biodiversity

Freshwater lakes across North America and Europe are becoming noticeably browner, reducing underwater visibility and reshaping fish populations. Research found that several popular sport fish, including trout, bass, perch, and whitefish, tend to decline in darker waters. Meanwhile, walleye and northern pike often become more abundant because they are better adapted to low-visibility conditions. T…

The health of the Amazon rainforest is key to the global climate, but many dangers threaten to make it unrecognizable in the future.

Nature Climate Change, Published online: 17 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41558-026-02677-y The biophysical effects of forests on climate are important for mitigation, but the impacts of climate change on these effects are unclear. This study shows that vapour pressure deficit is the primary driver of trends in forest biophysical cooling, regulated by plant anisohydricity.

The online mobilisation of digital collections has made tens of millions of specimens accessible for scientific research, helping discoveries in conservation, food security, and biodiversity studies. Many of these projects focus on questions such as extinction risks, improving estimates of plant distributions across space and time, and conservation planning for threatened species. But digitisatio…

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Researchers say these coral strongholds may help repopulate more degraded reefs.

As demand soars, the country’s mangrove forests and the livelihoods of shellfish gatherers are under threat from encroaching farms and unchecked pollution At low tide, Johana Carolina Cruz Potes steps into the mudflats around Isla Costa Rica, in Ecuador ’s Jambelí Archipelago. Holding a bucket and a short metal hook, she probes the tangled roots of a mangrove patch, searching for concha negra , b…

The warming caused by climate breakdown in the landlocked east Asian country is transforming its fragile ecosystem As the climate crisis accelerates, Mongolia is warming rapidly, transforming the country’s cryosphere, including some of the most southerly permafrost landscapes in the northern hemisphere. Although rarely associated with the Arctic, Mongolia has a remarkably cold climate. Ulaanbaata…

Nature reserves constitute a key means of biodiversity conservation. Using matched data between nature reserves and listed companies in China, this study investigates how the capital market views the establishment of nature reserves and explores whether nature reserves are priced. The results indicate that the establishment of nature reserves significantly reduces the cost of equity capital, demo…

ObjectiveThis systematic review examines the association between campus green spaces and mental well-being among university students, with a specific focus on evidence from mainland China and Hong Kong. It synthesizes findings on how different measures of greenness relate to mental health outcomes, including stress, anxiety, depression, life satisfaction, and psychological well-being.MethodsThe s…

Portsmouth, Hampshire: A huge conservation effort is under way to restore native oysters to the Solent, and I was on hand to help give them a pre-release spa day Native oysters ( Ostrea edulis ) have been harvested from Chichester Harbour since Roman times, but due to overfishing, disease, pollution and competition from invasive Pacific oysters ( Magallana gigas ), the population has declined by …

Bottom trawling—towing a net along the seafloor to catch fish—is one of the most contested areas of the just-stalled Fisheries Amendment Bill. […] The post Should we worry about bottom trawling? – Expert Q&A appeared first on Science Media Centre .

University of Notre Dame researchers analyzed 42 years of biological records from the Great Lakes, unveiling how per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) or “forever chemicals” have moved across the region, contaminating a variety of wildlife.

The first global map of underground fungal networks reveals a hidden 68 quadrillion-mile superhighway that helps sustain life on Earth and store carbon in the soil. Beneath forests, grasslands, wetlands, and even many agricultural fields lies a vast underground fungal network that supports plant life and plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. [...]

Top 10% generate climate and biodiversity damage bill that exceeds economies of most countries, say researchers The environmental damage bill racked up by the highest-consuming 10% of the world’s population has reached up to $5.7tn a year – larger than the economy of every country except the US and China, a study has found. Mega-consumers in this group are concentrated in the global north, accoun…

From the sprawling Amazon to the lesser-known tropical forests, see if you can correctly rank these rainforests by their total area.

Civil society organizations around the world are playing a critical role in addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, land degradation, pollution, and other environmental challenges. Yet many of these organizations struggle to secure the resources needed to expand successful initiatives and increase their impact. To address this gap, the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) CSO Challenge […] The …