Ecosystems News

Raccoons are definitely cute and clever, and in habitats where they have predators, they keep to the trees and do most of their foraging for food at night. In areas where there are no predators, their cute and clever ways can wreak havoc on ecosystems.

Vancouver - Scientists at the University of British Columbia (UBC) claim human actions are responsible for accelerating the evolutionary process by causing the extinction of “younger” species.

Afraid of the wolf? The world will be a whole lot scarier if wolves and other large carnivores become extinct, according to a new study published Friday by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), in collaboration with the University of Montana.

Potsdam - Climate change is likely to transform landscapes worldwide, affecting most of Earth’s forests and agriculture — and it isn’t a far future scenario, says a new report. Profound changes in the world’s ecosystems could happen less than 90 years hence

March 21 is the first United Nations International Day of Forests. In Scotland, conservation charity Trees for Life is stepping up efforts to get people involved in a renaissance of Scotland’s long beleaguered ancient Caledonian pine forest.

Greenpeace Canada announced its withdrawal yesterday from the Canada Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA) claiming logging roads built in Quebec’s Montagnes Blanches region managed by Resolute Forest Products are a violation of the CBFA.

Calgary - On November 10, 2011, the U.S. State Department delayed plans to build the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline to get additional information. It was a major coup for environmentalists who opposed the project that would have straddled Canada and the US.

During the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, which concluded at the end of October, the World Bank announced two linked initiatives that aim to protect ecosystems and species at risk of extinction.

The Internet could be used as an early warning system for potential ecological disasters, according to researchers from the University of East Anglia and Stockholm University.

Although ecologists expect many species will be harmed by climate change, some species could be buffered by their potential to evolve or by changes in their surrounding ecosystems.

Researchers use novel tools to report some of the first quantifiable results that place values on nature’s services to humans.

Researchers say unparalleled warming over the last few decades has triggered widespread ecosystem changes in many temperate North American and Western European lakes.

A University of Georgia study has found that tadpoles play a key role keeping the algae at the base of the food chain productive.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a report that can help reduce the potential impact of climate change on estuaries, forests, wetlands, coral reefs, and other sensitive ecosystems.

The catastrophic action a tiny beetle is wreaking on the deteriorating Chihuahuan desert will be revealed in the April edition of the Royal Entomological Society’s Ecological Entomology journal.

It may be the year of the rat but the Aleutian Islands is working on evicting the vermin. The action is taking place because of the massive ecosystems that have been changed with the presence of the rodents.

Predatory crabs and fish are poised to return to warming Antarctic waters for the first time in millions of years, threatening the shallow marine ecosystems surrounding Antarctica. Antarctic marine communities resemble the primeval waters.

Aphids that eat Brussels sprouts are smaller than normal and live in undersized populations, which has a negative knock-on effect up the food chain according to new research published today in "Science".

The full recovery of ecological systems, following the most devastating extinction event of all time, took at least 30 million years, according to new research from the University of Bristol.

A new study that was funded by the National Science Foundation indicates that a genetically modified corn (Bt corn) may be causing damage to the ecology of streams that are draining Bt corn fields.