Background Articles

This feature will be particularly perilous because it's so rare in this part of the world. Sixty per cent of British Columbians do not own an air conditioner in their households.

A researcher's quest to understand a mysterious mass extinction leads to cud-chewing culprits.

Despite seeing snow fall across the Norton Sound and Nome earlier this month, summer weather seems to have arrived in Western Alaska.

Researchers have recently found that several long-lasting human-made contaminants have been building up in Arctic lakes, polar bears and ringed seals and other wildlife. These contaminants belong to a family of chemicals called polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and are used in food packaging, waterproof clothing and firefighting foams.

Global climate warming is most severe in the Arctic. One consequence is a widespread reduction in permafrost. Continuous, stable permafrost can act as a physical glue that helps anchor unstable slopes. Increasingly, scientists are reporting collapse of rock slopes in the High Arctic.

“We’re dropping in elevation because we live on ice cubes,” says a scientist trying to map permafrost.

Micah Hahn, an assistant professor of environmental health at the University of Alaska Anchorage, says while it might seem obvious that wildfire smoke causes health impacts, there had actually never been a nuanced, scientific look at those impacts. The biggest impact was for asthma-related emergency department visits. This was really across the board and across age groups and in geographic areas.

It's long been suspected that wild turkeys are to blame for Maine moose tick infestation. A new study proves that theory wrong.

While the Kenai Peninsula is relatively lucky that the ecosystems here are fairly intact, there are still a handful of invasive species making their way into the streams, fields and gardens here.

Fearing that runoff from the December rains might have carried contamination to Henderson Farm in Haines, the American Bald Eagle Foundation has told its renters they won't be able to farm their plots this year.

Warming seas appear to have led to a large reduction in the number of puffins around Iceland in recent decades.

Beyond its environmental threat, climate change is endangering public health in Canada in ways that will have significant human and financial costs, a new report says.

For the first time in more than 20 years, rabies was confirmed in a river otter, officials said.

One common salmon virus introduced to southern B.C. 30 years ago despite assertions from government, industry virus is 'endemic' to province. Further analysis of the PRV genomes in B.C. waters indicate that the number of PRV infections in the region has increased by two orders of magnitude over the last two decades, a pattern that aligns with the regional growth in farms, where nearly all of the fish become infected.

Upgrades are needed on the tarmac

Evidence shows a debilitating virus found in British Columbia salmon was transferred from Atlantic fish farms, which then spread from Pacific aquaculture operations into wild fish, says a study published Wednesday.

Until recently, giant seaweed called bull kelp formed lush underwater forests in northern California's coastal waters. These kelp forests have long provided critical habitat for many species like salmon, crabs, and jellyfish. But now a few patches of bull kelp remain. Warming waters and hungry urchins make it hard for these kelp forests to survive.

Climate warming has accelerated the permafrost degradation, which influences the processes of water supply, runoff and discharge in the Source Area of the Yellow River (SAYR) in the northeast of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

The mauling left the man with a crushed jaw, a puncture wound in his scalp so deep the doctor told him he could see bone, lacerations and many stitches after a 4 1/2-hour surgery.

A federal regulator has lifted a stop-work order on tree cutting and grass mowing along the route of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.