eco matters6
-
Urban Trees Fight CO2 Emissions
Trees play a vital role in cleaning air and absorbing carbon dioxide.
-
Mysterious Honeybee Deaths Remain Unsolved
According to a comprehensive federal study, the collapse of American honeybee colonies stems from a complex slew of factors, including pesticides, parasites, poor nutrition and a lack of genetic diversity.
-
Birds, Ballasts, and the Fate of the Biosphere
The Biosphere really needs its own newspaper. Yes, there are lots of newspapers out there, but when it comes to the Biosphere, important stories just don’t get the top billing they deserve. Take discoveries of new species, for example. Just in the last month, a new spoon worm, white toothed shrew, corpse flower, and tailorbird…
-
Strange Bedfellows in the Climate Change Saga: Taiga to Tundra
In the nine-hour drive on the great Dalton Highway to Toolik Field Station one starts out in the boreal forest, which is also called the “taiga,” but the forest eventually disappears. More accurately, trees disappear. Leaving Fairbanks, one drives through beautiful stands of spruce, birch, and aspen trees, but as one gets closer and closer…
-
Strange Bedfellows in the Climate Change Saga: The Quest for the Arctic Wolf
When you travel northbound on Alaska’s famous Dalton Highway heading toward the Arctic Sea, the northern edge of the world, you carry a radio to communicate with the enormous rigs that roar along the road, the giant trucks made famous by the History Channel’s Ice Road Truckers. Radio messages between truckers and non-truckers are simple…
-
Maintaining large-scale biodiversity is critical for ecosystem health
It is well known that biological diversity underpins the functioning of ecosystems and the services that they provide. However, in a new study, researchers at the University of California-Santa Cruz demonstrate that higher levels of biodiversity are required in order to maintain multiple ecosystem functions simultaneously, over time.
-
IUCN Red List for Ecosystems Steps Up Biodiversity Conservation
This week in PLoS One, a group of researchers coordinated by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), published a new framework for assessing threats to ecosystems. This study offers the theoretical foundation for the Red List criteria for ecosystems, which like its predecessor, the Species Red List, will aim to inform government and…
-
Certificate Student Builds Green Roofs
Eric Dalski, a student in the Earth Institute Executive Education Certificate Program in Conservation and Environmental Sustainability is building vegetative layers grown on a rooftop. Learn more about his perspectives on the Certificate Program.
-
Spring Courses in Conservation, Ecology & Policy
The Earth Institute Center for Environmental Sustainability (EICES) at Columbia University provides executive training in environmental sustainability through courses in science, economics and policy. We invite you to join our leading experts and practitioners, strengthen your understanding of human-ecosystem interactions, and become an effective environmental leader and decision-maker.
