Editor’s note: This post has been updated and broken links removed. Please see our policy on broken hyperlinks for more. A few years ago the term “hydroponic” may have conjured up a particularly fragrant cloud in your mind, but these days the horticultural subset is becoming a more popular way of growing produce. Most big grocery stores …
Several strong hurricanes have made landfall over the past few months, leaving destruction in their wake, but what else are they triggering? Could they be responsible for seismic activity? We wanted to learn more about the data recently captured by seismometers amid some of the season’s strongest storms. For insight, we spoke to Stephen Hicks, …
What would the world look like without coffee? This is what some researchers are wondering now that they’ve looked at the impact of climate change and pollination on coffee bean plants. For a recent study, a group of scientists wanted to examine how climate change caused geographic range shifts in pollinators and major crops (Imbach …
The summer sun and heat calls people outside once again. With all the scares of mosquito transmitted diseases, the bug spray is par for the course. Who’s more at risk: city-dwellers or rural lovers? Research out of Panama suggests those along the main roads — whether they are rural or city dwellers are first choice …
Air pollution is already a significant problem in many parts of the world, but what about the U.S.? Recently, scientists set out to determine just how much air pollution we’re exposed to in the U.S., as well as how it’s impacting our health. (Di et al., 2017) The researchers used 12 years of data, health records …
Welcome to Henderson Island, where you can literally live alongside 38 million pieces of trash. This little island located halfway between New Zealand and Chile is considered to be a UNESCO world heritage site. Unfortunately, it’s been plagued with a plastic problem. A recent report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences …
There are drawbacks, of course, to doing environmental experiments in a laboratory setting. Small-scale experimentation may not yield the same results as a large-scale, real-world experiment. In a sterile lab, scientists may not be able to predict the impact of other environmental factors. A more accurate way of conducting research would be to experiments in …
Carbon dioxide doesn’t have to be a bad thing – in moderate doses – but our planet is simply getting too much of it. Thanks to manmade activities, we now have to think about how carbon dioxide is going to affect everything from wildlife to the longevity of our planet in its entirety. Now, scientists …
We often think of fire as the ultimate destructive force but for pyrophile trees, fire is necessary to reproduce. Although several pyrophile plants – plants that have adapted to tolerate fire – exist worldwide, some species of trees have taken this relationship a step further. They have adapted to harness the power of fire to …
The Great Barrier Reef is one of the world’s most stunning underwater marvels, but depending on the pace of global warming, it may not be here for us to witness in the future. According to a new report published in Nature, the resilience of the reef is quickly dropping. (Hughes et al., 2017) This comes after …