Hundreds of farmers who rely on a massive irrigation project that spans the Oregon-California border learned Wednesday they will get a tiny fraction of the water they need amid the worst drought in decades, as federal regulators attempt to balance the needs of agriculture against federally threatened and endangered fish species that are central to the heritage of several tribes.

Only between 2% and 3% of the Earth's terrestrial surface can be considered ecologically intact, according to a new study published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. This percentage is drastically lower than past assessments, which estimated it to be between 20% and 40%, because it factored in loss of species from intact habitat as well as reduced populations of species. A restoration focus of specific species in intact habitat could recover ecological integrity to about 20% of land.

Over the past few decades, pollinators have been in decline worldwide, which is concerning because 70% of crops used for human food depend on pollinators. Turfgrasses—used for most residential lawns—often take some of the blame for pollinator decline as they are known to be wind-pollinated and were thought not to serve as a pollinator food source, until now.

As climate change reduces the frequency and intensity of killing freezes, tropical plants and animals that once could survive in only a few subtropical parts of the U.S. are expanding their ranges northward, according to a new study led by the U.S. Geological Survey. This change is likely to result in some temperate zone plant and animal communities found today across the southern U.S. being replaced by tropical plant and animal communities.

A study led by scientists at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) has decoded the genomes of the deep-sea clam (Archivesica marissinica) and the chemoautotrophic bacteria (Candidatus Vesicomyosocius marissinica) that live in its gill epithelium cells. Through analysis of their genomic structures and profiling of their gene expression patterns, the research team revealed that symbiosis between the two partners enables the clams to thrive in extreme deep-sea environments.