© Chuck Peoples / TNC In 1989, the Conservancy purchased 10,626 acres along the river that became the Roanoke National Wildlife Refuge.Since 2002, the Conservancy has worked with the Corps of Engineers on dam releases that mimic natural flows, providing pulses of water to the floodplain forest that provide for vegetation and fish migration and spawning.

For a forest, one way to track resiliency is through a satellite measurement called vegetation optical depth, or VOD, which penetrates through the canopy and detects how much woody biomass there is.

The wasp strolls along the vegetation that Elophila turbata frequents, searching for an aquatic caterpillar in its case.Fleeing for its life, the caterpillar surfaces into the vegetation above its home, only for the wasp to emerge from the water, Godzilla-style.

“Even though this area is wild and undeveloped, we were seeing pro-longed growing season floods that hurt the floodplain vegetation, eroded river banks, and caused low dissolved oxygen levels that resulted in fish kills,” says Julie DeMeester, water program director for The Nature Conservancy in North Carolina .

The grazers might also prefer grasses to shrubs, which changes the vertical structure of the vegetation, further increasing the fire risk.So while the grazers are doing a helpful job of eating up some potential tinder, they’re leaving behind vegetation that is extra-flammable—which is a mixed bag, in terms of wildfire prevention.

Yet another study found feral cats are highly attracted to areas that burned recently and tend to avoid ones three months or older, perhaps because vegetation has begun to grow back by that time, or they’ve simply obliterated the prey species there.

All that rain meant a bumper crop of grasses and other vegetation, which, as hot and dry conditions returned, likely contributed to a combustible mix of fuels that played a role in the severe fires that have swept California in the past two years .These wild swings from one weather extreme to another are symptomatic of a phenomenon, variously known as “climate whiplash” or “weather whiplash,” that scientists say is likely to increase as the world warms.

Wara says they tend to be built to higher standards, making them less prone to wind damage.“The lines in the South Bay where the tech headquarters are, like in Mountain View and Santa Clara County, are [surrounded by] wide open space—there's basically no vegetation.

“If you imagine the atmosphere over your head as a sponge, you can’t wring it out anymore,” says Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA.At ground level, the warm air screaming through the mountains sucks away whatever moisture might be left in the vegetation—which is increasingly little as the climate warms in California and autumns grow increasingly dry .

A typical fire retardant dropped from a plane, like the inorganic salt ammonium polyphosphate, or APP, works by sticking to the surface of vegetation and binding to carbon, creating a char layer that is resistant to burning.

Yelp has long given users the ability to filter search results based on dozens of different criteria, including what type of cuisine a restaurant offers and whether it has vegan or vegetarian options.

Frustration with buying fruit and vegetables that are never ready to eat prompted a 13-year-old Tauranga girl to a design a machine to help.Bay of Plenty Science Fair 2019 winner Anamaya Taylor.

They found that not all green spaces are created equal in the eyes of pollinators, and while urban nature reserves and parks are good, community vegetable gardens can be even better.

The fossil records show that the world is very sensitive to temperature changes, which suggests that if fossil fuel emissions continue unabated, accelerated warming could lead to dramatic transformations in vegetation and ecosystems around the globe, the team wrote today (Aug. 30) in the journal Science.