BIOL 107 - Environmental Science

Paper II: Environmental Science

Following the instructions in your writing syllabus (blue) and report on one of the recently published papers below. Write a news story based on what you learn.  The first step will be to analyze the reading using the five questions in the writing syllabus. You may give your oral presentation in lab on the same topic, or you can pick a different topic. Some articles below are not available online. Please get a copy of those articles from the Bay College Library or inquire about other options.

Resources on Reserve

Published Papers Online

Published Papers

• Human-caused mortality triggers pack instability in gray wolves. Kira Cassidy et. al.  Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. October 2023.
• The Coming Collapse: Antarctica's Thwaites Ice Shelf may soon splinter.  Douglas Fox. Scientific American. November 2022.
• Rise of the Toxic Slime:  A warning for today. Chris Mays, Vivi Vajda, & Stephen McLoughlin. Scientific American. July 2022.
• Neanderthals Like Us. David W. Frayer & Davorka Radoveic. Scientific American. February 2022
• How COVID Changed the World. Special Report. Scientific American. March 2022.
• Parasites Lost. Megan Scudellari. Scientific American. May 2022.
• Bold Experiments in Fish Farming. Ellen Ruppel Shell. Scientific American. May 2022.
• How Mammals Prevailed. Steve Brusatte. Scientific American. June 2022.
• An action agenda for Africa's electricity sector: Modernization and expansion require heightened efforts. Daniel Puig, et. al. Science. 06 Aug 2021 : 616-619.
• Deadly Kingdom: Killers of 1.6 million people every year, fungi are emerging as some of the most lethal microbes on the planet, and we don’t really know how to stop them. Maryn McKenna. Scientific American. June 2021.
• A Tapestry of Alternatives: Making peace with the biosphere will require building communities and relationships that are focused on sustaining life 
• The Polar Crucible: A warming climate brings sweeping changes to the world’s northernmost town. Gloria Dickie. Scientific American. June 2021.
• Coastal Retreat: Buy High, Sell Low. Like it or not, retreat from the coasts has begun. Elizabeth Rush. Anthropocene. Issue 5. July 2020.
• How to Plant the Forests of the Future. Lauren E. Oakes. Anthropocene. Issue 5. July 2020.
• Silent Scourge: Microplastics in Water, Food, and Air.  Cheryl Lyn Dybas. BioScience.  December 2020.
• Pitfalls of Tree Planting Show Why We Need People-Centered Natural Climate Solutions.  Forrest Fleischman, et al. BioScience. November 2020. pp. 947-950.
• Fence Ecology: Frameworks for Understanding the Ecological Effects of Fences. Alex McInturff, et al. BioScience. November 2020. pp. 971-985.
• A Severe Lack of Evidence Limits Effective Conservation of the World’s Primates. Jessica Junker, et al.  BioScience. September 2020. pp. 794-803.
• LED Flashlight technology facilitates wild meat extraction across the tropics. Mark Bowler, et. al. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. November 2020. Pp 489-495.
• Rewilding of Fukashima’s human evacuation zone. Phillip C. Lyons, et. al. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. April 2020. Pp 127-134.
• Inequality before Birth Contributes to Health Inequality in Adults: Improving newborn health is more essential now than ever. Janet Currie. Scientific American. October 2020.
• What Ancient Mass Extinctions Tell Us about the Future: Carbon dioxide has done plenty of damage before. Peter Brannen. Scientific American. September 2020.
• How Oak Trees Evolved to Rule the Forests of the Northern Hemisphere: Genomes and fossils reveal their remarkable evolutionary history. Andrew L. Hipp, Paul S. Manos and Jeannine Cavender-Bares. Scientific American. August 2020.
• Humans Evolved to Be Friendly: Cooperation made Homo sapiens the last human species standing. Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods. Scientific American. August 2020.
  How Climate Change Strategies That Use Biomass Can Be More Realistic. Current plans for drawing down carbon dioxide call for more trees, grasses and crop residues than Earth can spare. Eric Toensmeier and Dennis Garrity. Scientific American. August 2020.
• How 'Sustainable' Development Ravaged the Congo Basin: Pygmies and wildlife coexisted for millennia—until conservation coupled with extractive industries arrived. Jerome Lewis. Scientific American. May 2020.
• The Hidden Toll of Wildfires: A huge aerial campaign seeks to understand the effects of biomass smoke on human health. Kyle Dickman. Scientific American. March 2020.
• What Is Really Killing Monarch Butterflies? Some scientists suspect that Roundup and milkweed loss aren’t the only culprits. Gabriel Popkin. Scientific American. March 2020.
• Solar and Wind Power Could Ignite a Hydrogen Energy Comeback: Hydrogen, produced from water by surplus electricity, could power industry and the grid. Peter Fairley. Scientific American. February 2020.
• Hawaii as a Microcosm: Advancing the Science and Practice of Managing Introduced and Invasive Species. LISA PEJCHAR, CHRISTOPHER A. LEPCZYK, JEAN E. FANTLE-LEPCZYK, STEVEN C. HESS, M. TRACY JOHNSON, CHRISTINA R. LEOPOLD, MICHAEL MARCHETTI, KATHERINE M. MC 

Science of Aging BioScience Nov 2019. 


• Genetically Engineering Wild Mice to Combat Lyme Disease: An Ecological Perspective. ALLISON A. SNOW. BioScience. September 2019. 


• Side-swiped: Ecological cascades emanating from earthworm invasions. Lee E Frelich, Bernd Blossey, Erin K Cameron, Andrea Dávalos, Nico Eisenhauer, Timothy Fahey, Olga Ferlian, Peter M Groffman, Evan Larson, Scott R Loss, John C Maerz, Victoria Nuzzo, Kyu 


• When pets become pests: the role of the exotic pet trade in producing invasive vertebrate animals. Julie L Lockwood, Dustin J Welbourne, Christina M Romagosa, Phillip Cassey, Nicholas E Mandrak, Angela Strecker, Brian Leung, Oliver C Stringham, Bradley Ud 


• The case for a supply-side climate treaty: The Paris Agreement can be strengthened by a treaty limiting global fossil fuel supply. By G. B. Asheim, T. Fæhn, K. Nyborg, M. Greaker, C. Hagem, B. Harstad1, M. O. Hoel, D. Lund, and K. E. Rosendahl. Science. 2 


• The Ecological Paw Print of Companion Dogs and Cats. Pim Martens, Bingtao Su, and Samantha Deblomme. BioScience. June 2019. 


• Rough Weather Ahead: Recent disasters show how climate change is making winter storms, flooding rains and summer heat waves more extreme. By Jennifer Francis. Scientific American. June 2019. 


• A deadly amphibian disease goes global: Chytrid infection is linked to the decline of more than 500 amphibian species. By Dan A. Greenberg and Wendy J. Palen. Science. 29 March 2019. 


• Don’t abandon evidence and process on air pollution policy: Who decides how to establish causality? By Gretchen T. Goldman and Francesca Dominici. Science. 29 March 2019. 


• Governance of Economic Transition: Global Sustainable Development Report 2019. Paavo Jarvensivu et. al. United Nations Reports. August 14, 2018.
• The Little Reactors That Could: Billed as safe and cheap, NuScale’s small reactors aim to revive the ailing nuclear industry and help save a warming planet. By Adrian Cho. Science. 22 February 2019. 


• Droughts and Floods May Level Off until 2050, but Then Watch Out: Strange waves in the jet stream foretell a future full of heat waves and floods. By Michael E. Mann. Scientific American. March 2019. 


• Nitrogen in the environment: Excess nitrogen causes problems in developed nations, but nitrogen-poor soils threaten food security elsewhere. By Carly J. Stevens. Science. 08 Feb 2019 : 578-580 


• Advances in weather prediction: Better weather and environmental forecasting will continue to improve well-being. By Richard B. Alley, Kerry A. Emanuel, & Fuqing Zhang. Science. 25 January 2019. 


• Scrubbing Carbon from the Sky: Can we remove enough CO2 from the atmosphere to slow or even reverse climate change? By Richard Conniff. Scientific American. January 2019. 


• Are Antarctica’s Glaciers Collapsing? Rapid glacier retreat could put coastlines underwater sooner than anticipated. By Richard B. Alley. Scientific American. February 2019. 


• Re-engineering the Colorado River to Save the Grand Canyon: Can dam releases that mimic natural flows restore the Grand Canyon ecosystem? By Heather Hansman. Scientific American. February 2019. 


• Tragedy Revisited: New solutions to the Tragedy of the Commons. Policy Forum. Science. 14 December 2018. 


• Historical and potential future importance of large whales as food for polar bears. Kristin Laidre, Ian Stirling, James Estes, Anatoly Kochnev, and Jason Roberts. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. November 2018. 


• Where Have All the Turtles Gone, and Why Does It Matter? Jeffrey Lovich, Joahua Ennen, and Whitfield Gibbons. BioScience. October 2018. 


• Climate Change, Pathogens, and People: The challenges of monitoring a moving target. Lesley Evans Ogden. BioScience. October 2018. 


• Global Warming Policy: Is population left out in the cold? Population policies offer options to lessen climate risks. John Bongaarts and Brian O’Neill. Science. 17 August 2018. P. 650 


• Beavers, Rebooted: Artificial beaver dams are a hot restoration strategy, but the projects aren’t always welcome. Ben Goldfarb. Science. 8 June, 2018. 


• Early detection of invasive exotic insect infestations using eDNA from crop surfaces. Rafael Valentin, et. al. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. June 2018. 


• Should it be Saved? Proposals to focus resources on some endangered species and let others go extinct are stirring fierce debate. Warren Cornwall. Science. 7 September 2018. P. 962. 


• Gaia 2.0. Could humans add some level of self-awareness to Earth’s self-regulation? (Sustainability Perspective) Timothy Lenton. And Bruno Latour. Science. 14 September 2018. P. 1066. 


• Endangered species recovery: A resource allocation problem. Explicit articulation of values and objectives is critical. Conservation Policy Forum. Leah Gerber et al. Science. 19 October 2018. P. 284. 


• Beavers, Rebooted: Artificial beaver dams are a hot restoration strategy, but the projects aren’t always welcome. Ben Goldfarb. Science. 8 June, 2018. 


• Wicked evolution: Can we address the sociobiological dilemma of pesticide resistance? Fred Gould, Zachary S. Brown, Jennifer Kuzma1. Science. 18 May, 2018. 


•  Worldwide emergence of resistance to antifungal drugs challenges human health and food security. Matthew C. Fisher, Nichola J. Hawkins, Dominique Sanglard, Sarah J. Gurr. Science. 18 May, 2018. 


• The Genetics of Conservation: Peering into DNA to save species and ecosystems. Cheryl Lyn Dybas. BioScience. May 2018. 

• A Review of the Combined Threats of Road Salts and Heavy Metals to Freshwater Systems. Matthew S. Schuler and Rick A. Relyea. BioScience. May 2018.
• Can we Save the Corals? Rebecca Albright. Scientific American. January 2018.