The Guardian

Ecologists and botanists have been working with highly skilled mountaineers in a series of intensive studies to map and track mountain plants and help ecologists understand the impact and speed of climate change

Drakewalls, Tamar Valley The spoil tips and the dressing floors where ore was processed have been covered in earth, and seeded with grass and flowers

Up the hill from Gunnislake, Drakewalls mine was the first stop for the Man Engine on the huge mechanical puppet’s celebratory journey through the world heritage mining landscapes of Cornwall this summer. Now the site is quiet again, bereft of the admiring crowds. Consolidated ruins of engine houses and chimneys remain from the 19th century, when this mine was the largest tin producer in east Cornwall, employing 398 people at its peak. Wolframite, a tungsten mineral, was separated from the tin ore and, by 1890, arsenic and copper were also being produced and loaded in sidings that connected to the new mineral railway. Contemporary reports described underground caverns that could be “traversed only by boat”. Earlier opencast excavations were filled in, but there remains a walled-in linear chasm or “gunnis”, choked with ferns and bushes. Come 1895, production was almost finished: “Coals stopped, mine stopped, water risen in the shaft.”

A Conservation International team has counted an average of 252 species of reef fish at each site in the waters around Atauro Island – more any other place on the planet. There is a push to protect the island, which is 24km north of Timor-Leste’s capital, Dili, with a view to developing an ecotourism industry.

The National Parks Service celebrates its 100th birthday in August. How have America’s natural wonders impacted your life? Share your stories and photos

For 100 years, the National Parks Service has been providing Americans and international visitors alike with unspoiled vistas – and vacations to match.

Ahead of the centennial on 25 August, we want to hear from you. Do you have a particularly memorable hiking adventure to tell us about? Or an undeniably beautiful shot of a waterfall or mountain range? Share your stories and photographs with us. We’ll feature a selection in our coverage.

Natural range of critically endangered western swamp tortoise increasingly untenable owing to reduced rainfall

Twenty-four of Australia’s rarest tortoises have been released outside their natural range because climate change has dried out their remaining habitat.

The natural range of the critically endangered western swamp tortoise, Pseudemydura umbrina, has shrunk to two isolated wetlands in Perth’s ever-growing outer suburbs, and a herpetological expert, Dr Gerald Kuchling, said reduced rainfall and a lowered groundwater table made those areas increasingly untenable.

Coastal village of Shishmaref, which is losing ground to rising sea levels, could become the first in the US to move over the threat of climate change

The residents of an Alaskan coastal village have begun voting on whether to relocate because of rising sea levels.

If they vote to move, the village of Shishmaref, just north of the Bering Strait, and its population of 650 people, could be the first in the US to do so because of climate change.

July was hotter than any month globally since records began – but some areas, such as the Middle East, suffer more than others

In Siberia, melting permafrost released anthrax that had been frozen in a reindeer carcass for decades, starting a deadly outbreak. In Baghdad, soaring temperatures forced the government to shut down for days at a time. In Kuwait, thermometers hit a record 54C (129F).

July was the hottest month the world has endured since records began in 1880, scientists have said, and brought a painful taste of the troubles people around the world may have to grapple with as global warming intensifies. Results compiled by Nasa showed the month was 0.84C hotter than the 1951-1980 average for July, and 0.11C hotter than the previous record set in July 2015.

Second phase of new benchmark will cut equivalent of greenhouse gases emitted by electricity and power from all US residences in one year, officials say

US trucks will produce 10% less carbon dioxide and consume 10% less fuel within a decade under the last major plank of Barack Obama’s climate policy.

The second phase of a new benchmark for medium- and large-sized trucks will cut more than 1bn metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and 2bn barrels of oil use, the Environment Protection Agency announced on Tuesday.

Simon Jenkins writes that “To question China’s good intentions in financing the power station [at Hinkley Point] is silly. It is a French-built plant, and the idea that Beijing might contrive to embed and then activate some doomsday bug is absurd” (Trade with China is a good thing. But Hinkley Point is a dud, 11 August).

Not that absurd. The China General Nuclear Group (CGN), which is involved in financing Hinkley Point, expects to build a new nuclear station with its own reactor at Bradwell in return for its involvement at Hinkley. This was agreed by David Cameron and Xi Jinping last October.

Researchers have captured rare footage of the stubby squid – a purple-colored species with large eyes – during an exploration voyage off Santa Monica, California. The somewhat rare species, which looks like a cross between an octopus and squid, spends its life on the seafloor, burrowing into the sand for camouflage and using its large eyes to spot incoming prey, such as shrimp and small fish

Southern Louisiana has been ravaged by a slow-moving rainstorm that the National Weather Service has called a ‘1,000-year’ disaster. Thousands of people have evacuated their homes and at least eight people are dead as of Tuesday morning. The historic storm began in the corner of Florida’s gulf coast in the first week of August

• Louisiana begins recovery from devastating storm – in pictures
  

Species that feed most on the bright yellow flowers of the crop treated with controversial neonicotinoids have fallen by as much as 30%

Pesticides used on oilseed rape crops, whose bright yellow flowers have become an increasingly common sight across the British countryside, are harming native populations of wild bees, scientists have conclusively proved.

Species that feed most on the flowers of the now-profitable cash crop used for vegetable oils and animal fodder are down by as much as 30%, according to the wide-ranging study published in the journal Nature.

Multibillion-pound Hornsea Project Two, 55 miles off Grimsby coast, would see 300 turbines span an area five times size of Hull

The second phase of the world’s biggest offshore windfarm is set to be built off the Yorkshire coast after being approved by ministers.

The multibillion-pound Hornsea Project Two would see 300 turbines – each taller than the Gherkin – span an area five times the size of Hull.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to classify disaster as the eighth flood considered to be a once in every 500-year event in the US in a year

The historic and devastating floods in Louisiana are the latest in a series of heavy deluges that some climate scientists warn will become even more common as the world continues to warm.

On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) is set to classify the Louisiana disaster as the eighth flood considered to be a once in every 500-year event to have taken place in the US in little over 12 months.

Artists teamed with photographer and volunteers to produce posters that will warn young people of air quality on some of the capital’s most polluted streets

Young Londoners concerned about air pollution from traffic have launched an independent billboard campaign to warn their peers of the dangers of diesel fumes.

Artists Vasilisa Forbes and Claire Matthews, together with photographer Terry Paul and a group of 16 to 25-year-old volunteers, have printed 12 large 20 x 12-foot posters which will appear for months on some of London’s most polluted streets.

Leaders of the Munduruku people will be shown the storeroom’s head-dresses and other objects made by their tribe more than 150 years ago

Amazonian leaders, in Britain to protest against the construction of several large dams which they say will destroy the lives of thousands of indigenous people, will on Tuesday be shown head-dresses and other objects made by their tribe more than 150 years ago.

The two chiefs of the Munduruku civilisation, which has flourished peacefully for centuries by fishing and farming along the banks of the great Tapajós river and its tributaries in the rainforests of central Brazil, will visit the massive storeroom of the British Museum in London, where a collection of 50 objects brought to Britain by a Victorian merchant are kept.

Leaked documents and sources show Natural England will use its legal powers less and seek funding from the private companies it is meant to keep in check

England’s nature watchdog is planning to use its legal powers less and risks becoming a weak regulator forced to raise funding from the private companies it is meant to keep in check, leaked documents and sources reveal.

Natural England is duty-bound to defend rare species and protected areas including national parks and England’s 4,000 sites of special scientific interest from potentially environmentally damaging developments.

Claxton, Norfolk Surely more than anything else in British nature, swifts symbolise all of life, and it is all here now in the line of that curve

My summer’s highlight, as we sit in the garden most evenings, has been to watch the pre-migration flocking behaviour of our village swifts. No one knows what purpose it serves, though it’s thought to play some role in flock cohesion. Up to 30 birds were involved, all crushed into a ravelling ball of anarchy burning across the heavens. I find it all the more magnificent to know that its whole ecology is based entirely on insects, but converted to swift speed and scream.

Like the flock itself I circle around and around, but no fishing net of words seems to catch it. Could one possibly express it better as a taste? It is like red chilli crushed in a gloop of honey; the essence of all the Americas mingled with that from all Africa and Eurasia; a taste, perhaps, of Pangaea.

Nasa’s results, which combine sea-surface temperature and air temperature on land, show July was 10th month in a row to break monthly temperature record

Last month was the hottest month in recorded history, beating the record set just 12 months before and continuing the long string of monthly records, according to the latest Nasa data.

The past nine months have set temperature records for their respective months and the trend continued this month to make 10 in a row, according to Nasa. July broke the absolute record for hottest month since records began in 1880.

The celebrity physicist Brian Cox holds up a graph to the One Nation senator-elect and climate change denier Malcolm Roberts on the ABC’s Q&A showing the rise in global temperature over time. Roberts had claimed: ‘We’ve had a pause in this so-called warming for now 21 years.’ He later says ‘the data has been corrupted’ and ‘manipulated by Nasa’ – prompting Cox to ask whether he believes ‘we landed men on the moon?’