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News articles on Ecology

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Mongabay.com news articles on ecology in blog format. Updated regularly.

Hurricane Katrina damage just a dose of what's to come
(9/21/2005) The kind of devastation seen on the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina may be a small taste of what is to come if emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2 ) are not diminished soon, warns Dr. Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology in his opening remarks at the 7th International Carbon Dioxide Conference in Boulder, Colorado, September 26, 2005.


Builder of rainforest canopy walkways believes conservation can be profitable
(9/20/2005) This month's issue of The Ecological Finance Review details Greenheart conservation Company, a for-profit company that designs, builds and operates conservation based canopy walkways (canopy trails) and other nature-based attractions around the world. Operating on the premise that conservation can be economically viable, Greenheart believes that is has already become a "model of how to shift gears from an industrial to a green economy." Greenheart has developed or is developing canopy walkways in Peru, Nigeria, Madagascar, Ghana, Brazil, Guyana, the United Kingdon, and Canada.


After Chernobyl accident wildlife flourishes
(8/10/2005) Chernobyl's ecosystems seem to be recovering just 19 years after the region was badly contaminated with radiation from a nuclear meltdown. Researchers, who presented the results of suverys around old nuclear power plant at the Ecological Society of America meeting in Montreal, say that biodiversity is actually higher than before the disaster.


After Empowering ecologists with informatics education and training
(8/10/2005) Ecological research needs of the 21st century are being enabled by the development of new cyberinfrastructure for management, integration, and analysis of distributed, heterogeneous, sometimes massive, data collections.


We are trading short-term food production for long-term environmental losses
(7/25/2005) In the July 22, 2005 issue of the journal Science, scientists argue that modern land-use practices may be trading short-term increases in food production for long-term losses in the environment's ability to support human societies.


Lemur hunting persists in Madagascar, rare primates fall victim to hunger
(7/17/2005) While it has been illegal to kill or keep lemurs as pets since 1964, lemurs are hunted where they are not protected by local taboos. Many lemurs are particularly easy targets for hunting because evolution has rendered them ecologically naive in that without natural predators over the majority of their existence, they are less fearful than they should be.


Rainforest information site for school kids launched
(7/7/2005) Today mongabay.com launched a kids-oriented version of its popular web site on tropical rainforests. Kids.mongabay.com offers information on tropical rainforest ecology.


Should environmentalists fear logging or learn to understand its impact?
(5/18/2005) Environmentalists usually oppose logging, associating it with deforestation and biodiversity loss. A new report, Life after logging: reconciling wildlife conservation and production forestry in Indonesian Borneo, from CIFOR suggests that in reality, many logging operations have a lesser impact than than generally believed by conservationists. Further, since more forests in Borneo -- the area of study -- are allocated for logging than for protected areas it is imperative that we have a better understanding of how biological diversity and ecological services can be maintained in such areas and how they can be integrated with protected areas into "multi-functional conservation landscapes." conservationists, loggers, and policy-makers alike need to recognize that logged-over forests have conservation value and work to ensure that these areas are indeed used for this purpose especially when other options for biodiversity conservation are not available.


For What It's Worth: Ecological Services and conservation
(5/4/2005) For a long time, preserving natural spaces was considered to be a favor to the environment without a true, measurable benefit to businesses, industrial production and productivity. In recent years however, scientists are increasingly producing substantial evidence to support the notion that the natural environment supplies a diverse range of renewable economic benefits beyond timber and fish. These benefits are termed “ecological services” and provide such valuable functions as water treatment, pollination and sediment capture, simply by remaining intact.


Kalimantan at the Crossroads: Dipterocarp Forests and the Future of Indonesian Borneo
(4/17/2005) Kalimantan at the Crossroads: Dipterocarp Forests and the Future of Indonesian Borneo


Soils and Nutrient Cycling
(3/1/2005) Understanding the basic composition of forest soils helps explain the concept of nutrient cycling in the rainforest; why there are problems with clearing rainforest lands for agriculture; and how soils are an important factor influencing forest complexity..


Light Gaps, Seedlings, Shrubs
(3/1/2005) The majority of the world's remaining forests are not the classical rainforest with towering trees, an open interior, and virtually no ground growth. Instead, most rainforests have been impacted in their recent history by storms, fires, logging, and landslides and subsequently have scattered areas in various stages of regrowth.


Seeds and Fruits
(3/1/2005) Many of the seeds and fruits produced by canopy trees fall to the ground where they provide food for seed gatherers (rodents, birds, fish, etc) and create a natural seed bank in the leaf litter. There are two growth strategies once seeds reach the ground. One strategy is to produce large seeds with food reserves enabling the seedling to survive in the low-light conditions of the understory. The second method characteristic of many pioneer species is to produce huge numbers of small seeds which only germinate under certain conditions (usually light gaps). When a light gap opens, these seeds sprout and the seedlings rapidly grow to once again plug the hole in the canopy.


Forest Floor - the Understory
(3/1/2005) The forest floor of primary tropical rainforest is rarely the thick, tangled jungle of movies and adventure stories. It is actually quite the opposite: the floor is relatively clear of vegetation due to the deep darkness created by perhaps 100 feet (30 m) of canopy vegetation above. The canopy not only blocks out sunlight, but damps wind and rain. A visitor to the rainforest during a rainstorm will usually not immediately feel falling rain because so much is deflected and collected by various canopy plants. The blocking of wind by the canopy makes the forest floor a calm place where only the slightest breeze blows during tropical thunderstorms. When hiking in primary tropical rainforest a flashlight may be more useful than a machete since the subdued lighting limits ground growth. Instead of choking vegetation, a visitor will find large tree trunks, interspersed hanging vines and lianas, and countless seedlings and saplings and a relatively small number of ground plants..



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