Yellow-cedar in West Chichagof-Yakobi Wilderness Area, a pristine area of coastal Alaska, faces intensive mortality. February 1, 2012. Yellow-cedar, a culturally and economically valuable tree in southeastern Alaska and adjacent parts of British Columbia, has been dying off across large expanses of these areas for the past 100 years. But no one could say why—until now.

Over dinner on R.V. Calypso while anchored on the lee side of Glover's Reef in Belize, Jacques Cousteau told Phil Dustan that he suspected humans were having a negative impact on coral reefs. Dustan—a young ocean ecologist who had worked in the lush coral reefs of the Caribbean and Sinai Peninsula—found this difficult to believe. It was December 1974.

A comprehensive multi-disciplinary synthesis just published in Environmental Reviews reveals the urgent need for further investigation and policy development to address significant environmental, social and economic impacts of invasive alien species (IAS) and climate change. "Effects of climate change on the distribution of invasive alien species in Canada: a knowledge synthesis of range change prediction in a warming world" is the collaborative effort of a team of dedicated researchers at York University's Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS).

Worldwide pandemics of influenza caused widespread death and illness in 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009. A new study examining weather patterns around the time of these pandemics finds that each of them was preceded by La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific. The study's authors--Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard School of Public Health—note that the La Niña pattern is known to alter the migratory patterns of birds, which are thought to be a primary reservoir of human influenza. The scientists theorize that altered migration patterns promote the development of dangerous new strains of influenza.

An article in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Integrated Pest Management (JIPM) refutes claims by Greenpeace Germany that the western bean cutworm (WBC), Striacosta albicosta (Smith), is "a new plant pest" that was "caused by genetically engineered corn." The Greenpeace Germany report, which was written by author Richard Then of Testbiotech, offers a "surprisingly simplistic conclusion" regarding the spread of western bean cutworm over the last decade, according to the JIPM authors.

This is a blue marlin with a PSAT (Popoff Satellite Archival Transmitting) tag used to monitor horizontal and vertical habitat use in a new study The science behind counting fish in the ocean to measure their abundance has never been simple. A new scientific paper in Nature Climate Change shows that expanding 'ocean dead zones' (areas of low oxygen) driven in part by climate change makes that science even more complex.

With current news of additional radioactive leaks from the Fukushima nuclear power plants, the impact on the ocean of releases of radioactivity from the plants remains unclear.

A new model developed by scientists of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) allows the potential presence of bluefin tuna to be tracked through daily updated maps, helping to protect endangered stocks and fight illegal fishing. The model, based on satellite remote sensing data, provides for the first time an overall view of the preferred bluefin tuna habitats in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as their changes over time. Satellite-based habitat mapping can help identify more precisely areas to be inspected or to be closed for fisheries and it can also help refine estimates of fish stocks, thus contributing to a more effective fisheries management. European Commissioner for Research and Innovation, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, said: "This model will help to ensure sustainable management of bluefin tuna, actively contributing to two of the most pressing challenges for the future: food security and protection of the environment. Another good example of how science and research provide support to European Union policies."

This is a crown-of-thorns sea star feeding on a coral. Can fish save coral reefs from dying? UC Santa Barbara researchers have found one case where fish have helped coral reefs to recover from cyclones and predators.

Even remote tropical forests, like this forest in Panama, are affected by nitrogen pollution. Scientists braved ticks and a tiger to discover how human activities have perturbed the nitrogen cycle in tropical forests. Studies at two remote Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory sites in Panama and Thailand show the first evidence of long-term effects of nitrogen pollution in tropical trees.

Rebecca Murphy, lead author of the Chesapeake Bay study, is a doctoral student in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins. Efforts to reduce the flow of fertilizers, animal waste and other pollutants into the Chesapeake Bay appear to be giving a boost to the bay's health, a new study that analyzed 60 years of water quality data has concluded. The study, published in the November 2011 issue of Estuaries and Coasts, was conducted by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

Sedimentary rocks from Grand Canyon, USA, show evidence for widespread anoxic and sulfidic waters 750 million years ago. "We have investigated the cycling of molybdenum (Mo) in ancient oceans by studying the elemental and isotopic composition of Mo in sedimentary rocks from Grand Canyon that formed in the oceans 750 million years ago", explains Tais W. Dahl, who did this research in collaboration with researchers from Arizona State University, Harvard University and the Nordic Center of Earth Evolution in Denmark (NordCEE).

California Chinook salmon face many threats, but a new study predicts that climate change alone could finish them off as streams become too warm for spawning. Warming streams could spell the end of spring-run Chinook salmon in California by the end of the century, according to a study by scientists at UC Davis, the Stockholm Environment Institute and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

A key glacier in Greenland is melting faster than previously expected, according to findings by a team of academics, including Dr Edward Hanna from University of Sheffield.

This is Dr. Dror Avisar of Tel Aviv University. The health implications of polluting the environment weigh increasingly on our public consciousness, and pharmaceutical wastes continue to be a main culprit. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher says that current testing for these dangerous contaminants isn't going far enough.

These are veliger-stage larvae of the California mussel, Mytilus californianus. Ocean acidification, a consequence of climate change, could weaken the shells of California mussels and diminish their body mass, with serious implications for coastal ecosystems, UC Davis researchers will report July 15 in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

This is professor Andrew Lowe, Director of the Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity, University of Adelaide. Advances in DNA 'fingerprinting' and other genetic techniques led by Adelaide researchers are making it harder for illegal loggers to get away with destroying protected rainforests.

The white-plumed antbird has gone "extinct, " then returned, several times in the forest. Bird species in rainforest fragments in Brazil that were isolated by deforestation disappeared then reappeared over a quarter-century, according to research results published today in the journal PLoS ONE.

A new study from University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science scientists Chris Langdon, Remy Okazaki and Nancy Muehllehner and colleagues from the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Max-Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany concludes that ocean acidification, along with increased ocean temperatures, will likely severely reduce the diversity and resilience of coral reef ecosystems within this century.

El Niño and its partner La Niña, the warm and cold phases in the eastern half of the tropical Pacific, play havoc with climate worldwide. Predicting El Niño events more than several months ahead is now routine, but predicting how it will change in a warming world has been hampered by the short instrumental record. An international team of climate scientists has now shown that annually resolved tree-ring records from North America, particularly from the US Southwest, give a continuous representation of the intensity of El Niño events over the past 1100 years and can be used to improve El Niño prediction in climate models. The study, spearheaded by Jinbao Li, International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawai'i at Manoa, is published in the May 6 issue of Nature Climate Change.

Exotic bacteria that do not rely on oxygen may have played an important role in determining the composition of Earth's early atmosphere, according to a theory that UChicago researcher Albert Colman is testing in the scalding hot springs of a volcanic crater in Siberia.

Research released in anticipation of World Malaria Day finds that plants in East Africa with promising antimalarial qualities—ones that have treated malaria symptoms in the region's communities for hundreds of years—are at risk of extinction. Scientists fear that these natural remedial qualities, and thus their potential to become a widespread treatment for malaria, could be lost forever.

Flame retardants are chemical compounds added to fabrics and plastics to keep them from burning easily, but these can be toxic. Now a team of researchers from Spain and Canada has detected some of these emerging pollutants for the first time in peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus) eggs in both countries.

High oil prices and environmental and economic security concerns have triggered interest in using algae-derived oils as an alternative to fossil fuels. But growing algae – or any other biofuel source – can require a lot of water.

The animals on the earth have adapted themselves to the environmental temperature changes such as hot in deserts, or cold in the glacial epochs. However, the molecular mechanism for adaptation to thermal environments in the evolutionary process involving temperature sensors was not well understood. Professor Makoto Tominaga and Assistant Professor Shigeru Saito at The National Institute for Physiological Sciences (Okazaki Institute for Integrative Bioscience) demonstrate that the molecule called TRP channels, serve as temperature sensors in animals, sense different temperature ranges between mammals and western clawed frog (amphibians) even the same type of the TRP channels have been investigated. This observation indicates that the temperature sensors can dynamically change their temperature sensitivities to adapt to thermal environments in the evolutionary process. The report is published in American science magazine, PLoS Genetics (electronic edition).

New research shows that mangroves store exceptionally more carbon than most tropical forests, but they are being destroyed from coastlines at a rapid rate causing significant emissions of greenhouse gases.

Loss of glaciers and snowpack due to climate warming in alpine regions is putting pressure on a rare aquatic insect, the meltwater stonefly, according to a study recently released in Climatic Change Letters.

University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science scientist Chris Langdon and colleagues developed a new tool to monitor coral reef vital signs. By accurately measuring their biological pulse, scientists can better assess how climate change and other ecological threats impact coral reef health worldwide.

Improving land management and farming practices in Australia could have an effect on global climate change, according to a study published in the International Journal of Water.

Earth's biodiversity—the number of microorganisms, plants, and animals, their genes, and their ecosystems (such as rainforests and grasslands)—is declining at an alarming rate, even faster than the last mass extinction 65 million years ago. In fact, two thirds of the terrestrial species that exist today are estimated to be extinct by the end of this century. Humans are an integral part of this extensive network of life. We depend on biodiversity for goods and services; we impact biodiversity via rapidly expanding human population growth, consumption of resources, and spread of disease; and we study biodiversity in order to understand, conserve, and protect it.