Honey bees heavy with pollen and nectar foraged from wildflowers on Utah’s Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest collide with tall grass and tumble to the ground. 

Scientists have long believed that ocean viruses always quickly kill algae, but Rutgers-led research shows they live in harmony with algae and viruses provide a “coup de grace” only when blooms of algae are already stressed and dying.

The devastating effects of human activity on wildlife in the American tropics over the last 500 years are revealed in a new study published today.

Repeated pooling and evaporation of water built this expansive salt pan in northern Namibia.

Almost all of the 46 centimeters (18 inches) of rain that falls in Etosha National Park each year arrives between October and March. The influx of moisture—a boon for the wildlife—completely transforms the landscape. It greens parched grasslands, replenishes ephemeral streams and watering holes, and sometimes pools enough to cover a flat basin with a layer of water that extends for thousands of square kilometers.

When the rains slow and then cease during the dry season (April through September), any water in the basin slowly evaporates, depositing salt and other minerals on the land surface in the process. Over time, this cycle of flooding and evaporation has built up a mineral-encrusted surface called a salt pan. In fact, the striking white surface of the salt pan is what originally earned Etosha Pan its name. In the language of the local Ovambo people, etosha means "great white place."

Continue reading at NASA Earth Observatory

Image via NASA Earth Observatory

Satellite data is helping scientists size up one of the most intense outbreaks of fire and smoke that Oregon and California have seen in decades.

August 2020 ended as 2nd hottest for the globe

The National Science Foundation awarded Dominic Winski $137,419 to reconstruct 1,500 years of summer climate and wildfire history in Alaska, western Canada and Siberia using an ice core from Denali National Park.

Sparrows show increased stress when exposed to more numerous and more severe winter storms, says a Western study that tested the songbirds’ resilience to the effects of climate change.

By studying the wood-cutting behaviour of ancient beavers that once roamed the Canadian high Arctic, an international team of scientists has discovered that tree predation – feeding on trees and harvesting wood – evolved in these now-extinct rodents long before dam-building.

Rural Canada is home to more than 18 per cent of the national population and it plays a critical role in the national economy.