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Mystery of Greenland’s ‘disappearing lakes’ solved
Posted by LiveScience: Joseph Castro on June 4th, 2015
LiveScience: Geoscientists have solved a decade-long mystery of how some of the large lakes that sit atop the Greenland ice sheet can completely drain billions of gallons of water in a matter of hours. In 2006, Greenland's North Lake, a 2.2 square-mile (5.6 square kilometers) supraglacial meltwater lake, drained almost 12 billion gallons of water in less than two hours. In a study published two years later, researchers determined that this astonishing phenomenon is possible because giant hydro-fractures (water-driven...
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Many Amazon extinctions yet to come, study finds
Posted by LiveScience: Joseph Castro on July 12th, 2012
LiveScience: When species lose their natural habitat to deforestation and other causes, they don't immediately disappear. Instead, they gradually die off over several generations, racking up an "extinction debt" that must eventually be paid in full. New research shows that the Brazilian Amazon has accrued a heavy vertebrate extinction debt, with more than 80 percent of extinctions expected from historical deforestation still pending.
Only on msnbc.com Redux Pictures file Women in the infantry? Bad idea, female...
Climate Change Ripples Through Mountain Ecosystems
Posted by LiveScience: Joseph Castro on January 17th, 2012
LiveScience: Like dominoes given one nudge, climate change in the form of reduced winter snowfall on mountaintops has subtle but powerful cascading effects felt throughout entire ecosystems, a new study finds.
In the northern mountains of Arizona, elk spend their winters in lower elevations where there's much less snow and the cold is less pronounced. But the decrease in high-elevation snowfall in the mountains over the last 25 years has allowed elk to forage in these areas throughout winter. Researchers found...