Assessing ecosystem services to identify conservation priorities
...onomic opportunity. But as human pressures on wild lands continue to escalate, conservation biologists are ...ion. Understanding the degree of overlap between lands that provide important ecosystem services as well as biodiversity, Chan et al. argue, will not only ...Inventor helps grasslands go native
... Much of the seed market is for the restoration of lands disturbed by mining, road construction and fires. The Plant Materials Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that in 2001 more than 19 million pounds of PMP released varieties of native seed species sold for $94 million, represent...Winners of the 2006 AAAS Science Journalism Awards
...ct of airborne dust, from drought-stricken grazing lands and other sources, on snow pack in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Peter Spotts of The Christian Science Monitor called her series "a nice blend of current research and historical context" that is "accessible to a lay readership." Gugliotta pra...Report outlines funding to conserve half of Massachusetts's land
...onserve roughly half of Massachusetts as protected lands has received a boost from a new report detailing seven strategies to finance the ambitious proposal. The report emerged from an April conference of 40 conservation finance experts from across the nation, hosted by Harvard University's Center for th...Icelandic volcano caused historic famine in Egypt, says Rutgers-based team
...tion of 1783 was not sufficient, great part of the lands therefore could not be sown for want of being watered, and another part was in the same predicament for want of seed. In 1784, the Nile again did not rise to the favorable height, and the dearth immediately became excessive. Soon after the end of Nov...Measuring plant diversity, predicting vulnerability to invasive species
...nd severity, and native plant diversity on Federal lands and other natural areas. To better protect native plants and prevent non-native invasions, it is important to assess hot spots of native plant diversity, areas with species that occur only in that area or region, and unique native plant communities. ...Intensified research effort yields climate-resilient agriculture to blunt impact of global warming
...th American wheat growers will be able to farm new lands as far as 65 degrees north, 10 degrees beyond their current planting limit. In North America, wheat growing would extend from its current limit extending from Ketchikan, Alaska in the West to Cape Harrison, Labrador in the East to less than two deg...It's enough to turn your neighbors green
...estment in the conversion of marginal agricultural lands to commercial tree plantations in Costa Rica, location decision is based on the host countrys potential for avoiding deforestation as well as by previous aid and trade patterns. The authors advise policy makers to pay particular attention to region...Erythrocyte G protein as a novel target for malarial chemotherapy
...P PO Box 9600 Leiden, Zuid-Holland 2300 RC Nether lands +31 71 5271914 b.t.heijmans@lumc.nl...ESA launches new project to protect biodiversity
...ally, the project will provide a global map of dry lands based on existing global datasets to the UNCBD. The DIVERSITY project, developed under ESA's Data User Element (DUE) programme, is being carried out in collaboration with the UNCBD Secretariat and UNESCO, which, in addition to being a user, is also...Winners of the 2006 AAAS Science Journalism Awards
...ct of airborne dust, from drought-stricken grazing lands and other sources, on snow pack in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. Peter Spotts of The Christian Science Monitor called her series "a nice blend of current research and historical context" that is "accessible to a lay readership." Gugliotta pra...Farmed salmon could become an invasive species in forest streams
...ishes inhabiting streams on National Forest System lands and to learn if concerns from both sides of the farmed-versus-wild fish debate had validity, based on an extensive literature review. Here are some of the findings in the report: At present, breeding populations of escaped farm salmon are not kn...Slow but sure -- Burned forest lands regenerate naturally
CORVALLIS, Ore. -- A new study of forest lands that burned in the 1990s in northern California an...fer regeneration appears to be working." Whether lands should be planted and weed competition controlled is more a question of short-term timber production...Study projects effects of forest management in Oregon's Coast Range
...they may impact federal, state, and private forest lands in the areas nearly five million acres. Some of ...e Coast Range are more likely to improve on public lands than on private. Recent biodiversity policies have been developed in a largely uncoordinated manner...Drylands are not the same as badlands
...nce, there are many opportunities to improve these lands so they won't be degraded in the future." For example, study co-author D. Mark Stafford Smith of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, in Canberra, Australia, has begun a program called Desert Knowledge that is tapping n...From the deep -- Researchers find new species of sea anemone
...said. "A whale dies where it dies, and its carcass lands wherever. But these are actually some of the most stable deep sea communities. "A better understanding of deep-sea populations may shed light on how humans drive ecological change, whether it's through whaling or global climate change," she said, a...Climate change threatens wild relatives of key crops
...o climate change is they are largely found in flat lands and would have to migrate a long way to reach cooler climates, a predicament exacerbated by the fact that peanuts bury their seeds underground, a meter or less from the parent plant. That limits the speed at which seeds can move into more favorable c...On-farm research shows farmers that they can use less nitrogen
...ght, so less manure is required to fertilize those lands to grow corn. Coller has reconfigured applications to better distribute the farm's manure resources to other fields. In New York state, some 460,000 acres produced 8.28 million tons of silage in 2006. Nitrogen fertilizer is growing increasingly exp...Modified mushrooms may yield human drugs
...imately depends on where exactly the imported gene lands in the mushroom chromosome, among a complexity of other factors, but researchers point out that the process of producing biopharmaceuticals is potentially faster and cheaper with mushrooms than conventional technologies. Unlike plants that have long...Military bases can benefit by addressing sprawl issues and biodiversity
...before the opportunity to buffer these surrounding lands is lost. RAND researchers surveyed military staf... federal agencies to protect biodiversity on their lands so that military installations do not become the remaining federal islands of biodiversity protectio...