Right now, a prairie dog in Colorado is busy increasing soil carbon retention, increasing water infiltration, and clipping vegetation that will help maintain local grasslands and provide nutritious forage for large herbivores like cattle and bison. And, somewhere in Mexico, a pollinating bat is ensuring agave plants make good tequila.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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