The warming climate has dramatically reduced the size of 39 glaciers in Montana since 1966, some by as much as 85 percent, according to data released by the U.S. Geological Survey and Portland State University.

It is becoming more and more appreciated that a major part of the biologic activity is not going on at the ground surface, but is hidden underneath the soil down to depths of several kilometres in an environment coined the “deep biosphere”. Studies of life-forms in this energy-poor system have implications for the origin of life on our planet and for how life may have evolved on other planets, where hostile conditions may have inhibited colonization of the surface environment. The knowledge about ancient life in this environment deep under our feet is extremely scarce.

In numerous cracks down to depths of 1700 meter that have been partly sealed by crystals grown in them, an international team of researchers led by Dr. Henrik Drake from Linnaeus University, Sweden, has traced fundamental ancient microbial processes, including production and consumption of the greenhouse gas methane. The multi-disciplinary approach included micro-scale measurement of stable isotopes coupled with geochronology within minerals formed in response to microbial activity at several Swedish granitic rock sites. This is the most extensive study on ancient microbial activity in the continental crust yet and the findings suggest that microbial methane formation and consumption are widespread in the bedrock.

A warming climate could affect the stability of alpine grasslands in Asia’s Tibetan Plateau, threatening the ability of farmers and herders to maintain the animals that are key to their existence, and potentially upsetting the ecology of an area in which important regional river systems originate, says a new study by researchers in China and the United States. 

The Center for Biological Diversity and Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future today asked the Environmental Protection Agency to reject a pesticide company’s request to permanently approve the use of a medically important antibiotic called oxytetracycline as a herbicide on citrus crops.

When it comes to removing very dilute concentrations of pollutants from water, existing separation methods tend to be energy- and chemical-intensive. Now, a new method developed at MIT could provide a selective alternative for removing even extremely low levels of unwanted compounds.

Neonicotinoid pesticides hinder wild queen bumblebees’ reproductive success, according to a new University of Guelph study.

The study is the first to link exposure to thiamethoxam — one of the most commonly used neonicotinoid pesticides — to fewer fully developed eggs in queens from four wild bumblebee species that forage in farmland.

The Polyphagous shot hole borer, a brown-black beetle from southeast Asia, never gets bigger than a tenth of an inch. It breeds inside trees; pregnant females drill into trunks to create networks of tunnels where they lay their eggs. The beetles also carry a fungus called Fusarium; it infects the tunnels, and when the eggs hatch, the borer larvae eat the fungus.

The digging, stirring and overturning of soil by conventional ploughing in tillage farming is severely damaging earthworm populations around the world, say scientists.

Migratory mule deer in Wyoming closely time their movements to track the spring green-up, providing evidence of an underappreciated foraging benefit of migration, according to a study by University of Wyoming and U.S. Geological Survey scientists at the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.

The time it takes for a leaf to decompose might be the key to understanding how temperature affects ecosystems, according to Kansas State University ecologists.