News & Comment

An article in Environmental Research finds that wildfire events in Brazil increased the ambient concentration of air pollutants between 2003–2018, which contributed to air-pollution related deaths.

Yingchu Shen discusses the use of deep-sea stony coral geochemistry as a long-term record of ocean temperature, acidity, and nutrient levels.

Soil records information about past environmental and ecological conditions, yet little is known about mechanisms of memory, transmission of information across space and time, and potential consequences for ecosystem functioning. More systematic inclusion of soil memory in Earth system models can account for complex land surface responses to disturbances and changing climate.

An article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explores whether changes in the contrast and intensity of artwork could reflect air pollution trends throughout the Industrial Revolution.

Angelique Rosa Marín discusses how benthic foraminifera can be used as bioindicators for assessing water quality and monitoring coral reef health.

Estimates of plastic input from rivers to ocean vary by up to five orders of magnitude. Harmonization of field data used to calibrate models and a better understanding of transport processes are key to reducing these uncertainties, contributing to meaningful assessments of the effectiveness of environmental regulations against plastic pollution.

Adriana Uscanga discusses the use of time series of satellite images to analyse changes in vegetation across large regions and timescales.

Carolina Hurtado-Pulido explains how Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) can measure regional vertical land motion patterns.

Daniela Navarro-Perez explains how nuclear magnetic resonance can be used to assess the capacity of natural reservoirs to store fluids.

An article in One Earth finds that >75% of insect species lack representation in protected areas.

An article in Science Advances explores the capacity of protected areas to buffer ecosystems from the effects of climate change.

An article in Nature Communications reveals that protected areas will continue to include suitable habitat for more than 90% of analysed herpetofauna under climate change scenarios.

An article in Global Change Biology demonstrates that the current network of protected areas is disconnected in terms of climate similarity.

Emerging technologies can enhance the measurement and analysis of soil data and unleash its potential to support different ecosystem functions. However, concerns about ownership and reward complicate how and when the resulting data is shared. Soil data sharing must be incentivized to promote soil science.

Yulissa T. Perez Rojas explains how air-quality sensors can be repurposed as low-cost alternatives for measuring soil CO₂ fluxes from soil.

An article in The Cryosphere outlines projections of rapid ice change events in the Barents Sea.

An article in Environmental Research Letters investigates the influence of the Amundsen Sea Low in driving record low Antarctic sea ice extent in February 2022.

Akshat Chulawat describes how graph theory can be used to predict the vulnerability of the built environment to wildfire.

Souleymane Diop explains how four-component radiometers can be used to assess the effects of conservation agriculture practices on albedo and heat flux.

Alba Rodriguez Padilla explains how airborne lidar can capture 3D submeter to tens of meters changes in surface topography caused by earthquake deformation.