♦ Earth Science Press Releases

A clean energy future hinges on minerals such as copper, cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements. But the race to secure them puts pressure on the places where they are mined, often affecting communities contributing the least to climate change. With some supply and processing concentrated in just a few countries, these critical raw materials (CRMs) have also become a geopolitical flashpoint. To secure CRM sources, the United States and European Union are moving supply chains to aligned regions—producing more at home, bringing industries ...

Ice cores taken from glaciers reveal the air pollution of the past, using atmospheric particles incorporated in snow that fell on the glacier and became ice. Now, scientists have extracted a record of thousands of years’ worth of air pollution from 9.5 meters of ice at the Weißseespitze glacier, close to the border between Austria and Italy. But this ice is under threat from global warming, and scientists warn that it is now a race against time to capture critical climate information locked in these glaciers before it’s gone forever.  “These ...

Thanks to upstream diversions and climate change, Utah’s Great Salt Lake has shrunk by 70% since 1989, exposing about 800 square miles of playa and mudflats—along with numerous curiosities. While a potential environmental catastrophe, the lake’s dewatering presents numerous research opportunities for University of Utah geoscientists, including several who are looking to characterize the extent, characteristics, chemistry and flow of a mysterious, mostly freshwater aquifer under the playa. In a pair of studies coming out this year, a team led by geophysicist Mike Thorne deployed electrical resistivity tomography, or ERT, lines in 30 locations ...

Soil erosion is widely known for degrading land and reducing agricultural productivity. But new research shows it may also play a far more complex and important role in regulating the global nitrogen cycle, a fundamental process that supports plant growth and ecosystem health. In a new review published in Nitrogen Cycling, researchers synthesized current scientific knowledge on how soil erosion affects nitrogen transport, storage, and transformation in terrestrial ecosystems. The study reveals that erosion can significantly reshape how nitrogen moves through landscapes, with important implications for ...

Scientists have uncovered how different types of biochar influence the movement of water in agricultural soils that contain excessive phosphorus, offering new insights into how farmers can reduce nutrient loss and protect surrounding water bodies. In a new study, researchers investigated how two widely available agricultural biochars affect water infiltration and leakage in phosphorus enriched vegetable soils. The findings suggest that biochar made from rice husks can significantly slow water movement through soil, potentially reducing the risk of phosphorus leaching and improving water retention for crops. Vegetable production systems ...

A new study reports that specially engineered biochar can significantly improve compost quality by reducing nitrogen loss and accelerating the formation of stable humic substances. The findings offer a promising strategy for transforming organic waste into more effective fertilizers while lowering environmental emissions. Composting plays a critical role in recycling agricultural and food wastes into nutrient rich soil amendments. However, conventional composting systems often suffer from two major challenges. Large amounts of ...

Researchers have developed a novel engineered biochar that can simultaneously immobilize arsenic and cadmium in contaminated water and agricultural soils, offering a promising new strategy for addressing two of the world’s most dangerous toxic elements. The study, recently published in Agricultural Ecology and Environment, introduces a sulfur-ferrihydrite-modified biochar designed to tackle the complex challenge of co-contamination by arsenic and cadmium. These pollutants frequently occur together in agricultural regions impacted by mining, industrial emissions, and long-term fertilizer use, posing serious ...

NEW YORK, March 3, 2026 — A new scientific study led by paleontologist Stephen Chester, an Anthropology professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, is shedding fresh light on how the earliest known primate relatives evolved and spread across North America after the extinction of the dinosaurs. The research—published as the cover article in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology—was conducted in collaboration with scientists from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. It focuses on Purgatorius, a small, tree-dwelling mammal that lived about 66 million years ago and is considered the earliest known relative of all primates, ...

Restoring ecosystems after mining is one of the toughest environmental challenges, particularly when soils are rebuilt from crushed rock with little organic matter or microbial life. A new study shows that something as simple as adding native forest litter could jump-start soil recovery and help restore the biological engine that drives nutrient cycling. Researchers investigating rehabilitated land near a former uranium mine in northern Australia found that introducing leaf litter from nearby native Eucalyptus woodlands rapidly reshaped soil microbial communities and improved their functional potential. The findings ...

The Cascadia Subduction Zone is unusually quiet for a megathrust fault. Spanning more than 600 miles from Canada to California, the fault marks the convergence of the Juan de Fuca and North American plates. While other subduction zones produce sporadic rumblings as the plates scrape past each other, Cascadia shows very little seismic activity, fueling assumptions that the plates are locked together by friction.  The subduction zone — miles offshore and deep underwater — is difficult to observe. Most data collection ...

Sandy soils are among the most challenging environments for agriculture because water drains quickly and nutrients are easily lost. A new long-term field experiment shows that combining biochar with compost and sludge can dramatically improve how sandy soils retain water, offering a practical strategy for farming in drought-prone regions. Researchers conducted a 441-day lysimeter study to examine how different organic amendments influence the water balance of sandy soil under realistic environmental conditions. The team compared single amendments and combinations of biochar, compost, and sludge, monitoring soil moisture, drainage, ...

A decade-long study has revealed that rising atmospheric CO₂ and warming work together to reduce the availability of phosphorus in rice-upland crop rotation systems, potentially threatening future food security. The research, which was led by scientists from the Institute of Soil Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, shows that warming plays a dominant role in redirecting phosphorus into less accessible soil pools. The findings were published in Nature Geoscience on February 3. The journal also invited ...

Earth’s surface is covered by more than a dozen tectonic plates, and in subduction zones around the world—including the Japanese Islands—plates converge and dense oceanic plates sink into the Earth’s interior. These regions, especially plate boundaries, are known for frequent seismic activity. In recent years, scientists have increasingly emphasized that water plays a crucial role in earthquake phenomena in subduction zones, and thus conducted active research to investigate the influence of water on various processes occurring within earthquake source regions. When water is supplied, peridotite—the primary constituent of ...

Stanford researchers have created the first-ever global map of a rare earthquake type that occurs not in Earth’s crust but in our planet’s mantle, the layer sandwiched between the thin crust and Earth’s molten core. The new map will help scientists learn more about the mechanics of mantle earthquakes, in turn opening a window into the complexities and triggers for all earthquakes. As reported in a study published Feb. 5 in Science, continental mantle earthquakes occur worldwide but are clustered regionally, particularly in the Himalayas in southern Asia and the ...

A new study reveals that soil acidity plays a critical role in determining how wheat competes with soil microorganisms for nitrogen, a nutrient essential for plant growth and global food production. The findings provide new insight into how farmers may optimize nitrogen use efficiency and improve crop productivity by considering soil chemical conditions. Nitrogen is one of the most important nutrients limiting plant growth worldwide. Plants typically absorb nitrogen from the soil in two primary forms: ammonium and nitrate. However, plants are not the only organisms that rely on these nutrients. Soil microorganisms ...

Before plants evolved, vegetative life consisted of primitive green algae living in the sea. Like plants, these algae survived by performing photosynthesis, turning sunlight into energy. However, little light reaches the ocean where algae live; therefore, they evolved specialized organs to grab what little is available. Among these tiny ocean algae are prasinophytes, which are among the earliest photosynthetic life forms on Earth. Like all photosynthetic organisms, they rely on a pigment–protein complex called LHC to capture sunlight. How efficiently LHC performs photosynthesis in different environments depends on the pigments ...

The fossils, representing at least five individuals, were first uncovered by Fidel Torcida Fernández-Baldor of the Dinosaur Museum of Salas de los Infantes. “From the beginning, we knew these bones were exceptional because of their minute size. It is equally impressive how the study of this animal overturns global ideas on ornithopod dinosaur evolution,” he notes. The genus name Foskeia is derived from the ancient Greek. The prefix fos means ‘light’, given the very lightweight and small body size of grown individuals (Dieudonné et al. 2023). The combination of letters ...

Babies and very young sauropods – the long-necked, long-tailed plant-eaters that in adulthood were the largest animals to have ever walked on land – were a key food sustaining predators in the Late Jurassic, according to a new study led by a UCL (University College London) researcher. The study, published in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin, used data from fossils laid down 150 million years ago in the Morrison Formation*, in the United States, to map out a “food web” of the time – a gigantic network of who ate what and who ate whom. The research team found that very young sauropods, relatively defenceless ...

Cadmium contamination in agricultural soils is a growing global concern, threatening food safety, crop productivity, and human health. New research shows that not all biochars work the same way and that choosing the right type of biochar can make the difference between trapping toxic metals in soil or unintentionally making them more mobile. In a study published online on January 15, 2026, researchers report that biochar produced at high temperatures can work together with soil microbes to effectively immobilize cadmium, one of the most hazardous heavy metals found in farmland ...

For decades, researchers thought that an October 1843 earthquake on the small Greek island of Chalke caused a powerful tsunami and led to the deaths of as many as 600 people. But a new analysis of primary accounts of the event by Ioanna Triantafyllou at Hellenic Mediterranean University suggests the truth was much less dramatic and destructive. As Triantafyllou reports in Seismological Research Letters, evidence from primary sources indicates that the mainshock occurred on Chalke on 17 September 1843, causing ...

A new three-dimensional model of the fault beneath the Marmara Sea in Türkiye reveals where a future major earthquake could take place, as reported by researchers from Science Tokyo. Using electromagnetic measurements, the team mapped hidden structures that help explain how earthquakes initiate and where ruptures could occur in this region. The findings help improve earthquake forecasts and could guide disaster prevention strategies for millions living in Istanbul and nearby, where seismic risk is high. The Republic of Türkiye sits in one of the most seismically ...

By tracking swarms of very small earthquakes, seismologists are getting a new picture of the complex region where the San Andreas fault meets the Cascadia subduction zone, an area that could give rise to devastating major earthquakes. The work, by researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of California, Davis and the University of Colorado Boulder, is published Jan. 15 in Science. “If we don’t understand the underlying tectonic processes, it’s hard to predict the seismic hazard,” said coauthor Amanda Thomas, professor of earth and planetary sciences at UC Davis. Three of the great tectonic ...

Polyester microfibers in soil negatively impact the development of cherry tomato plants in experiments, raising concerns over the potential effect of high levels of such contaminants Article URL: https://plos.io/3Ne0e7W Article title: Polyester microfibers delay growth of cherry tomato (Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme) throughout the lifecycle Author countries: Canada Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. END ...

For decades, scientists have been counting annual growth rings—similar to tree rings—inside fossilized leg bones of Tyrannosaurus rex to estimate how old the giant carnivores were when they died and how quickly they grew to adulthood. The best estimates from previous studies were that T. rex typically stopped growing at around age 25. An extensive new study of 17 tyrannosaur specimens, ranging from early juveniles to massive adults, now concludes that the king of carnivores took 40 years to reach its full-grown size of around eight tons. The new analysis—the most complete life ...

A new study shows that resilient and remarkably diverse populations of organisms can persist in the soil despite harsh and extremely dry conditions. An international team led by researchers from the University of Cologne, has examined tiny nematodes in the Chilean Atacama Desert. Along with the polar regions, the Atacama Desert is considered one among these most arid regions in the world. Lack of rainfall, high salt content in the soil, and extreme temperature fluctuations make it one of the most hostile places on earth. The interdisciplinary team with researchers from the fields of zoology, ecology and botany demonstrated the strategies used by different nematodes ...