Many beloved wildflowers bloom in early spring, while trees are still bare and the flowers have access to sunlight. Climate change is throwing trees and wildflowers out of sync.
Journals, museum collections and other historical sources can provide valuable data for modern ecological studies. But just because a source is old doesn’t make it useful.
Honey bees, wild and native bees face threats from parasites, pesticides and habitat loss. Shorter winters, more extreme weather and more habitat destruction won’t help.
Satellite telemetry, tiny geolocation tags and passive acoustic recording are providing new insights into bird migration and vital data for conservation.
Climatologists study data over a long time to understand weather patterns and what causes them. Biometeorologists explore the impact that the weather and climate have on people, plants and animals.
The picture seems hopeless, but with mitigation and adaptation strategies and policies driven through COP26, southern Africa can reduce the impacts of climate change on local livelihoods.
Trees and shrubs in cold-weather climates rely on certain signals, such as temperature and light, to know when to leaf out and bloom. Climate change is scrambling those signals.
COVID-19 kept many scientists from doing field research in 2020, which means that important records will have data gaps. But volunteers are helping to plug some of those holes.
The COVID-19 pandemic is interrupting scientific field work across North America, leaving blank spots in important data sets and making it harder to track ecological change.
Climate change has advanced the arrival of spring by as much as several weeks in some parts of the US. This can mean major crop losses and disconnects between species that need each other to thrive.
Masting is what biologists call the pattern of trees for miles around synchronizing to all produce lots of seeds − or very few. Why and how do they get on schedule?