Los Angeles is abandoning its $5 billion plan to rebuild three aging natural gas-fired power plants, deciding instead to phase out the plants and invest in renewable energy, Reuters reported.

The rapidly growing desalination industry produces water for drinking and for agriculture in the world’s arid coastal regions.

Recovery of vegetation on plugged and abandoned oil and gas well sites on the Colorado Plateau is influenced by time, moisture, nonnative plants and the type of plant community that was originally in place before well sites were constructed, according to a recently published study by the U.S. Geological Survey.

For the first time ever, measurements from NASA Earth-observing research satellites are being used to help combat a potential outbreak of life-threatening cholera.

Exposure to health risks due to extreme temperatures have been growing worldwide and a significant number of heat related deaths are reported annually during the summer months in both the northern and southern hemispheres, particularly among the elderly, the poor, and in densely populated cities. 

Soil erosion can have a devastating impact on traditional farming landscapes in developing countries.

An international team led by the Innsbruck geologists Arata Kioka, Tobias Schwestermann, Jasper Moernaut, and Michael Strasser could quantify for the first time the entire trench-wide volume of marine sediments that were remobilized by the magnitude 9 Tohoku-oki earthquake in 2011 and transported into the up to 8 km deep Japan Trench.

Advances in remote sensing technologies are helping scientists to better measure how global landscapes — from forests to savanna — are able to store carbon, a critical insight as they evaluate the potential role of ecosystems in mitigating climate change.

Phosphate is a key element in many processes in the body and essential for global food production.

Say what you will about the emerald ash borer and the damage it has wreaked during two decades of munching millions of North American ash trees, you have to admire its cold-weather tenacity.