At first glance, it might seem like Amazon’s planned delivery drones will be just another way to overconsume. But it turns …
Amazon
How Human Activity — and Extinctions — Are Driving Evolution
When humans cause species to go extinct, the effects ripple throughout the surrounding ecosystem
How Fungi Create the Amazon’s Clouds
When you mess with the Amazon rainforest you mess with a lot of things — 2.5 million species of insects, 40,000 species of plants, 1,300 species of birds, and those are only the known ones. The 1.4 billion of acres of thriving, …
Faces of the Lost: Photos from Brazil’s Controversial Belo Monte Dam
Belo Monte will be the world´s third-largest hydroelectric project and will displace up to 20,000 people while diverting the Xingu River and flooding as much as 230 square miles of rainforest. The controversial project is one of …
Rain Forest for Ransom?
In this week’s international edition of TIME—which is thankfully not behind the paywall—I have a piece on Ecuador’s innovative plan to forswear drilling for oil in the Yasuni National Park in exchange for funding from the …
Technology: Google Makes the Earth—and the Planet’s Forests—Searchable
The more I write about environmental issues, the more I like writing about technology. Maybe that’s because while reporting on the decline of the environment can be, frankly, depressing (the naturalist Lois Crisler once remarked of the inextricable link between “love [of the earth] and despair”), while technology is undeniably …
How Will Drought Affect the Amazonian Rainforest?
The Amazonian rainforest isthe planet’s respiratory system–the more than 1 billion acres of trees help regulate the climate and produce more than 20% of the Earth’s oxygen. And that’s why one of the biggest fears surrounding climate change is the possibility of what’s known as Amazon dieback–the risk that higher temperatures and …
The Protective Powers of the Amazon
As if we needed further proof that chopping down the Amazon was a bad idea, a new study suggests that deforestation in Brazil had led to an increased incidence of disease.
Writing in the current (June 16, 2010) online issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, a team of scientists from the University of …