Spring in America’s heartland is often wet. That makes its soil too soft for planting. One solution to that issue is tile drainage. Growers insert a series of pipes (drain tiles) under their fields, which drains water from the soil into nearby streams and lakes. 

Why share food with non-family members when there is no immediate gain? An international team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) in Leipzig, Germany, conducted observations of natural food sharing behavior of the chimpanzees of the Taï National Park, Ivory Coast. They found that chimpanzees who possess large, desirable food items, like meat, honey or large fruit share food with their friends, and that neither high dominance status nor harassment by beggars influenced possessors’ decisions to share.

The amount of plastic washing up onto the shores of remote South Atlantic islands is 10 times greater than it was a decade ago, according to new research published today (8 October) in the journal Current Biology.

It was almost an ordinary day in the field for Dr. Nancy Foster Scholar Sarah Kienle — except for the Jeff Corwin show camera crew.

Rice University scientists have developed something akin to the Venus’ flytrap of particles for water remediation.

Alaska’s land mass is equal to the size of one-fifth of the continental United States, yet stores about half of the country’s terrestrial – both upland and wetland –  carbon stores and fluxes. The carbon is not only stored in vegetation and soil, but also in vital freshwater ecosystems even though lakes and ponds, rivers, streams, and springs only cover a small amount of landmass in Alaska.

Species-rich subtropical forests can take up, on average, twice as much carbon as monocultures. This has been reported by an international research team in the professional journal SCIENCE. The study was carried out as part of a unique field experiment conducted under the direction of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The experiment comprises forests grown specifically for this purpose in China; for the study, data from experimental plots with a total of over 150,000 trees were analysed. The researchers believe that the results speak in favour of using many different tree species during reforestation. Thus, both species conservation and climate protection can be promoted.

A pioneering study by the University on the effects of relocating adders due to development has found that males will disperse from their release site – with one even going so far as to return to his original home.

Global warming is projected to spawn more extreme wet and dry weather around the world, according to a Rutgers-led study.

Over a dozen international researchers from the Ocean Solutions Initiative1—including scientists from the CNRS, IDDRI2, and Sorbonne University—have evaluated the potential of thirteen ocean-based measures to counter climate change. Their findings are published in Frontiers in Marine Science. They hope their analysis will inform decision-makers gathering in Katowice, Poland, for the COP24 conference in early December.