Property rights are essential in western market societies and often taken for granted. They are ubiquitous and we do not question them. They are also a crucial element in the discussion of natural resource management.

Managing reservoirs for water quality, not just flood control, could be part of the solution to the growth of toxic algal blooms in the Great Lakes, especially Lake Erie, every summer.

The world’s tropical forests store huge quantities of carbon in their biomass and thus constitute an important carbon sink. However, current estimates of the amount of carbon dioxide stored in tropical forests of the Amazon vary largely.

Human population density and land use is causing changes in animal genetic diversity, according to researchers at McGill University.

The planet’s warming climate has led to countless changes that are affecting all of us. Droughts, hurricanes, rising sea levels and forest fires — all are now regular events in a world that saw close to 40 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions released into our atmosphere last year.

Susan Trumbore of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry on the effect of the forest fires in the Amazon on the global climate.

Newly formed Tropical Depression 6 in the Atlantic Ocean may have just formed, but it did so under adverse atmospheric conditions. The depression is battling wind shear and it’s apparent on imagery from NASA’s Aqua satellite.

Long-term exposure to outdoor air pollutants, especially ozone, accelerates the development of emphysema and age-related decline in lung function, even among people who have never smoked, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

New strategies for river management are needed to maintain water supplies and avoid big crashes in populations of aquatic life, researchers argue in a perspective piece published today in Nature.

More than 6,280 tons of DDT were sprayed on the forests of New Brunswick, Canada to fight insect outbreaks in the 1950s and 1960s.