Climate science, earth systems and environmental research.
Two native Amazonian stingless bee species carried microplastics in both urban and rural areas, with most particles attached to their outer bodies. The finding suggests these bees could help monitor pollution, while also raising questions about whether they transport plastic particles into natural areas.
Europe’s forests lost an estimated 6.5 ± 0.8 petagrams of aboveground biomass between 1985 and 2023, with annual losses accelerating after 2018. Harvests caused most of the total loss, while rising natural disturbances in biomass-rich temperate forests helped drive the recent increase.
Iron-rich regions at the boundary between Earth’s core and mantle may store heavy iron isotopes and carry them upward in rising mantle plumes. The proposed deep source could help explain why ocean-island basalts have heavier and more variable iron isotope compositions than mid-ocean ridge basalts.
Ghana’s Keta Lagoon remains ecologically functional, but researchers found signs of nutrient enrichment, organic matter loading and habitat alteration. Water, sediment and bottom-dwelling animal communities varied across the lagoon, with more tolerant species dominant where nutrient and turbidity levels were higher.
Bangladesh’s nighttime heat stress has risen faster than its daytime extremes over the past 40 years, with the strongest warming in the early morning. Major cities including Dhaka and Rajshahi are experiencing more days of very strong heat stress, raising concerns about health, work and urban resilience.
Seismic sensors detected hidden larval activity from the destructive longhorn beetle Cerambyx dux in Israeli sweet cherry orchards. Activity peaked in late summer, while infestations formed expanding clusters around already infested trees.
Researchers built a geospatial framework to assess agrivoltaic solar farms across the Iberian Peninsula. The approach screens constraints, matches crops to local agroclimatic conditions, and compares simplified energy estimates for different solar layouts. It is tested in three case studies in Portugal and Spain, including a qualitative check against an existing pilot.
Satellite images often average bare-soil data over long periods, but the colors can change even under similar conditions. Using seven years of Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 reflectance data from more than 27,000 European sites, researchers found that changes in solar angle interacting with rough bare soil explain most of the temporal variation, while surface moisture contributes less.
A study using passive air samplers found that outdoor air across five East African countries shares a broadly similar set of bacteria. Fungal communities varied more by country, and nearby sites did not always match closely.
A cross-sectional study in Sweden found that youths following vegan diets obtained more energy and several nutrients from ultra-processed foods than youths in other diet groups. Across all diets, higher ultra-processed food intake was linked with lower nutrition knowledge and lower whole-grain intake, but it was not linked to blood markers of nutritional status.
Blue mussels from an Irish hybrid zone responded to repeated heat stress with time-dependent changes in stress-related genes. One key heat-shock gene (hsp24) was strongly induced 24 hours after heat exposure, but expression dropped at later time points. The findings show that how mussels cope with warming may depend on when researchers measure their responses—an issue that matters for managing both wild populations and mussel farming.
A new paper reviews fossil evidence from past “hyperthermals” to understand how rapid warming has repeatedly driven extinctions in both marine and land ecosystems. It argues that modern biodiversity loss could become similarly long-lasting because today’s warming is faster and adds direct human pressures.
A study in *Scientific Reports* tested phosphorus recovered from human urine as a fertilizer in a tropical Oxisol planted with maize. The urine-derived struvite supported substantial shoot growth and left higher residual phosphorus in soil after cultivation, suggesting it released phosphorus in a way that better resisted soil “locking up.”
Madrid wants more residents to upgrade their homes for energy savings, but policies often stall before they reach households. A new study in Energy Research & Social Science finds that different kinds of local “intermediaries” help bridge this gap in Madrid.
A new analysis maps how drought hazard changes across India’s major farming regions under three global warming levels. It finds that large shares of land shift into higher drought-risk categories, and that some new high-risk areas appear. The work also notes that results depend on one climate model and should be read as directional guidance rather than forecasts.
