(Natural News) American and Brazilian researchers evaluated the possibility of elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations reducing the negative effect of drought on physiological parameters and the growth of Manihot esculenta (cassava). They reported their findings in an article published in the journal Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science. The researchers grew cassava with 390 ppm or 750 ppm […]

(Natural News) Colorado’s East Troublesome Fire has exploded from 19,000 acres to a staggering 170,000 acres on Thursday, Oct. 23. The state’s second-largest fire to date blazed through trees and rugged terrain in the Rocky Mountains – and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has captured the inferno from space. With the Operational Land Imager […]

(Natural News) California’s most devastating wildfire season reached a grim milestone on Oct. 4, with officials from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) announcing that the state has surpassed four million acres burned. This figure is more than double the 1.8 million acres burned during California’s fire season in 2018. However, this […]

(Natural News) Even before lightning storms opened California’s most destructive fire season to date, pests called bark beetles had been setting the stage for the fires, transforming millions of trees into heaps of dried timber. Experts report that the beetles have infested millions of acres of trees, killing entire forests in the process. They stated that […]

(Natural News) Drought conditions this year have been so bad that water coming from the Colorado River has dropped to below-average levels, jeopardizing the two largest man-made water reservoirs and threatening water shortage in several western states. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) conducted a simulation study calculating future water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead as water […]

(Natural News) An unprecedented number of migratory birds have been dropping dead in southern New Mexico over the last few weeks. Wildlife experts are still uncertain what caused the die-off, but it’s posited that the extreme weather conditions in the western United States may have forced birds to migrate before they’re ready. Martha Desmond, an ecologist at […]

(Natural News) The U.S. may have to deal with more storms and dry conditions as a La Niña brews in the Pacific Ocean. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that surface temperatures in the Pacific have dropped to below-average levels, indicating that a La Niña is on the horizon. They also stated that there’s also a big […]

(Natural News) Iowa farmers suffer back-to-back blows after a dramatic drought hits the state following the August 10 derecho. The U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM) reported that about 60 percent of Iowa is currently affected by drought while almost the entire state is dry. West-central Iowa is experiencing the most extreme drought among all divisions of the state. […]

(Natural News) Forests around the globe are fighting a pandemic, too – that of beetle infestations. The outbreaks of mountain pine beetles – bugs no bigger than a grain of rice – are killing mature pine trees in record numbers across the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC), according to a recent report from Bloomberg. The mountain pine […]

(Natural News) Plagues of mice had stripped bare more than 120,000 hectares of German farmlands, reported authorities. Farmers suspect that the succession of arid summers, among other factors, had enabled field mice to reproduce at a rate that had not been seen since the 1970s. Farmers said that the mice had been tunneling under the […]