University of British Columbia researchers have discovered an internal messaging system that plants use to manage the growth and division of their cells.

About 94 million years ago, something happened that led to an unusually high amount of organic material being preserved in oceans around the world.

Study finds injecting fluid into sedimentary rock can produce bigger, more distant earthquakes than injecting into the underlying basement rock.

Trees try to protect themselves from extreme drought with various measures such as premature leaf shedding.

The vast majority of lemur species are on the edge of extinction, experts warn. But not every lemur species faces a grim future. There may be as many as 1.3 million white-fronted brown lemurs still in the wild, for example, and mouse lemurs may number more than 2 million, a Duke-led study has shown.

A new paper reviews current knowledge on climate change and biodiversity. In the past, plants and animals reacted to environmental changes by adapting, migrating or going extinct. These findings point to radical changes in biodiversity due to climate change in the future. The paper is published in the scientific journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution by an international group of scientists led by the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate, University of Copenhagen.

A new method of monitoring bird populations that takes into account changes in their songs over time could help scientists understand why some species are declining in the boreal forest.

Seven often wet and muddy researchers can be found bundled in their orange full-body suits sifting through mud on the back deck of the Healy.

The Arctic Ocean is a bustling metropolis of life that ranges in size from whales the size of small ships to microscopic marine bacteria that are 300,000 times smaller than a basketball.

Land ecosystems absorb on average 30% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, thereby tempering the increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. But plants need water to grow. When a drought occurs, and soils dry out, plants reduce photosynthesis and breathe less in order to save water and preserve their tissues. As a consequence, they are no longer able to capture carbon dioxide from the surrounding air and more CO2 remains in the air. While this effect can be easily observed in the lab, measuring its impact on the whole planet has proved quite difficult. One of the greatest challenges has been to measure where and how often droughts occur globally. In a new study, Vincent Humphrey, climate researcher in the lab of Sonia Seneviratne, Professor for Land-Climate Dynamics at ETH Zurich, used innovative satellite technology to measure the global sensitivity of ecosystems to water stress. The study was carried out in collaboration with the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (France) and the University of Exeter (United Kingdom).