Promoting early season plant cover, primarily through the use of cover crops, can be more effective at reducing pest density and crop damage than insecticide applications, according to a Penn State-led team of researchers.

Dark patches of open sea that appear in the ice-choked water around Helheim Glacier may reveal new clues about how a rapidly changing Greenland glacier loses ice, according to a Penn State-led team of scientists.

A first-of-its-kind study led by our Department of Geography has investigated the formation of surface meltwater lakes around the world’s largest ice sheet, offering new insights into the potential impact of recent climate change on the ‘Frozen Continent’.

Biodiversity is rapidly declining, yet the area of nature reserves is limited and it is difficult to expand them further.

For a long time, ecologists assumed tree rings to be absent in tropical trees because of a lack of temperature and rain fluctuations in the trees' environment. But in recent decades, the formation of growth rings has been proven for hundreds of tropical tree species, which are sensitive to drought and usually experience at least a month or two of slightly reduced rainfall every year.

If wind and solar power continue the rapid growth they achieved over the last decade, rising by 20 percent annually until 2030, the global electricity sector will do its part to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, according to a new report from climate think tank Ember.

From birdsong in the rainforest to whale calls in the oceans, the world is losing the variety of sounds that enriches life. 

From snowflakes to sunflowers, starfish to sharks, symmetry is everywhere in nature. 

The day after lead author Daniel Winstead approved the final proofs for a study to be published in Ambio, the journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Russia put its nuclear forces on high alert.

CICERO scientists have now developed a new method to reduce fluctuations in calculating rate of global warming