In the midst of an unseasonably warm winter in the Pacific Northwest, a comparison of four publicly available climate projections has shown broad agreement that the region will become considerably warmer in the next century if greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere rise to the highest levels projected in the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “business-as-usual” scenario.
Researchers who confirmed in recent years that salmon use the Earth’s geomagnetic field to guide their long-distance migrations have found that the fish also use the field for a much simpler and smaller-scale migration: When the young emerge from gravel nests to reach surface waters.
Old, complex tropical forests support a wider diversity of birds than second-growth forests and have irreplaceable value for conservation, according to an Oregon State University-led exhaustive analysis of bird diversity in the mountains of southern Costa Rica.
Hatchery-raised chinook salmon sort themselves into surface- and bottom-oriented groups in their rearing tanks. This behavior might be due in part to the fish’s genes, according to an OSU study.
Bird species that live in wooded areas are under stress from human-caused changes to forest composition, according to new research led by Oregon State University that quantifies the effects of forest “degradation” on bird habitat.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The California scrub-jay, a generally non-social bird, can learn just as well as another species of jay that lives in groups, a finding that surprised animal intelligence researchers who devised a novel food puzzle to study cognition in the wild.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The likelihood of hot, dry, windy autumn weather that can set the stage for severe fires in California and western Oregon has increased 40% due to human-caused climate change, new computer models show.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – The recovery of the fisher, a charismatic, long-tailed forest carnivore, will likely be hindered by the increasing frequency and intensity of future wildfires, new research by Oregon State University indicates.