A Recipe for Ancient Wildfires
The earliest wildfires raged long before humans, and they only needed three ingredients to get started.
iNaturalist and Crowdsourcing Natural History
The citizen-science app iNaturalist lets you record observations of plants and animals. The data can be used to study biodiversity.
Freshwater Fish of Virginia
Roanoke College's Ichthyological Collection of over 800 freshwater fish documents the biodiversity we're losing at an alarming rate.
Aeroplankton: The Life in the Air We Breathe
Just as the ocean is full of plankton, the air we breathe teems with microorganisms.
The Environmental Downside of Cannabis Cultivation
Wide-scale cannabis cultivation is causing environmental damage. Federal regulations could change this.
How Trees Can Save Lakes From Algae Blooms
In addition to cleaning air pollution, trees absorb excess nutrients from soil, preventing algae blooms in waterways.
Exploring Lake Baikal
The world's largest, deepest freshwater lake is home to hundreds of species that don't live anywhere else on Earth. But it's threatened by climate change.
When a Cultivated Tree Goes Rogue
The Callery pear was meant to help prevent fire blight from destroying the commercial pear industry. Then it became invasive.
The Tangled History of Weaving with Spider Silk
Spider silk is as strong as steel and as light as a feather, but attempts to industrialize its production have gotten stuck, so to speak.