Conservation Science

Under the wide green umbrella of the Panamanian rainforest, the only signs of human intrusion are yellow, orange and blue marks painted around some of the tree trunks. Those marks help measure the plants’ water efficiency, as trees are believed to steady the flow of rivers. “We are trying to understand the services provided by forests,” says Jefferson Hall, a Yale-educated forest ecologist with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.

Mark Elbroch always knows what his cats are up to. When the mountain lions Elbroch and fellow researchers are tracking make a kill, the Teton Cougar Project pays a visit. At the carcasses, they leave behind a video camera activated by a motion-sensitive trigger. The high-definition feed it picks up tells a story. “I’ve been studying mountain lions for 12 years,” Elbroch said, sitting before his computer in his Kelly office. “I’ve learned more from videos in the last year than I could ever have imagined.

At the end of a sharp point of land jutting into Western Bay, the Down East Institute for Applied Marine Research is a small campus of outbuildings, docks and a wharf centered around a large, nondescript metal warehouse. Inside, the air is humid and laced with the briny smell of shellfish and salt water.

Ship strikes Social communication is necessary so that they can get together for important activities, such as mating, and it is unclear just what the ramifications of cutting off that communication will mean for them. But the ships are not just disrupting communication; they also collide with whales from time to time. Dr Dave Wiley who works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has seen the consequences at first hand.

Remember when Apple's stock traded at $7 a share? I do, because that's when I sold my shares. Tech experts' sage predictions had convinced me that the Mac would never make a dent in the PC market. As it turned out, the Mac didn't need to make a dent, because Apple mutated its cute computer DNA into cute music players and phones that fit massive unfilled niches. Yet even the genius architect of this turnaround made faulty predictions sometimes. Remember the invention Steve Jobs said was going to be "bigger than the PC"?

As climate change encroaches, animals and plants around the globe are having their habitats pulled out from under them. At the same time, human development has made islands out of even our largest nature reserves, stranding the biodiversity that lives within them. The Spine of the Continent introduces readers to the most ambitious conservation effort ever undertaken: to create linked protected areas extending from the Yukon to Mexico, the entire length of North America. This movement is the brainchild of Michael Soule, the founder of conservation biology and the peer of E.O.

With unspoiled ocean views and easy access to beaches, West Cliff Drive is prime real estate in Santa Cruz. Josh Adams, an ecologist with the United States Geological Survey in Santa Cruz, says those coastal cliffs are ideal spots for seabirds too. A thriving colony of Brandt’s cormorants lives at Natural Bridges. Adams says this colony is unique because few native seabirds nest within cities along the California coast. “Most of the seabirds in our system nest on offshore rocks and islands that are predator free,” he says.

To keep tabs on natural schedules in California, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have launched the California Phenology Project. Led by professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Susan Mazer, graduate student Brian Haggerty, and postdoctoral fellow Elizabeth Mathews, the project is observing plants at eight UC Natural Reserves and seven national parks, totaling more than 100 monitoring sites.

Cougar biologist Mark Elbroch spent more than a year in South America's Patagonia region tracking down pumas and recording what they hunt and eat, riding on a horse for up to 21 hours at a time. In the course of his research, Elbroch noticed something odd: Patagonian pumas kill about 50 percent more animals than their North American counterparts and spend less time feeding on their hard-earned meals. But why?