When it comes to marine plankton, the smaller you are the farther you travel. A new international study found that the size of plankton, and the strength and direction of currents, are key to how they are dispersed in the ocean – much more so than physical conditions including differences in temperature, salinity and nutrient availability.

Streams and rivers across much of the U.S. are getting saltier and more alkaline due to an uptick in the use of road deicers and fertilizers in recent decades, according to a  50-year-long analysis of 232 monitoring sites by the U.S. Geological Survey.

It’s simple math, says a University of Alberta conservation biologist. More roads equals fewer grizzly bears.

In a recent study examining a non-invasive DNA (hair collection) dataset of grizzly bear activity in British Columbia, Clayton Lamb and his colleagues determined what scientists have long suspected: higher road density leads to lower grizzly bear density—a critical problem for a species still rebounding from a long period of human persecution.

The Great Lakes will have a network of well-equipped guardians thanks to a plan hatched by a UWindsor researcher with funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and Ontario’s Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science and Ministry of Economic Development and Growth.

Aaron Fisk and his nine collaborators will receive $15.9 million for the Real-time Aquatic Ecosystem Observation Network (RAEON), a collaborative research project which will provide infrastructure and data management for Canadian scientists to carry-out cutting-edge research on freshwater ecosystems.

Plastic bags are known for their environmental impact. They slowly release toxic chemicals once in the soil, for instance, and find their way into the guts of animals that often choke and die as a result.

University of Adelaide scientists have demonstrated how climate change can drive the collapse of marine “food webs”.

A University of Victoria molecular biologist has gained new insights into how environmental contaminants may disrupt thyroid systems. The discovery was made while assembling the genome of the North American bullfrog.

Caren Helbing’s findings could help explain the mechanisms of early development, as well as how environmental contaminants cause thyroidrelated diseases and malfunctions.

Human activities are exposing US rivers and streams to a cocktail of salts, with consequences for infrastructure and drinking water supplies. So reports a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that is the first to assess the combined, long-term changes in freshwater salinity and alkalization across the country.

Birds exposed to the persistent noise of natural gas compressors show symptoms remarkably similar to those in humans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, new research shows.

Methane hydrates, also known as flammable ice, occur in many regions of the oceans. But only under high pressure and cold temperatures the product of methane and water forms a solid compound. If the pressure is too low or the temperature is too high, the hydrates decompose, and the methane is released as gas from the sea floor into the water column. Spitsbergen has been experiencing severe outgassing for several years. Does the methane originate from decomposed methane hydrates? What is the cause of the dissociation of the hydrates? Warming due to climate change or other, natural processes? An international team of scientists has now been able to answer this question, which has been published in the international journal Nature Communications.