California Projected to Get Wetter Through This Century

UC Riverside researchers analyze 38 climate models and project California will get on average 12 percent more precipitation through 2100.

Hot new imagery of wintering bats suggests a group behavior for battling white-nose syndrome

Hot new imagery from temperature-sensing cameras suggests that bats who warm up from hibernation together throughout the winter may be better at surviving white nose syndrome, a disease caused by a cold-loving fungus ravaging insect-eating bat populations in the United States and Canada. The study by researchers with Massey University in New Zealand and the USGS was published in Methods in Ecology and Evolution.  

Blue-green algae makes a colourful, scummy return to Alberta lakes

It’s slimy, it’s stinky and like a creature from a summer horror flick, it’s coming back to Alberta lakes this vacation season.

Blue-green algae—the scum-inducing bacteria to blame for the annual ‘eww’ factor in local swimming holes—should be blooming by mid-July, says a University of Alberta water expert.

Krill hotspot fuels incredible biodiversity in Antarctic region

There are so many Antarctic krill in the Southern Ocean that the combined mass of these tiny aquatic organisms is more than that of the world’s 7.5 billion human inhabitants.

Scientists have long known about this important zooplankton species, but they haven’t been certain why particular regions or “hotspots” in the Southern Ocean are so productive.

Cellulosic Biofuels Can Benefit Environment if Managed Correctly

Could cellulosic biofuels – or liquid energy derived from grasses and wood – become a green fuel of the future, providing an environmentally sustainable way of meeting energy needs? In Science, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy-funded Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center say yes, but with a few important caveats.

How grassland management without the loss of species works

The intensive management of grasslands is bad for biodiversity. However, a study by the Terrestrial Ecology Research Group at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has brought a ray of hope: If different forms of management are optimally distributed within a region, this can lead to higher yields without the loss of insect species. In ideal cases, this will allow even more species to find habitats that are optimal for them. What is crucial here is that management is planned at the landscape level.

Volvo to Drop Combustion Engines and Take All its Cars Electric in 2019

The Swedish-based carmaker, Volvo, will build only electric or hybrid-electric cars beginning in 2019, making it the first big auto company to abandon conventional gasoline-powered engines. 

The legendary auto manufacturer, now a wholly owned subsidiary of a Chinese company, had earlier set a goal of selling one million electric cars and hyrids by 2025. “This is how we are going to do it,” President and CEO Hakan Samuelsson said in a statement. 

Ancient fungi could help Canada's future northern forests

As Canada’s vast boreal and tundra ecosystems experience dramatic warming due to climate change, trees are rapidly spreading north. New research from UBC’s Okanagan Campus suggests some of these trees could be getting help from a surprising source: fungi that have lain dormant underground for thousands of years.

“The idea that long-dormant, symbiotic fungi could help trees migrate during periods of rapid climate change has been around for decades, but no one had taken it seriously enough to investigate,” says the study’s co-author Jason Pither, associate professor of biology at UBC Okanagan. “Could fungi actually remain dormant and viable for thousands of years and be resurrected by plants growing today? Our research suggests it’s possible.”

CAS Researchers Develop Selective Electrocatalysts to Boost Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Performance

A research group from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences recently reported the development of a new technology to boost performance of direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs) using high-concentration methanol as fuel, shedding some light on the design of clean and affordable alternative energy sources for portable electric devices. 

When methanol, the fuel of DMFCs, crosses over from the anode to the cathode through the proton exchange membrane (PEM), fuel cell performance is significantly degraded, creating a major problem for the commercialization of DMFCs. Commonly, scientists use various strategies to improve DMFC performance at high concentrations of methanol. These include improving the fuel-feed system, membrane development, modification of electrodes, and water management. 

The big ecological roles of small natural features

Ecologists and conservationists have long recognized that keystone species have major ecological importance disproportionate to their abundance or size. Think beavers, sea stars and prairie dogs — species that keep a ecosystem balanced.

Similarly across landscapes, the keystone concept of disproportionate importance extends to other ecological elements, such as salt marshes in estuaries.