Urban ecologists developed a new approach to understanding biodiversity patterns in cities. The work could inform efforts to improve access to nature’s benefits.

Xavier Basurto, Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Associate Professor of sustainability science, studies community-based marine conservation. Basurto discusses how fishers can help us understand the effects of climate change by listening to their experiences.

This year’s global Earth Day theme is “planet vs plastics”, and calls for the rapid phase out all single-use plastics.

Meet the Marine Robotics and Remote Sensing Laboratory, learn more about its research focus, lab members' experiences in the lab and the opportunities the lab offers Duke students.

Meet the Patino-Echeverri Lab, learn more about its research focus, lab member's experiences in the lab and the opportunities the lab offers Duke students.

The vast size of the ocean makes tracking human activity there challenging, but a new study provides a startling glimpse of how extensive this activity has become in recent years and how much of it occurs outside of public monitoring.

Xavier Basurto is broadly interested in how people in small communities successfully organize themselves for collective action. His recent talk described his work in advancing the understanding of non-colonialist sustainability science: the prospects and limitations of self-organization, or self-governance, for social-ecological sustainability, particularly in the Global South.

A new Duke University study finds that municipal waste incinerators' legacy of contamination could live on in urban soils.

Researchers at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and Pratt School of Engineering are co-leading a new National Science Foundation-funded project that aims to boost economic development and climate resilience in coastal North Carolina through nature-based scientific and technological innovations.

A new study by researchers at Duke University and WWF aimed to accurately track the expansion and retraction of small ephemeral water bodies from the wet to dry seasons across the KAZA region.

Knowing voters have seen news reports about problems caused by failing or outdated public infrastructures in their district makes local officials who face competitive re-elections more inclined to support new spending to repair or replace the aging structures, a survey of city and county officials in 49 states shows. Findings from the survey by Duke University and the Environmental Policy Innovation Center underscore the continued importance of local media even as newsrooms shrink nationwide.

Climate change threatens species worldwide. At the Nicholas School, we’re creating new geospatial tools that boost their odds of survival.

PhD student Renata Poulton Kamakura has been working with Duke Landscape Services and undergraduate students in the Theory and Applications of Sustainability (ENV 245) course to determine how the more than 17,000 trees on the Duke University campus benefit sustainability—including their effect on carbon sequestration and stormwater mitigation.

When it comes to making communities and businesses greener, re-thinking the “little” stuff we often take for granted—like zoning, logistics and cement—can yield big benefits.

New research finds nearly 75% of the seafood exported to China is processed there and ‘re-exported’ to global markets as Chinese products, making it hard to track its sustainability and verify it’s labeled accurately, but also gutting the economies of small fishing communities worldwide that can no longer compete.