News by Subject Earth Science

In 2019, a coalition of more than 11,000 scientists from across the globe declared a climate emergency and established a set of vital signs for the Earth in order to measure effective climate action. Now, twenty months later, a new study published today in BioScience finds that those indicators -- including ice and forest loss, ocean acidity, and global temperatures -- reflect the consequences of unrelenting "business-as-usual" on climate change.

Scientists around the world are collaborating on a project that is changing the way they trace the evolutionary history of flowering plants. By using new technology allowing them to rapidly retrieve and compare DNA sequences from among any of the 300,000 species of flowering plants, scientists are unraveling the 140-million-year history of the largest group of land plants on Earth and providing a framework to protect vulnerable species and populations into the future.

A genetic analysis of fruit in the mandarin family has unraveled a complex journey from the mountainous region of southern China to the markets of Okinawa, says researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University.

Similar to the election needle and the stock market index, scientists have developed a new tracking system to detect danger to rainforests around the world. The data to build the index was culled from advanced satellite measurements of climate and vegetation of each tropical region on Earth.

Many species within Kenya's Tana River Basin will be unable to survive if global temperatures continue to rise as they are on track to do - according to new research from the University of East Anglia. A new study published in the journal PLOS ONE outlines how remaining within the goals of the Paris Agreement would save many species. The research also identifies places that could be restored to better protect biodiversity and contribute towards global ecosystem restoration targets.