photo: Franco Folini

In landscapes that contain wild and developed lands, connecting wild areas via "corridors" helps increase biodiversity in both the wild and the surrounding developed areas, according to a new study co-authored by Nick Haddad (2008). This effect is due largely to easing the movement of animal-dispersed seeds.

photo: SkyTruth

Scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found a 21-mile-long oil plume in June from the Gulf oil spill and described it in a study co-authored by Chris Reddy (2006). Reddy recently criticized some journalists who, in looking for definitive answers, misrepresented the study as deciding between "competing" estimates on the oil remaining. "Science does not work that way," Reddy wrote in an op-ed for CNN.com, noting "Rather, science is more like a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece is added. Occasionally a wrong piece may be placed, but eventually science will correct it."

photo: James Davidson

Scientists have quickly criticized a federal report that claims to account for all but 26% of the oil spilled in the Gulf. The report discounts the 16% of the oil that dispersed into droplets since its "readily available for biodegradation," but Chris Reddy (2006) contended that microbes biodegrade only parts of the oil and only at their own pace. Pedro Alvarez (2008) questioned the precision of the figures, noting, "We don't know exactly how much was released. It's not like when you have a tank with a known inventory."

photo: Scott Ingram

Current agricultural practices have "destroyed huge regions of natural habitat" and produced "30% of greenhouse-gas emissions" and yet fail to feed a billion people, note Ruth DeFries (2001) and 24 other scientists in an op-ed in Nature. To address these shortcomings, the authors advocate for stakeholders to come together to create a freely available data network to monitor the success of agricultural systems based on social, economic, and environmental outcomes.

photo: thinkpanama

The oceans of Australia and Japan have the greatest diversity of species in the world, according to the latest update from the Census of Marine Life, while the waters most threatened by human activity are the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico – surveyed just before April's oil spill. "The sea today is in trouble," says Nancy Knowlton (1999), head of the Census coral reef project, "…but it remains a wondrous and enriching place, and with care it can become even more so."

photo: Jordan Macha, Sierra Club

As containment of the Gulf oil spill progressed, scientists looked at its aftermath amidst the Gulf's other problems. Evaporation is cleaning up the oil more than anything else, but since different compounds evaporate at different speeds, the makeup of the oil is ever-changing, Chris Reddy (2006) said. When flying over the marshes of Louisiana recently, Denise Reed (2006) saw mostly green, which she saw as a sign of the wetlands' resilience. Felicia Coleman (2000) compared the media outcry over the oil spill to the silence on the Gulf's many other persistent problems. The annual low-oxygen "dead zone" caused by overuse of fertilizers reached the size of Massachusetts this year, according to a report by Nancy Rabalais (1999).