Drought News

November 23, 2024

Top Headlines

NASA Satellites Reveal Abrupt Drop in Global Freshwater Levels

Nov. 16, 2024 — The Earth's total amount of freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since. The shift could indicate Earth's continents have entered a persistently drier ...

Beehive Fences Are Highly Effective in Reducing Human-Elephant Conflict, but Researchers Warn of Future Risks

Oct. 29, 2024 — A groundbreaking, nine-year study has revealed that elephants approaching small-scale farms in Kenya avoid beehive fences housing live honey bees up to 86% of the time during peak crop seasons, ...

How Playing Songs to Darwin's Finches Helped Biologists Confirm Link Between Environment and the Emergence of New Species

Oct. 10, 2024 — They say that hindsight is 20/20, and though the theory of ecological speciation -- which holds that new species emerge in response to ecological changes -- seems to hold in retrospect, it has been ...

Researchers Discover How Plants Produce a Novel Anti-Stress Molecule

Oct. 9, 2024 — New research identifies for the first time the genes that help plants grow under stressful conditions -- with implications for producing more sustainable food crops in the face of global climate change. The study reveals the genes that enable plants ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:15pm EST

A New Piece in the Grass Pea Puzzle -- Updated Genome Sequence Published

Oct. 31, 2024 — An international research collaboration has completed the most detailed genome assembly to date of grass pea (Lathyrus ...

New Parasite Discovered Amid Decline of California's Unique Channel Island Fox

Oct. 23, 2024 — In the 1990s, the San Miguel Island fox nearly went extinct, with numbers dropping to just 15. A recovery program increased their population by 2010, ...

Chickpeas: Sustainable and Climate-Friendly Foods of the Future

Oct. 16, 2024 — Climate change has a negative impact on food security. Researchers have now conducted a study to investigate the natural variation of different chickpea genotypes and their resistance to drought ...

Drier Winter Habitat Impacts Songbirds' Ability to Survive Migration

Oct. 4, 2024 — A new study shows environmental conditions in migratory birds' winter homes carry over to affect their ability to survive spring migration and the breeding ...

Scientists Urge New Conservation Approach to Save Vulnerable Species from Climate Change Impacts

Sep. 18, 2024 — A team of scientists alarmed by the loss of biodiversity across the world due to climate change has proposed a new approach to managing vulnerable ...

Hardship Early in Life Can Affect Health and Longevity -- Even for Marmots

Sep. 16, 2024 — The cumulative adversity index for people quantifies numerous measures of hardship, such as poverty and stress to understand health and longevity over the individual's lifespan. A similar tool could ...

How El Nino and Mega Ocean Warming Caused the Greatest-Ever Mass Extinction

Sep. 12, 2024 — Mega ocean warming El Nino events were key in driving the largest extinction of life on planet Earth some 252 million years ago, according to new research. The study has shed new light on why the ...

Dangerous Airborne Fungus Boosted by California Droughts

Sep. 3, 2024 — Researchers have identified the seasonal and climate-based cycles of Valley fever, an emerging but dangerous fungal disease spread through dust in the ...

Study Reveals Urban Trees Suffer More from Heat Waves and Drought Than Their Rural Counterparts

Aug. 13, 2024 — A recent study details how trees in New York City and Boston are more negatively impacted by heat waves and drought than trees of the same species in ...

Seismic Detectors Measure Soil Moisture Using Traffic Noise

Aug. 5, 2024 — Using state of the art techniques, researchers use vibrations from traffic to measure underground soil ...

Droughts' Impact on Pasturelands Is Measured in Order to Guide Extensive Livestock Management on Spain's Dehesas

Oct. 30, 2024 — A study using meteorological data and remote sensors, aims to furnish livestock farmers with information to promote more efficient ...

From Genes to Jeans: New Genetic Insights May Lead to Drought Resilient Cotton

July 29, 2024 — Cotton is woven into the very fabric of our lives, from soft T-shirts to comfortable jeans and cozy bedsheets. It's the world's leading renewable textile fiber and the backbone of a global ...

Agriculture: Less Productive Yet More Stable Pastures

July 22, 2024 — Climate change will have a considerable influence on the biodiversity and productivity of meadows and pastures. However, according to the results of the large-scale climate and land use experiment ...

Study Examines Urban Forests Across the United States

July 12, 2024 — Tree-planting campaigns have been underway in the United States, especially in cities, as part of climate mitigation efforts given the many environmental benefits of urban forests. But a new study ...

Researchers Create Groundbreaking Cotton Quality Model to Aid Farmers

July 12, 2024 — Researchers have produced a cotton quality module -- a part of a larger forecasting tool -- allowing cotton producers to better monitor crop quality under changing environmental ...

Near Chromosome-Level Genome of the Mojave Poppy Bee

July 2, 2024 — Scientists have developed a near chromosome-level genome for the Mojave poppy bee, a specialist pollinator of conservation ...

This Desert Moss Has the Potential to Grow on Mars

June 30, 2024 — The desert moss Syntrichia caninervis is a promising candidate for Mars colonization thanks to its extreme ability to tolerate harsh conditions lethal to most life forms. The moss is well known for ...

Groundbreaking Discovery: Zinc Can Make Crop Yields More Climate-Resilient

June 27, 2024 — Climate change, drought, increased temperature and other stressors challenge agricultural sustainability. Researchers have now made an unexpected discovery: zinc plays a pivotal role in the plant ...

Human Activity: A Double-Edged Sword in the Face of Drought

June 21, 2024 — A professor analyzes the conflicting impacts of human activities on extreme spring ...

Fish out of Water: How Killifish Embryos Adapted Their Development

June 6, 2024 — The annual killifish lives in regions with extreme drought. A research group now reports that the early embryogenesis of killifish diverges from that of other species. Unlike other fish, their body ...

Roots Are a Key to Drought-Tolerant Maize

May 22, 2024 — Maize can grow successfully in very different local conditions. An international study has now demonstrated the important role of the plant root system. The researchers analyzed more than 9,000 ...

Unraveling the Drought Dilemma: Can Reservoirs Be a Carbon Source?

May 20, 2024 — A team delves into the spatiotemporal patterns of water volume and total organic carbon concentration of agricultural ...

Plants Utilize Drought Stress Hormone to Block Snacking Spider Mites

May 3, 2024 — Recent findings that plants employ a drought-survival mechanism to also defend against nutrient-sucking pests could inform future crop breeding programs aimed at achieving better broadscale pest ...

Diversity and Productivity Go Branch-in-Branch

Apr. 24, 2024 — Researchers found that forests with higher trait diversity not only adapt better to climate change but may also thrive. The study unveiled how tree functional trait diversity plays a pivotal role in ...

How Soil Microbes Survive in Harsh Desert Environments

Apr. 17, 2024 — Prolonged droughts followed by sudden bursts of rainfall -- how do desert soil bacteria manage to survive such harsh conditions? This long-debated question has now been answered by microbiologists. ...

Twisted Pollen Tubes Induce Infertility

Apr. 16, 2024 — Plants with multiple sets of chromosomes, known as polyploids, are salt-tolerant or drought-resistant and often achieve higher yields. However, newly formed polyploid plants are often sterile or have ...

Genetic Underpinnings of Environmental Stress Identified in Model Plant

Apr. 11, 2024 — Researchers have identified 14 genes that thale cress -- a plant commonly used in genetic investigations since its genome is well documented -- express more when responding to five specific ...

Scientist Helps Link Climate Change to Madagascar's Megadrought

Apr. 9, 2024 — A team reveals a clear link between human-driven climate change and the years-long drought currently gripping southern ...

Groundbreaking Research in Groundwater's Role in Ecosystem Sustainability

Apr. 3, 2024 — Until now, groundwater -- a critical water resource around the globe, especially in dry regions -- has been largely unstudied in its importance and role in sustaining ecosystems. New groundbreaking ...

Australia on Track for Unprecedented, Decades-Long Megadroughts

Apr. 2, 2024 — Australia could soon see megadroughts that last for more than 20 years, according to new modelling. The researchers' bleak findings are before factoring in human impact on the climate since the ...