At the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, there are five strange looking “patches” cleared out of the surrounding forest. No, they’re not crop circles carved by aliens. They’re actually budding longleaf pine forest ecosystems. Biologists have created these ecological patches with the help of the United States Forest Service-Savannah River to understand whether “corridors” help plants and animals survive habitat fragmentation.

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Hydrological changes over the past 24 years in the Mar Menor, including increased irrigation, are altering habitats and biological communities of the wetland area. Researchers have studied tenebrionid beetles and how their numbers have declined as a result of increased ground moisture and salinity.

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A team of researchers from the Netherlands and Florida has found that plants that range beyond their normal distribution because of warming climates may have advantages over native plants. Global warming-induced biological invasions may represent an additional threat to biodiversity.

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Keeping tropical rain forests intact is a better way to combat climate change than replacing them with biofuel plantations, a study in the journal Conservation Biology finds.

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The results of the biggest and most comprehensive survey of Britain’s countryside and its natural resources are unveiled in a report published this week by the Countryside Survey partnership.

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