For much of its history, our planet has been hotter—sometimes much hotter—than it is today. But our planet has also been colder.

An international team of scientists, including two from Oregon State University, conducted a biological assessment of the world’s rivers and the limited data they found presents a fairly bleak picture.

Scientists at Oregon State University and the U.S. Forest Service have demonstrated that DNA extracted from water samples from rivers across Oregon and Northern California can be used to estimate genetic diversity of Pacific salmon and trout.

Robotic laboratories on the bottom of Lake Erie have revealed that the muddy sediments there release nearly as much of the nutrient phosphorus into the surrounding waters as enters the lake’s central basin each year from rivers and their tributaries.

Some songbirds are not dissuaded by constant, loud noise emitted by natural gas pipeline compressors and will establish nests nearby. 

Like a scene from a horror movie, tomato fruitworm caterpillars silence their food plants’ cries for help as they devour their leaves. 

A study published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry has found long-term impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the northern Gulf of Mexico on bottlenose dolphins’ immune function. 

Ancient alchemists dreamed of transforming base materials like lead into gold and other valuable commodities. 

Scientists have discovered a never-before-seen biodiversity pattern of coral reef fishes that suggests some fishes might be exceptionally vulnerable to environmental change.

Scientists have found that permafrost buried beneath the Arctic Ocean holds 60 billion tons of methane and 560 billion tons of organic carbon — making it a major source of greenhouse gases not currently included in climate projections that could have a significant impact on climate change in the longer-term.