Environmentalists have chained themselves to giant excavators in an effort to halt the expansion of a vast open-pit coal mine in western Germany.

More than 20 climate activists clambered onto the diggers in the Garzweiler lignite mine in the early hours of Friday. Eight have since been removed, police said.

Wildfires have destroyed nearly 50,000 homes in California alone in the last five years, and scientists say global warming is only making things worse.

While much attention is focused on managing overgrown forests, fire managers say it's equally crucial to increase the fire resistance of homes and the area immediately around them, known as "defensible space."

California's reservoirs are so dry from a historic drought that regulators warned Thursday it's possible the state's water agencies won't get anything from them next year, a frightening possibility that could force mandatory restrictions for residents.

California has a system of giant lakes called reservoirs that store water during the state's rainy and snowy winter months. Most of the water comes from snow that melts in the Sierra Nevada mountains and fills rivers and streams in the spring.

Authorities sandbagged low-lying areas in the Thai capital and checked pumping stations Thursday along the Chao Phraya River in preparation for possible flooding as dams upstream, swollen by heavy rains, were forced to release water as a precaution.

Flooding in the northern and central regions has already displaced thousands. Seven people have died and one woman is missing.

The land on which Audrey Trufant Salvant's home sits in the small Louisiana town of Ironton has become an island in a sea of mud and snake-infested marsh grass. Nearby houses are disconnected from their foundations, a refrigerator is lodged sideways in a tree, and dozens of caskets and tombs from two nearby cemeteries are strewn across lawns for blocks. The entire town is without power and running water.

A month after Hurricane Ida roared ashore with 150-mph (241-kph) winds, communities all along the state's southeastern coast — Ironton, Grand Isle, Houma, Lafitte and Barataria — are still suffering from the devastating effects of the Category 4 storm.

The surface of Spain's La Palma island is continuing to expand as lava from a volcano flows into the Atlantic Ocean and hardens when it comes into contact with the water, European Union scientists said Thursday.

Copernicus, the European Union's Earth observation program, said Thursday that its satellite imagery showed a D-shaped tongue of molten rock building up on the island's western shore measured 338 hectares (835 acres) by the end of Wednesday.

Droughts that cause leaves to turn brown and wither before they can reach peak color. Heat waves prompting leaves to fall before autumn even arrives. Extreme weather events like hurricanes that strip trees of their leaves altogether.

For a cheery autumnal activity, leaf peeping is facing some serious threats from the era of climate change.

Death's come knocking a last time for the splendid ivory-billed woodpecker and 22 more birds, fish and other species: The U.S. government is declaring them extinct.

It's a rare move for wildlife officials to give up hope on a plant or animal, but government scientists say they've exhausted efforts to find these 23. And they warn climate change, on top of other pressures, could make such disappearances more common as a warming planet adds to the dangers facing imperiled plants and wildlife.

The World Heritage-listed Daintree Rainforest is among four national parks to be handed back to traditional owners in a deal signed with an Australian state government on Wednesday.

More than 160,000 hectares (395,000 acres) of land in northern Queensland state stretching from the Daintree, north of Port Douglas, to south of Cooktown will be jointly managed before a full handover is made to the Eastern Kuku Yalanji people.

Lava from a volcano on Spain's Canary Islands has reached the sea after 10 days of wiping out hundreds of homes and causing the evacuation of thousands of residents.

Columns of steam that experts had warned could contain toxic gases shot upward when the bright red molten rock tumbled into the Atlantic Ocean at 11 p.m. on Tuesday.