The most valuable fossils found in sediment cores are from tiny animals with a calcium carbonate shell, called foraminifera. One species of foraminifera lives in the icy waters of the Arctic above ...

Kathryn Hansen is the managing editor for NASA Earth Observatory. She has been writing stories, producing videos, and editing content for the group since 2014. Prior to joining Earth Observatory, ...

All of this extra carbon needs to go somewhere. So far, land plants and the ocean have taken up about 55 percent of the extra carbon people have put into the atmosphere while about 45 percent has ...

Phytoplankton are the foundation of the aquatic food web, the primary producers, feeding everything from microscopic, animal-like zooplankton to multi-ton whales. Small fish and invertebrates also ...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a different part of the world? What would the weather be like? What kinds of animals would you see? Which plants live there? By investigating ...

Among the first things the data revealed was a definite seasonal difference in cloudiness over the polar regions. Cloud fraction (the fraction of the area in a map’s grid box covered by cloud) over ...

Examine the set of graphs below for a given city. Read carefully the temperature and precipitation scales on the graphs. Review the biome information. Two biome choices are given for each set of ...

Less than two years after dissecting the head of the great white shark, Steno completed a manuscript on the geology of Tuscany. The locale was a shrewd choice; it celebrated the homeland of his ...

On the floor of the aquarium, spread a 1-inch layer of gravel. Mix the soil in the following ratios: Design an observation chart. Chart any changes in your plants. Give water in increments of a 1/2 ...

× This page contains archived content and is no longer being updated. At the time of publication, it represented the best available science. Before widespread human settlement began to encroach on the ...

Between 1950 and 2003, the world’s population grew from an estimated 2.5 billion to 6.3 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More people are affected by natural disasters today because there ...

The Antarctic is in some ways the opposite of the Arctic. The Arctic is an ocean basin surrounded by land, with the sea ice corralled in the coldest, darkest part of the Northern Hemisphere. The ...