Environmentally friendly additives to road salt may still have tradeoffs. Every year, as winter closes in, transportation authorities prepare to deploy their vast stockpiles of salt and sand to keep the roads and highways safe and ice-free for drivers. In the United States, roughly 18 million metric tons of road salt are spread on the […]
ecology
Sponsor a fish and save Canada’s experimental lakes
Fans of environmental science can now play a direct role in helping Canada’s unique Experimental Lakes Area continue to do the research it has done for decades. The International Institute for Sustainable Development, based in Winnipeg, took over running the ELA on 1 April, after the federal government eliminated funding for the decades-old environmental research […]
Pesticide makes invading ants suicidally aggressive
Neonicotinoids change behaviour in ways that could affect spread of invasive species. Neonicotinoid insecticides have developed a bad reputation for their unintended and potentially harmful effects on pollinating insects such as bees. A study in New Zealand now shows that the chemical can also change how native and invasive ants interact. New Zealand is facing […]
Seafood diet killing Arctic foxes on Russian island
Mercury pollution in marine animals may be behind a population crash. An isolated population of Arctic foxes that dines only on marine animals seems to be slowly succumbing to mercury poisoning. The foxes on Mednyi Island — one of Russia’s Commander Islands in the Bering Sea — are a subspecies of Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) […]
Slow science
The world’s longest-running experiments remind us that science is a marathon, not a sprint. Although science is a long-term pursuit, research is often practised over short timescales: a discrete experiment or a self-contained project constrained by the length of a funding cycle. But some investigations cannot be rushed. To study human lifespans or the roiling […]