They’ve got no roots or veins and grow in hanging pendants or tightly packed mats attached to stones, soil and wood. Called by some “the secret plants that surround us,” the bryophytes (mosses and liverworts)...
There is little doubt that human activity is affecting planet Earth, but just how much? And is it all negative? Rick Potts is the director of the Human Origins Program and curator of anthropology at...
All bear species except for one live in either temperate or tropical woodlands. Only the polar bear is a stranger to the forest, living and foraging instead across vast expanses of barren polar ice. But...
Striking Caribbean sunsets occur when particles in the air scatter incoming sunlight. But a particulate shadow over the sea may have effects underwater. A research team, including staff scientist Héctor Guzmán from the Smithsonian Tropical...
A new genetic analysis has revealed that many Amazon tree species are likely to survive human-caused climate warming in the coming century, contrary to previous findings that temperature increases would cause them to die out.
The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory has been awarded a NASA project to build the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument. TEMPO will measure North American air pollution, from Mexico City to the Canadian tar/oil sands, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific, hourly and at high spatial resolution.
Almost half of the tropical forest reserves examined in a new study are ineffective, researchers say.
Just a few towering white fir, sugar pine and incense cedars per acre at Yosemite National Park are disproportionately responsible for photosynthesis, converting carbon dioxide into plant tissue and sequestering that carbon in the forest, sometimes for centuries,
Science Spotlight
