Large stones in streams provide crucial habitat for fish. Modeling the boulders and streamflow offers fresh insights into how water engineering projects alter aquatic habitats.
ecosystems
Understanding Stream Metabolism with Reactive Tracers
When the blue dye resazurin encounters living microorganisms, it transforms into fluorescent pink resorufin and helps scientists understand ecosystem respiration, but it has its limitations.
Science in This Century Needs People
An ecologist built an army of beach surveyors over 20 years and now has the world’s largest data set of marine bird mortality informing climate change and disaster studies.
The Ice Nurseries of the Arctic Are Melting
Ice formed in coastal nurseries along Russia’s Arctic coast is melting before it can float far offshore. Scientists are worried about what that means for wildlife.
Topography and Microclimate Shape Tree Ring Growth
Wizened bristlecone pines in California reveal past climate trends, and new research shows how slight variations in landscape position drive different growth patterns in trees’ annual rings.
Monitoring Ecosystem Health in India’s Food Basket
A new critical zone observatory in India’s Ganga Basin helps researchers and farmers understand and improve the ways that human activities shape environmental processes.
Making the First National Seafloor Habitat Map
Seamap Australia integrates seafloor maps with information on plant and animal habitats, environmental stressors, and resource management to create a first-of-its-kind resource.
Eddies Influence Productivity in the Subtropical Open Ocean
Ocean eddies may help recycle nutrients within giant current systems that encircle “desert” surface waters.
A Novel Approach Reveals Element Cycles in the Ocean
Dissolved thorium isotopes light the way to a more thorough understanding of how different elements enter marine environments—and how long they stay there.
Keeping a Watch on Seaweeds: The Forests of the World’s Coasts
Planning the Implementation of a Global Long-Term Observing and Data Sharing Strategy for Macroalgal Communities; Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, 24–26 September 2018
