Leaves change color in autumn because the green pigment that dominates them all summer, chlorophyll, breaks down faster than trees replace it once daylight fades, unmasking yellow and orange pigments that were there the whole time while a separate red pigment gets made fresh in the process. Nothing about the display is sudden; it’s the
Fall colors were never a new pigment appearing — they were there all summer, hidden under green. Here is the chemistry behind autumn's reds, oranges and golds.
A new global map shows precisely which coral reefs are likely to survive the climate crisis, and the unglamorous, community-level work already underway on some of them.
A new global map shows which coral reefs can survive climate change, and the Bahamian community already restoring one of them.
The Great Egret standing in a Florida Bay slough is, whether the photograph says so or not, standing inside the largest hydrologic restoration project ever attempted in the United States. Its presence there is not nature quietly bouncing back on its own — it is the closest thing wetland science has to a live scoreboard.
Life Returns: Tracking a Decade of Wetland Recovery Read More »
Ten years of restoration work, told through the return of the species that had disappeared.