Research by PhD candidate Nicola Bryson-Morrison from the School of Anthropology and Conservation (SAC) suggests chimpanzees are aware of the risks of foraging too close to humans.
Chimpanzees adapt their foraging behaviour to avoid human contact
articles
Rooftop Solar Panels Are Great for the Planet—But Terrible for Firefighters
When first responders arrived to the burning home on Eugene Street in Manchester, New Hampshire just after 2 am on January 27, half the home was already up in flames. It was a big fire, but relatively routine: Working in the dark, the firefighters made sure the two residents got out unharmed, and got to work.
Climate Change can Alter the Impact of Forest Pathogens in Trees
New research on projected climate changes from the University of Helsinki indicates that climate change has an alarming potential to increase the damage caused to Norway spruce trees by a naturally circulating disease spreading fungus.
Amazon rainforest may be more resilient to deforestation than previously thought
The Amazon forest stores about half of the global tropical forest carbon and accounts for about a quarter of carbon absorption from the atmosphere by global forests each year. As a result, large losses of Amazonian forest cover could make global climate change worse.
In the past, researchers have found that a large part of the Amazon forest is susceptible to a tipping point. The tell-tail sign is satellite data showing areas of savannah and rainforest coexisting under the same environmental conditions. Theories from nonlinear dynamics would then suggest that both states are alternative stable outcomes. This so called bistability means that shocks such as forest clearance or drought could lead to a dramatic increase of fire occurrence and tip an area of rainforest into savannah. Areas that have experienced this transition would then remain locked into this savannah state until large enough increases of rainfall and release of human pressures allow forests to regrow faster than they are lost by intermittent fires.
NOAA's newest geostationary satellite will be positioned as GOES-East this fall
GOES-16, the most advanced weather satellite NOAA has ever developed, will be moved to the GOES-East position at 75 degrees west longitude, once it is declared operational in November. Top officials from NOAA announced the long-awaited decision at today’s 2017 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook news conference in College Park, Maryland.
Death by volcano?
Anyone concerned by the idea that people might try to combat global warming by injecting tons of sulfate aerosols into Earth’s atmosphere may want to read an article in the May 1 issue of the journal Geology.
