Ecosystem

An expedition to the “Lost City of the Monkey God” in Honduras has revealed a trove of natural treasures. The pristine forests house an incredibly rich ecosystem, including species new to science, some unknown in the area, some that haven’t been seen in decades and others that were believed extinct.

The Pleistocene Park project is aiming to rebuild a lost Ice Age ecosystem in Siberia, and its directors, Sergey and Nikita Zimov, say it could help slow the effects of climate change. Now, the initiative is running a crowdfunding campaign to help transport a new herd of animals to the park.

A new study has calculated there is more than 15 million gallons of toxic mercury trapped in the permafrost north of the equator. That's around 10 times the mercury emissions produced by humans over the past 30 years and researchers are understandably concerned about the effects it could have.

​What happens when you purposely sink an historic WWII ship with a large scale sculpture of a giant octopus? A new fascinating marine experiment blending art and coral reef planting dubbed The Maverick BVI Art Reef.

Kudzu, zebra mussels and Africanized honeybees are some of the more well-known invasive species, but a team of international scientists says those are just the beginning. In a just-released report they warn that a new wave of biological invaders is on its way.

What happens when Nature decides to push the "reset" button on an ecosystem? The answer can be found in the aftermath of the 2012 El Hierro eruptions. While the magma vaporized everything in its path, it also provided a blank slate for a mysterious organism to move in and restart life anew.

With various “de-extinction” projects in the works right now, researchers have published a paper analyzing the ecological benefits, risks and responsibilities of reintroducing once-extinct species into modern ecosystems.

Android Wear-powered watches have made their way into the wild, but the wider public of consumers seems to have taken little notice. Eric Mack has some suggestions for improvements to get their attention.

A team of researchers may have found new evidence to shed light on the cause of the most devastating mass extinction in the history of our planet. The event, estimated to have taken place around 252 million years ago, was responsible for the extinction of roughly 90 percent of all life on Earth.

An international project is using floating plastic islands to restore the ecosystem of an African lake.

NASA's stunning Perpetual Ocean animation visualizes ocean currents.

Using the Kinect, the SandyStation projects a virtual environment over an ordinary patch of sand.