Environmental conservation efforts have traditionally focused on protecting individual species or natural resources. Scientists are discovering, however, that preserving the benefits that whole ecosystems provide to people is more economically and environmentally valuable.

According to a new study, global warming could lead to larger changes in snowmelt in the western United States than was previously thought, possibly increasing wildfire risk and creating new water management challenges for agriculture, ecosystems and urban populations.

Sea ice in Antarctica that persists through the summer is a highly important polar habitat for unique polar species, such as algae, krill, seals, and penguins. Scientists worry that as climate warms, declining sea ice trends might devastate Antarctic ecosystems.

Globally, natural ecosystems are being lost to agricultural land at an unprecedented rate. This land-use often results in significant reductions in abundance and diversity of the flora and fauna as well as alterations in their composition.

Multi-agency effort a collaborative success in integrated ecosystem assessment

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a report that can help reduce the potential impact of climate change on estuaries, forests, wetlands, coral reefs, and other sensitive ecosystems.

Current coastal management practices are ineffective and their continuation endangers ecosystems that support the economies on which over half the world’s population depend, United Nations University experts warn in a new report offering a major prescription for sweeping change.

Ecosystems are constantly exchanging materials through the movement of air in the atmosphere, the flow of water in rivers and the migration of animals across the landscape. People, however, have also established themselves as another major driver of connectivity among ecosystems.

In this week’s issue of Science, a team of researchers from the United States and Sweden report on a newly identified factor that controls the natural input of new nitrogen into boreal forest ecosystems. Nitrogen is the primary nutrient that dictates productivity (and thus carbon consumption) in boreal forests.

Assessing human impact on climate and ecosystems and predicting future climate evolution require knowledge of climates from past centuries.

In the first experiment involving a natural environment, scientists at Brown University have shown that richer plant diversity significantly enhances an ecosystem's productivity. The finding underscores the benefits of biodiversity, such as capturing carbon dioxide, a main contributor to global warming.

The mesquite girdler Oncideres rhodosticta may only be 13mm long, but it has a big role in shaping the landscape.