Museum specimens collected during a 1907 marine expedition reveal loss of genetic diversity in the Philippines

The Department of Agriculture has been formally alerted to the incident by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

We investigated how tree functional traits vary across six vegetation types in the Amazon–Cerrado transition and identified key environmental drivers of these patterns, revealing a functional continu....

npj Climate Action - Quantifying the regional to global climate impacts of individual fossil fuel projects to inform decision-making

Plant cells are connected to their neighbours via ‘tubes’ called plasmodesmata, creating an interconnected cytoplasm that joins cells within and between tissues and organs.

npj Climate Action - Quantifying the regional to global climate impacts of individual fossil fuel projects to inform decision-making

Background The increasing size, severity, and frequency of wildfires is one of the most rapid ways climate warming could alter the structure and function of high-latitude ecosystems. Historically, boreal forests in western North America had fire return intervals (FRI) of 70–130 years, but shortened FRIs are becoming increasingly common under extreme weather conditions. Here, we quantified pre-fire and post-fire C pools and C losses and assessed post-fire seedling regeneration in long (> 70 years), intermediate (30–70 years), and short (< 30 years) FRIs, and triple (three fires in < 70 years) burns. As boreal forests store a significant portion of the global terrestrial carbon (C) pool, understanding the impacts of shortened FRIs on these ecosystems is critical for predicting the global C balance and feedbacks to climate. Results Using a spatially extensive dataset of 555 plots from 31 separate fires in Interior Alaska, our study demonstrates that shortened FRIs decrease the C storage capacity of boreal forests through loss of legacy C and regeneration failure. Total wildfire C emissions were similar among FRI classes, ranging from 2.5 to 3.5 kg C m−2. However, shortened FRIs lost proportionally more of their pre-fire C pools, resulting in substantially lower post-fire C pools than long FRIs. Shortened FRIs also resulted in the combustion of legacy C, defined as C that escaped combustion in one or more previous fires. We found that post-fire successional trajectories were impacted by FRI, with ~ 65% of short FRIs and triple burns experiencing regeneration failure. Conclusions Our study highlights the structural and functional vulnerability of boreal forests to increasing fire frequency. Shortened FRIs and the combustion of legacy C can shift boreal ecosystems from a net C sink or neutral to a net C source to the atmosphere and increase the risk of transitions to non-forested states. These changes could have profound implications for the boreal C-climate feedback and underscore the need for adaptive management strategies that prioritize the structural and functional resilience of boreal forest ecosystems to expected increases in fire frequency.

Taking the Environment Minister to court over his approval of Australia’s largest, longest operating and most polluting gas project.

Analysis of Aboriginal Australian mitochondrial genomes shows geographic patterns and deep splits across the major haplogroups that indicate a single, rapid migration along the coasts around 49–45 ka, followed by longstanding persistence in discrete geographic areas.

Ecologist amazed an Aboriginal legend about the origin of the palm tree in Central Australia backs up his research.

New research suggests Palawa Aboriginal stories from Tasmania recall geological and astronomical events that occurred 12,000 years ago, placing them among the oldest recorded stories in the world.