Covering conservation and the environment can be quite depressing at times, writer Hillary Rosner told students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism recently, but stories about climate change, endangered species, disappearing rain forests and other topics demand astute and sustained attention.

Using airborne mapping, researchers are discovering new archeological sites that show pre-Columbian Mesoamerica was “significantly more densely populated at the time of European contact” than previously thought.

Learn about the Inquiry in Rain Forests professional development program for science teachers, co-taught by "Miller & Levine Biology" author Joe Levine.

Although the Brazilian Amazon has recently experienced a decline in deforestation rates, researchers writing in Science say that forest fires in the region are on the rise—and that the benefits of decreased deforestation could be partially offset by increased carbon dioxide emissions from those fires.

American society must abandon the notion that science will provide clear-cut answers about the environment and climate change and learn to make policy decisions based on research trends and probabilities rather than absolute conclusions, a New York Times science writer said Tuesday in a lecture at AAAS.