Young aspen trees in Yellowstone are doing something they have not done in almost 100 years. Rather than sprouting and being eaten back to nubs by elk and bison, they're actually growing into tall, adult forest trees rising up towards the canopy.



This matters more than it might seem, because it shows what happens when a missing piece of an ecosystem returns.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-yellowstone-aspens-and-elk">Yellowstone, aspens, and elk</h2>



In the 1920s, people <a href="https://www.yellowstone.org/wolf-project/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">eliminated wolves in Yellowstone</a>. At the time, with limited scientific knowledge, managers believed it was the right thing to do.



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/from-wolves-to-dogs-did-domestication-begin-without-human-help/">Without wolves</a>, elk herds grew very large. Elk love to eat aspen shoots - the tender young growth is highly palatable to them.



For roughly 70 years, elk browsed aspen sprouts down to stub height, and the trees couldn't grow. 



If you had walked through Yellowstone in the 1980s, you would have seen many tiny aspen shoots covering the ground, but almost no young trees gaining height. 



The forest's regeneration was stalled. Old trees died, and no new ones replaced them.



In 1995 and 1996, park managers reintroduced wolves into the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/yellowstone-supervolcano-eruption-study-sparks-new-debate-on-where-and-when-it-will-erupt/">Yellowstone Park ecosystem</a>. Scientists hoped and wondered whether this would change anything for the trees.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-aspen-matter-to-yellowstone">Why aspen matter to Yellowstone</h2>



Aspen groves provide habitat for many species. Birds nest in them. Beavers eat the bark and use the wood for dams. Butterflies and moths lay eggs on the leaves. 



Their canopy admits enough light for wildflowers and shrubs to grow beneath. When it rains, aspen groves hold water in the soil better than some other forest types.



In short, when aspen return, dozens of other species benefit. More trees support more insects, which in turn support more birds, enriching the ecosystem.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-checking-the-trees-three-decades-later">Checking the trees three decades later</h2>



<a href="https://fwcs.oregonstate.edu/users/luke-painter" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Luke Painter</a>, an ecologist at <a href="https://oregonstate.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Oregon State University</a>, sought clear answers. His team returned to 87 aspen stands across Yellowstone that scientists had previously surveyed. 



They measured thousands of young trees, looked for bite marks, and counted how many stems were tall enough that elk could no longer reach the tips.



About a third of these stands now have many tall young aspens pushing toward the canopy. 



"About 26 of the 87 aspen stands we examined had large numbers of tall saplings throughout, a remarkable change from the 1990s when surveys found none at all," Painter said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-wolves-matter-to-yellowstone-aspens">Why wolves matter to Yellowstone aspens</h2>



Breaking it all down, the conclusions of this study are pretty simple. 



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/wolves-move-pups-across-mountains-to-adapt-to-climate-pressure/">Wolves hunt elk</a>. When wolves came back, two things happened. First, elk numbers declined from unusually high levels. Second, elk changed their behavior. They spent less time in the same areas feeding.



With fewer elk and shorter feeding bouts, more aspen shoots survived long enough to exceed the browsing zone - about six to seven feet high. 



Once a sapling reaches that height, elk cannot easily reach the growing tip. The tree continues to grow.



"The reintroduction of large carnivores has initiated a recovery process that had been shut down for decades," Painter explained.



Scientists call this a <a href="https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/trophic-cascades-across-diverse-plant-ecosystems-80060347/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">trophic cascade</a> - when adding or removing one species causes changes that ripple through the whole system.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-some-places-recover-others-don-t">Some places recover, others don't</h2>



Unfortunately, not every aspen stand has recovered yet. Some valleys still have many short, heavily browsed shoots, because it's not only elk eating them anymore. 



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/yellowstones-iconic-bison-have-merged-into-a-single-herd/">Bison herds have grown</a>, and bison browse on aspen as well. They are strong enough to break young trees. 



"Increasing numbers of bison may be emerging as a new constraint to aspen in some areas," Painter confirmed.



Additionally, winter snow depth varies; droughts stress trees; bears and mountain lions also hunt elk; and hunting outside the park influences elk distribution. 



All of these factors interact, which is why some sites show strong recovery, others show moderate recovery, and a few have changed very little.



The key pattern is that places with many tall saplings experience little browsing, and aspen groves that remain popular eating grounds today stay short. 



This fact is the strongest indication that tree recovery is linked directly to wolf presence, not solely to weather or soil conditions.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-proof-in-the-measurements">Proof in the measurements</h2>



Painter's team did not rely on casual observation. They used the same methods as earlier researchers, measuring the same plots. 



They counted recruitment - when young trees surpass browsing height and begin progressing toward maturity. This measure is crucial. Sprouts are insufficient if they never grow; without recruitment, the forest cannot replace itself.



The results are robust. After being stalled for most of a century, Yellowstone's aspens are increasing in height. In recovering stands today, you will see saplings - six, eight, or ten feet tall - that were not present in the 1990s.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-future-of-yellowstone-s-aspens">The future of Yellowstone's aspens</h2>



"This is a remarkable case of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/giant-viruses-found-in-yellowstones-hot-springs-may-be-near-the-root-of-all-life-on-earth/">ecological restoration</a>," Painter concluded. "Wolf reintroduction is yielding long-term ecological changes contributing to increased biodiversity and habitat diversity."



Trees grow slowly, so even with wolves restored, it will take decades for these young aspens to form a full-grown forest. 



Some areas might never fully recover if bison numbers continue to rise or if the climate becomes too hot and dry.



Thanks to the work of Painter and his team, scientists are now certain that restoring the Yellowstone predator has restarted aspen forest regeneration. Not everywhere and not perfectly, but enough to be measured, creating hope for the future.



The full study was published in the journal <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112725004499?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Forest Ecology and Management</a>.



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Yellowstone's aspen trees are growing again thanks to the reintroduction of wolves

Young aspen trees in Yellowstone are doing something they have not done in almost 100 years. Rather than sprouting and being eaten back to nubs by elk and bison, they're actually growing into tall, adult forest trees rising up towards the canopy. This matters more than it might seem, because it shows what happens when a missing piece of an ecosystem returns. Yellowstone, aspens, and elk In the 1920s, people eliminated wolves in Yellowstone. At the time, with limited scientific knowledge, managers believed it was the right...

Positive,Tourist,Woman,Taking,Picture,Outdoors,For,Memories,,Making,Selfie

A stray burst of joy can do more than lift a mood. New evidence shows that positive emotions can mark even the blandest picture for long‑term storage in the brain, turning forgettable squiggles into sticky memories.



The work comes from <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Xi-Jia-4" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Xi Jia</a> of <a href="http://sie.hznu.edu.cn/Portal/Home.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hangzhou Normal University</a> and collaborators at <a href="https://en.njnu.edu.cn/about-nnu" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nanjing Normal University</a>. Their team asked 44 adults to learn meaningless squiggle shapes while viewing photos designed to spark positive, neutral, or negative feelings.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-positive-emotions-better-memory-retrieval">Positive emotions, better memory retrieval</h2>



Scientists often track <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4309118/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">memory encoding</a> by measuring the <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3016705/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">event‑related potential (ERP)</a>, a voltage change over the parietal cortex that peaks 400–1200 milliseconds after a clue appears. 



In Jia’s experiment the ERP signal during positive trials grew stronger, and that uptick forecast which shapes participants would recognize, 24 hours later.



“Positive emotions enhanced the retrieval of meaningless squiggles compared to negative emotions,” wrote Jia and colleagues. 



That single sentence lines up with a broader observation called the positivity effect, where people, especially <a href="https://gero.usc.edu/labs/matherlab/files/2019/03/MatherCarstensen2005.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">older adults</a>, remember cheerful images better than grim ones.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-flashing-squiggles-in-the-lab">Flashing squiggles in the lab</h2>



Each shape-photo pair appeared three times, a design that let the researchers probe how repetition cements memory. 



During learning, electrodes captured electroencephalography <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/eeg/about/pac-20393875" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">(EEG)</a> patterns at over 100 scalp sites, giving millisecond‑level views of brain activity.



“Greater item‑specific spatiotemporal pattern similarity across repetitions predicted better later recall,” stated <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rong-Pan-16" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rong Pan</a>, a co‑author of the report who was from <a href="http://sie.hznu.edu.cn/Portal/Home.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hangzhou Normal University</a>. 



Greater item‑specific similarity in those EEG patterns across the three presentations predicted next‑day success, but only in the positive condition.



Neutral or negative photos, by contrast, did not boost pattern similarity, hinting that a good mood nudges the brain to replay its own activation template while the material is still fresh in the mind.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-cheerful-emotions-better-memory-recall">Cheerful emotions, better memory recall</h2>



The <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6870483/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">parietal ERP “old/new” effect</a>, long linked to recollection, blossomed during positive but not during negative learning. 



This effect aligns with theories that happiness recruits frontal–parietal networks, freeing mental bandwidth for deeper encoding rather than threat monitoring.



At the right frontal electrodes, remembered shapes showed a 380-600 millisecond burst of pattern reinstatement, suggesting early executive loops help stamp data with a cheerful tag. 



Because the shapes carried no meaning, their fate depended almost entirely on the emotional flavor of the surrounding picture, underscoring how context shapes memory traces.



The findings narrow the gap between laboratory studies that use words or faces and real‑world scenes that are crowded with mixed feelings.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-a-dopamine-boost-behind-the-scenes">A dopamine boost behind the scenes</h2>



Animal and human work shows that bursts of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/dopamine-enhances-brain-function-during-exercise/">dopamine</a> in the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/our-brain-has-a-meal-memory-that-controls-hunger/">hippocampus</a> help lock in new experiences. 



Positive images, which are rich in motivational value, may trigger that neuromodulatory spray from the ventral tegmental area, sharpening plasticity in circuits that store the incoming squiggle.



Such chemistry could explain why the same EEG pattern pops up on every repetition: dopamine may cue the hippocampus to replay the just‑formed code, strengthening synapses with each pass. 



In everyday life the positive trigger might be a laugh, a compliment, or an upbeat soundtrack, any cue that nudges <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/dopamine-fuels-learning-in-young-songbirds/">dopamine</a> levels high enough to prime memory networks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-positivity-lessons-for-everyday-memory">Positivity lessons for everyday memory</h2>



Students cramming dull material just before exam time might benefit from pairing it with upbeat music, humorous examples, or brief videos that create authentic positive emotions rather than forced cheer. 



Teachers could also space repetitions, as reinstated patterns appear to grow with each encounter, suggesting a compounding return on emotional context. 



Workplace trainers might alternate challenging content with short clips chosen to evoke pride or amusement, planting stronger recall traces for otherwise dry procedures. 



The data also carry implications for mental health, because <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/young-adult-depression-linked-to-worse-memory-skills/">depressed mood</a> and negative emotions could curb the very neural reinstatement needed for durable memory formation.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-remains-unknown">What remains unknown</h2>



The study focused on young adults, leaving open whether the same positivity leverage works in children or older people whose emotion circuits differ. 



Photographs, while evocative, offer only a slice of real‑life complexity, so future work should use videos or virtual reality to capture richer moods.



The team also measured memory after one day; tracking recall across weeks would show if the benefit endures or fades with <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/sleep-can-boost-memory-in-a-surprising-way/">sleep</a> and daily interference. 



Lastly, pinpointing the neural source of the reinstatement burst, perhaps with magnetoencephalography or intracranial recordings, could tie the EEG signature to specific cortical hubs.



For now, the squiggle experiment reminds us that a smile, even a fleeting one, can leave a literal trace in the mind. That trace, it turns out, may help decide what stays with us long after the moment has passed.



The study is published in the <a href="https://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2025/06/24/JNEUROSCI.0009-25.2025" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Journal of Neuroscience</a>.



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Brainwaves reveal that positive emotions enhance memory

A stray burst of joy can do more than lift...

Finding motivation to exercise can be the greatest challenge in working out. This might be part of the reason why less than a quarter of people achieve the activity goals recommended by the World Health Organization.



 Yet new evidence shows that if we choose routines tailored to who we are, moving our bodies can feel less like a chore and more like fun.



A research team at <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/">University College London</a> (UCL), working with the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health and the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, has now examined this connection in detail.



Their study followed adults through an eight-week home program of cycling and strength <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/studies-learn-the-exact-amount-of-time-you-should-spend-training-to-build-muscle/">training</a> and compared them with a control group who stuck to stretching.



The scientists combined laboratory fitness tests with <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/personality-has-a-profound-influence-on-gene-expression/">personality</a> surveys and weekly enjoyment ratings to see how the Big Five traits - extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness - shape experience.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-joy-depends-on-personality">Joy depends on personality</h2>



But what if exercise could be more enjoyable? One way of achieving this could be opting for types of exercise that fit our personalities. That suggestion proved correct.



“We found that our personality can influence how we engage with exercise, and particularly which forms of exercise we enjoy the most,” said study lead author Flaminia Ronca from UCL’s Institute of Sport, Exercise, and Health.



“Understanding personality factors in designing and recommending physical activity programs is likely to be very important in determining how successful a program is,” added senior author Paul Burgess, a scientist at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience.



The team recruited 132 volunteers aged between their twenties and late fifties. Half received a structured plan with four sessions per week that blended easy long rides, threshold training, high-intensity intervals, and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/obesity-impairs-the-brains-response-to-nutrient-intake/">bodyweight</a> strength work. 



Each session was guided by heart-rate measurements taken in the lab. Everyone logged how much they enjoyed each session on a seven-point scale.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-personality-guides-workout-choices">Personality guides workout choices</h2>



“Our brains are wired in different ways, which drives our behaviors and how we interact with our environment,” said Ronca. “So it’s not surprising that personality would also influence how we respond to different intensities of exercise.”



The data confirmed that everyday intuition. Participants high in extraversion flocked to the hardest rides and reported the greatest pleasure during maximal lab tests, mirroring earlier findings that sensation seekers chase bigger stimulation.



Contrary, people scoring high on neuroticism preferred private workouts. While they are fine with high intensity, they need short breaks in between.



Others who scored high on conscientiousness and openness exercised consistently, either out of discipline or curiosity, regardless of enjoyment.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-personality-links-to-performance">Personality links to performance</h2>



The numbers behind those preferences were striking. Extraversion predicted a higher baseline aerobic capacity and peak cycling power. This suggests that outgoing personalities may already gravitate to vigorous activities and build fitness through them.



Conscientiousness predicted more weekly activity and leaner body composition, echoing the idea that disciplined people keep health promises even when motivation dips.



Neuroticism, often linked with <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/fear-and-anxiety-the-mental-health-impacts-of-wildfires/">anxiety</a>, showed a different pattern: these participants liked gentle sessions conducted at home and were less consistent in uploading heart-rate data, but they still completed the program.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-exercise-soothes-anxious-minds">Exercise soothes anxious minds</h2>



What was particularly interesting was the relationship between personality, changes in fitness, and stress, the researchers said.



Before the intervention, the stress levels of both groups were similar. After the intervention, however, especially people who scored high in neuroticism showed a strong reduction in stress.



“It’s fantastic news, as it highlights that those who benefit the most from a reduction in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/why-stress-makes-us-take-more-risks-in-financial-decisions/">stress</a> respond very well to exercise,” Ronca said.



The drop did not depend on how much their aerobic capacity improved, hinting that simply sticking with an activity they could manage was enough to calm the mind.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-follow-your-fitness-instinct">Follow your fitness instinct</h2>



The authors stress that enjoyment, not willpower alone, keeps people moving. The most important part of exercising is choosing something we enjoy and staying motivated even if we don’t find it right away.



“It’s okay if we don’t enjoy a particular session,” Ronca said. “We can try something else.”



“We hope that if people can find <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/physical-activity-instantly-boosts-your-brain-speed-by-years/">physical activities</a> that they enjoy they will more readily choose to do them,” Burgess added. “After all, we don’t have to nag dogs to go for a walk: being so physically inactive that we start to feel miserable might be a peculiarly human thing to do."



"In effect, our body punishes us by making us miserable," he said. "But for some reason, many of us humans seem poor at picking up on these messages it is sending to our brain.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tailored-exercise-plans-stick-better">Tailored exercise plans stick better</h2>



Taken together, the findings argue for personalized coaching. Intense workouts may suit gregarious gym lovers, while introverted or anxious individuals could thrive on solo sessions that build intensity in short bursts.



Coaches might offer conscientious clients clear long-term goals, and give open types novel routines to satisfy curiosity. By aligning activity with personality, programs may boost adherence and health in populations where finding motivation to exercise is challenging.



The study isn’t the final word - its sample skewed toward educated Londoners and relied on self-reported enjoyment. But it still shows how psychological insight can turn exercise from an obligation into a reward.



Whether you relish the roar of a spin class or the quiet rhythm of a living-room workout, the lesson is the same: when the workout fits the person, the mind as well as the body stands to gain. 



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1587472/full">Frontiers in Psychology</a>



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Exercise feels better when it's matched to your personality

Finding motivation to exercise can be the greatest challenge in...

People have always been curious about what the Moon is made of. Scientists have studied its surface for decades, but many questions remain. In 2023, something unexpected happened. A meteorite from the moon landed in Africa, and it had a story to tell.



Scientists named it Northwest Africa 16286. It’s not just another Moon rock. It’s about 2.35 billion years old. That makes it a rare discovery.



Researchers revealed their findings at the <a href="https://conf.goldschmidt.info/goldschmidt/2025/meetingapp.cgi" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Goldschmidt Conference</a> in Prague. This meteorite is helping to fill a missing piece of the Moon’s volcanic history.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-this-moon-rock-matters">Why this Moon rock matters</h2>



Over time, lunar missions have brought back many samples from <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/dry-side-of-the-moon-reveals-new-details-about-its-evolution/">the Moon</a>, but those come from small, isolated areas on the Moon's surface. This rock, in contrast, came to Earth on its own.



It got knocked off the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/asteroid-that-once-threatened-earth-may-target-the-moon/">Moon</a> by an impact. After floating through space, it landed on Earth. That makes it different from any mission sample.



"Lunar rocks from sample return missions are fantastic in the insights they provide us, but they are limited to the immediate areas surrounding those mission landing sites," said Dr. Joshua Snape, a research fellow at the <a href="https://www.manchester.ac.uk/">University of Manchester</a> who presented the research at the <a href="https://conf.goldschmidt.info/goldschmidt/2025/meetingapp.cgi" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Goldschmidt Conference</a>.



"By contrast, <a href="https://sites.wustl.edu/meteoritesite/items/lunar-meteorites/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">lunar meteorites</a> can potentially be ejected by impact cratering occurring anywhere on the Moon’s surface. As such, there’s some serendipity surrounding this sample; it just happened to fall to Earth and reveals secrets about <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/how-did-earth-get-its-moon-a-new-theory-has-emerged/">lunar</a> geology without the massive expense of a space mission."



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-moon-rock-s-chemical-clues">Moon rock’s chemical clues</h2>



Scientists started studying the rock’s features right away. They dated it back to 2.35 billion years ago. That makes it the youngest basaltic <a href="https://airandspace.si.edu/explore/stories/lunar-rocks" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">lunar meteorite</a> ever found here on Earth.



This rock didn’t form near the Moon’s surface. Instead, it came from deep inside. It likely formed after lava flowed out and hardened.



Its chemical makeup stood out right away. It had high levels of potassium and moderate titanium. It also contained large crystals of olivine, a mineral found in volcanic rocks.



The researchers also studied its lead isotopes. They found something unusual. The rock came from a part of the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/surprise-arrival-a-fragment-of-the-moon-just-circled-earth/">Moon</a> with a high uranium-to-lead ratio. That suggests the Moon’s interior stayed hot for longer than expected.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-this-rock-solved-a-moon-mystery">How this rock solved a Moon mystery</h2>



This discovery matters because it fills a huge gap in the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/the-moon-had-active-volcanoes-just-120-million-years-ago/">Moon’s volcanic timeline</a>. Before this, there was little information about this period in lunar history.



“The age of the sample is especially interesting because it fills an almost billion-year gap in lunar volcanic history. It’s younger than the basalts collected by the Apollo, Luna and Chang’e 6 missions, but older than the much younger rocks brought back by China’s <a href="https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=2020-087A">Chang’e 5</a> mission," explained Dr. Snape. 



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/moon_rock_basaltic_youngest_UManchester_1m.jpg"><img src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/moon_rock_basaltic_youngest_UManchester_1s.webp" alt="Images of the sample obtained using a scanning electron microscope. These are backscattered electron images, and the different shades of grey highlight different chemical compositions of the minerals making up the rock. Credit: University of Manchester" class="wp-image-1977269"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Images of the sample obtained using a scanning electron microscope. These are backscattered electron images, and the different shades of grey highlight different chemical compositions of the minerals making up the rock. Click image to enlarge. Credit: University of Manchester</figcaption></figure>



He added that the rock's age and composition show that volcanic activity continued on the Moon throughout this timespan, suggesting the existence of a heat generation process within the Moon. 



This process could potentially have involved radiogenic elements that decayed and released heat over a long period of time.



In simpler terms, the Moon stayed active for longer than many scientists thought. This rock proves it.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-journey-of-the-rock">Journey of the rock</h2>



The rock’s journey wasn’t smooth. It got hit by an asteroid or meteorite while it was still on the Moon. That impact created glassy pockets and veins inside the rock. These features show how violent its history was.



Dating rocks like this is tricky. But the scientists still got a good estimate. They calculated its age within about 80 million years. That’s accurate enough for this kind of research.



"Moon rocks are rare, so it’s always interesting when we get something that stands out and looks different to everything else," Dr. Snape continued.



This particular rock provides new constraints about when and how volcanic activity occurred on the Moon.



"There is much more yet to learn about the Moon’s geological past, and with further analysis to pinpoint its origin on the surface, this rock will guide where to land future sample return missions," added Dr. Snape.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-this-small-rock-holds-big-clues">This small rock holds big clues</h2>



This meteorite weighs just 311 grams. It is one of only 31 lunar basalts found on Earth. Despite its small size, it offers a huge amount of new information.



The Royal Society funded this research. Scientists plan to publish a full study in a peer-reviewed journal later this year.



The Goldschmidt Conference is the biggest geochemistry conference in the world. Held in Prague from July 6 to 11, the event drew over 4,000 scientists from around the world.



Among many studies at the conference, this Moon rock stood out. It shows how much we still have to learn about the Moon’s long history.



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Meteorite from the moon tells a detailed story about lunar volcanoes

People have always been curious about what the Moon is...

People don’t need training to pick up on biodiversity - just eyes and ears. A new study finds their snap judgments about forest richness match the numbers ecologists collect in the field.



Thus, our everyday senses give a surprisingly accurate readout of nature’s true diversity, a talent that may help explain why greener, livelier places lift our mood.



The research was led by experts at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (<a href="https://www.idiv.de/">iDiv</a>).



The team asked volunteers with no ecology background to sort forest photos and sound clips by how “diverse” they felt. Researchers then compared those gut rankings with <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/birds-are-declining-fastest-where-they-were-once-common/">bird</a> counts and detailed vegetation surveys from the same sites.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-our-senses-detect-biodiversity-well">Our senses detect biodiversity well</h2>



Forty-eight adults completed a visual session using fifty-seven photographs taken in mixed-species woodlands across Germany, Belgium, and Poland. Another 48 adults listened to sixteen 10-second audio recordings from the same patches.



The participants first grouped the images or sounds any way they liked, revealing the features that stood out to them, and then rearranged the material from low to high biodiversity.



The researchers measured the real complexity of each forest in two ways. For pictures they combined tree-species richness, <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/most-cities-lack-sufficient-canopy-cover-despite-visible-trees/">canopy</a> structure, understory structure, and ground-layer cover into a single “actual diversity” score.



For sound they simply counted the different bird species singing in each clip. When the numbers were compared, perceived and measured diversity moved together: a strong correlation of 0.76 for sight and an even stronger 0.87 for sound.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-lushness-hints-at-species-count">Lushness hints at species count</h2>



When volunteers explained their choices, they kept coming back to elements any hiker would notice. Dense foliage, dappled light, bright greens, and a mix of trunks signaled a thriving community.



Using simple image analysis, the team confirmed that a higher “greenness index” matched both the on-the-ground surveys and the ratings people gave. 



In other words, the greener the shot, the richer the habitat and the higher the score. By contrast, photos that looked washed-out or evenly lit tended to come from simpler, species-poor areas.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-hearing-biodiversity-s-quiet-signals">Hearing biodiversity’s quiet signals</h2>



Sound told the same story through a different sense. Listeners paid closest attention to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/bird-songs-human-speech-common-vocal-genetic-origin-syrinx/">birdsong</a> - its complexity, pitch range, volume, and rhythmic patterns.



Four standard acoustic indices, including the well-known <a href="https://www.authorea.com/users/813436/articles/1214821-the-acoustic-complexity-indices-acis-theoretical-and-applied-perspectives">Acoustic Complexity Index</a>, rose in lockstep with both perceived richness and the tally of bird species. 



Even without technical tools, participants homed in on the same signals: lively, layered choruses meant lots of birds, while sparse or repetitive calls hinted at poorer sites.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-perception-and-wellness-connect">Perception and wellness connect</h2>



Earlier studies show that how biodiverse a place feels has a stronger link to mental health than the species list on a clipboard. That connection motivated the new work.



Lead author Kevin Rozario, a scientist at iDiv, emphasized the value of understanding how people sense biodiversity. 



“It’s important to identify what people perceive with regards to biodiversity, what the contribution of the different senses could be, and under which circumstances people’s perception of biodiversity best aligns with what ecologists measure.” 



Rozario noted that perceived biodiversity is thought to play a role in supporting mental health. The new data reveal that alignment is often tight, at least when people can compare several settings side by side.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-biodiversity-loss-hits-the-senses">Biodiversity loss hits the senses</h2>



The study also underscores a cultural loss that runs alongside species decline. “Not only are we experiencing an extinction of species, but also an extinction of biodiverse experiences,” Rozario explained.



City living, indoor jobs, and digital leisure mean fewer chances to stand among varied trees or wake to a dawn chorus. Preserving those encounters may matter for public health as much as for conservation biology.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-forest-planning-with-people-in-mind">Forest planning with people in mind</h2>



One clear takeaway is that mixed forests with layered canopies and active birdlife satisfy both ecological targets and human senses.



“We recommend to conserve and restore <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/forests-rich-tree-diversity-adapt-better-changing-climate/">diverse forests</a> characterized by a variety of tree species and structures to also provide habitats for different vocalizing bird species,” Rozario said.



“These conservation measures will have the dual benefit of meeting conservation goals while also increasing people’s experience of biodiversity and therefore likely increasing mental wellbeing.”



Planners can even use quick proxies. A handheld camera that registers shades of green, or a portable recorder that crunches acoustic indices, offers a cheap way to flag sites that feel and are alive. 



Urban designers might favor plantings that stay green through the year or host birds with distinctive songs, boosting the sensory richness visitors notice.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-building-a-multisensory-picture">Building a multisensory picture</h2>



The study relied mainly on young, university-educated women and on brief comparisons rather than lone encounters. 



Future work will test broader groups and real-time walks to learn how age, culture, and context shape perception. 



Researchers also hope to add smell, touch, and even temperature to build a full, multi-sensory picture of how humans read living landscapes.



For now, the message is clear. Ordinary observers, armed with nothing more than eyes and ears, can still spot the difference between a sparse wood and a thriving one - and that instinct lines up with hard science. 



Protect the layered greenery and the singing birds, and you protect both biodiversity and the quiet joy people draw from it.



The study is published in the British Ecological Society journal <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pan3.70087">People and Nature</a>.



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Humans can accurately perceive biodiversity through the senses

People don’t need training to pick up on biodiversity -...

Diseño sin título - 1

Earth started out as a ball of liquid fire, its newborn surface closer to a lava lamp than the calm continents we know today. Those incandescent beginnings happened 4.5 billion years ago, yet the evidence is buried miles beneath our feet where direct sampling is impossible.



A new computer model of the infant planet’s mantle says the rock we stand on still remembers that fiery youth, right down to the chemical fingerprints laid down within the planet’s first hundred million years. 



Assistant Professor <a href="https://www.yorku.ca/science/profiles/faculty/charles-boukare/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Charles‑Édouard Boukaré</a>, Department of Physics and Astronomy, <a href="https://www.yorku.ca/science/physics/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">York University</a>, led the new study.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-early-earth-was-a-molten-world">Early Earth was a molten world</h2>



When the young Earth cooled, it did not freeze evenly like a lake in winter. It simmered from the top down and the bottom up at the same time, leaving pockets of melt trapped deep inside.



Planetary scientists call that global melt a <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2023JB026941" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">basal magma ocean</a>, a deep layer of iron‑rich liquid pooling just above the metal core, and its existence explains why the modern core still loses heat so slowly.



Seismic scans of the modern deep mantle reveal sprawling ultralow velocity zones that slow earthquake waves, hinting they contain that same dense, iron‑heavy melt and supporting the basal ocean concept.



These reservoirs sit beneath the Pacific and Africa today, covering areas wider than the continental United States, yet they are hard to image because they lie nearly eighteen hundred miles down.



Exactly when those structures formed has been uncertain because many <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adp0021" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">earlier simulations</a> treated the mantle as a single gooey fluid, erasing the complex dance between liquid and crystal that governs segregation.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-modeling-magma-to-solid-rock">Modeling magma to solid rock</h2>



The code named Bambari by the researchers divided Earth’s interior into a fine grid and began with a half‑melted <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/earths-mantle-chemistry-has-remained-stable-for-billions-of-years/">mantle</a>, about fifty percent liquid, a state thought to be realistic after the giant impact that created the Moon.



Temperature contrasts made lighter crystal mush rise while heavier, iron‑loaded droplets sank, all as heat bled into cold space, and the model resolved motions at scales from global overturns to turbulent eddies only a few miles across.



Within a few thousand simulated years the top hundred miles had cooled enough for crystals to lock together, forming down‑plunging sheets that ferried a shallow chemical signal into the deep, a result that surprised the research team.



More crystals formed near the surface than near the core, overturning the textbook view that solidification begins at depth, and the outcome hints that early Earth might have sported a short‑lived rocky crust that repeatedly sank back into the mantle.



Because the falling crystals reheated and partly melted on the way down, they left behind an iron‑rich brew that eventually puddled into an <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/shifting-ocean-color-is-pushing-marine-life-toward-the-poles/">ocean</a> of liquid rock roughly three hundred miles thick above the core, one that may have persisted for half a billion years and acted as a blanket trapping core heat.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-surprising-chemistry-on-early-earth">Surprising chemistry on early Earth</h2>



Low‑pressure minerals such as <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/common-rocks-turned-into-great-cheap-carbon-trappers/">olivine</a> were expected to dominate only the upper mantle, yet Boukaré’s run shows their fingerprints nearly twelve‑hundred miles below.



This finding that forces a rethink of how trace elements were sorted. The reason is mechanical: surface‑grown crystals fell like hailstones, skipping equilibrium reactions at depth.



As they sank, mass balance pumped iron‑rich melt upward where it chilled, creating downwellings enriched in trace elements such as samarium and neodymium, and the pattern repeated until the mantle became mostly solid.



That process stamped unusual <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg2566" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lu/Hf and Sm/Nd ratios</a> that still appear in 3.8 billion‑year‑old rocks from Greenland, offering a rare chemical time capsule of early differentiation.



“This study is the first to demonstrate that the first‑order features of Earth’s lower mantle structure were established four billion years ago,” said Boukaré.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-remnants-in-earth-s-mantle-today">Remnants in Earth's mantle today</h2>



The simulation naturally birthed the two giant “<a href="https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/geology/article-abstract/19/10/963/205223/Geological-consequences-of-superplumes?redirectedFrom=fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">superplumes</a>,” formally known as large low shear‑velocity provinces or LLSVPs, that sit under the Pacific and Africa and rise more than six‑hundred miles off the core.



In the model they form as the dregs of the magma ocean, loaded with iron and slightly radioactive elements that keep them hotter than their surroundings, an explanation that unifies decades of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/new-map-shows-75-percent-of-the-u-s-at-risk-of-damaging-earthquakes/">seismic</a> and geochemical hints.



That extra heat helps feed volcanic hotspots such as Hawaii and Iceland, linking events separated by billions of years through persistent <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/earths-mantle-chemistry-has-remained-stable-for-billions-of-years/">mantle</a> circulation.



High‑precision noble‑gas measurements in ocean‑island basalts point to ancient, undegassed mantle domains that match the predicted reservoirs, giving independent support to the model’s deep‑time narrative.



Because the model reproduces both seismic and chemical observations, it knits together disciplines that rarely intersect and offers a single story for the planet’s deep past.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-this-means-for-other-planets">What this means for other planets</h2>



The equations behind Bambari apply to any rocky world, big or small, making the tool valuable far beyond Earth studies.



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/new-volcanic-clues-hint-at-ancient-life-on-mars/">For Mars</a>, whose lower mass bleeds heat faster, the basal magma ocean would have frozen early, starving the core of insulation and hastening the loss of its magnetic shield within a few hundred million years, a scenario that dovetails with rover <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371698608_Ground_magnetic_survey_on_Mars_from_the_Zhurong_rover" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a> showing weak residual magnetism in surface rocks.



For a super‑Earth twice our planet’s size, the same physics predicts a magma ocean that could linger a billion years, sustaining a long‑lived dynamo and perhaps protecting an atmosphere long enough for life to emerge.



“If we know some kind of starting conditions, and we know the main processes of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/scorching-world-offers-clues-to-planetary-evolution/">planetary evolution</a>, we can predict how planets will evolve,” Boukaré explained. That prospect gives exoplanet hunters a fresh tool for judging habitability without leaving the telescope.



The study is published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08701-z" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nature</a>.



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Scientists manage to simulate what the first days of early Earth were like, 4.5 billion years ago

Earth started out as a ball of liquid fire, its...

A Styrofoam (polystyrene plastic) take‑out food box can outlive its owner and their children. It weathers rain, sunlight, and curbside crushes yet still hangs around, splintering into smaller shards instead of disappearing.



An Australian research team now reports a way to erase 90% of that throw‑away <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/common-plastic-food-packaging-contains-9936-harmful-chemicals/">plastic</a> in just thirty minutes, using nothing more exotic than air, purple light, and a pinch of table-grade chemicals.



<a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XqtHx8oAAAAJ&amp;hl=fr" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dr. Maxime Michelas</a> of the University of New South Wales School of Chemical Engineering (<a href="https://www.unsw.edu.au/engineering/our-schools/chemical-engineering">UNSW</a>), working with colleagues in the <a href="https://www.unsw.edu.au/science/our-schools/chemistry" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">School of Chemistry</a> and <a href="https://www.csiro.au/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CSIRO</a>, describes the method in a recent study. 



Their approach slices stubborn polymers into bite‑size molecules that industry already uses to make solvents, coatings, and flavors.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-polystyrene-plastic-linger-for-centuries">Polystyrene plastic linger for centuries</h2>



Humanity produces more than four hundred million tons of plastic per year, and the figure keeps climbing even where <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/how-scientists-are-using-air-to-recycle-plastic/">recycling</a> programs thrive. Most items are designed for single use, yet their bonds resist microbial attack and sunshine alike.



Polystyrene poses a special headache. The foamed version is restricted in several U.S. states, yet analysts expect global demand to reach sixty‑two million tons within a decade. 



Its light weight means flakes travel far on the wind, then fracture into microplastics that slip through standard filters and into drinking water.



Medical <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11117644/">journals</a> now link those particles to oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction in animal and cell models. Surgeons have even found plastic fragments embedded in arterial plaque removed from heart patients.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-turning-sunlight-into-a-scalpel">Turning sunlight into a scalpel</h2>



Michelas’ team turns the low‑cost salt iron trichloride into an aggressive photocatalyst. 



When a 405‑nanometer LED excites the salt, it spawns chlorine radicals that yank hydrogen atoms off the polymer backbone. 



The orphaned carbon grabs oxygen from the air, the chain snaps, and the plastic’s mass plunges.



The setup looks almost rudimentary. A glass flask sits on a stir plate, air or pure oxygen bubbles through a dichloromethane solution of shredded plastic and five mole percent catalyst, and a small LED panel shines from the side.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-dissolving-plastic-by-90">Dissolving plastic by 90%</h2>



Under those conditions the authors report a 90% mass loss for seven commodity polymers in half an hour.



Extending exposure to three hours pushes conversion to 97%, a milestone that once demanded day‑long lamp times.



For the fastest substrates, including <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8435462/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">poly(ethylene oxide)</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/polymethyl-methacrylate" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">poly(methyl acrylate)</a>, most bond‑breaking happens in the first ten minutes. 



Even polyvinyl chloride, notorious for its tight packing and limited solubility, gave up seventy‑eight percent in the half‑hour window.



“I think it’s very important to degrade the polymer and turn it into another feedstock we can use for other things, or just to reduce the amount of microplastics in the world,” noted Dr. Michelas.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-from-trash-to-toolkit-chemicals">From trash to toolkit chemicals</h2>



Breaking chains is only half the story. Gas‑chromatography traces reveal a soup rich in small aldehydes and carboxylic acids that can feed into paint, adhesive, or fragrance manufacture with little additional purification.



Because the catalyst is iron and the reaction runs near room temperature, the energy bill looks minimal compared with pyrolysis or incineration. 



The group demonstrated a fifty‑gram‑per‑liter run that held over eighty‑five percent efficiency, then regained speed simply by bubbling in fresh oxygen when the gas was spent.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-checking-the-energy-math">Checking the energy math</h2>



A 2023 <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/12/3041" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">case study</a> of a decentralized pyrolysis unit showed that processing 360 tons of mixed plastic per year demanded about 560 MWh of electricity, or roughly 1,550 kWh for every ton treated. 



That figure dwarfs the LED‑lit UNSW setup, which relies mainly on ambient heat and the modest power draw of a few lamps.



While the pyrolysis plant did recover energy by burning the oil it made, the upfront input highlights why lower‑temperature chemistry matters. 



Slashing kilowatt‑hours per ton means smaller carbon footprints and lower operating bills, especially in regions where electricity still comes from coal.



For context, running a fifteen‑watt LED strip for half an hour consumes about 0.015 kWh, orders of magnitude below even the leanest pyrolysis benchmarks. 



Multiply that by thousands of lamps in parallel, and the energy tab still lands far south of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128228104000221" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">thermochemical routes</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-savings-for-cities-and-companies">Savings for cities and companies</h2>



Foamed polystyrene can occupy up to thirty percent of landfill volume by space, prompting bans in California, Maine, and Maryland that steer eateries toward plant‑based or recyclable packaging. 



Yet many municipalities still receive tons of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/new-ai-designed-material-is-light-as-foam-tough-as-steel/">foam</a>, paying transport costs on material that weighs almost nothing but swallows cubic yards.



A low‑temperature, bench‑scale unit could let waste haulers liquefy that foam onsite, drain the product into drums, and sell it to chemical distributors. Haulers would cut diesel miles, and cities would shrink the footprint of their transfer stations.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-less-polystyrene-plastic-better-health">Less polystyrene plastic, better health</h2>



Environmental <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10151227/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">researchers</a> estimate the average person ingests about five grams of dispersed plastic per week, roughly the weight of a credit card. 



By tackling items most prone to shedding, like takeaway containers, the UNSW chemistry could noticeably dent that intake.



Though the catalyst cannot vacuum particles already loose in rivers, less fragmentation upstream means fewer specks small enough to cross gut or lung barriers. 



Lower exposure could reduce inflammatory burdens now documented in lab studies, easing a growing public‑health worry.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-saving-earth-from-polystyrene-plastics">Saving Earth from polystyrene plastics</h2>



No exotic materials are required, so startups could prototype light‑reactor tubes that rely on midday sun instead of LEDs in sunny regions. 



Developers might even graft the concept onto existing plastic‑sorting lines, dropping shredded waste into solvent loops rather than balers.



Regulators drafting extended‑producer‑responsibility rules can nudge investment by counting photochemical conversion toward plastic‑recovery targets. 



Clarity on permitting would address solvent handling and air emissions, two hurdles that often stall new recycling infrastructure.



Further lab work will probe whether iron salts push <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/new-catalyst-precatalyst-improves-clean-hydrogen-production-to-99-9-efficiency/">hydrogen</a>‑atom transfer in cross‑linked elastomers or complex multilayer films. Each additional success widens the path to a circular economy that values the carbon already in circulation.



Funding agencies often favor technologies that link waste reduction to high‑value outputs, and solvent‑phase depolymerization fits that brief. 



Venture groups in Australia and Singapore have already begun scouting pilot‑scale demonstrations, according to the authors.



The study is published in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/marc.202400358" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Macromolecular Rapid Communications</a>.



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New chemical process breaks down 90% of plastic in just 30 minutes

A Styrofoam (polystyrene plastic) take‑out food box can outlive its...

The dream of living beyond Earth demands fresh food far from our planet. The Moon-Rice project is pioneering this vision by experimenting with future-proof crops for space. One day, this initiative could supply nutritious food to astronauts and people living in harsh environments on Earth.



Today, <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/space-lettuce-nasas-plans-to-grow-nutritious-plants-on-mars/">space</a> missions depend on supplies from Earth. These include ready-to-eat meals that lack fresh ingredients. Such meals often miss essential nutrients that the human body needs, especially during long missions.



For deep space exploration, we must grow food rich in vitamins and fiber. The Moon-Rice project aims to create such crops. Their goal is to sustain life in deep space missions.



“Living in space is all about recycling resources and living sustainably,” said Marta Del Bianco, a plant biologist at the <a href="https://www.asi.it/en/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Italian Space Agency</a>. “We are trying to solve the same problems that we face here on Earth.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tiny-rice-is-key-for-space-food">Tiny rice is key for space food</h2>



Dr. Del Bianco noted that the main challenge: crop size. Many dwarf rice types are still too large for space farming. “What we need is a super-dwarf, but this comes with its own challenges.”



“Dwarf varieties often come from the manipulation of a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/why-do-astronauts-meals-lose-flavor-in-space/">plant</a> hormone called gibberellin, which can reduce the height of the plant, but this also creates problems for seed germination. They're not an ideal crop, because in space, you just don't have to be small, you must also be productive.”



Since space farming demands high-yield crops that are compact, scientists face the tough task of balancing plant size with productivity.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-united-efforts-for-innovation">United efforts for innovation</h2>



In addition to the Italian Space Agency, the research involved the work of experts from three Italian universities.



The <a href="https://www.unimi.it/en">University of Milan</a> has a strong background in rice genetics, the University of Rome ‘Sapienza’ specializes in crop physiology manipulation, and the University of Naples ‘Federico II’ has a rich heritage in space crop production.



“We started this four-year project nine months ago, so it’s very much a work in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/futuristic-food-supply-transforming-co2-into-protein/">progress</a>, but the preliminary results we have now are really promising,” said Del Bianco.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tiny-rice-plants-with-more-protein">Tiny rice plants with more protein</h2>



Scientists at the University of Milan have discovered tiny rice varieties. These grow only 10 centimeters tall.



“Researchers at the University of Milan are isolating mutant rice varieties that can grow to just 10 cm high, so they’re really tiny and this is a great starting point,” said Del Bianco. “At the same time, Rome has identified genes that can alter the plant architecture to maximize production and growth efficiency.”



In addition to compactness, the team is enhancing rice protein levels. Meat production will not be practical in space, so protein-rich <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/novel-stretchy-sensors-could-transform-space-farming/">crops</a> are vital.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-testing-rice-plants-in-fake-gravity">Testing rice plants in fake gravity</h2>



According to Dr. Del Bianco, the team investigated how the rice plants would respond to microgravity. This type of research helps ensure the plants can survive space conditions.



“We simulate microgravity on Earth by continually rotating the plant so that the plant is pulled equally in all directions by gravity. Each side of the plant gets activated continuously and it doesn't know where the up and down is,” she said.



“It's the best we can do on Earth because, unfortunately, doing experiments in real microgravity conditions - i.e. in space - is complex and expensive.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-fresh-food-helps-mental-health">Fresh food helps mental health</h2>



Fresh food does more than nourish the body. It also boosts <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/mental-illness-is-caused-by-the-whole-body-not-just-the-brain/">mental health.</a>



“Watching and guiding plants to grow is good for humans, and while pre-cooked or mushy food can be fine for a short period of time, it could become a concern for longer-duration missions,” said Del Bianco.



Astronauts need both physical and psychological support during their missions. Their health directly affects mission success. Mistakes in space can be costly or even deadly.



“If we can make an environment that physically and mentally nourishes the astronauts, it will reduce stress and lower the chances of people making mistakes. In space, the best case of a mistake is wasted money, and the worst case is the loss of lives,” said Del Bianco.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-space-rice-could-help-farmers">Space rice could help farmers</h2>



The Moon-Rice project has benefits beyond space. It could help farmers on Earth too.



“If you can develop a robust crop for space, then it could be used at the Arctic and Antarctic poles, or in deserts, or places with only a small amount of indoor space available,” said Del Bianco.



The research will be presented at the <a href="https://www.sebiology.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Society for Experimental Biology Annual Conference</a> in Antwerp, Belgium, on July 9, 2025.



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Tiny rice plants could help astronauts grow food in space

The dream of living beyond Earth demands fresh food far...

Silicon has run almost every computer processor for six decades, but engineers recognize that shrinking silicon components is nearing its physical limits. 



Experts are exploring quantum <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/scientists-create-a-two-dimensional-carbon-material-eight-times-stronger-than-graphene/">materials</a>, which could offer entirely new ways to process and store information beyond the capabilities of silicon.



A new <a href="https://arxiv.org/html/2407.07953v3" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">experiment</a> shows that a single crystal of tantalum disulfide (<a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2053-1583/aaa104" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TaS2</a>) can toggle from an electrical insulator to a metal in picoseconds. 



This could lead to the development of computers and electronics that run 1,000 times faster compared to today’s best chips.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-how-quantum-switching-works">How quantum switching works</h2>



Alberto de la Torre of <a href="https://www.northeastern.edu/">Northeastern University</a> and collaborators triggered the toggle through “thermal quenching.” This technique uses a swift heat pulse followed by an equally swift cooldown that forces the lattice across a sharp phase boundary.



The boundary lies within a family of quantum materials - solids where collective quantum rules govern electron motion instead of classical particle flow. These quantum effects let outside stimuli switch macroscopic properties almost instantly.



The team studied the layered compound <a href="https://2dsemiconductors.com/TaS2-Crystal-1T/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">1T‑TaS₂</a>, heating it above 580°F, then cooling it at roughly 120°F per second. Domains of a hidden metallic phase froze next to the usual insulating domains, creating an electronic switch confined to one crystal.



X‑ray maps confirmed that the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/graphene-wonder-material-changing-the-world-is-officially-declared-safe-for-humans/">metallic</a> domains stay ordered up to 410°F for months - something previous laser‑driven attempts never achieved.



Measurements revealed that the metallic regions had electrons available to move around at the Fermi level, which is a key sign of electrical conductivity.



By comparison, nearby insulating areas still showed a gap where no electrons could move, which is typical of a Mott insulator. This confirmed that the differences between the regions were due to the material’s electronic structure - not random defects.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-quantum-material-for-faster-computers">Quantum material for faster computers</h2>



Electrons in 1T‑TaS₂ self‑organize into a charge density wave, a periodic modulation of charge that usually locks the material into an insulating state.



A 2014 Science <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24723607/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a> demonstrated that a femtosecond laser pulse could disrupt that modulation and reveal a “hidden” metallic state, though only for microseconds at cryogenic temperatures.



De la Torre’s thermal route extends the lifetime by twelve orders of magnitude and lifts the operating temperature by more than 350°F, removing the <a href="https://cryospain.com/superfluid-the-importance-of-liquid-helium" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">liquid‑helium</a> plumbing that once made the idea impractical.



Keeping both phases inside one crystal also eliminates the need for carefully matched interfaces, because the same atoms carry out either function depending on how they are cooled.



Researchers reviewing <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38518359/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CDW physics</a> in atomically <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/natrevmats201733" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">thin dichalcogenides</a> note that such intrinsic reconfigurability is valuable for next‑generation logic and memory.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-quantum-leap-in-chip-speed">Quantum leap in chip speed</h2>



“Processors work in gigahertz right now. The speed of change that this would enable would allow you to go to terahertz,” said de la Torre.&nbsp;



That boost comes from the fact that a lattice vibration can reverse the phase in femtoseconds, far faster than the tens of nanoseconds a silicon transistor needs to charge and discharge its gate capacitance.



“There’s nothing faster than light, and we’re using light to control material properties at essentially the fastest possible speed that’s allowed by physics,” said Gregory Fiete, professor of physics at Northeastern University.



Simulations of mixed photothermal stimuli show that steering the phase in 1T‑TaS₂ could support <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12095559/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">optoelectronic logic</a> that responds in under two microseconds at 0.29 THz, already demonstrated in proof‑of‑concept circuits.



Even without optical assistance, electrical pulses as short as eight nanoseconds have induced the transition in thin‑film devices, suggesting that conventional wiring could still exploit the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/new-ai-designed-material-is-light-as-foam-tough-as-steel/">effect</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-key-hurdles-to-faster-computers">Key hurdles to faster computers </h2>



The <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsphotonics.4c00124">thermal quench</a> was performed on flakes tens of microns thick, so engineers must verify that the mixed quantum state persists when the material is thinned to a few nanometers - the scale needed for chip stacking.



Repeated cycling could also drive domain walls to creep, slowly degrading the contrast between metallic and insulating pockets; <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10713631/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">in‑operando cryogenic electron microscopy</a> has already observed defect‑driven drift during voltage pulsing.



Another hurdle is <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsnano.9b02870" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Joule self‑heating</a>, which might trigger unintended phase flips when current density rises. Modeling shows that careful substrate choice and pulse shaping can keep device temperatures below the critical threshold even at gigahertz repetition rates.



Finally, large-scale adoption will require a fabrication recipe compatible with back-end-of-line temperatures. 



Researchers are exploring chemical vapor deposition routes that deposit stoichiometric <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360319924056702">TaS₂</a> below 840°F, comfortably inside standard process windows.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-faster-computers-that-use-less-energy">Faster computers that use less energy</h2>



Physicists are now mapping the free-energy landscape of competing phases in 1T‑TaS₂. They hope to tune the balance with strain, electrostatic gating, or chemical substitution - a strategy predicted to widen the stability window of the metallic domains.



Device architects envision stacking several dichalcogenide layers, each phase programmed independently. This approach could build three-dimensional arrays of ultrafast, non-volatile bits that couple directly to photonic waveguides, reducing data movement energy.



If those prototypes scale, logic blocks could reach a trillion cycles per second while drawing only a fraction of the power used by today’s computer processors.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-where-quantum-materials-could-lead">Where quantum materials could lead</h2>



Ultrafast phase control in layered dichalcogenides feeds into the wider effort to program material properties with light, pressure, or electric field on demand, a trend chronicled in recent <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41377-024-01380-x" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reviews</a> of nanoscale light-matter engineering.



Such dynamic tuning could link the 1T‑TaS₂ switch to qubits, terahertz antennas, or neuromorphic synapses, letting one crystal act as memory, logic, and communication element without extra interconnect layers.



Researchers also believe that this mix of metallic and insulating regions will help test fundamental ideas in nonequilibrium physics.



 If engineers can overcome the integration challenges, they could create heterogeneous stacks that deliver server-class performance in handheld modules, using far less power and enabling faster, more efficient computers.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://arxiv.org/html/2407.07953v3" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nature Physics</a>.



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Quantum material discovery could make all electronics 1,000 times faster

Silicon has run almost every computer processor for six decades,...

It’s easy to assume that when fish hang still in the water, they’re taking a break. After all, they look motionless - just calmly suspended in place. But new research shows that this “hovering” is actually a demanding task that takes more effort than resting.



The study comes from scientists at the University of California San Diego’s <a href="https://scripps.ucsd.edu/">Scripps Institution of Oceanography</a>. It focused on how fish manage to stay still in open water without sinking or drifting away.



The team found that fish burn nearly twice as much energy while hovering as they do when resting on the tank floor. That means what looks like rest is really anything but.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-rethinking-stillness-in-fish">Rethinking stillness in fish</h2>



Most bony fish have swim bladders - gas-filled sacs that help them stay neutrally buoyant, which make them neither float upward nor sink. 



Because of this, researchers once thought that hovering was easy. But the new findings challenge that idea.



The scientists studied 13 different <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/small-fish-species-are-the-big-catch-of-the-future/">fish species</a> with swim bladders. Each fish was placed in a special tank where its oxygen use was recorded during two behaviors: resting on the bottom and hovering midwater. 



At the same time, high-speed cameras captured every fin twitch and tail flick.



The team also measured body features like the shape of the fish and the position of its <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/fins-and-limbs-share-a-deep-evolutionary-history/">fins</a>. One key measurement was the distance between the fish’s center of mass and center of buoyancy. 



These don’t always align. That small misalignment creates instability, which the fish must constantly correct.



“Hovering is a bit like trying to balance on a bicycle that’s not moving,” said Valentina Di Santo, an assistant professor at UC San Diego and study author.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-stability-drains-fish-energy">Stability drains fish energy</h2>



Because of the mismatch between mass and buoyancy, hovering fish have to work against the natural tendency to roll, tilt, or drift. 



The more misaligned those centers are, the more energy the fish burns trying to stay still. That constant effort means hovering is far from restful.



“What struck me was how superbly all these fishes maintain a stable posture, despite their intrinsic instability,” said Di Santo.



Fish with more compact, deeper bodies like goldfish or pufferfish were better at hovering efficiently. In contrast, longer, thinner fish - like giant danios or shell dwellers - had to work harder. 



Fin position also played a role. Fish with pectoral fins placed farther back on their bodies generally hovered more efficiently. The researchers believe this may be due to improved leverage.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-goldfish-have-an-edge">Goldfish have an edge</h2>



“This changes how we see hovering. It’s not a form of rest at all,” said Di Santo. “It’s an energetically costly activity but one that fish engage in anyway because it can be very useful.”



Fish may hover when guarding a nest, feeding in a specific spot, or holding their place in fast-moving water. These tasks require them to stay stable in one position, even when it’s exhausting. 



The study also pointed out a trade-off. Fish with shapes that give them greater control and agility often burn more energy while hovering. Meanwhile, more stable shapes are less agile.



But that trade-off may be worth it. Being able to move nimbly through coral reefs or complex underwater environments is key to survival.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-fish-inspire-robot-design">Fish inspire robot design</h2>



The findings could also influence the next generation of underwater vehicles. Most robots today are built to be stable. But like fish, that stability may limit their agility.



“By studying how fish achieve this balance, we can gain powerful design principles for building more efficient, responsive underwater technologies,” said Di Santo.



For engineers, this could mean building in a bit of instability and designing systems that, like fins, actively correct for it. 



Doing so could allow underwater robots to better explore tight or cluttered environments, such as coral reefs or wreck sites.



“If you want a robot that can maneuver through tight spaces, you might have to learn from these fishes to design in some instability and then add systems that can dynamically maintain stability when needed,” said Di Santo.



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Fish don’t rest while hovering - it's actually hard work

It’s easy to assume that when fish hang still in...

A global team of researchers has delivered new evidence that public backing for climate measures rises when people connect extreme weather with climate change.



The findings also reveal a nuanced picture. Certain hazards, such as <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/mapping-marine-heatwaves-to-understand-their-impacts/">heatwaves</a> and tropical cyclones, appear to shift attitudes more than others - and the size of this shift varies widely across regions.



The study gauged support for a suite of government policy measures. These included higher taxes on carbon-intensive foods, steeper levies on fossil fuels, expanded public transport infrastructure, wider deployment of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/tapping-into-the-natural-power-of-plants-for-renewable-energy/">renewable energy</a>, and stronger protection of forests and other natural land.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-disaster-blame-shapes-climate-views">Disaster blame shapes climate views</h2>



Using a dataset that blended satellite-derived records of natural disasters including storms, floods, fires, and droughts with survey responses from 68 countries, the authors estimated how many citizens had faced each hazard in recent years. They then compared that exposure to stated policy preferences.



The results highlight the psychological weight of attribution - the extent to which respondents believe climate change has intensified local disasters.&nbsp;



“Our data suggest that if individuals attribute extreme weather events to climate change, support for climate policies is higher regardless of whether the events are more frequent,” the scientists explained.



They also conceded that reverse causality is possible: environmentally minded citizens may be more inclined to blame climate change for a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/can-we-outrun-the-flood-risks-of-climate-change/">flood</a> or heatwave.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-biggest-supporters-of-climate-policies">Biggest supporters of climate policies</h2>



Taxation remains a tough sell. “Increasing carbon taxes received the lowest support, with only 22 percent and 29 percent of people, respectively, indicating they very much supported increased taxes on carbon-intensive foods and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/more-warnings-fossil-fuels-are-causing-climate-health-and-biodiversity-crises/">fossil fuels</a>,” the authors wrote.



“Protecting forested and land areas, by contrast, was a popular policy option. Eighty-two percent supported it very much and only three percent not supporting it at all.” 



Renewables ranked second, drawing strong approval from three in four respondents. Demographic factors moderated these views. 



“Participants who identified as men, were younger, more religious, had higher education, higher income, left-leaning politics, and who lived in urban areas were more likely to support climate policies,” the researchers explained.



Such patterns echo earlier work on environmental attitudes but gain statistical heft when paired with hard numbers on disaster exposure.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-some-disasters-matter-more">Some disasters matter more</h2>



Support was highest across Africa and Asia, middle of the pack in Australia, Costa Rica, and the United Kingdom, and below average in parts of Europe such as Czechia, Finland, and Norway.



To better understand why some disasters sway opinion more than others, the team examined the “management potential” of each event type.



Heatwaves and <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/are-bomb-cyclones-increasing-due-to-climate-change/">cyclones</a>, they argue, lend themselves to engineering solutions - irrigation or seawalls - so citizens may associate them more closely with concrete policy interventions.



“One possible explanation is that these types of extreme weather events allow for management strategies that can directly reduce the hazard itself,” the scientists noted, listing measures like “flood protections, irrigation systems, prescribed burn-offs, and land-use policies.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-perception-shapes-climate-response">Perception shapes climate response</h2>



Another key takeaway: simply living through a disaster does not automatically translate into greener voting habits. For most hazard categories, raw exposure showed little correlation with climate policy support unless people also perceived a climate link.



The authors pointed out that attribution varies dramatically around the world. In South America - particularly Brazil and Colombia - people overwhelmingly agree that storms and heatwaves are climate-driven. 



Northern Europe and much of Africa report lower attribution levels, mirroring polls that find limited awareness of anthropogenic climate change in those regions.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-disasters-demand-climate-framing">Disasters demand climate framing</h2>



The paper suggests that effective climate messaging should draw explicit connections between local disasters and broader warming trends, especially in places where that mental bridge is weak. 



At the same time, communication campaigns must navigate skepticism toward carbon pricing by highlighting co-benefits of renewables or ecosystem protection.



The authors caution that their results do not prove causation in a strict sense, but the statistical associations are robust across thousands of survey responses and multiple modeling approaches.



They call for follow-up studies focused on how to communicate about lesser-known hazards. These include prolonged droughts and slow-onset sea level rise, which citizens may not instinctively link to climate change.



Finally, the experts stress that policy design must account for demographic and cultural nuances. For officials drafting climate plans after a devastating storm, the lesson is clear. 



The public’s willingness to pay for mitigation will hinge not only on their lived experience but also on whether they see that storm as another symptom of a warming planet.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02372-4">Nature Climate Change</a>.



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Connecting disasters to climate change drives public action

A global team of researchers has delivered new evidence that...

Young trees in large forests are often dismissed as bit players in the fight against climate change, but new evidence shows their importance is anything but small. 



The latest study of <a href="https://www.fao.org/4/j0628e/J0628E16.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">secondary forest regrowth</a> found that young trees, only a few decades old, can lock away carbon faster than almost any other land based solution.



Researchers mapped carbon removal in regrowing woodlands worldwide and discovered a sweet spot between 20 and 40 years where <a href="https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/what-carbon-sequestration" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">carbon sequestration</a> peaks, reaching up to eight times the rate recorded in newly sprouting forest patches.



The <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02355-5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">work</a> was led by ecologist <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gees/muelbert-adriane-esquivel" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert</a> at the <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Birmingham</a>, whose team says protecting these adolescent forests could keep billions of tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-young-forests-trap-more-carbon">Young forests trap more carbon</h2>



“Our research underscores the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/forest-fire-smoke-boosts-ocean-life-but-with-a-hidden-cost/">critical role</a> of young secondary forests in the global fight against climate change,” said Esquivel-Muelbert. 



Overlooking their protection could forfeit the opportunity to capture carbon more quickly and at a larger scale when it's needed most.



The emphasis on youth contrasts with <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/forests-are-lagging-centuries-behind-in-climate-adaptation/">reforestation</a> drives that prioritize planting, then wait decades for stored carbon to accrue. 



Keeping a 25 year old stand standing can deliver as much carbon benefit as planting several acres of new trees because its engines are already running at full speed.



A global <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2686-x" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">synthesis</a> published in 2020 showed that natural forest regrowth could capture 226 gigatons of carbon over the century.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-maps-reveal-fastest-carbon-gains">Maps reveal fastest carbon gains</h2>



The new paper applies a random forest model, crunching 109,708 field plots and 66 environmental layers to generate one kilometer growth curves for stands up to 100 years old. 



That computational lift produced the first fine scale map of how fast <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/virtual-forest-bathing-can-reduce-stress-and-improve-mood/">above-ground biomass</a> piles up decade by decade.



Across 800 million hectares of land identified as restorable, starting regeneration in 2025 could remove 20.3 billion metric tons of carbon by 2050. 



Delay the start to 2035 and the budget shrinks by almost half, underscoring the cost of procrastination.



Machine learning also revealed how growth spurts shift with latitude, offering a tool planners can use to rank projects by speed of return. Such spatial precision was impossible a decade ago.



Earlier satellite <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36922608/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">work</a> led by Viola Heinrich showed recovering humid tropical forests store an average 3.6 billion tons of carbon but only if they survive interruptions from fire or fresh clearing.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-young-forests-left-out-of-climate-plans">Young forests left out of climate plans</h2>



The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (<a href="https://www.wri.org/insights/2023-ipcc-ar6-synthesis-report-climate-change-findings" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">IPCC</a>) warns that deep emissions cuts alone will not limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels, making carbon removal essential. 



Yet current market rules rarely pay for preserving forests younger than 20 years, creating a blind spot that could derail mitigation efforts.



Co‑author <a href="https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gees/pugh-thomas" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tom Pugh</a>, from the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, at the University of Birmingham, notes that young stands “aren’t even on the books” for many offset schemes, despite their outsized impact. 



Fixing that oversight, the team argues, would steer finance toward projects that begin sequestering carbon within a single election cycle instead of a generation.



A persistent global forest sink of roughly <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1201609" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2.4 petagrams</a> of carbon per year from 1990 to 2007 already helps offset emissions, but analysts say ramping up the sink during the decisive 2020s could keep warming targets within reach.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-location-changes-forest-carbon-speed">Location changes forest carbon speed</h2>



<a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/resource-library-biomes/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Biome</a> type influences when forests hit their peak carbon removal rates. In <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/biome/biorainforest.php" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">warm tropical zones</a>, forests often reach their highest rates in their early 20s, while <a href="https://www.oneearth.org/ecoregions/mediterranean-woodlands-and-forests/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mediterranean woodlands</a> may not hit that point until they're closer to 50 years old.



Even so, the per hectare advantage of youth appears everywhere. In the Amazon, a forest that is eight years old today would draw 36 percent more carbon by 2030 than a clear cut plot replanted next year.



Similar arithmetic holds in <a href="http://costarica-information.com/nature/ecosystems-of-costa-rica/Lowland%20Rainforest" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Costa Rica’s wet lowlands</a>, where a 20 year old stand can outperform seedlings by 65 percent over the same window. That universality makes age tracking as important as area.



Journalist <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/policymakers-often-ignore-forest-regeneration-fight-against-climate-change-2025-06-24/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">data</a> show that fewer than six percent of young forests in the tropics survive long enough to reach their twentieth birthday, often sacrificed to repeat agricultural cycles or burned in accidental fires.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-saving-trees-saves-money">Saving trees saves money</h2>



Carbon credits linked to young forest protection could offer investors quicker returns than tree planting programs because monitoring tools can confirm <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/protecting-forests-helps-birds-and-humans-in-many-ways/">biomass gains</a> within a few years. That speed matters to companies racing toward net zero pledges set for 2030.



Maintaining existing young stands is also cheaper for governments. Studies suggest natural regeneration costs a fraction of active planting while delivering side benefits such as better soil structure and wildlife habitat.



A fresh economic <a href="https://www.nature.org/content/dam/tnc/nature/en/documents/N4C_NaturePositiveRecoveryReport_063020.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">analysis</a> estimated that every dollar spent on safeguarding regrowth can yield climate returns three to four times higher than planting efforts in the same region.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-global-talks-may-boost-forests">Global talks may boost forests</h2>



The study lands months before negotiators gather in Belém, Brazil, for <a href="https://cop30.br/en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">COP30</a>. The hosts sit amid the world’s largest tropical forest and also the fastest disappearing, giving added weight to calls for immediate safeguards on regrowth.



“We urge policymakers to prioritize the protection and regeneration of young secondary forests,” said Esquivel‑Muelbert. She wants treaty language that treats young forests as a strategic reserve, not a placeholder. 



Brazilian officials have hinted that regrowth credits could join the country’s voluntary carbon market, a signal observers hope will ripple across the Amazon Basin. If other nations follow, the carbon math suggests the path to net zero could get a much needed boost.



The study is published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-025-02355-5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nature Climate Change</a>.



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Young forests, big climate punch: Why 20-year‑old trees matter most

Young trees in large forests are often dismissed as bit...

For decades, researchers have questioned whether boys and girls are born with the same natural ability in math. In 2005, cognitive psychologist Elizabeth Spelke took a firm stand, stating that there are no differences in overall intrinsic aptitude for science and mathematics among women and men.



Now, the evidence is even stronger. In a new study, researchers from <a href="https://www.harvard.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Harvard University</a> and several institutions across France examined math performance in more than 2.5 million French schoolchildren. 



The team found that at the very beginning of first grade, boys and girls start off nearly equal in math. But just four months into formal math instruction, a small gap appears - and it keeps growing.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-nationwide-study-tracks-the-math-gap">Nationwide study tracks the math gap</h2>



The research draws on a French government testing program that was launched in 2018. This nationwide effort tracked <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/reminiscing-can-boost-language-development-in-preschoolers/">language</a> and math skills of young students from first through sixth grade. 



Over five years and across four student cohorts, the program gave researchers an unmatched view of early math development.



At school entry, French girls scored slightly better than boys in language. Math scores, though, were essentially the same. 



"The headline conclusion is that the gender gap emerges when systematic instruction in mathematics begins," Spelke explained.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-looking-for-gender-differences">Looking for gender differences </h2>



Spelke had already spent decades studying how young children understand numbers and shapes. Back in 2005, she wrote a major review for American Psychologist. The piece challenged the notion that boys are biologically wired for better math performance than girls.



"My argument was, 'OK, if there really were biological differences, maybe we would see them in the infancy period,'" said Spelke. 



She and her team always tracked <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/young-children-learn-gender-stereotypes-from-storybooks/">gender</a> in their studies, but they never found infant boys outperforming girls in math, or vice versa. Still, Spelke admitted that something could be happening later in development.



"The fact that there are no differences in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/conscious-awareness-when-does-our-sense-of-purpose-emerge/">infants</a> could be because the abilities that show gender effects actually emerge during preschool," she proposed.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-math-instruction-for-boys-and-girls">Math instruction for boys and girls</h2>



In recent years, Spelke has turned her attention to how <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/scientists-discover-a-better-way-for-kids-to-learn-math/">children learn counting</a> and numbers in real classrooms. 



Spelke partnered with Nobel Prize-winning MIT economist Esther Duflo to advise the Delhi office of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL). The team is helping four Indian states create and test math lessons for children in preschool through first grade.



In France, she works alongside her longtime collaborator, neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene. Together, they serve on the French Ministry of Education's Scientific Council, which helped develop the EvalAide testing program. 



The idea was simple: measure where every child stands in math and language and use that data to guide better teaching.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-gender-gap-emerges-in-math">Gender gap emerges in math</h2>



For this study, the team analyzed data from four full cohorts of first-graders entering school between 2018 and 2021. 



What they found was consistent: no math gap at the time of school entry, a small but significant gap favoring boys after four months, and a steadily widening gap by second, fourth, and even sixth grade.



"It was even bigger in fourth grade," Spelke said. "And in sixth grade it was bigger still."



Interestingly, the gender gap in language shrank slightly after the first few months of school and stayed relatively stable in later years.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ruling-out-old-explanations">Ruling out old explanations</h2>



So why does the math gap grow with time in school? The researchers ruled out several familiar theories.



"If there was really a pervasive social bias, and the parents were susceptible to it, we would expect boys to be more oriented toward spatial and numerical tasks when they first got to school," said Spelke.



But that didn’t happen. At school entry, there was no math gap. This points away from both biological and early social bias explanations.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-an-experiment-during-the-pandemic">An experiment during the pandemic </h2>



The EvalAide dataset offered other insights. French first-graders can be nearly a year apart in age, depending on when their birthday falls. 



The team wondered if the older students were skewing results. They weren’t. The widening gender gap aligned more closely with time spent in school than with age.



Then came an unusual variable: COVID-19. The 2019 cohort missed the final 2.5 months of first grade due to lockdowns. That gap year created a natural experiment.



"With less time in school, the amount of the gender gap grew by less than it did in the other years where there wasn't a long school closure," said Spelke.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-confirming-the-math-gender-gap">Confirming the math gender gap</h2>



The cohort also began school just after a national education crisis. In early 2019, French students had scored <a href="https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/braincamps/society/how-to-improve-the-relationship-between-education-and-employment/maths-an-essential-subject-whose-level-is-falling-in-a-majority-of-countries/#:~:text=In%202003%2C%2015%25%20of%20French,European%20average%20of%20527%20points.">lowest</a> among 23 European countries in math, according to international rankings. 



In response, the French Education Ministry - guided by its Scientific Council - called for more math teaching in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/covid-19-pandemic-setbacks-reduced-kindergarten-readiness/">kindergarten</a>.



Sure enough, a tiny math gender gap appeared in fall 2019 among new first-graders. That gap hadn’t shown up in 2018 but was still present in 2020 and 2021.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-problems-in-early-math-instruction">Problems in early math instruction </h2>



The study doesn't pinpoint a single cause, but its message is clear: differences in math achievement between boys and girls seem to grow as a result of what happens in early <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/schools-are-in-a-battle-with-cell-phones-to-keep-students-engaged/">school</a> instruction.



"We still don't know what that is exactly," Spelke said. "But now we have a chance to find out by randomized evaluations of changes to the curriculum."



The findings put pressure on education systems to ask hard questions about how math is taught in the early years - and what needs to change to make it fair for everyone.



The full study was published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09126-4">Nature</a>.



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Early math instruction may unintentionally favor boys

For decades, researchers have questioned whether boys and girls are...

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y4eLFNYrKE
</div></figure>



On the unforgiving landscape of North Greenland, temperatures drop and sunlight barely penetrates through the polar winter. It was here, however, that an international team of scientists found <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/predatory-worms-were-terror-beasts-half-a-billion-years-ago/#google_vignette" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">evidence of sea monsters</a> that would change our understanding of ocean life in the past.



This video captures the discovery of Timorebestia fossils that had been hidden for more than 500 million years in the Sirius Passet formation. The "terror beasts," as they are called, are a hidden chapter in the evolutionary history of <a href="https://www.earth.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Earth</a>, showing that sophisticated predator-prey interactions occurred much earlier than previously envisioned.



Dr. Jakob Vinther and his research team at the <a href="https://www.bristol.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Bristol</a>, in collaboration with researchers at the <a href="https://eng.kopri.re.kr/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Korean Polar Research Institute</a>, braved extreme weather conditions at 82.5 north latitude to locate these giant creatures. Using sophisticated electron microprobe analysis, they revealed the detailed anatomy of the animals, including their muscle and nerve tissues.



The find upsets the traditional timeline of sea predators. Although we've long appreciated that Cambrian oceans were at one time ruled by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWI3-UgA3_o&amp;list=PL1QLQMW9MWDwpkFOnvgAmu7wT6rZmYqdJ&amp;index=19" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">arthropods</a>, these discoveries indicate that relatives of arrow worms were first to dominate the seas. These worms were building sophisticated food webs several million years before other predator groups arose.



Each fossil is a story of ancient hunger, with fossil stomach contents revealing these meter-long beasts dined on heavily armored arthropods regularly, cementing their place as the ocean's first apex predators.



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Worms dominated seas before dinosaurs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y4eLFNYrKE On the unforgiving landscape of North Greenland, temperatures drop...

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3JH03PqEQ
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">New York is the site of the world's oldest forest.</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-385-million-year-old-trees-discovered">385-million-year-old trees discovered</h2>



Scientists have uncovered something extraordinary just two hours north of New York City. The <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/worlds-oldest-forest-discovered-close-to-new-york-city/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">world's oldest forest</a>, dating back 385 million years, offers a window into how Earth's first complex forests shaped our planet's atmosphere.



Located near <a href="https://townofcairo.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cairo, New York</a>, in Greene County, these weren't merely primitive plants struggling to survive. These were sophisticated trees with root systems remarkably similar to modern forests. This ancient woodland predates dinosaurs by 140 million years.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-cairo-forest-discovery">The Cairo forest discovery</h2>



385 million years ago, upstate New York was a tropical paradise near the equator. Thanks to continental drift, this ancient forest has traveled thousands of miles to its current location.



The fossil forest sits in an abandoned quarry, roughly half the size of a football field. This represents just a slice of what was likely a massive forest system stretching from New York into Pennsylvania.



Charles Ver Straeten, curator of sedimentary rocks at the <a href="https://www.nysm.nysed.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York State Museum</a>, made the discovery in 2009. While scouting the former highway department property, his trained eye spotted wandering patterns in the stone that looked like marine features.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-revolutionary-age-and-preservation">Revolutionary age and preservation</h2>



The site contains 385-million-year-old rocks with fossilized woody roots forming horizontal patterns up to 18 feet (5.5 meters) wide. As Christopher Berry, a paleobotanist at Cardiff University, explains: "You are walking through the roots of ancient trees."



This discovery pushes back advanced tree evolution by millions of years. The research, published in <a href="https://www.cell.com/current-biology/home" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Current Biology</a> in December 2019, fundamentally changes our understanding of when complex forests first emerged.



Researchers believe a massive flood buried the forest floor, creating perfect fossilization conditions. Over millions of years, sediment hardened into rock, preserving these root patterns like nature's time capsule.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-meet-archaeopteris-the-first-modern-tree">Meet Archaeopteris: the first modern tree</h2>



The star of this ancient forest is Archaeopteris – not to be confused with the feathered dinosaur Archaeopteryx. This tree was far older and more revolutionary.



William Stein from <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Binghamton University</a> describes the roots as "strikingly modern, essentially what you'd see outside in my yard right now." These weren't simple root systems you'd expect from ancient plants.



Some fossilized roots are six inches (15 centimeters) in diameter, forming 36-foot-wide (11-meter) patterns. These giants grew up to 65 feet (20 meters) tall with five-foot-diameter (1.5-meter) trunks.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-climate-changing-impact">Climate-changing impact</h2>



These trees fundamentally changed Earth's environment. Kevin Boyce, a Stanford University geoscientist, explains how their deep roots triggered "weathering," chemical reactions that pulled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.



This process dropped atmospheric CO2 levels from 10-15 times higher than today to roughly modern concentrations. These ancient trees helped create atmospheric conditions that made complex life possible.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-ancient-forest-ecosystem">Ancient forest ecosystem</h2>



The forest was remarkably diverse. Scientists identified Eospermatopteris, palm tree-like plants with short roots that reached 30 feet (9 meters) tall but lacked woody structure. The forest also housed cladoxylopsids and a mysterious third species still being studied.



All reproduced through spores rather than seeds – millions of years before seeds evolved. This tropical environment had no grass, flowers, or flying insects, just towering trees creating Earth's first complex forest canopy.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-scientific-significance">Scientific significance</h2>



Before this finding, the Gilboa forest, located 25 miles (40 kilometers) away, held the "oldest forest" title. Cairo's trees are 2-3 million years older, showing that complex forest ecosystems developed much faster than scientists believed possible.



Patricia Gensel, a <a href="https://www.unc.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of North Carolina</a> paleobotanist, notes: "The size of those root systems is really changing the picture. Even 20 years ago, researchers assumed trees with such complex root systems didn't evolve so early."



The Cairo site presents three unique root systems, suggesting Devonian period forests were diverse ecosystems with different trees occupying different environmental niches, much like today's forests.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-modern-preservation-efforts">Modern preservation efforts</h2>



In 2022, New York State Senator Michelle Hinchey secured a $170,000 grant for the town of Cairo to construct specialized fencing around the fossil forest site. The town plans to conduct a feasibility study exploring the possibility of creating an educational center and working lab on-site.



Joe Hasenkopf, chair of the Cairo Planning Board, hopes to partner with educational institutions to create a research facility serving scientists, students, and the public.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-lessons-for-today-s-climate">Lessons for today's climate</h2>



Why does a 385-million-year-old forest matter today? It shows how dramatically forests can change Earth's climate. These ancient woodlands created the atmospheric conditions supporting complex life.



Understanding how prehistoric forests transformed the planet helps us appreciate modern forests' critical role in addressing climate change. Forests remain Earth's most effective carbon capture systems.



These prehistoric trees changed Earth's atmosphere by pulling massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the air. As we face modern climate challenges, this ancient forest reminds us of trees' incredible power to transform our planet's environment.



The next time you walk through a forest, remember you're experiencing an ecosystem whose blueprint was established 385 million years ago in upstate New York. These ancient pioneers didn't just survive – they thrived and changed the world forever.



The full study was published in the journal Current Biology.



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Earth's oldest forest found in the United States

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3JH03PqEQ New York is the site of the world's oldest...

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prrq8Ql81zk
</div><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Acid rain and a crisis solved.</figcaption></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-don-t-we-ever-hear-about-acid-rain-anymore-the-environmental-crisis-that-was-solved">Why don't we ever hear about "acid rain" anymore? The environmental crisis that was solved</h2>



Remember the 1980s when acid rain dominated headlines? Dire warnings about rain eating buildings, killing fish, and destroying forests filled every news cycle. Then, almost like magic, acid rain vanished from public discourse. What happened? Did we actually solve one of the late 20th century's most pressing environmental challenges?



The answer might surprise you. Unlike many environmental issues that drag on indefinitely, acid rain represents one of modern history's most successful ecological recovery stories. It's a tale of science, politics, and technology working together to tackle what seemed impossible.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What was acid rain?</h2>



Acid rain isn't regular rain having a bad day – it's precipitation that became significantly more acidic due to air pollution. When power plants, factories, and vehicles burn fossil fuels, they release sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) into the atmosphere.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The science behind it</h2>



Think of acid rain as nature's chemistry experiment gone wrong. These compounds react with water, oxygen, and other chemicals to form sulfuric and nitric acids. When mixed with water vapor in clouds, they create precipitation with dangerously low pH levels.



While clean rain has a pH of about 5.6, acid rain could drop as low as 4.2 to 4.4 – roughly as acidic as tomato juice or coffee. According to US Geological Survey documentation, Scottish chemist Angus Smith first coined "acid rain" in 1872, but it didn't become a household phrase until the 1960s and 1970s when Swedish scientist Svante Odén documented its devastating effects on Scandinavian lakes and European forests.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The crisis at its peak</h2>



During the height of public concern, environmental damage was both widespread and visible. This wasn't some abstract future threat – people could see destruction happening in real-time.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Environmental devastation</h2>



The most dramatic impacts were impossible to ignore. Research documented by the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation shows that in the Adirondack Mountains, more than 200 lakes became so acidic they couldn't support fish life. The Adirondack Council reports that 409 lakes once supported brook trout, but many lost their fish populations due to acid rain.



By 1976, when scientists cataloged all acidified lakes in the Adirondack Park, researchers found that half of the lakes over 2,000 feet above sea level had no fish, according to studies published in environmental journals. The acidification process worked like a slow-motion disaster. As acid rain fell into watersheds, it gradually lowered pH levels. Fish couldn't survive in acidic water, and their food sources died off too.



Trees at high elevations showed stress directly linked to acid rain. It weakened them by leaching nutrients and making them susceptible to disease. Historical records show Germany's Black Forest saw nearly half its trees damaged by the mid-1980s.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Economic impact</h2>



Acid rain wasn't just environmental – it was expensive. Acidic precipitation corroded infrastructure, buildings, and monuments. Historic stone structures deteriorated at accelerated rates. Tourism suffered as lakes became fishless and forests declined. EPA economic analyses from the period documented repair costs mounting into billions annually.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The solution: government action and technology</h2>



Transformation from crisis to success required unprecedented cooperation between governments, industries, and environmental groups.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Clean Air Act of 1990</h2>



The turning point came with the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, signed by President George H.W. Bush. This represented a fundamentally new approach to environmental regulation, as documented in EPA historical records.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Cap-and-trade success</h2>



Instead of mandating specific technologies, the 1990 amendments introduced something revolutionary: a cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide emissions. EPA program documentation shows this market-based approach set overall limits but allowed companies to trade emission allowances.



The genius was harnessing market forces to find cost-effective pollution reduction. Companies reducing emissions cheaply could sell excess allowances to those facing higher costs. Research published in environmental economics journals and EPA progress reports shows this resulted in dramatic SO2 reduction at a fraction of projected costs.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Technology advances</h2>



Policy provided the framework, but technology made reductions possible. Studies in atmospheric science journals document the widespread adoption of flue gas desulfurization systems ("scrubbers") that removed sulfur dioxide before it reached the atmosphere. By the 2000s, new installations could remove over 95% of SO2 emissions, according to EPA technical reports.



The push coincided with cleaner energy development. Natural gas produces fewer sulfur compounds than coal. Wind and solar, emerging in the 1990s, captured growing market share, reducing reliance on high-sulfur coal.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-we-don-t-hear-about-it-today">Why we don't hear about it today</h2>



Why did acid rain disappear from headlines? Simple: the problem was largely solved.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Success doesn't make news</h2>



There's an old journalism saying: "If it bleeds, it leads." Environmental success stories don't generate urgency like crisis reporting. Media attention shifted to other challenges: climate change, plastic pollution, and biodiversity loss. There's only so much environmental anxiety the public can absorb, and newer concerns replaced acid rain.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Mission accomplished</h2>



The primary reason is beautifully simple: interventions worked. EPA monitoring data shows sulfur dioxide emissions dropped over 90% since 1990. Academic research published in environmental science journals confirms pH levels in formerly affected areas returned closer to normal. This represents one of history's most dramatic environmental recoveries. Studies by the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation show fishless lakes now support healthy populations. Forests recovered, and building damage slowed dramatically.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-is-it-really-gone">Is it really gone?</h2>



The crisis is largely resolved, but monitoring data shows the problem isn't completely eliminated – it's managed to acceptable levels. Some areas still experience occasional events during high pollution periods. International environmental research indicates that rapidly industrializing Asian countries face similar problems to what we experienced decades ago, though they're implementing successful strategies.



EPA research shows nitrogen oxide emissions proved more challenging than sulfur dioxide, coming from vehicles and mobile sources. Climate science studies suggest changing weather patterns add complexity to how acid rain forms and falls.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What this teaches us</h2>



The acid rain experience proves that seemingly intractable environmental problems can be solved with scientific understanding, political will, and technological innovation. Environmental monitoring data shows recovery speed was remarkable – within a decade, measurable improvements appeared in air quality and ecosystem health.



Success came from bipartisan support across party lines. Policy analysis studies show the market-based approach appealed to those preferring economic incentives while achieving environmental goals. This support created lasting policy surviving political changes.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Conclusion</h2>



Acid rain's disappearance from public consciousness represents environmental science's greatest success stories. Through effective regulation, technological innovation, and international cooperation, we transformed an overwhelming crisis into a manageable challenge.



Today's silence isn't because we forgot – it's because we solved it. The 1990 Clean Air Act, combined with technology and energy market changes, reduced acid rain emissions over 90%, according to comprehensive EPA data analysis.



This success offers hope for current challenges. It proves complex problems can be solved when science, policy, and technology work together. As we face climate change and plastic pollution, acid rain reminds us that dramatic positive change is possible.



Next time someone asks whether environmental regulations work, remember acid rain. It's proof that sometimes, we get it right.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Sources: This article draws from EPA official documentation and progress reports, peer-reviewed research published in environmental and atmospheric science journals, historical data from the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation records, US Geological Survey publications, policy analysis studies, and environmental monitoring data collected over three decades.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Frequently Asked Questions</h2>



1. Is acid rain completely gone? No, but EPA monitoring shows it's reduced to manageable levels. US sulfur dioxide emissions dropped over 90% since 1990, making acid rain much less severe than the 1980s crisis.



2. How long did solving take? Environmental monitoring data shows significant improvements began within 5-10 years of 1990s emission controls. Full ecosystem recovery took longer – some areas need 20-30 years for complete recovery.



3. What made the solution successful? Clear scientific understanding, visible damage motivating action, bipartisan support, available technology, and innovative market-based policies like cap-and-trade.



4. Do other countries have acid rain problems? Yes, particularly rapidly industrializing Asian countries. However, international environmental research shows many implement similar successful control strategies.



5. Could acid rain return? Potentially, if regulations weaken or we return to high-sulfur coal without controls, though effects would take years to become severe according to environmental projections.



6. Can you recommend any teaching tools on the subject of "acid rain"? The United States Environmental Protection Agency produced a wonderful teacher's guide for ages 14 and under that you can find on the EPA website here: <a href="https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-03/documents/teachersguide.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2017-03/documents/teachersguide.pdf</a>



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The environmental problem we actually solved

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prrq8Ql81zk Acid rain and a crisis solved. Why don't we...

Fresh,Radish,Harvest,On,Soil,In,Garden.

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://youtu.be/Fi2OeEwuzRM?si=vTyd2m9FMmtyWkex
</div></figure>







Mid-July is an opportune time to kick-start a thriving fall garden, and this guide lays out the best vegetables and herbs to plant now for a fruitful autumn harvest. 



Fast-growing leafy greens such as spinach, lettuce, kale, and arugula perform especially well in the waning summer heat, with harvests beginning as soon as 30 days. 



These cool-season crops relish the transition into fall, offering repeated yields with cut-and-come-again methods.



Root vegetables like radishes, carrots, and beets also excel during this period. Radishes deliver satisfaction in under a month, while carrots and beets mature in about two months. Employing succession planting ensures a continuous stream of produce deep into the cooler months. 



For a boost of fresh flavor, herbs like cilantro, basil, dill, and chervil are excellent picks. These heat-loving varieties flourish in July’s warmth and are harvest-ready in about 30 days, especially when sown continuously.



Gardeners in zones 6 through 9 can benefit from planting bush beans and snap peas, which don’t require trellising and are ideal for compact plots. 



Maturing in 50–60 days, they’re a smart choice for quick, protein-rich harvests. For those in hotter regions, heat-tolerant crops such as okra and southern peas provide reliable yields and thrive in scorching conditions.



This guide emphasizes more than crop selection—it highlights the importance of timing, soil preparation, and ongoing sowing techniques. 



With thoughtful planning and attention to regional climate needs, even late-summer gardeners can enjoy fresh salads, hearty stews, and the satisfaction of a robust, homegrown harvest well into fall.



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What to plant in your garden in mid-July

https://youtu.be/Fi2OeEwuzRM?si=vTyd2m9FMmtyWkex Mid-July is an opportune time to kick-start a thriving...

Green,Ecoduct,Over,An,Empty,Highway,During,Sunset.

<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
https://youtu.be/XYgiPzmNBTU?si=eFYY7gPHU1JznLvU
</div></figure>



A new long-term study in Monkton, Vermont, reveals that wildlife tunnels significantly reduce amphibian road mortality during seasonal migrations. 



Frogs and salamanders often cross roads to reach breeding ponds each spring, but many are killed by vehicles. 



Researchers from the <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Vermont</a>, in collaboration with local citizens and the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources, installed two underpass tunnels in 2015. 



Over a 12-year monitoring period, they observed an 80.2% reduction in amphibian deaths, and up to 94% for non-climbing species like salamanders. 



The study used a before-after-control-impact design and documented more than 5,200 amphibians, highlighting the tunnels’ effectiveness even in nearby buffer zones.



Funded at $342,397 - far cheaper than wildlife crossings for large mammals - the project showcased the power of community-led conservation.



Local groups initiated the effort after observing mass amphibian deaths. Wildlife cameras later captured over 2,200 amphibians using a tunnel in just one spring, along with other species like raccoons and bobcats, indicating wider ecosystem benefits.



This marks the first peer-reviewed, long-term data set in the northeastern U.S. confirming amphibian-specific underpasses work. 



The study urges transportation departments to incorporate these designs into road planning and highlights how community action, thoughtful infrastructure, and persistence can make a real difference for biodiversity.



The full study was published in the <a href="https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1617138125000780" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Journal for Nature Conservation</a>.



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Wildlife tunnels save millions of amphibians

https://youtu.be/XYgiPzmNBTU?si=eFYY7gPHU1JznLvU A new long-term study in Monkton, Vermont, reveals that...

Scientists are transforming chocolate into a functional food by infusing it with probiotics and prebiotics, aiming to create a treat that satisfies cravings while supporting gut health. 



The challenge lies in maintaining chocolate's beloved texture and flavor while adding health benefits.



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Probiotics - beneficial microbes that balance gut bacteria and aid digestion - are typically fragile and can be destroyed by stomach acid or processing. 



Prebiotics act as food for these microbes, helping them thrive. Together, they form "synbiotics," a powerful health combination.



Researchers Smriti Gaur and Shubhi Singh from India's Jaypee Institute of Information Technology took an innovative approach, using natural prebiotics like corn and honey instead of complex processing methods. 



They created five chocolate varieties: a control and four synbiotic versions containing different combinations of prebiotics, probiotics (Lactobacillus strains), and flavor enhancers (cinnamon or orange).



Laboratory simulations of human digestion showed the probiotics remained viable for over five hours, suggesting they could survive long enough to benefit gut health.



Taste tests were positive, with researchers particularly enjoying the orange-flavored variety, describing it as having "vibrant citrus notes" complementing the "rich cocoa" with a "luxurious" texture.



This research represents just the beginning. With further refinement of strains, textures, and flavors, chocolate could evolve beyond mere indulgence to become a functional food that nourishes while it delights.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsfoodscitech.4c00741" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ACS Food Science &amp; Technology</a>.

Is chocolate the next nutritional powerhouse?

Scientists are transforming chocolate into a functional food by infusing...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Nushagak Bay, a large estuary in southwest Alaska. Nushagak runs mainly north to south and exits in Bristol Bay, a large body of water in the Bering Sea.



"The bay is primarily fed by the Nushagak River, which begins in the Alaska Range and flows southwest approximately 450 km. The bay is also fed by several additional rivers including the Wood, Igushik, Snake and Weary rivers," says ESA.



"The dark colors of the Nushagak River are most likely due to tannins or lignins (chemical substances found in plants). Tannins and lignins from roots, leaves, seeds, bark and soil can leach into the water and give it a brown or even black colour. The sediments then flow southwards where it is mixed with the bluer waters of the bay."



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Nushagak Bay in southwest Alaska

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> (ACS) reveals that proteins on flu viruses are actually flexible, tilting and waving in a “breath-like” motion. According to the experts, these proteins could be used to better defend against the flu.



"The main antigenic targets of influenza virus are two surface glycoproteins, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). Whereas the structural and dynamical properties of both glycoproteins have been studied previously, the understanding of their plasticity in the whole-virion context is fragmented," wrote the researchers.



To investigate, the team conducted detailed simulations of the influenza A H1N1 virion, or the swine flu. The experts concluded that the visualizations show many new vulnerable states of flu viruses, which could improve future vaccines and antiviral drugs.



Video/ Image Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Flu viruses are more flexible than expected

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Lake Trasimeno, which is located west of Perugia in central Italy. It is the fourth largest lake in the country. While Trasimeno’s water level varies, it has a maximum depth of approximately six meters.&nbsp;



"In this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, captured on 6 August 2022, the lake’s emerald green colour is likely due to the presence of phytoplankton. Streaks in the water, particularly visible in the west, indicate the presence of soil and sediments which have been stirred up by winds. Dark colored waters in the southern part of the lake indicate a presence of submerged and floating macrophytes (aquatic plants) as well as algae," says ESA.



"Surrounded by hills on three sides, Trasimeno is subject to heavy storms created by winds, especially from the north and west. There are three islets in the lake: Maggiore, Minore and Polvese (the largest). The lake’s shores are sparsely inhabited with only two popular villages: Castiglione del Lago and Passignano sul Trasimeno."



"Italy is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years which has affected drinking water supplies, hydroelectric power and agricultural production. High temperatures, hot winds and lack of rainfall are the main causes of drought in the Umbrian region which saw Lake Trasimeno’s drop 1.3 m, reaching the limit of the hydrometric zero in July 2022."



Video/Image Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Lake Trasimeno in Central Italy

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes a new self-powered nanosensor that can instantly detect mercury contamination with the tap of a finger.&nbsp;



The oxidized form of mercury can be harmful when it is ingested through contaminated water or food. This makes it necessary for experts to develop sensors that can quickly and accurately detect the presence of mercury.&nbsp;



Zong-Hong Lin and colleagues have now created a triboelectric nanosensor (TENS) that can detect mercury by simply by touching a sample. According to the researchers, their TENS could serve as the basis for similar devices to safely and remotely monitor other pollutants.



Video Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Detecting mercury contamination with the tap of a finger

[sendtonews key="LvS8v8bp9z-2564889-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> explores the ability of salt to transform the way that foods and beverages taste. Salt is known to cover up undesirable flavors, such as bitterness in coffee or beer, but how exactly does sodium chloride change the taste of other compounds?



One previous study showed that, not only does salt suppress bitterness, but also enhances sweetness and sourness. Another study revealed that bitterness reduction by salt seems to be happening at the tongue receptor level as well as in the brain.&nbsp;



While it is known that salt taste is mediated by the presence of sodium channels in the form of taste buds, experts believe that there is also an unknown receptor responsible for how we taste salt that has not yet been identified.&nbsp;



Video Credit: ACS Reactions



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

How does salt makes things taste better?

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Santiago, the capital city of Chile. The city is located in the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, which has a population of about eight million people.&nbsp;



'The weather of Santiago resembles the Mediterranean climate with dry and warm summers with temperatures reaching up to 35°C (from October to March) and cool and humid winters that can drop to 0°C (from April to September)."



"The city lies in the centre of the country’s central valley around 80 km from the Pacific Ocean to the west and borders Argentina to the east. A tiny part of Argentina is visible in the top-right corner of the image where the mountain crest of the Andes Mountains acts as a divider between the two countries," says ESA.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Santiago, Chile in South America

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Spiral,Galaxy,,Illustration,Of,Milky,Way

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Astronomers at <a href="https://www.jhu.edu/">Johns Hopkins University</a> have created an interactive map of the universe, including the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies. The map allows the public to access data that was previously only available to scientists.



The map was developed using data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For over two decades, a telescope in New Mexico was aimed at slightly different locations to capture the night sky.&nbsp;



"Growing up I was very inspired by astronomy pictures, stars, nebulae and galaxies, and now it's our time to create a new type of picture to inspire people," said map creator Brice Ménard, a professor at Johns Hopkins. "Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, leading to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries. But nobody took the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to people who are not scientists. Our goal here is to show everybody what the universe really looks like."



"In this map, we are just a speck at the very bottom, just one pixel. And when I say we, I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way which has billions of stars and planets. We are used to seeing astronomical pictures showing one galaxy here, one galaxy there or perhaps a group of galaxies. But what this map shows is a very, very different scale."



"From this speck at the bottom, we are able to map out galaxies across the entire universe, and that says something about the power of science."



The <a href="https://mapoftheuniverse.net/">interactive map</a> is available online, where it can be downloaded for free.



Video Credit: Johns Hopkins&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Interactive map of the universe includes 200,000 galaxies

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Lesotho: Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky" Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features northwest Lesotho in South Africa.



According to ESA, Lesotho is the only nation in the world that lies completely above 1,000 m in elevation. The country is famous for its tall mountains and narrow valleys, and is known as Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky."



Out of a population of around two million people, about 80 percent live in rural areas. More than 75 percent of these people are engaged in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/climate-change-will-have-a-global-impact-on-agriculture/">agriculture</a>, including rainfed cereal production and animal grazing.&nbsp;



ESA reports that the country’s agricultural system faces a growing number of issues, with climate-related vulnerabilities such as drought, floods and extreme temperatures occurring more frequently. 



Diamonds are amongst the minerals found in the mountains. Indeed, Lesotho can truly be called the Kingdom in the Sky. Beautiful, culturally rich, safe, affordable, and easily accessible from Durban and Johannesburg, mountainous Lesotho is a vastly underrated travel destination. the Kingdom of Lesotho (Sotho: 'Muso oa Lesotho) is an enclaved country in southern Africa. It is just over 30,000 km2 (11,583 sq mi) in size and has a population of around 2 million.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer 



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Lesotho: Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky"

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Dublin, the capital and largest city of Ireland. Beyond its pub culture, Dublin is known as a modern culinary destination and a UNESCO City of Literature.



"Dublin is located near the midpoint of Ireland’s east coast in the province of Leinster. The city, which covers an area of around 115 square kilometers, is bordered by the Dublin Mountains, a low mountain range to the south, and is surrounded by flat farmland to the north and west," says ESA.



"The city straddles the River Liffey, which rises in the Wicklow Mountains and flows around 80 kilometers eastwards through the city of Dublin, in which it is canalised and bordered with quays. It then empties into Dublin Bay, an arm of the Irish Sea."



Dublin has an abundance of green spaces, including one of the largest enclosed public parks in any European capital city. Phoenix Park, which was originally formed as a royal hunting park in the 1660s, includes 707 hectares of green space.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The city of Dublin on Ireland's east coast

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain. The image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.



"Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, Zaragoza formed the old kingdom of Aragon. Its capital, also called Zaragoza (not visible in this image) is home to around half of Aragon’s population," says ESA.



"The Ebro River can be seen winding its way through the province from west to east in this image. Between its source in the Cantabrian Mountains in the northwest and its delta on the Mediterranean coast, the Ebro River is fed by more than 200 tributaries as it flows 910 km across much of northern Spain."



Since rainfall is very scarce in this region, irrigation in the Ebro basin is critically important. In the valleys surrounding the Ebro River, many fields are used for growing crops such as corn, wheat, and barley.



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain

[sendtonews key="oL4FnPTGCV-2384527-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> reveals the evolution of the Columbia Glacier in southeastern Alaska. Columbia is among the fastest shrinking glaciers in the world, and the video documents its rapid retreat over the years.&nbsp;



Columbia Glacier is a large, multi-branched calving glacier that flows out of the Chugach Mountains to the Prince William Sound.&nbsp;



According to USGS, Columbia had a long history of stability prior to 1980, with a length 41 miles, and small, short-lived advances or retreats.



In the years since 1980, however, satellite images have captured Columbia’s alarming retreat. By using false-color images, scientists can distinguish between snow and ice, open water, vegetation, and rocky debris on the glacier’s surface.



The series of false-color images featured in today's video were acquired over the span of 35 years. You can see that by 2021, the glacier’s main branch had retreated about 15 miles from its initial position.



The Columbia Glacier has also lost more than 50 percent of its volume, mostly due to calving. <a href="https://www.earth.com/video/nasa-reveals-3d-visual-of-an-atmospheric-river/">NASA</a> reports that while climate change likely started the retreat, mechanical processes kept the disintegration going.



The NASA images are provided by Jesse Allen, Robert Simmon, Joshua Stevens, and Lauren Dauphin using data from Landsat satellites, from the U.S. Geological Survey, and data from MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite. The structure of Columbia’s moraine played a large role in the stability of the glacier before 1980. 



Like other tidewater glaciers, the Columbia built up a moraine over time, and the mixture of ice and rock functioned like a dam keeping out the sea. It was supported on one end by the shoreline and by the underwater terminal moraine at the other.



Video Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/&nbsp; NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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The rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the Pyrenees Mountains, which form a natural boundary between France and Spain in southwest Europe.



The mountain range is 430 kilometers in length. It stretches from the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Atlantic Ocean on the west.



At an elevation of 3404 meters, Pico de Aneto is the highest mountain peak in the Pyrenees, and the third-highest peak in Spain. Pico de Aneto is located in the Posets-Maladeta Natural Park, which spans more than 82,000 acres.&nbsp;



"Geological studies have revealed that the Pyrenees Mountains have been around for longer than the Alps, with their sediments first deposited in coastal basins during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras," reports ESA.



"The entire mountain range formed due to the upwelling of large sedimentary rocks by the collision of the Iberian and the Eurasian plate around 100 to 150 million years ago, followed by intense erosion from ice and water."



The western Pyrenees receive more precipitation due to moisture blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. The mountain range contains many lakes, several small glaciers, and some of the highest waterfalls in Europe.



Video &amp; Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

The Pyrenees Mountains in southwest Europe

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes two exoplanets that are orbiting a star 218 light-years away. A team of researchers led by the University of Montreal has found evidence that these planets are "water worlds."



The experts used data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. They discovered that exoplanets Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 could be composed largely of water.



"We previously thought that planets that were a bit larger than Earth were big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-up versions of Earth, and that's why we called them super-Earths," explained study co-author Björn Benneke.&nbsp;



"However, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138 c and d, are quite different in nature and that a big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water. It is the best evidence yet for water worlds, a type of planet that was theorized by astronomers to exist for a long time."



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and Leah Hustak (STScI)



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Two distant planets may be "water worlds"

[sendtonews key="QIoVYJqRBi-2434608-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes Earth’s interconnected systems, and how this network is affected by rising temperatures.&nbsp;



During 2020, average global temperatures matched the hottest year on record. The hurricane season was also record-breaking, with many of the storms intensifying at extraordinary speeds. Hot water in the ocean is fuel for hurricanes. The satellite data shows that it's all one interconnected system showing how Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected.



According to NASA, dust swept up from Northern Africa plays a major role in the formation of hurricanes, and is also a key source of fertilization in the Amazon rainforest. As a result of<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/seagrass-wasting-disease-is-fueled-by-climate-change/"> climate</a> change, dust plumes are expected to decline, which will have an effect on vegetation far away.&nbsp;



Images from Earth-observing satellites show how the world’s plant life is affected by natural disasters, fires, and deforestation. Satellites also reveal how widespread changes in vegetation impact waterways,&nbsp; the climate, air quality. Satellites communicate by using radio waves to send signals to the antennas on the Earth. "Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. 



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected

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