Over the last half-decade, public transit ridership declined nationwide. The number of vehicle miles traveled in cars is rising, and traffic congestion is getting worse in many U.S. cities. At the same time, the century-old taxi industry is struggling, with many taxi companies going bankrupt….

Trade and social networking helped our Homo sapiens ancestors survive a climate-changing volcanic eruption 40,000 years ago, giving hope that we will be able to ride out global warming by staying interconnected, a new study suggests. Analyzing ancient tools, ornaments and human remains from a prehistoric rock…

When people think of the Arctic, snow, ice and polar bears come to mind. Trees? Not so much. At least not yet. A new NASA-led study using data from the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE)shows that carbon in Alaska’s North Slope tundra ecosystems spends about 13 percent…

Arctic sea ice is not merely a passive responder to the climate changes occurring around the world, according to new research. Scientists at Yale University and the University of Southampton say the ongoing Arctic ice loss can play an active role in altering one of…

The global warming process may be even more intense than originally forecast unless deforestation can be halted, especially in the tropical regions. This warning has been published in Nature Communications by an international group of scientists. “If we go on destroying forests at the current…

At first glance, the high-resolution images of the polygons look like the lacy skin of a cantaloupe melon – perhaps not what would be expected of images of the Arctic tundra. But this characteristic feature of the tundra is a perfect focus for remote sensing…

Stanford researchers have developed a water-based battery that could provide a cheap way to store wind or solar energy generated when the sun is shining and wind is blowing so it can be fed back into the electric grid and be redistributed when demand is…

Every spring, tens of thousands of elk follow a wave of green growth up onto the high plateaus in and around Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, where they spend the summer calving and fattening on fresh grass. And every fall, the massive herds migrate…

A concentrating photovoltaic system with embedded microtracking can produce over 50 percent more energy per day than standard silicon solar cells in a head-to-head competition, according to a team of engineers who field tested a prototype unit over two sunny days last fall. “Solar cells…