You probably don’t spend much time thinking about nitrogen. If you do, maybe you think of it as a pollutant. Fertilizer running off farm fields, livestock manure giving off ammonia, and burning fossil fuels all add nitrogen to the environment. This nitrogen contributes to the... click to read more

In the 1970s, Nintendo, a company that owned taxis and hotels and made playing cards and instant rice, began to make video games. This changed the company forever. Communities of species that live together in nature are somewhat like a business. Each species is a... click to read more

Climate change poses a concrete threat to arid ecosystems, in which water is limited (it rains less than 65% of what is evaporated). These dry ecosystems cover almost half of the terrestrial surface and are predicted to go through increased aridification, which endangers the plants... click to read more

Since Yellowstone National Park became the world's first nationally designated protected area in 1872, nations around the world have created more than 200,000 terrestrial protected areas. Clumped together they would cover all of Latin America - from Mexico to the southern tip of Chile -... click to read more

Coral reefs are ecosystems of extraordinary diversity. Considered "the rainforests of the sea", they contain ~35% of described marine species despite only occupying 0.2% of the world's ocean. Although they are extremely important habitat providers and form large living structures (some reefs can be seen... click to read more