The following is an article by Julie Cohen, written for The UCSB Current and posted June 5, 2015, with the title “In Living Color”: Over the last few days, the waters off the Santa Barbara coast have turned a striking shade of turquoise. The mystery behind this unusual color change is a type of chalk-producing phytoplanktonic organism called a coccolithophore. But what makes these otherwise invisible life forms suddenly...
Read MoreThe following NewScientist.com article was written by Fred Pearce and posted on June 8, 2015 with the title “Snail’s Demise Suggests Sixth Mass Extinction Is Underway”: The meek may, as the Bible says, inherit the Earth. But the spineless are going extinct. While vertebrate species like mammals and birds are mostly surviving the human-dominated epoch of Anthropocene better than expected, invertebrate species are...
Read MoreA National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis working group study analyzes a variety of factors contributing to forest die-offs; coauthor Naomi Tague is an Affiliate Faculty member of the Department of Geography. Julie Cohen, in an article for The UCSB Current posted June 9 with the title above goes on to state: A combination of drought, heat and insects is responsible for the death of more than 12 million trees in...
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