Greening of the Earth pushed way back in time

Conventional scientific wisdom has it that plants and other creatures have only lived on land for about 500 million years, and that landscapes of the early Earth were as barren as Mars.

Autonomous rover drills underground in the Atacama

A rover named Zoë recently traveled the Atacama Desert in Chile, the driest place on Earth and a landscape that has much in common with the harsh terrain of Mars. From the unrelenting UV radiation, to the thin, cold air ...

Pesticides harm more than bees, says biologist's study

(Phys.org) —Soil organisms, aquatic life and farmland birds may all be harmed by neonicotinoid insecticides, according to a new study by University of Sussex biologist Professor Dave Goulson.

Pollination merely one production factor

(Phys.org) —No food for the human race without bees? It is not quite as straightforward as that. A case study by ecologists from ETH Zurich in a coffee-growing area in India reveals that pollinating insects are just one ...

Biochar reduces nasty nitrous oxide emissions on farms

(Phys.org) —In the quest to decrease the world's greenhouse gases, Cornell scientists have discovered that biochar – a charcoal-like substance – reduces the nemesis nitrous oxide from agricultural soil on average by ...

Marsh plants actively engineer their landscape

Marsh plants, far from being passive wallflowers, are "secret gardeners" that actively engineer their landscape to increase their species' odds of survival, says a team of scientists from Duke University and the University ...

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