Earth
- Animals
Bat killer hits endangered grays
The news on white-nose syndrome just keeps spiraling downward. The fungal infection, which first emerged six years ago, has now been confirmed in a seventh species of North American bats — the largely cave-dwelling grays (Myotis grisecens). The latest victims were struck while hibernating this past winter in two Tennessee counties.
- Humans
Harappans may have lived, died by monsoon
Waning of seasonal rains over millennia gave rise to a civilization and then doomed it, a new study suggests.
- Climate
Rising CO2 promotes weedy rice
There has been a lot of research, recently, showing how global change — especially warming — can alter the habitat and preferred range of marine and terrestrial species. But rising levels of greenhouse gases can also, directly, do a number on agricultural ecosystems, a new study shows. At least for U.S.-grown rice, rising carbon dioxide levels give a preferential reproductive advantage to the weedy natural form — known colloquially as red rice (for the color of its seed coat).
- Life
Delay of bloom blamed on climate change
Flowers that appear immune to global warming in spring may simply be taking a cue from the previous warmer autumn.
- Earth
Pumping groundwater raises sea level
Two new studies flag an underreported factor in global ocean change.
- Life
Climate change miscues may shrink species’ outer limits
Ecological partnerships are getting out of sync especially at high latitudes, a study of hummingbirds suggests.
- Humans
Redefining ‘concern’ over lead
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced May 16 that it would no longer designate any particular blood-lead value in children as representing a “level of concern.” Its justification: There is no threshold below which lead exposures are not a concern.
- Earth
Natural sinks still sopping up carbon
Ecosystems haven’t yet maxed out their ability to absorb fossil fuel emissions, new calculations suggest.
- Life
Climate change may leave many mammals homeless
In some places over the next century, projected warming threatens the survival of more than one in three species.
- Earth
Big Antarctic ice sheet appears doomed
Warming climate is expected to trigger the sudden retreat of a partially floating glacier on the continent’s western side by 2100.
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- Earth
Study keeps pace with Greenland glaciers
Herky-jerky motion of the island’s ice suggests that melting ice is unlikely to contribute to dramatic sea level rise this century, but the news isn’t all good.
