Ecological research on mountaintop mining has been focused on aquatic impacts because the overburden (i.e., the mountaintop) is disposed of in nearby valleys, which leads to a wide range of water-quality impacts on streams. There are also numerous impacts on the terrestrial environment from mountaintop mining that have been largely overlooked, even though they are no less wide ranging, severe, and multifaceted. We review the impacts of mountaintop mining on the terrestrial environment by exploring six broad themes: (1) the loss of topographic complexity, (2) forest loss and fragmentation, (3) forest succession and soil loss, (4) forest loss and carbon sequestration, (5) biodiversity, and (6) human health and well-being.

Humans depend on diverse ocean ecosystems for food, jobs, and sustained well-being, yet many stressors threaten marine life. Extensive research has demonstrated that maintaining biodiversity promotes ocean health and service provision; therefore, monitoring the status and trends of marine biodiversity is important for effective ecosystem management. However, there is no systematic sustained program for evaluating ocean biodiversity. Coordinating existing monitoring and building a proactive marine biodiversity observation network will support efficient, economical resource management and conservation and should be a high priority. A synthesis of expert opinions suggests that, to be most effective, a marine biodiversity observation network should integrate biological levels, from genes to habitats; link biodiversity observations to abiotic environmental variables; site projects to incorporate environmental forcing and biogeography; and monitor adaptively to address emerging issues. We summarize examples illustrating how to leverage existing data and infrastructure to meet these goals.

Maintaining or restoring connectivity in aquatic systems can enhance migratory fish populations; maintain genetic diversity in small, isolated populations; allow Organisms to access complementary habitats to meet life-history needs; and facilitate recolonization after local extirpations. However, intentional fragmentation may be beneficial when it prevents the spread of nonnative species or exotic diseases, eliminates hybridization between hatchery and wild stocks, or stops individuals from becoming entrapped in sink environments. Strategies for fragmenting aquatic systems include maintaining existing natural barriers, taking advantage of existing anthropogenic features that impede movement, severing artificial connectivity created by human actions, and intentionally creating new barriers. Future challenges for managing fragmentation include maintaining hydrologic connectivity while blocking biological connectivity in water development projects; identifying approaches for maintaining incompatible taxa, such as sport fishes and small nongame species; and developing selective barriers that prevent the passage of unwanted species while allowing normal life-history movements of other species.

In this article, I discuss recent developments in the field of synthetic biology in France. Although in the United States and in the United Kingdom dedicated policies and budgets are devoted to this emerging field, in France, synthetic biology has developed on a more bottom-up and lateral basis. Important developments have taken place mostly over the last 3 years: the publication of three official reports, the creation of an observatoire for synthetic biology, the establishment of dedicated research groups, and the plan to set up several platforms for fostering collaborations between public and private actors. I therefore examine how synthetic biology is assembled, governed, debated, and positioned and argue that social scientists should not reduce their analysis to categories such as the social, the legal, or the ethical. Instead, they should offer relational accounts on how the history, governance, geopolitics, and debates on synthetic biology are woven together.

Student understanding of the nature of science (NOS) improves in response to focused reflection about its aspects—an explicit, reflective (ER) pedagogy. However, whether this approach is effective within the two most common instructional models of undergraduate science laboratories—expository, which confirms predetermined outcomes, and inquiry, which is student driven and involves undetermined outcomes—is unknown. We manipulated underlying pedagogy (expository or inquiry based) and NOS treatment (ER or no ER) randomly across 31 sections of an introductory biology laboratory (n = 602 students). The students' understanding of several NOS aspects, assessed by their responses on two validated surveys, was significantly affected by the treatment. However, different NOS aspects were promoted by different treatments, which suggests that no single model or pedagogy can increase all aspects of NOS understanding. Instead, the instructional approach should be selected on the basis of the desired NOS learning outcomes.

The ecological effectiveness of widespread and costly aquatic restoration efforts is often unknown. We reviewed studies incorporating electronic-tagging techniques (including radio, acoustic, satellite, biologging, and passive integrated transponder tags) into restoration-monitoring programs and discuss novel uses of these technologies and experimental design considerations. We found 25 studies, mostly published after 2005. Most were focused on salmonids or monitored the residency of species at artificial reefs. Few studies used site-level replication or data collected prior to restoration or at control sites, which limits the usefulness of their results for evaluating restoration effectiveness. The use of electronic tags and related sensors (e.g., temperature, depth) can reveal how habitats are used and their associated bioenergetic costs or benefits. These technologies are focused on individual- and population-level responses and complement traditional methods of assessing abundance, richness, and community composition but must be deployed in conjunction with well-designed experiments to truly better inform evaluations of restoration effectiveness.

Wilderness areas have been widely discussed in the terrestrial conservation literature, whereas the concept of marine wilderness has received scant attention. The recent move to protect very large areas of the ocean and thus preserve some of the final marine wilderness areas is a bold policy initiative. However, some important questions have remained unanswered, such as whether marine wilderness areas support a different composition and abundance of species than do the smaller marine no-take areas (NTAs) that are steadily dotting our coastlines. We present a case study from the world's largest wilderness coral reef NTA, the Chagos Archipelago, and demonstrate that fish biomass is six times greater than and composition substantially different from even the oldest NTAs in eight other Indian Ocean countries' waters. Clearly, marine wilderness does promote a unique ecological community, which smaller NTAs fail to attain, and formal legislation is therefore crucial to protect these last marine wilderness areas.