Climate change is going to make life on Earth a whole lot worse, report predicts

Think recent climate disasters have been bad? Just wait, researchers at the University of Hawaii predicted Monday.Right now, one climate-linked disaster generally hits at a time, whether it’s forest fires destroying swathes of California, hurricanes flooding Texas and Louisiana and completely devastating Puerto Rico, or heat waves killing thousands in Europe. By 2100, unless something drastic changes, a new report […]

Current climate models underestimate warming by black carbon aerosol

Soot belches out of diesel engines, rises from wood- and dung-burning cookstoves and shoots out of oil refinery stacks. According to recent research, air pollution, including soot, is linked to heart disease, some cancers and, in the United States, as many as 150,000 cases of diabetes every year.Beyond its impact on health, soot, known as […]

Progress in hybrid rice research highlighted at the HRDC annual meeting

Forging partnerships with the private sector opens up opportunities to maximize our research-for-development impact. IRRI, through the Hybrid Rice Development Consortium (HRDC), facilitates a collaboration that would advance hybrid rice development and dissemination for smallholder rice farmers in Asia.Eighty-three HRDC members gathered at IRRI Headquarters, Los Baños, Laguna earlier this week to discuss achievements and […]

Vietnam stakeholders discuss ways to increase mechanization and sustainability of rice value chains

As Vietnam rapidly progresses towards sustainable rice production, there is an increasing need for the rice sector, such as farmers’ organizations, exporters, food companies, research institutes, and other development oriented groups, to work together for the common vision of the country in becoming a global supplier of sustainable rice. Since standards for sustainable rice management […]

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As climate and land-use change accelerate, so must efforts to preserve California’s plants

As the IPCC warns that we have only 12 years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half or risk significantly greater impacts from climate change, University of California, Berkeley, scientists are charting the best course to save California's native plants from these human threats. "We just have a decade or two given the rapid […]

Study: Replanting Trees After Wildfires May Not Be Necessary

New research is offering a way to potentially save money and resources on forest recovery after wildfire. After wildfire season ends each year, land managers start planning what comes next for the areas that burned.  Often, the strategy used to ensure the forests return is to salvage log and then replant. But a recent study suggests that in […]

Wales ‘Rich soup of life’ in Gwent wetlands at risk from motorway

The Gwent Levels is a low-lying patchwork of wetlands, divided by drainage ditches first dug by the Romans, that is so full of life that conservationists compare its diversity to the Amazon rainforest. But this quiet corner of south-east Wales may soon disappear under concrete if the Labour-led Welsh government gives the go-ahead for a new 14-mile stretch of […]

Surge in marine refuges brings world close to protected areas goal

A record surge in the creation of marine protected areas has taken the international community close to its goal of creating nature refuges on 17% of the world’s land and 10% of seas by 2020, according to a new UN report. Protected regions now cover more than five times the territory of the US, but […]

Severity of toxic red tide tests Florida’s resources for rescued manatees

At the peak of Florida’s red tide crisis this summer, Jon Peterson had to dig deep into Sea World’s storage warehouses to find enough portable pools to accommodate the dozens of sick manatees arriving at a rate of two or three a week. The Orlando theme park’s manager for animal rescues even found himself forking […]