Scientists Warn that Proposed US-Mexico Border Wall Threatens Biodiversity, Conservation
Amidst increased tensions over the US-Mexico border, a multinational group of over 2500 scientists have endorsed an article cautioning that a hardened barrier may produce devastating ecological effects while hampering binational conservation efforts. In the BioScience Viewpoint, a group led by Robert Peters, William J. Ripple, and Jennifer R. B. Miller call attention to ecological disturbances that could affect hundreds of terrestrial and aquatic species, notably including the Mexican gray wolf and Sonoran pronghorn.
The authors argue that the border wall will harm wildlife populations by fragmenting, degrading, and elimi...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - January 23, 2019 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Scientists Update Their " Warning to Humanity " on its Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
Scientists have long engaged the public and leaders on crucial matters of environmental stewardship. In 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists, along with more than 1500 signatories, issued the "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," in which they argued that human impacts on the natural world were likely to lead to "vast human misery" and a planet that was "irretrievably mutilated."
On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the landmark declaration, William J. Ripple, his colleagues, and over 15,000 signatories from 184 countries revisit the original warning in what they deem "A Second Notice." Using time-series data, the aut...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - August 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Science Community Considers Approaches to Climate Disinformation
Despite overwhelming scientific agreement on the question of human-caused global warming, a major gap exists between this consensus and the public’s understanding of the issue. Writing in BioScience, Jeffrey A. Harvey, of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, and his colleagues examine the causes of the consensus gap, focusing on climate-denier Internet blogs and the ways in which they use topics such as Arctic sea ice extent and polar bear well-being to foment misapprehensions about climate change among the public.
Harvey and his colleagues performed an analysis of 45 climate-denier blogs, noting that 80% relied pr...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - August 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
One Thing Leads to Another: Causal Chains Link Health, Development, and Conservation
The linkages between environmental health and human well-being are complex and dynamic, and researchers have developed numerous models for describing them. The models include attempts to bridge traditional academic boundaries, uniting fields of study under rubrics such as social-ecological frameworks, coupled human and natural systems, ecosystem services, and resilience theory. However, these efforts have been constrained by varying practices and a failure among practitioners to agree on consistent practices.
Writing in BioScience, Jiangxiao Qiu of the University of Florida and his colleagues describe this state of affair...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - August 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Scientists Warn that Proposed US-Mexico Border Wall Threatens Biodiversity, Conservation
Amidst increased tensions over the US-Mexico border, a multinational group of over 2500 scientists have endorsed an article cautioning that a hardened barrier may produce devastating ecological effects while hampering binational conservation efforts. In the BioScience Viewpoint, a group led by Robert Peters, William J. Ripple, and Jennifer R. B. Miller call attention to ecological disturbances that could affect hundreds of terrestrial and aquatic species, notably including the Mexican gray wolf and Sonoran pronghorn.
The authors argue that the border wall will harm wildlife populations by fragmenting, degrading, and elimi...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - August 6, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Tree Planting Can Harm Ecosystems
The world's grassy biomes are key contributors to biodiversity and ecosystem services, and are under immense pressure from conversion to agriculture and tree planting, report Joseph W. Veldman, of Iowa State University, and his colleagues in an article for the October issue of BioScience (https://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/lookup/doi/10.1093/biosci/biv118). The authors argue that forest- and tree-focused environmental policies and conservation initiatives have potentially dire ecological consequences for undervalued ecosystems, such as grasslands, savannas, and open-canopy woodlands.
To illustrate this forest bias and...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - June 12, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
A Successful Intervention Boosts the Gender Diversity of STEM Faculty
Eighty-one percent of US science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) university faculty members are men. To address this substantial gender disparity, an interdisciplinary team from Montana State University, led by Jessi L. Smith, devised a three-step search intervention, the results of which are published in BioScience. The approach, based on self-determination theory, was successful. "Searches in the intervention were 6.3 times more likely to make an offer to a woman candidate, and women who were made an offer were 5.8 times more likely to accept the offer from an intervention search," explain the authors.
The st...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - June 12, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Contact with Nature May Mean More Social Cohesion, Less Crime
Numerous studies have demonstrated the benefits of contact with nature for human well-being. However, despite strong trends toward greater urbanization and declining green space, little is known about the social consequences of such contact. In the December issue of BioScience, an international, interdisciplinary team reports on how they used nationally representative data from the United Kingdom and stringent model testing to examine the relationships between objective measures and self-reported assessments of contact with nature, community cohesion, and local crime incidence.
The results in the report, by Netta Weinste...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - June 12, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
A Field Research Network to Address Looming Grain Failures
Across the United States, record quantities of corn and soybeans have been harvested in recent years. However, according to a BioScience article (http://io.aibs.org/gst) by David Gustafson of the International Life Sciences Institute Research Foundation and his colleagues, this trend may soon change. "By midcentury," the interdisciplinary team reports, "temperatures in Illinois will likely be closer to those of today's mid-South, and precipitation will range somewhere between that of today's East Texas and that of the Carolinas." Likewise, vapor-pressure deficits, which are a measure of the atmosphere's drying power, will ...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - June 12, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
New Insights into Animal-Borne Disease Outbreaks
In the wake of the recent Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, a reevaluation of the ways plague spreads through prairie dog colonies in the western United States has yielded insights that could help explain outbreaks of plague, Ebola, and other diseases that can be transmitted by animals to humans. These include West Nile Virus disease and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome). The study, led by Dan Salkeld and Mike Antolin of Colorado State University and described in the journal BioScience, suggests that even deadly diseases may persist unnoticed in a population for years as smoldering infections, rather than jump fro...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - June 12, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Nitrogen Is a Neglected Threat to Biodiversity
Habitat destruction and the direct exploitation of species often occupy center stage in discussions of biodiversity perils. However, indirect harms, such as that posed by nitrogen pollution, remain underappreciated and poorly understood despite playing a key role in species declines. In an article for the journal BioScience, a team of environmental researchers led by Daniel Hernández of Carleton College, in Minnesota, outline the challenges associated with nitrogen.
To better understand nitrogen-induced biodiversity imperilment, the authors surveyed 1400 species listed under the Endangered Species Act, finding a total o...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - June 12, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Current Methods Cannot Predict Damage to Coral Reefs
The potentially devastating effects of ocean acidification on coral reefs are well reported. However, the methods used to evaluate the potential harm are often focused on individual species, viewed in isolation. According to an international research team led by Peter J. Edmunds of California State University, Northridge, this simplistic approach neglects broad-scale inter-species and inter-population dynamics that may have unforeseen consequences for ecosystems.
"Most studies address the effects of ocean acidification on single species of corals and calcified algae in tanks," write the team members in an article for the...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - June 12, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Hydropeaking Extirpates River Insects
Hydropower produces 19% of the world's electricity--far more than all other renewable sources combined. In the face of mounting climate-change effects, the rush to this profuse energy source is expected to continue. However, hydroelectric dams can also produce a number of environmental consequences, many of which are unrecognized or understudied.
Writing in an article for BioScience, an interdisciplinary team led by Theodore A. Kennedy of the US Geological Survey identifies one such threat: these dams' ability to devastate aquatic insect populations and the food webs that those insects underpin.
One of hydropower's be...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - June 12, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
AIBS Announces the Appointment of Scott Collins as BioScience Editor in Chief
AIBS is pleased to announce the appointment of Scott L. Collins to a three-year term as BioScience's editor in chief. He has held the position on an interim basis since April 2016, when he succeeded Timothy M. Beardsley.
Collins, a Distinguished Professor at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, received his PhD from the University of Oklahoma in 1981 and brings a wealth of experience to the position, both as a biologist and as a publications expert. In addition to his numerous academic positions, Collins served at the National Science Foundation as a Program Director for efforts ranging from Conservation and Resto...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - June 12, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
Marine Ecosystems Show Resilience to Climate Disturbance
Climate-driven disturbances are having profound impacts on coastal ecosystems, with many crucial habitat-forming species in sharp decline. However, among these degraded biomes, examples of resilience are emerging. Writing in BioScience, Jennifer O'Leary, a California Sea Grant Marine Biologist based at California Polytechnic State University, and her colleagues describe these recoveries and highlight the possible implications for ecosystem-sparing management.
To gain insight into disturbed coastal habitats, the authors surveyed 97 marine experts about their observations of climate-induced perturbations, including extreme ...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - June 12, 2018 Category: Biology Source Type: news
