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Discoveries

Deer in the Diet

Coyotes have become ubiquitous in the Northeast since they began colonizing the region in the 1920s. The conventional wisdom has been that coyotes are specialists in preying on deer, thus…

Spruce Scrubbers

Trapping carbon dioxide before it exits power plants, vehicle exhaust pipes, and industrial smokestacks is believed by many experts to be a key step in fighting climate change. The most…

Contamination Revelation

Abandoned industrial sites litter the world, and many are contaminated with pollutants that make it difficult to redevelop the land. Yet some species of trees can tolerate polluted soil and…

The Rust of the Story

Rusty blackbird populations have declined by about 95 percent in the last 50 years, making their decline the fastest of any songbird in all of North America. They breed in stunted conifers…

Knocking Down Nitrogen

Beavers have long been admired for their dam-building skills, which enable them to create ponds and slow the movement of water. Recently, a team of University of Rhode Island scientists has…

Saved by the Silver Fly?

The hemlock woolly adelgid remains near the top of the list of harmful pest insects in eastern forests. It has significantly damaged the hemlocks in 2.5 million acres of hemlock-dominated…

Teeter-Totter Travel

Birdwatchers in the Northeast have long known that some species of finch that spend most of their lives in the boreal forest occasionally travel far beyond their normal range. Pine siskins,…

Technology Tells the Tale

For decades it was hypothesized that blackpoll warblers, tiny black-and-white songbirds that breed in boreal forests and winter in South America, migrate south entirely offshore in a nonstop…

Chemicals That Bees Need

We hear a great deal in the news about the decline of managed honeybee colonies, but little has been reported about the crisis facing native bumblebees. According to Leif Richardson, a…

Extra Genes = Killer Fungus

A scientific investigation into the genetics of 20 fungi that infect trees has turned up an unusual explanation for why one particular fungus is killing plantation-grown poplars. According to…

Pathways to the Ponds

Beavers are well known for damming streams and creating ponds, forging new habitat for a wide range of wildlife. In the absence of streams, however, these ecosystem engineers often dig…

Hearts of Darkness

The wood of sugar maple trees is highly valued for its even grain and creamy light color, making it one of the Northeast’s most commercially important hardwood species for use in…

Grain Gene Fights Fungus

The American chestnut may be on the verge of a comeback. More than 125 years after Asian chestnuts arrived in the United States carrying a fungus that caused the near eradication of one of the…

Forest Fish Food

We don’t typically think of forest debris as a food source for freshwater fish and other aquatic organisms, but a study by researchers at the University of Cambridge in England suggests…

Peeper Keeper

For nearly 20 years, Gary Lovett has kept a journal with notes about a variety of natural events taking place in his backyard in southeastern New York, including the date that spring peepers…

Sugar and Seeds

Maple syrup producers no longer have to wait for spring weather to know if they are likely to have a good year. A postdoctoral researcher at Tufts University has revealed that sugar maple seed…

Fur-Bearings

Detecting small mammal prey beneath a thick covering of snow is among the more challenging skills that some predators must develop to survive New England winters. Most use exceptional hearing…

Go Jump in a Lake

The Clean Air Act, passed more than 40 years ago, continues to provide positive outcomes. The latest good news comes from a University of New Hampshire environmental scientist who reports that…

The Case for Snow

Trees sequester carbon from the atmosphere and play a key role in mitigating the effects of climate change. But a study by researchers at Dartmouth College found that from a climate…

Seasons are Shifting

It may be tough to believe after this past year, but it appears that winters are getting shorter and shorter. By studying the growth cycle of vegetation at daily intervals, a team of British…