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Once upon a time, there was a swampy rainforest near the bottom of the world. Buried sediment extracted from the seafloor off West Antarctica contains ancient pollen, fossilized roots and other chemical evidence of a diverse forest that flourished millions of years ago, less than a thousand kilometers from the South Pole. The sediment offers […] More
A double whammy of climate change and deforestation could double the area burned by wildfires in the southern Brazilian Amazon forest, simulations suggest. That increase in fires could burn up to 16 percent of the region by 2050 and release enough carbon dioxide to flip parts of the forest from carbon dioxide sponge to source […] More
SAN FRANCISCO — Maybe the trigger for the rise of oxygen on Earth was nothing special. Maybe that oxidation didn’t need large tectonic shifts or the evolution of land plants. Instead, the circulation of carbon dioxide, oxygen and phosphorus between Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, rocks and the simplest of photosynthesizing life forms is sufficient to produce […] More
Plastics can enter the food web at an unexpected point: larval fish as small as the tip of a pencil. Larval fish congregate in ocean slicks — ribbons of calm water that form naturally on the ocean’s surface — to feast on an abundance of prey. Prey-sized plastics also accumulate in these fish nurseries, outnumbering […] More
