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Categories: Environmental: Ecosystems, Geoscience: Earthquakes

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Due to human-caused pressures and global warming, some soils in Europe's Mediterranean region are reaching what the researchers refer to as 'critical limits for their ability to provide ecosystem services,' which include farming and absorbing carbon, among others. Perhaps even more troubling, the problem could be even more extensive than we realize, says an author of a new study.

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Research findings suggest that alternative stable states can be maintained through biotic mechanisms, such as root traits, in addition to the commonly understood abiotic factors like climate. This insight is critical to conserving threatened ecosystems around the world.

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Researchers have unearthed the earliest definitive evidence of broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) in ancient Iraq, challenging our understanding of humanity's earliest agricultural practices.

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The sun rises on the savannas of central Kenya. Grasses sway in the wind as hoof-steps fall on the dusty ground. A menagerie of Africa's iconic wildlife congregates around a watering hole to quench their thirst during the region's dry season.

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Researchers have analyzed an extensive collection of sand samples from so-called megaripple fields around the world and gained new insights into the composition of these sand waves. These could help settle debates about the mechanistic origin of some recently discovered enigmatic extraterrestrial sand structures and improve our ability to infer information about past weather and climate events from sediment records.

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When winds loft fine desert dust high into the atmosphere, iodine in that dust can trigger chemical reactions that destroy some air pollution, but also let greenhouse gases stick around longer. The finding may force researchers to re-evaluate how particles from land can impact the chemistry of the atmosphere.

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Shrubs in the desert Southwest have increased their water use efficiency at some of the highest rates ever observed to cope with a decades-long megadrought. Researchers found that although the shrubs' efficiency increases are unprecedented and heroic, they may not be enough to adapt to the long-term drying trend in the West.

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Referred to as 'China's Venice of the Stone Age', the Liangzhu excavation site in eastern China is considered one of the most significant testimonies of early Chinese advanced civilization. More than 5000 years ago, the city already had an elaborate water management system. Until now, it has been controversial what led to the sudden collapse. Massive flooding triggered by anomalously intense monsoon rains caused the collapse, as geologists and climate researchers have now shown.

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Researchers have now reconstructed how the Indian summer monsoon responded to meltwater pulses into the North Atlantic at the end of the penultimate cold period.

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The largest survey of pollinator abundance in Wales has found that woodland and hedgerow creation can play a crucial role in action to reverse declines in insects that are essential for crop yield and other wildlife.

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Climate scientists identify abrupt transitions in climate records that may have been caused by the climate system crossing a tipping point. They devised a statistical method to determine whether these transitions are simply noise or evidence of a more significant change. Their method is less error-prone than previous methods, since it doesn't rely on human determination. It also allows comparing different records consistently and can identify important events that may have been overlooked in older studies.

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Scientists have built a plant that can produce carbon-neutral liquid fuels from sunlight and air. The next goal will be to take this technology to industrial scale and achieve competitiveness. Researchers now describe how this novel solar reactor functions and outline a policy framework that would provide incentives to expand the production of 'solar kerosene'.

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Heat from a comet exploding just above the ground fused the sandy soil into patches of glass stretching 75 kilometers, a new study found.

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Precambrian cratons -- some of Earth's oldest rocks -- were uninhabitable for microbes for much of their existence, with the longest period of habitability not much beyond a billion years, and many only for the past 50 million to 300 million years, according to a paper correlating Earth's deep biosphere with geologic history.

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Scientists have used down-scaled laboratory models to show how sand dunes move through a landscape, revealing the conditions that determine whether they will pass through hurdles in their path -- like pipelines or walls -- or get stopped in their tracks.

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Water is a scarce commodity in many countries worldwide, but new cost-effective technology pioneered by researchers in Australia, Egypt and Saudi Arabia could ensure sustainable water supplies for decades to come.

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Climate 'tipping points' can be better understood and predicted using climate change data taken from the ancient past, new research shows.

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Plants need water to grow. So if there's water, shouldn't there be more plants? New research shows it's a lot more complicated than that.

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Hot desert sex has resulted in major genetic differences between male and female jojoba plants -- one of only 6 percent of plants that require a male and female plant to reproduce. New research suggests male and female jojoba plants have diverged so much, that the jojoba plant has more novel sex genes than any other known living organism. The discovery may help researchers develop a DNA test to identify male and female jojoba plants, which cannot be distinguished from each other as seedlings - and shed light on how plants adapt to environmental stress.

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The landscape at Lava Beds National Monument in northern California is typically home to sage and junipers, with unique lava caves twisting underneath the surface. But in the summers of 2020 and 2021, wildfires tore through the region, burning thousands of acres and leaving the surface charred.