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Featured
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News |
Hot science from a volcanic crisis
The eruption of Mount St Helens in 1980 left an indelible mark on the field of volcanology. Janet Fang reports.
- Janet Fang
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News |
China drought highlights future climate threats
Yunnan's worst drought for many years has been exacerbated by destruction of forest cover and a history of poor water management.
- Jane Qiu
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News |
Conservation's poverty reduction claims questioned
Does greater biodiversity help or hinder the world's poorest people?
- Natasha Gilbert
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Correspondence |
Questionable value of planting thirsty trees in dry regions
- Shixiong Cao
- , Guosheng Wang
- & Li Chen
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Research Highlights |
Oceanography: Deep-sea biomass boom
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Editorial |
A plan for the ocean
Governments have typically regulated their coastal waters as if fishing, shipping and the like were separate entities. A new, integrated approach could change all that — while greatly boosting marine science.
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News |
Ecologists brace for oil spill damage
Deepwater Horizon disaster looms over the Gulf coast, and beyond.
- Amanda Mascarelli
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Opinion |
Forecasts needed for retreating forests
As tree habitats shift towards the poles in response to climate change, we must study the neglected, trailing edges of forests, warns Csaba Mátyás — they are economically and ecologically important.
- Csaba Mátyás
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News |
Oil spill endangers fragile marshland
Clean-up efforts begin after oil explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.
- Mark Schrope
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News |
Proposal sets whaling limits
Conservative hunting quotas require more scientific data.
- Janet Fang
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Letter |
Stoichiometric control of organic carbon–nitrate relationships from soils to the sea
The accumulation of nitrate in freshwater and coastal marine ecosystems is one of the consequences of the worldwide production of artificial fertilizers. Here it is shown that nitrate accumulation in ecosystems shows consistent and negative nonlinear correlations with organic carbon availability, along a continuum from soils, through freshwater systems and coastal margins, to the open ocean. This pattern can be explained by carbon:nitrate ratios, which influence nitrate accumulation by regulating microbial processes.
- Philip G. Taylor
- & Alan R. Townsend
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News Feature |
Environmental Science: New life for the Dead Sea?
A conduit from the Red Sea could restore the disappearing Dead Sea and slake the region's thirst. But such a massive engineering project could have untold effects, reports Josie Glausiusz.
- Josie Glausiusz
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Opinion |
Copenhagen Accord pledges are paltry
Current national emissions targets can't limit global warming to 2 °C, calculate Joeri Rogelj, Malte Meinshausen and colleagues — they might even lock the world into exceeding 3 °C warming.
- Joeri Rogelj
- , Julia Nabel
- & Niklas Höhne
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News |
It's a microbial world
Worldwide census ups diversity estimates for marine microbes one-hundred-fold.
- Jane Qiu
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Research Highlights |
Oceanography: Early bloomers
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News & Views |
Ways to raise tadpoles
To reduce parental care, just add water — that's the conclusion of an intriguing investigation into the extent of the motherly and fatherly devotion that different species of frog extend to their offspring.
- Hanna Kokko
- & Michael Jennions
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News |
Illegal whale meat tracked back to Japan
Researchers identify sashimi from restaurants in California and South Korea.
- Amber Dance
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Research Highlights |
Palaeoecology: Ancient tree nursery
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News & Views |
A flourishing of fish forms
According to an innovative exercise in 'morphospace analysis', modern fish owe their stunning diversity in part to an ecological cleaning of the slate by the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.
- Michael Alfaro
- & Francesco Santini
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News & Views |
Grazing and nitrous oxide
Most emissions of nitrous oxide from semi-arid, temperate grasslands usually occur during the spring thaw. The effects that grazing has on plant litter and snow cover dramatically reduce these seasonal emissions.
- Stephen J. Del Grosso
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News |
Animals thrive without oxygen at sea bottom
Creatures found where only microbes and viruses were thought to survive.
- Janet Fang
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News |
Hostile volcanic lake teems with life
Microbes thriving in salty, alkali waters containing arsenic.
- Ana Belluscio
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Letter |
Curvature in metabolic scaling
It has been thought that the basal metabolic rate of organisms increases as body mass is raised to some power, p. But the value of p has proved controversial, with both 2/3 and 3/4 being proposed. It is found here that the relationship between mass and metabolic rate does not follow a pure power law at all, and requires a quadratic term to account for curvature. Taking temperature and phylogeny into account, this explains why different data sets have produced different exponents when a power law has been fitted.
- Tom Kolokotrones
- , Van Savage
- & Walter Fontana
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Correspondence |
Fishermen contribute to protection of marine reserves
- Joachim Claudet
- & Paolo Guidetti
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Research Highlights |
Ecology: Mothers stress kids out
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Research Highlights |
Evolutionary biology: Lend a helping claw
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News |
Methane-eating microbes make their own oxygen
Bacteria may have survived on Earth without plants, thanks to unique metabolism.
- Amanda Leigh Mascarelli
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News |
Teams set for first taste of Antarctic lakes
Samples could reveal unique life forms from beneath the ice.
- Quirin Schiermeier
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News |
Bad news for tuna is bad news for CITES
Commerce trumps conservation as wildlife convention votes against protecting endangered bluefins.
- Anjali Nayar
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News |
Whale sedation aids conservation
Marine biologists look for better ways to save whales tangled in fishing gear.
- Daniel Cressey
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Research Highlights |
Conservation: Heavy metal history
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News |
Wildlife service plans for a warmer world
US interior department seeks ways to save species threatened by climate change.
- Janet Fang
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News |
Saving forests, cultures and carbon dioxide
'Win-win' conservation should start with indigenous lands and other protected areas.
- Anjali Nayar
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News |
Carbon-capture scheme could cause toxic blooms
Findings raise more concerns over proposals to boost plankton growth in the oceans.
- Brian Vastag
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News |
Should we be trying to save the dodo?
A quantitative way to decide whether to keep on conserving a species.
- Daniel Cressey
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News |
Scientists against proposed ivory auction
Researchers want science to take precedence over politics in decisions on elephants.
- Anjali Nayar
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Correspondence |
Colour-coded targets would help clarify biodiversity priorities
- Anne Larigauderie
- , Georgina M. Mace
- & Harold A. Mooney
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Research Highlights |
Evolution: Creating cooperation
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Books & Arts |
Q&A: Peter Hessler on urbanization in China
In Country Driving, the final book in his China trilogy, Peter Hessler recounts his 11,000-kilometre drive across China to see at first hand the effects of rapid industrialization. The New Yorker journalist explains how mass migration to cities brings out people's resourcefulness, but also how the speed of social and environmental change leads them to seek meaning in their lives.
- Jane Qiu
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News |
Woody shrubs don't slurp up water
Clearing encroaching plants from savannah might make drought worse.
- Erik Vance
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News |
Ancient polar-bear fossil yields genome
Oldest mammalian DNA sequence reveals link to brown bears.
- Matt Kaplan
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News |
Ancient impact hammered Northern Hemisphere
Extinctions were less severe in southern oceans after catastrophe of 65 million years ago
- Janet Fang
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News |
Carbon credits proposed for whale conservation
Stopping whale hunting could help sequester millions of tonnes of carbon.
- Richard A. Lovett
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