Environment
press releases.

Environment5 Jun 2025

Sharp-tailed grouse in south-central Wyoming potentially a distinct subspecies

For decades, a population of grouse in south-central Wyoming and northwest Colorado has been identified as Columbian sharp-tailed grouse, the same subspecies that can be found in far western Wyoming near Jackson along with Idaho, northern Utah and parts of the Pacific Northwest. But new research led by University of Wyoming scientists has found that the 8,000-10,000 sharp-tailed grouse found in the shrublands and high deserts of southern Carbon County and northwest Colorado are not Columbian sharp-tailed grouse. Nor are they more closely related to plains sharp-tailed grouse -- a subspecies found in portions of ...

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Environment5 Jun 2025

A forward-looking approach to climate disaster preparation

Vulnerable communities in the Southeastern United States must look to the future, not the past, to prepare for climate disasters, according to researchers at the Feinstein International Center, located at the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. In a recent paper published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, the researchers document substantially higher risk of extreme temperatures and flooding in the Southeast U.S. The researchers' work, which was supported by a NASA cooperative grant, also includes a proposed framework to help these communities better prepare ...

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Environment5 Jun 2025

UN-backed global research shows benefits of tracking ocean giants for marine conservation

Woods Hole, Mass. (June 5, 2025) -- A team of international scientists, including from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, have tracked over 100 marine megafauna species, identifying the most critical locations in our global oceans for better marine conservation efforts, and the establishment of effective Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), according to new research published in Science. The global UN-endorsed research project, MegaMove, involves almost 400 scientists from over 50 countries, showing where protection could be implemented specifically ...

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Environment5 Jun 2025

Caterpillar factories produce fluorescent nanocarbons

Researchers led by Kenichiro Itami at the RIKEN Pioneering Research Institute (PRI) / RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science (CSRS) have successfully used insects as mini molecule-making factories, marking a breakthrough in chemical engineering. Referred to as “in-insect synthesis,” this technique offers a new way to create and modify complex molecules, which will generate new opportunities for the discovery, development, and application of non-natural molecules, such as nanocarbons. Molecular nanocarbons are super tiny structures made entirely of carbon atoms. Despite their minuscule size, they can be ...

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Environment5 Jun 2025

Groundbreaking study maps the movements of marine megafauna

A sweeping new study is helping pinpoint where whales, sharks, turtles, and other ocean giants need the most protection and where current efforts fall short. Led by Ana Sequeira of Australian National University and supported by the United Nations, the research synthesized data from 12,000 satellite-tracked animals across more than 100 species. It reveals how marine megafauna move globally and where their migratory, feeding, and breeding behaviors intersect with human threats such as fishing, shipping, and pollution. Virginia ...

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Environment5 Jun 2025

Study helps pinpoint areas where microplastics will accumulate

The accumulation of microplastics in the environment, and within our bodies, is an increasingly worrisome issue. But predicting where these ubiquitous particles will accumulate, and therefore where remediation efforts should be focused, has been difficult because of the many factors that contribute to their dispersal and deposition. New research from MIT shows that one key factor in determining where microparticles are likely to build up has to do with the presence of biofilms. These thin, sticky biopolymer layers are shed by microorganisms and can accumulate ...

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Environment5 Jun 2025

Fungal resistance in wheat: preserving biodiversity for food security

Wheat production is threatened by a major fungal disease: yellow rust. Researchers at the University of Zurich have found traditional wheat varieties from Asia that harbor several resistance-conferring genes. They may serve as a durable source of yellow rust resistance in commercial varieties in the future, highlighting the importance of genetic diversity for food security. Yellow rust, also known as stripe rust, is caused by a fungal pathogen named Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici. The plant disease affects around 88% of global bread wheat production ...

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Environment4 Jun 2025

Six decades of data on North Atlantic phytoplankton reveal that their biomass has decreased up to 2% annually across most of the Atlantic Ocean, with potentially widespread implications for the wider

Six decades of data on North Atlantic phytoplankton reveal that their biomass has decreased up to 2% annually across most of the Atlantic Ocean, with potentially widespread implications for the wider food web under climate change Article URL: https://plos.io/4kq8QEt Article title: Large, regionally variable shifts in diatom and dinoflagellate biomass in the North Atlantic over six decades Author countries: Canada Funding: This work was supported by grants from the Simons Foundation (549935 to AJI, 549937 and 986772 to ZVF), the Ocean Frontier Institute (NWABCP to AJI and ZVF), and Discovery grant awards from the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada ...

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Environment4 Jun 2025

Cambridge chemists discover simple way to build bigger molecules – one carbon at a time

A team of chemists at the University of Cambridge has developed a powerful new method for adding single carbon atoms to molecules more easily, offering a simple one-step approach that could accelerate drug discovery and the design of complex chemical products. The research, recently published in the journal Nature under the title One-carbon homologation of alkenes, unveils a breakthrough method for extending molecular chains—one carbon atom at a time. This technique targets alkenes, a common class of molecules characterised by a double bond between two carbon atoms. Alkenes are found in a wide range of everyday ...

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Environment4 Jun 2025

Researchers unveil a groundbreaking clay-based solution to capture carbon dioxide and combat climate change

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- One of Earth's most common nanomaterials is facilitating breakthroughs in tackling climate change: clay. In a new study, researchers at Purdue University, in collaboration with experts from Sandia National Laboratories, have potentially uncovered a game-changing method for using clay to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the air to help mitigate climate change. Their work, which earned them a 2024 R&D 100 Award and has a patent application in progress, was recently published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C. Cliff Johnston, professor of agronomy ...

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Environment4 Jun 2025

Study shows making hydrogen with soda cans and seawater is scalable and sustainable

Hydrogen has the potential to be a climate-friendly fuel since it doesn’t release carbon dioxide when used as an energy source. Currently, however, most methods for producing hydrogen involve fossil fuels, making hydrogen less of a “green” fuel over its entire life cycle. A new process developed by MIT engineers could significantly shrink the carbon footprint associated with making hydrogen. Last year, the team reported that they could produce hydrogen gas by combining seawater, recycled soda cans, and caffeine. The question then was whether the benchtop process could be applied at an industrial scale, and at ...

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Environment4 Jun 2025

Museum specimens offer new lens on pollution history

A new study highlights a surprising lens for tracking pollution trends over centuries: preserved plants and animals housed at natural history museums around the world. According to Shane DuBay, a researcher at The University of Texas at Arlington, these specimens contain valuable environmental data that can help scientists reconstruct pollution trends spanning more than 200 years. “We often lack the historical pollution data needed to understand the links between environmental contamination and long-term health effects, such as cancer, asthma, cognitive disorders and premature ...

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Environment4 Jun 2025

A summer like no other: inside 2023’s record-smashing North Atlantic marine heatwave

In a UNSW-led Nature study published today, researchers say that an off-the-scale marine heatwave in the North Atlantic Ocean in 2023 was caused by record-breaking weak winds combined with increased solar radiation – all on the back of ongoing climate change. From Greenland to the Sahara and across to the Americas, the waters of the North Atlantic Ocean warmed at an unprecedented speed in the summer of 2023. “The intensity of the warming in that single summer was equivalent to about two decades worth of warming for the North Atlantic,” says lead author Professor Matthew England from UNSW Sydney. “While ...

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Environment4 Jun 2025

Research shows rivers release ancient carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, uncovering a greater role for plants and soil in the carbon cycle

A new study has revealed for the first time that ancient carbon, stored in landscapes for thousands of years or more, can find its way back to the atmosphere as CO₂ released from the surfaces of rivers. The findings, led by scientists at the University of Bristol and the cover story of the journal Nature, mean plants and shallow soil layers are likely removing around one gigatonne more CO₂ each year from the atmosphere to counteract this, emphasising their pivotal and greater part in combating climate change. Lead author Dr Josh ...

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Environment4 Jun 2025

The atmosphere’s growing thirst is making droughts worse, even where it rains

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Hot air holds more moisture. That’s why you can blow your hair dry even after a steamy shower. It’s also what dumps rain in the tropics and sucks water from desert soils. A new study, published in Nature, shows that the atmosphere’s growing thirst for water is making droughts more severe, even in places where rainfall has stayed the same. The paper details how this “thirst” has made droughts 40% more severe across the globe over the course of the past 40 years. “Drought is based on the difference between water supply (from precipitation) and atmospheric water demand. ...

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Environment4 Jun 2025

Life from oceans to savannas explained with one single rule

A simple rule that seems to govern how life is organised on Earth is described in a new study published today (Wednesday, 4 June) in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The research team led, by Umeå University and involving the University of Reading, believe this rule helps explain why species are spread the way they are across the planet. The discovery will help to understand life on Earth – including how ecosystems respond to global environmental changes. The rule is simple: in every region on Earth, most species cluster together in small 'hotspot' areas, then gradually spread outward with fewer and fewer species able to survive farther away from these ...

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Environment4 Jun 2025

One single rule helps explain life from ocean depths to open savannas

A new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution has found a simple rule that seems to govern how life is organised on Earth. The researchers believe this rule helps explain why species are spread the way they are across the planet. The discovery will help to understand life on Earth – including how ecosystems respond to global environmental changes. At first glance, Earth seems like a collection of wildly different worlds. Each region has its own species and environmental conditions. Yet, beneath this variety, ...

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Environment3 Jun 2025

Millions of new solar system objects to be found and ‘filmed in technicolor’ – studies predict

A group of astronomers from across the globe, including a team from the University of Washington and led by Queen’s University Belfast, have revealed new research showing that millions of new solar system objects will be detected by a brand-new facility, which is expected to come online later this year. The NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory is set to revolutionize our knowledge of the solar system’s “small bodies” — asteroids, comets and other minor planets. The Rubin Observatory, ...

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Environment3 Jun 2025

SwRI-led research finds particles energized by magnetic reconnection in the nascent solar wind

SAN ANTONIO — June 3, 2025 — New research led by a Southwest Research Institute scientist identified a new source of energetic particles near the Sun. These definitive observations were made by instruments aboard NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which detected the powerful phenomena as the spacecraft dipped in and out of the solar corona. These new results offer fresh perspectives on how magnetic reconnection could heat the solar atmosphere, which then transitions into the solar wind, and also how solar flares accelerate a small fraction of charged particles to ...

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Environment3 Jun 2025

Ancient collagen can help identify a “wombat the size of a hippo” in the fossil record

What happened to all the megafauna? From moas to mammoths, many large animals went extinct between 50 and 10,000 years ago. Learning why could provide crucial evidence about prehistoric ecosystems and help us understand future potential extinctions. But surviving fossils are often too fragmented to determine the original species, and DNA is not always recoverable, especially in hot or damp environments. Now scientists have isolated collagen peptide markers which allow them to identify three key megafauna ...

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Environment2 Jun 2025

Virginia Tech researchers develop recyclable, healable electronics

Between upgrades and breakdowns to cellphones, tablets, laptops, and appliances, so many electronics are getting tossed in the trash that they've taken on a name of their own: e-waste. According to a 2024 report issued by the United Nations, the amount of e-waste worldwide has almost doubled in the past 12 years, from 34 billion to 62 billion kilograms — the equivalent of 1.55 million shipping trucks — and it's estimated to hit 82 billion kilograms by 2030. Just 13.8 billion kilograms — about 20 percent of the total — is expected to be recycled, a number ...

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Environment2 Jun 2025

Iron from coal, steel industries alters North Pacific ecosystem

Along with nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus, iron is essential for the growth of microscopic phytoplankton in the ocean. However, a new study led by oceanographers at the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa revealed that iron released from industrial processes, such as coal combustion and steel making, is altering the ecosystem in the North Pacific Transition Zone, a region just north of Hawai‘i that is important for fisheries in the Pacific. The study was published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. “This ...

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Environment2 Jun 2025

Still on the right track? Researchers at the University of Graz enable reliable monitoring of the Paris climate goals

In the Paris Agreement of 2015, the international community of countries agreed to limit global warming to well below 2 °C, and preferably to 1.5 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels. This refers to the increase in global surface air temperature, inspected at any time of interest as an average over 20 years. The latest IPCC report expected the 1.5 °C threshold to be reached between 2030 and 2035. Climate researcher Gottfried Kirchengast from the Wegener Center and Institute of Physics at the University of Graz now has to revise this estimate: “Our ...

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Environment2 Jun 2025

Study finds coastal flooding more frequent than previously thought

Flooding in coastal communities is happening far more often than previously thought, according to a new study from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The study also found major flaws with the widely used approach of using marine water level data to capture instances of flooding. “Government agencies and researchers use data from tide gauges to measure water levels in coastal areas, then use that data to estimate flood frequency in the region,” says Miyuki Hino, corresponding author of a paper on the study and assistant professor of city and regional planning at UNC. “Those estimates ...

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Environment2 Jun 2025

‘A love affair with the sea’: Meet a scientist who overcame hurdles to dedicate her life to studying the ocean

by Dr Mary Elizabeth Livingston In my recently published paper ‘My love affair with the sea’ I describe how from a very early age I fell in love with the sea and pursued that love throughout my younger years and at university, ending up with a 40-year career as a fisheries scientist. Political changes on how women were perceived in the workplace benefitted me and I feel incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to work in a job that has taken me to many parts of the globe and given me such a purposeful way of contributing to human and ecological wellbeing. I am originally from the UK but moved to New Zealand as a post-graduate ...

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