ScienceDaily: Top Environment News

These were days, months and years that many will come to remember: the drought from 2018 to 2020. An international team of researchers has succeeded in categorizing the historical dimensions of this event. Based on their findings, no drought covering such a large area for an extended period and coinciding with warmer temperature has occurred in Europe since the middle of the 18th century. The years from 2018 to 2020 thus represent a new benchmark for droughts. Because such an unprecedented event is likely to occur more frequently in the future, the scientists urgently recommend the development and implementation of suitable, regionally adapted drought prevention measures.

Researchers have discovered and described two new species of Amazonian fish -- one with striking red-orange fins and the other so small it is technically considered a miniature fish species. Both species inhabit waters located at the bleeding edge of human encroachment into the Amazon rainforest roughly 25 miles north of the Brazilian city of Apuí. The study's authors said that ongoing deforestation in the region places these roughly inch-long fish, part of a group known colloquially as the South American darters, in imminent danger of extinction.

Researchers have developed a CRISPR-Cas9 approach to enable gene editing in cockroaches, according to a new study. The simple and efficient technique, named 'direct parental' CRISPR (DIPA-CRISPR), involves the injection of materials into female adults where eggs are developing rather than into the embryos themselves.

Proponents of degrowth have long argued that economic growth is detrimental to the environment. Now, scientists show that concerning the food sector, curbing growth alone would not make our food system sustainable -- but changing what we eat and putting a price on carbon would.

A human rights activist and a group of anthropologists and human biologists are casting a critical lens on the way that microbiome research is conducted with Indigenous peoples.

Many animal species bury their eggs, for a number of different reasons. While it is firmly established that Eurasian penduline tits bury them because of sexual conflict, their Chinese counterparts seem to have an entirely different reason. Experimental manipulations show that for these birds burial prevents the eggs from falling out of the nest in strong winds.

New gene-editing techniques are shedding light on how hormones impact social behavior in animals and possibly, humans.

Eliminating air pollution emissions from energy-related activities in the United States would prevent more than 50,000 premature deaths each year and provide more than $600 billion in benefits each year from avoided illness and death, according to a new study.