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The far-flung islands of the Pacific Ocean were the last scraps of land on the planet to be settled by humans.

Research led by scientists at the University of Southampton has found settlers arrived in East Polynesia around 200 years earlier than previously thought. Colonisation of the vast eastern Pacific with its few and far-flung island archipelagos was a remarkable achievement in human history.

At several points in the history of our planet, increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have caused extreme global warming, prompting the majority of species on Earth to die out. In the past, these events were triggered by a huge volcanic eruption or asteroid impact.

In California, a changing climate has made autumn feel more like summer, with hotter, drier weather that increases the risk of longer, more dangerous wildfire seasons, according to a new Stanford-led study.

2019 was the year Australians confronted the fact that a healthy environment is more than just a pretty waterfall in a national park; a nice extra we can do without. We do not survive without air to breathe, water to drink, soil to grow food and weather we can cope with.

Here we provide a review of how ‘protected area’ effectiveness was addressed in the 2011-2020 plan and based on this, provide recommendations for fit-for-purpose indicators that will measure how such efforts contribute to the conservation of biodiversity.

Researchers have found evidence of rainforests near the South Pole 90 million years ago, suggesting the climate was exceptionally warm at the time. A team from the UK and Germany discovered forest soil from the Cretaceous period within 900 km of the South Pole.

There may be a small answer to one of the biggest problems on the planet.

More than 2000 renewable energy facilities are built in areas of environmental significance and threaten the natural habitats of plant and animal species across the globe.

Tropical forest ecosystems are an important part of the global carbon cycle as they take up and store large amounts of CO2. It is, however, uncertain how much this ability differs between forests with high versus low species richness.