ENVIRO AONE

Ruby-throated hummingbirds use the same energy-conserving strategy to survive overnight fasts and build the fat stores they need to fuel long migrations, shows a new study. The findings help prove a long-held suspicion among scientists who study hummingbirds. They also provide new insights on the rules the birds use to determine whether to conserve energy…

Geologists have improved upon methods to map seabed rocks, helping us better understand underwater earthquakes and the tsunamis they can cause. The researchers hope that their clearer view of the rocks around these fault lines — whose movements can trigger earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis — will help them better understand why such events happen. Lead…

In the Middle Bronze Age (about 3600 years ago or roughly 1650 BCE), the city of Tall el-Hammam was ascendant. Located on high ground in the southern Jordan Valley, northeast of the Dead Sea, the settlement in its time had become the largest continuously occupied Bronze Age city in the southern Levant, having hosted early…

Researchers have generated new maps of jet contrails over the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, which show a steep reduction in the area covered by contrails in 2020. MIT engineers have mapped the contrails that were generated over the United States in 2020, and compared the results to prepandemic years. They found…

A new study shows that an increase in hot, dry nights in recent decades has resulted in nighttime wildfires becoming more intense and more frequent. Researchers found there are 11 more flammable nights every year in the U.S. West compared to 1979 — a 45% increase over the past four decades. Nighttime warming is only…

Extensive satellite tracking has revealed important new knowledge about the little known pygmy blue whale population of Southern Australia. Marine biologists have extensively tracked the movements of foraging and migrating blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus brevicauda) along the Australian continental shelf on a journey towards breeding grounds in Indonesia as part of conservation efforts for the…

An international team of researchers explored how focusing either on the short- or long-term warming effects of methane can affect climate mitigation policies and dietary transitions in agriculture. Unlike the other main greenhouse gases (GHG) and particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) has a short atmospheric life (around 10 years). Its warming effect is significant…

As climate change poses risks to plant growth and food supply, researchers have identified how iron deficient plants optimize photosynthesis and regulate light protection. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how plants lacking iron optimize photosynthesis, and it describes the genetic processes that regulate light protection in plants that…

The use of weed killers can increase the prevalence of antibiotic resistant bacteria in soil, a new study shows. Herbicides are one of the most widely used chemicals in agriculture and while these compounds are used to target weeds, they can cause damage to soil microbes, such as bacteria and fungi, potentially changing the ecological…

What happens when a disease disrupts a protected ecosystem so forcefully that cascading consequences are felt by nearly all wildlife and plants within it? A study examines how the mange outbreak among vicunas restructured tightly linked food-chain interactions that were previously driven by pumas. Other times, the connection is devastatingly clear. Argentina’s wild vicunas are…