plants

By Jason Quinn and Hailey Summers The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The Big Idea Indoor cannabis production is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and the environmental effects vary significantly depending on where it is being grown, according to our new study. The lights used to grow weed […]

Planting greenery is often touted as one solution to the threat of air pollution, but which species are actually the most effective against this major public health hazard? Researchers at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in the UK set out to answer that exact question and in the process revealed a new “super plant” — […]

By Tara Lohan For 10,000 years we’ve relied on domesticated plants for our staple foods. But it’s the wild relatives of those crops that are becoming increasingly important to our future food supply. Over hundreds of thousands of years, these wild foods have adapted to pests, diseases, extreme climates and other inhospitable conditions. That makes […]

By Ayesha Tandon The research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), concludes that the North American pollen season is now starting 20 days earlier and lasting eight days longer than in 1990. Climate change is responsible for roughly half of these changes, the study says. The study also finds […]

By Theresa Crimmins, Erin Posthumus, and Kathleen Prudic The rapid spread of COVID-19 in 2020 disrupted field research and environmental monitoring efforts worldwide. Travel restrictions and social distancing forced scientists to cancel studies or pause their work for months. These limits measurably reduced the accuracy of weather forecasts and created data gaps on issues ranging […]

By Tara Lohan Fall used to be the time when millions of monarch butterflies in North America would journey upwards of 2,000 miles to warmer winter habitat. But these days the iconic butterfly’s numbers are dwindling. The western migratory population is down 97% since the 1980s — a survey this month found fewer than 2,000 […]

Toxins enter the body through what we eat, drink, breathe in, and process in any way. Once inside, toxins overtax our immune system and detoxification system and leave us more vulnerable to illness — not ideal during cold and flu season, and especially not this year during a pandemic — and make us age a […]

Up until now, humans have had an invaluable ally in the climate crisis battle: Earth’s plants. These steadfast photosynthesizers have absorbed about a third of human-released greenhouse gas emissions, but that could change. A study published in Science Advances on Wednesday warned that if emissions continue at current rates, then we are decades away from […]