ScienceDaily: Earth & Climate News

In the fall of 2017, a team of geologists had just set up a new volcanic forecasting modeling program on the Blue Waters and iForge supercomputers. Simultaneously, another team was monitoring activity at the Sierra Negra volcano in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. The teams shared their insights and what happened next was the fortuitous forecast of the June 2018 Sierra Negra eruption five months before it occurred.

While coastal flooding from tropical weather events such as hurricanes tend to get a lot of media attention, a new study from the University of Delaware found that midlatitude weather events like Nor'easters can produce flood levels just as severe and occur much more frequently in the Mid-Atlantic.

Studying ancient ocean floors could help us discover minerals needed to produce electric cars and solar panels.

Chemists are discovering new information to help remediate 'forever chemicals' by showing for the first time how they interact with soil at the molecular level.

No one is at their best when they are dehydrated and that goes for tectonic plates too. Researchers using a thermomechanical model of the Alaska subduction zone indicates that plate dehydration is at its highest in the region where low-frequency tremors occur, suggesting that the expelled water contributes towards these seimic events. This improved understanding will contribute to better predictions of future earthquakes.

New research finds that the ecological effect of invasive species alone is comparable to the combined effects of invasives plus warming temperatures, drought or nitrogen deposition. This suggests that a critical preparation for climate change is to manage invasive species at the local level.

Indiscriminate snaring for bushmeat hunting may have varying collateral effects on non-target species, ranging from mild injuries to death. Beyond immediate mortalities these effects are rarely examined. A team of scientists now analyzed the life-history consequences of debilitating snare injuries in individually known female spotted hyenas between 1987 and 2020 in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. The long-term data revealed that injuries did not decrease the age expectancy of the hyenas, but hampered their reproductive performance. Debilitating injuries caused by snares delayed their age at first reproduction, decreased the size of their litters and reduced the survival of their offspring.

Sparse data often make it difficult to track how climate change is affecting populations of insect species. A new study has now evaluated an extensive species mapping database (Artenschutzkartierung, ASK) and assessed the population trends of butterflies, dragonflies and grasshoppers in Bavaria since 1980. The main finding: heat-loving species have been increasing.

Could the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use's ambitions be too ambiguous? An international team of researchers looked into this question.

New research reveals that 44 percent of Earth's land area -- some 64 million square kilometers (24.7 million square miles) requires conservation to safeguard biodiversity.

Global warming has a particularly pronounced impact on the Alpine region. Like the Arctic, this European mountain range is becoming greener. Researchers have now used satellite data to show that vegetation above the tree line has increased in nearly 80% of the Alps. Snow cover is also decreasing, albeit so far only slightly.

They click. They whistle. They love seafood. They are New York City's nearshore bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) that return to feed in local waters from spring to fall each year, and a team of scientists is tracking them.

Analysis of long-term monitoring data for almost 1,500 species in Finland shows that four decades of climate change has led species to shift between the 'better' and 'worse' parts of their climatic niches, and that these impacts were most pronounced at higher latitudes.

Giant kelp forests around the world have struggled to stay healthy in recent decades, with some vanishing altogether. But along Patagonia's rugged southwestern coast, giant kelp are thriving, showing remarkable stability for almost 200 years. New research suggests frequent marine cold spells could help keep kelp happy.

To prevent the worst outcomes from climate change, the U.S. will need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in the next eight years. Scientists from around the nation have developed a blueprint for success.

The iconic Red List of Threatened Species, published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), identifies species at risk of extinction. In a new study, researchers present a novel machine learning tool for assessing extinction risk, and then use this tool to show that reptile species which are unlisted due to lack of assessment or data are more likely to be threatened than assessed species.