Environment

Scientists are finding 2,000 new marine species a year. Why it matters to name and categorize them.

This entrepreneur plans to revive the famous urban ecosystem with a billion oysters.

Native and non-native scientists have come together to counter overfishing with an ancient practice.

The fig is an ecological marvel. Although you may never want to eat one again.

It’s time to retire the hierarchical classification of living things.

Our planet supports 8.7 million species. Here’s how they break down.

To preserve coastal heritage from the ravages of climate change.

Understanding how oceans move is key to understanding life on Earth.

Great writers waxed poetic over “milky seas.” Here’s the science behind the glow.

Can Moby-Dick help us find one of Earth’s rarest large-scale natural wonders?

Uncovering one of the greatest environmental crimes of the 20th century.

Ecologists argue balance is maintained by predators on the prowl.

Cooperation in nature is the key to survival, including our own.

Roger Payne sparked the anti-whaling movement. He’s not done yet.

How one small farmer is creating a buzz with organic pot.

What the scientist who has studied the iconic sea creature for 45 years now sees.

A geophysicist breaks down the elements of wildfires.

The fig is an ecological marvel. Although you may never want to eat one again.

A botanist is introduced to escapees from the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

This British scientist explores terrain 35,000 feet below the surface—and has some advice for the landlubbers.

It’s time to retire the hierarchical classification of living things.

How a trail of plastic waste might help us find the mysterious Velella

Ten thousand feet under the sea, these snails thrive with a little help from their friends.

Humans have long projected their insecurities and ill tempers onto animals, including crabs. Can science help us tell fact from fable?

Allison Wallis’s disability rendered the ocean off-limits. But the adaptive surfing movement says they can get everybody—of any ability—in the water.

Wendy Schmidt applies the spirit of Silicon Valley to saving the ocean.

Pacific Islanders are charting a new course for ocean conservation.

Marine biologist Heather Koldewey on conservation, seahorses, and cross-discipline work.

Odds are, if an asteroid hadn’t crashed into Earth, we wouldn’t be here.

A celebrated conservation photographer finds undersea beauty—and hope.

Protecting the ocean isn’t just necessary. It’s possible.

How a life on the water inspired Dona Bertarelli

What geoscientists are uncovering in Eastern Europe.

Insects are escape artists. Now they face a threat more pernicious than predation.

Marine biologist Heather Koldewey on conservation, seahorses, and the importance of cross-discipline work.

An “Earth lawyer” argues for cultural transformation in environmental law.

Carbon sequestration could slow or reverse human emissions—and nothing is better at sequestration than a green plant.

A new push for attention to coastal communities, marine conservation, and ocean infrastructure

The simple insight that most changes are random had a profound effect on genetics, evolution and ecology.

Vast meadows sprawl far beyond the old boundaries drawn for seagrasses. They may provide a unique refuge for biodiversity.

We need a diversity of crops to adapt to Earth’s changing climate.

In three bursts of adaptive change, one species of cichlid fish in Lake Tanganyika gave rise to hundreds.

Undersea explorer Victor Vescovo has piloted submersibles to the deepest depth of each of the world’s oceans, a feat shared by no one else on earth.

After helping the world’s largest pension fund divest from fossil fuels, Nina Jensen tackles the ocean’s problems.

Declarations that the ocean is dying have become commonplace. We read headlines almost daily telling us that the oceans are choked with plastic, overfished, and rapidly acidifying. Yet even in “dying,” we are told, the ocean threatens human existence as sea levels rise, sea surface temperatures increase, and commercial fish stocks disappear.  The ocean has […]

Wisdom from the end of the Earth.

Marine biologists have a front-row seat to catastrophic environmental change. There are lessons in how they cope.

To stop destroying nature, developers are mimicking it.

Few have witnessed the impact of global warming more closely than this scientist.

The science-fiction author on why climate change doesn’t have to be humanity’s final story.

To preserve nature, we need to open our minds to it.

After so much taking, it’s time to give.

Palm oil is an environmental scourge. Plant biology has a solution.

Why the next geological epoch should be named for when we tapped the sun’s energy.

Jellyfish have mesmerized people for millennia, and much remains to be learned about them.

The little-appreciated but very big problem of marine hypoxia.

Biodiversity itself seems to nourish the rainforests of the sea.

An 18th-century physicist first predicted the existence of a chorus of atmospheric waves that swoop around Earth. Scientists have finally found them.

Hundreds of thousands of marine mammals are killed each year by fishing gear. This should not be considered “sustainable.”

Scientists don’t even know how many seamounts there are—but the few they’ve explored are extraordinary.

Plants ignore the most energy-rich part of sunlight because stability matters more than efficiency, according to a new model of photosynthesis.

Researchers look to dolphins as a model for alien intelligence.

Let’s stop hustling as if the world is running toward disorder.

What finding life on Mars could tell us about our own origins.

Palm oil is an environmental scourge. Plant biology has a solution.

Surfers have dreamt it—now engineers are delivering.

A geologist explains that climate change is not just about a global average sea rise.

How a star explosion may have shaped life on Earth.

A journey to the underwater volcanoes where life may have erupted.

The COVID-19 crisis has made the dark energy of evolution visible.

The eminent oceanographer Walter Munk reflects on science and war.

We know more about other planets than we do about our own ocean floors.

Plants talk to this ecologist. They tell her how to do better science.

A new array of cameras, vehicles, and sensors promises to change ocean science.

Sylvia Earle addresses the state of our seas.

Near the end of my long career, I want to save the animal that started it.

Even in calm seas, waves can become monsters.

To avoid the next pandemic, we need a reckoning with our place in nature.

Shyla Raghav uses her ecology background to advocate for the environment.

The wilderness offers not just escape but reassurance.

The nonhuman world is free of charge; sunlight is a disinfectant, physical distance easily maintained, and no pandemic can suspend it. Nature offers not just escape but reassurance.Photograph by Tim Zurowski / Shutterstock Needing to clear my head, I went down to the Penobscot River. There they were, swimming with the mergansers, following an early […]

An unearthed fossil and genomic discoveries are filling important gaps in scientists’ understanding of how primitive green algae eventually evolved into land vegetation.

Vertical farming could make agriculture more robust and sustainable. To unlock that potential, scientists are redesigning crops for urban life.

A revolution in archaeology is happening just when we need it most.

Earth’s tremors can tweak your GPS coordinates.

When I read that more than a billion animals had lost their lives to bushfires still raging in Australia, I froze, staring at the incomprehensible figure on my screen. A sort of sinking feeling came. Scientists made the estimate from the numbers of animals that have died from previous land-clearing practices. It is dismaying to […]

Why we need to branch out to solve global warming.

What it would take to suck more carbon dioxide out of the air than we put in.

Where might the US be if it heeded her discovery of global warming’s source?

Everyone knows forests are alive, but Suzanne Simard, who studies complex, symbiotic networks, helps us see that life anew. Even dying, for a tree, is not what it seems.Photograph by Tomasz Wrzesien / Shutterstock Talk of “Mother Trees,” from a scientist studying plant life, can sound fanciful, like something out of a fairy tale. Suzanne […]

The science and history of the lake Thoreau made famous.

Our sense of order is disappearing with the snow packs.

Earth’s great storehouses of carbon are looking ominous.

Plants communicate, nurture their seedlings, and get stressed.

Author Robert MacFarlane on the awe and horror of subterranean places.

Is there a biochemical reason that extreme weather makes us happy?

Sylvia Earle addresses the state of our seas.

In the Australian outback, the future of drought has come early.

The stories we tell about the epidemic get things backward.

Scientists are seeing a glimmer of hope in the complicated future of coral reefs.

On a raft trip down the Green River, a writer faces her environmental preconceptions.

Scientists might need to take a cue from artists to adapt our cities for climate change.

Minks in TV graveyards, and other stories of Chicago’s hidden animals.

Brief encounters with cuckoos.

Inalienable rights in the age of carbon dioxide.

Eric Lundgren’s electric car goes farther than a Tesla. He’s also going to prison.

In the 70s and 80s, nuclear power made a dramatic flip in the public mind, changing from a futuristic miracle to an environmental disaster.Photograph by U.S. DOD / Wikipedia In the late spring of 2010, the world watched, often in real time, a new kind of environmental disaster unfold: An oil rig operating deep under the […]

Plants have their own form of money: carbon dioxide. For decades, our fossil fuel industry has been artificially inflating their currency. What happens to plants during inflation—when CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise? The same thing that happens if you drop money from the sky over Times Square, leaving everyone there with $1,000 in their […]

The science and history of the lake Thoreau made famous.

The inside story of the largest dam removal project in US history.

Compact genomes and tiny cells gave flowering plants an edge over competing flora. This discovery hints at a broader evolutionary principle.

The inside story of the largest dam removal project in US history.

The interdependence of ecosystems and their inhabitants means climate change may force animals, including us, to adapt in surprising ways—some startling changes are to come.“Leiv Eiriksson discovers North America,” by Christian Krohg (1893) Rising sea levels, lower air quality, and longer and more frequent droughts often top the list of climate change consequences that will […]

The plan for an artificial Martian magnetosphere may sound “fanciful,” but researchers say that emerging research is starting to show that a miniature magnetosphere can be used to protect humans and spacecraft.NASA Earth is most fortunate to have vast webs of magnetic fields surrounding it. Without them, much of our atmosphere would have been gradually […]

We are ignoring the gains that balance the losses.

The stories we tell about the epidemic get things backward.

When hurricanes tear apart cityscapes and shorelines, and humans rebuild them, the biosphere twists and turns, shuffling the ecological deck.“The Garden of Earthly Delights,” central panel, by Hieronymus Bosch (circa 1480-1490) / Wikimedia Alligators wandering through inundated streets, snakes hiding on porch doors, deer careening across neighborhoods, and other wild sights emerged in the aftermath […]

“What physicists and astronomers do is trivial compared to solving these problems.”

Feeling is the physics of the organic world.

Feeling is the physics of the organic world.

The ecological philosophy of turning a garbage dump into a park.

The ecological philosophy of turning a garbage dump into a park.

The legendary marine biologist discusses why she’s excited about the coming era of ocean science, the shortsightedness of maritime exploitation and diving in the Arctic in her 80s.

To assess the ocean’s health, ecology’s “rugged individualists” learned to get with the big data program.

Before Rachel Carson there was Ellen Swallow Richards, MIT’s first female student.

Can a planet be alive? Lynn Margulis, a giant of late 20th-century biology, who had an incandescent intellect that veered toward the unorthodox, thought so. She and chemist James Lovelock together theorized that life must be a planet-altering phenomenon and the distinction between the “living” and “nonliving” parts of Earth is not as clear-cut as […]

Mussels are devastating a unique ecosystem.

The missing climate change narrative.

The missing climate change narrative.

Forests are an important buffer against climate change—so understanding forest dynamics is vital.

The light that a city emits is like its glowing fingerprint. From the orderly grid of Manhattan, to the sprawling, snaking streets of Milan, to the bright contrast of Kuwait’s ring-roads, each city leaves its own pattern of tiny glowing dots. See if you can ID these cities based on the way they shine.    […]

Rising temperatures are bringing ethnic tensions to a boil in Central Asia.

Rising temperatures are bringing ethnic tensions to a boil in Central Asia.

The Gaia hypothesis implies that once alien life takes hold, it will flourish.

The Princeton ecologist tells us about the scientists who inspired his work.

One spring day in 1984, Joyce Longcore got a phone call from Joan Brooks, a biologist at the University of Maine. Brooks had received a National Science Foundation grant to study the interactions of fungi and bacteria in peat bogs. She needed a hand, and she heard through the grapevine that Longcore knew a bit […]

It can be foolish to anthropomorphize the natural world. Perhaps the most frequent version of this failing is when people attribute human thoughts and emotions to animal behavior. Look at that adorable polar bear caressing that sled dog! Clearly that’s an endearing display of affection. It wasn’t, as a Washington Post article titled, “First a […]

Mad Max: Fury Road envisions an embarrassing, nightmarish future. Worldwide droughts have driven humanity to nuclear war over water, destroying modern civilization, and disfiguring the earth into a planet-spanning Sahara. Decrepit old goons control the last remaining pockets of groundwater and arable land; essentially, the movie is one drawn-out, violent chase scene through a sterile […]

Meet the transgendered ecologist helping her country move past years of conflict.

Around 500 miles southeast of the bright turquoise waters at Honolulu Harbor, and two and a half miles down to the dark ocean floor, a massive carpet of potato-sized rocks stretches thousands of miles on the seabed. These rocks, called polymetallic, or manganese, nodules, are made up of manganese, nickel, copper, and cobalt. The nodules’ […]

Economics and conservation are converging to resurrect one of the planet’s greatest parks.

Plastic is so pervasive that I sometimes forget it’s all around me—in toothpaste, in makeup, in clothes. But plastic is also omnipresent in places untouched by people, and one sobering forecast shook me: By 2050, it’s likely that plastic in the oceans will outweigh all the oceans’ fish. Some reports predict 850-950 million tons of […]

When Lauret Edith Savoy first heard the word “colored” at five years old, she saw herself as exactly that—full of veins as blue as the sky. Not long after, she learned another definition, steeped in racism. “Words full of spit showed that I could be hated for being ‘colored,’” she writes. “By the age of […]

Tree education is full of tearing and screaming.

In March, a team of scientists dragged a blast furnace on a sled across a giant slab of ice in the Beaufort Sea, above the Arctic Circle. With the furnace, the researchers (from the United States Navy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) melted a hole in the ice big enough to fit their 850-pound, […]

To many people in New York City, a beautiful summer day is all about the trees. To be more specific, the American elm trees in the Central Park Mall, which form a promenade through the heart of the park. “Everybody’s always impressed by the wonderful cathedral-like ceiling of the Mall, especially if they’re new to […]

Even though there’s virtually nothing you can do as an individual to combat climate change, the problem remains solvable. It’s almost like a riddle, the world’s thorniest challenge. In my new off-Broadway production, “Rap Guide to Climate Chaos” (now running at the Soho Playhouse), I delve into this dilemma, taking my literary inspiration from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. […]

The 1883 eruption on Krakatoa may be the loudest noise the Earth has ever made.

A handful of underfunded researchers still believe science can defy the odds.

Last May, as wild birds from around the globe converged on Alaska’s western shores for the summer breeding season, local citizen scientists did, too. Armed with sterile polyester-tipped swabs and screw-top vials, the amateur biologists descended upon dozens of homes belonging to hunters in villages such as Kotlik, Pilot Station, Chefornak, and Eek. In exchange […]

A new array of cameras, vehicles, and sensors promises to change ocean science.

Nearly three years ago, George Boorujy took a trip to Wolfe’s Pond Park, on the southeastern edge of Staten Island in New York City, and threw a bottle into the ocean. On a cold, sunny day this February, artist Brigitte Barthelemy, her husband, and their schnauzer, Elton, went for a walk on a beach in […]

Is there a biochemical reason that extreme weather makes us happy?

A trip to a Louisiana river delta reveals an ecosystem that is growing up.

Where I grew up in northern California, we were surrounded by the remains of Gold Rush towns, now subsumed into the wild rye. I used to look for these places on old maps and then search them out by car and on foot; sometimes the only sign I had arrived was a single blackened chimney […]

Torrey pines seem like they could use some human help. According to the U.S. Forest Service, they are the rarest pine species in North America, with fewer than 10,000 trees growing in the wild. They’re split between Santa Rosa Island, off California’s southern coast, and a small state forest perched on the coastal bluffs just […]

Gregor Hintler had what seemed like a simple question: How many trees are there? As part of Plant for the Planet, a youth initiative that aimed to plant one billion trees in every country by 2020, he needed a way to figure out how many trees the planet could fit. But when he tried to […]

One April day in 2013, the submersible Shinkai 6500 descended to the base of the steep São Paulo Ridge, 13,000 feet under the Atlantic Ocean. “Hang on,” Paulo Sumida, a marine biologist, radioed to the submersible pilot from the support vessel on the ocean’s surface. “Those are whale bones.” In fact, they were frozen vertebrae of […]

How a steady diet of fertilizers has turned crops into couch potatoes.

This time the test is Earth’s own ecological future.

Robert Paine showed us the surprising importance of predators.

Bahrain’s “Tree of Life” is a beauty. Low and wide, its thick, craggy branches dive under the surface of the desert before curving back up toward the hot sun. Delicate, feathery leaves flutter at its edge. It’s also profoundly alone. Diminutive shrubs dot this sandy wasteland, but there’s not another tree in sight, across miles […]

My sister the scientist makes a startling discovery in an Ugandan jungle.

A geologist explains that climate change is not just about a global average sea rise.

  To walk the streets of New York and think about all the little black spots on the sidewalks is a little like pondering the stars in the night sky: How many people must have walked this way, deciding at just this moment to spit out their gum? It’s almost beautiful, except that gum attracts […]

In the fight against insects, plants have evolved an arsenal of ingenious chemical defenses.

Mad Max: Fury Road envisions an embarrassing, nightmarish future. Worldwide droughts have driven humanity to nuclear war over water, destroying modern civilization, and disfiguring the earth into a planet-spanning Sahara. Decrepit old goons control the last remaining pockets of groundwater and arable land; essentially, the movie is one drawn-out, violent chase scene through a sterile […]

How Earth’s seas get around.

It’s no secret that water shapes the world around us. Rivers etch great canyons into the Earth’s surface, while glaciers reorganize the topography of entire mountain ranges. But water’s influence on the landscape runs much deeper than this: Water explains why we have land in the first place. You might think of land as the […]

This is what passes for good news from Fukushima Daiichi, the Japanese nuclear power plant devastated by meltdowns and explosions after a cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami in 2011: By the end of last month, workers had succeeded in filtering most of the 620,000 tons of toxic water stored at the site, removing almost all of […]

Sea lampreys showing off their unusual mouthsJoanna Gilkeson/USFWS Several years ago, a young man bow-fishing on New Jersey’s Raritan river spotted a long, thin creature in the murky water. He shot the animal through the neck, reeled it in, and posed for photographs. Eventually a friend posted one to Reddit. Within days it went viral, […]

At long-term nuclear repositories in Finland and Sweden, waste will be ensconced in cast-iron inserts (right), which are then placed in copper canisters (left).Posiva Oy This is part 2 of Vincent Ialenti’s report on how how to think about nuclear waste in the environment over the very long term. Also see part 1, which ran […]

On June 1, 1676 the Battle of Öland was raging, as the Swedish navy grappled with a Danish-Dutch fleet for control of the southern rim of the Baltic Sea. Amid bad weather, Kronan—Sweden’s naval flagship in the region and one of the largest warships of its kind at the time—made a sudden left turn. Its […]

This map produced by NOAA shows the land-surface temperature anomaly: how the temperature deviated from normal, on average, over the month. The darkest red areas were 12 degrees Celsius (22 degrees Fahrenheit) above average, while the darkest blue areas were 12 degrees Celsius below average.NOAA A question hangs like a cloud over the deeply weird […]

The “chapel” area at the Vocal Vibrations exhibitAmy Kraft Upon entering the Vocal Vibrations installation at Le Laboratoire Cambridge, visitors are directed to a room called the chapel, where a haunting vocal composition plays out of nine speakers positioned around the room. After relaxing on a bench to focus on the music, people are led […]

  One hundred sixty years ago, Henry David Thoreau published his magnum opus, Walden. In it he detailed his time spent living alongside nature in a cabin adjacent to Walden Pond. In one of the book’s emblematic lines, Thoreau wrote, “We can never have enough of nature.” He believed that it was a “tonic” for us. […]

I was puzzled by the artist’s photographs of my home in the Amazon—then I looked again.

In West Africa, a model for worldwide conservation takes root.

Folsom Lake, near Sacramento, provides a clear illustration of the extent of California’s drought. On July 20, 2011, the reservoir was at 97 percent of capacity. On January 16, 2014, it was at 17 percent, and there was no water flowing through the Folsom Dam.California Department of Water Resources via NASA   California is the […]

As Urmia dries up, it leaves huge salt beaches behind.Giulio M via Flickr The last time my cousin Houman traveled to Lake Urmia was 10 years ago. He and four of his friends piled into his car and drove for roughly 12 hours, snaking west from the capital of Tehran. Iran is shaped like a […]

Staph bacteria (red) forming a biofilmNational Science Foundation A common enemy befouls surgeons, plumbers, and sailors alike: slime. In each of their professions, they wage ceaseless war against biofouling—layers of living organisms that stick around exactly where we don’t want them.  Removing these various scum layers is a billion-dollar endeavor. Boats were among the first […]

Three of the rare Przewalski’s horses that now roam the area near the Chernobyl nuclear plant.Sergey Gaschak After a fatal series of errors and malfunctions in the early morning of April 26, 1986, the core of the Chernobyl nuclear facility melted down and then exploded, killing 31 workers at the plant. The accident spewed massive […]

Even in calm seas, waves can become monsters.

Even in calm seas, waves can become monsters.

The eminent oceanographer Walter Munk reflects on science and war.

I was puzzled by the artist’s photographs of my home in the Amazon—then I looked again.

To explain her motivations as a writer, Anna Badkhen quotes the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert: “you have little time you must give testimony.” Badkhen recently stopped by the Nautilus office to sit for an interview and take us behind the scenes of “The Men Who Planted Trees,” her cover story for the Spring 2014 Nautilus […]

In West Africa, a model for worldwide conservation takes root.

Sylvia Earle addresses the state of our seas.

In West Africa, a model for worldwide conservation takes root.

Call the daring marine biologist and paleontologist “Professor Nautilus.”

Many common air pollutants—ozone, various sulfur oxides, and even some particulate matter among them—are completely invisible to the eye. How interesting, then, that the EPA and other environmental organizations around the world, use color scales to communicate information about air quality. The US Air Quality Index, for instance, starts at green, meaning good air quality, moves […]

Searching for the ultimate example of recycling? Look in the mirror.

This is exactly the kind of photo you would not see in environmentalist literature.BMJ / Shutterstock When environmentalists petitioned to designate the polar bear a threatened animal under the Endangered Species Act in 2005, they were not, in fact, out to save the polar bear. They were out to save the world. Since the polar […]

Tales of monsters invading Japan are a longstanding tradition, usually involving menacing kaiju—literally “strange creatures”—rising from the sea to wreak havoc on a Japanese city. At this very moment, the country is engaged in just such a war, with an entire army of invasive creatures, but they’re both less fearsome and more adorable than Godzilla […]

Should extraterrestrials be looking down at Earth from space, they would know a few things about us humans. They would know our routines are dictated by the sun. They would see that we tend to congregate and build near water. But perhaps most of all, they would know that we move. Today’s world is an […]

The remarkable ways animals get around.

If you want to know the weather tomorrow, meteorologists can tell you. If you’d like to know what it’ll be like in 50 years, climatologists can tell you that reasonably accurately, too. But if you want to know the weather six months from now? That’s a far trickier matter. Between the reliability of short-term and […]

Can outfitting bees with tiny radio transmitters solve colony collapse disorder?

This afternoon, President Obama gave a major speech at Georgetown University laying out his administration’s climate and energy policy. The most notable bit was probably that he’s directing the EPA to take the unprecedented step of creating federal limits on power plants’ emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas that is the main driver of global […]

How one airline wrestles with the uncertainty of weather.

If an intelligent alien species landed on the small bit of galactic rock that we call home, they might get out of their spaceships, have a look around, and decide that we—that is, our species—are the master builders on our planet. There would be plenty of reasons to think so. We build bridges spanning enormous […]

If an intelligent alien species landed on the small bit of galactic rock that we call home, they might get out of their spaceships, have a look around, and decide that we—that is, our species—are the master builders on our planet. There would be plenty of reasons to think so. We build bridges spanning enormous […]

We consume unlike any other.