Scientists deployed motion-sensitive camera traps across a 50-square-mile swath of Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in southern Sumatra and, over the course of eight years, recorded the haunts and habits of dozens of species, including the Sumatran tiger and other rare and endangered wildlife. Their observations offer insight into how abundant these species are and…

A scientist has discovered a method for detecting and better defining meteorite impact sites that have long lost their tell-tale craters. The discovery could further the study of not only Earth’s geology but also that of other bodies in our solar system. The key, according to work by associate research professor Gunther Kletetschka at the…

The death of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was caused by the impact of a huge asteroid on the Earth. However, paleontologists have continued to debate whether they were already in decline or not before the impact. Scientists now show that they were already in decline for as much as ten million years before…

Scientists have employed a new method utilizing tsunami signals to calculate the calving magnitude of an ocean-terminating glacier in northwestern Greenland, uncovering correlations between calving flux and environmental factors such as air temperature, ice speed, and ocean tides. It is, however, difficult to directly measure the volume of calving ice and submarine melting because conducting…

Different combinations of human hunting and climate change caused Australia’s famed ‘giant’ species to go extinct, and now it turns out that for some species, changing food availability made things worse. Sophisticated new modelling has uncovered a previously unrecognised process contributing to the disappearance of ancient megafauna communities across south-eastern Australia tens of thousands of…

The Red Sea is a fascinating and still puzzling area of investigation for geoscientists. Controversial questions include its age and whether it represents a special case in ocean basin formation or if it has evolved similarly to other, larger ocean basins. Researchers have now published a new tectonic model that suggests that the Red Sea…

Climate change mitigation efforts have led to shifts from fossil-fuel dependence to large-scale renewable energy. However, renewable energy sources require significant land and could come at a cost to ecosystems. A new study evaluates potential conflicts between alternative energy strategies and biodiversity conservation. The study, published in Biological Conservation, evaluates potential tradeoffs between climate benefits…

A four-year study concludes that the fungal disease, white-nose syndrome, poses a severe threat to many western North American bats. Since it was first detected in 2006, white-nose syndrome has killed millions of bats in eastern and central North America. The spread of the fungal pathogen that causes white-nose syndrome in hibernating bats has reached…

Researchers compiled a dataset of 209 crustacean and 155 mollusk species from 16 mangrove forests around the world. They found that mangroves, when compared with other ecosystems, are among those with the lowest functional redundancy among resident fauna recorded to date, which suggests that these coastal vegetations are among the most precarious ecosystems in the…