Phys.org: Earth science

A new Stanford study challenges the decades-old view that the rise of land plants half a billion years ago dramatically changed the shapes of rivers.

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine and other institutions have spotted a contradiction in worldwide wildfire trends: Despite a 26% decline in total burned area from 2002 to 2021, the number of people exposed to wildfires has surged by nearly 40%.

Lib4RI has completed the digitization of more than 700 historical snow and avalanche reports from the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF. These reports, published between 1938 and 2005, document decades of avalanche observations and snow research by researchers from Switzerland and around the world. These reports are now accessible to all in the institutional repository DORA.

Heat-stressed Victorian mountain ash forests are thinning fast, turning from carbon sinks to carbon sources, new research reveals.

A recent study led by Prof. Zeng Fanjiang from the Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has revealed concerning trends in soil organic carbon (SOC) loss due to prolonged human disturbance in hyper-arid desert ecosystems.

Beneath Australia's soils lie ancient aquifers which supply 30% of the water consumed across the country. The groundwater they hold can be some of the oldest water on the planet, dating back as far as two million years.

Large earthquakes along some of New Zealand's major faults are commonly clustered in time and place, according to recent research.

Deep beneath the ocean's surface lies Earth's largest carbon reservoir: marine sediments that have accumulated organic matter over millions of years. Long assumed to be permanently "locked away," this vast carbon pool is far more dynamic than scientists previously believed, according to a new international study.

At a trailhead surrounded by sagebrush, a naturalist welcomes a group of visitors to Mono Lake beside a sign that reads "Oasis in the Desert."

A deeper look into carbon flux is now possible—thanks to a deep pool of scientific collaboration. And for once, the spotlight is on Asia.

Atmospheric waves from a massive 2022 South Pacific volcanic eruption created seismic waves that penetrated Earth to at least 5 kilometers in Alaska, creating an opportunity to employ an unusual method of peering into the state's deep subsurface.

The world will warm more than expected due to future changes in ozone, which protects the Earth from harmful sun rays but also traps heat as it is a greenhouse gas.

Thawing permafrost is a major climate risk due to the associated release of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs). However, new research by a team led by Prof. Yang Yuanhe from the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows how microbes can stabilize soil carbon and potentially weaken the climate risk.

Identifying a mineral might sound straightforward: Analyze its chemistry, compare it to known minerals and voilà. But for geologists, this process can be a time-consuming puzzle requiring specialized expertise and a lot of manual calculation.

Federal lands—which make up about 640 million acres, or 28%, of U.S. soil—are used for many purposes, including conservation, recreation, and extraction of resources such as coal. Greenhouse gas emissions are released throughout the life cycle of coal use, including during its mining, transport, and combustion.

Each year, billions upon billions of tons of CO2 are pumped into the atmosphere. A significant proportion of this ends up in Earth's oceans, where it can react with water to form carbonic acid, which causes ocean acidification.

Climate change enhances extreme rains more than the ordinary drizzle. New research shows that frontal rain increases the most, and illustrates why extreme rains caused by other phenomena are not equally affected.

Stylolites—irregular seams that occur in limestone—have been found to affect how acoustic waves move through rock samples. Laboratory-based insights from KAUST researchers offer an improved understanding of how these features impact acoustic imaging techniques, which are used to analyze induced microseismic events during hydraulic fracturing.

Arctic sea ice has been melting at a slower rate for the past 20 years, despite human-induced global warming.

Antarctica is at risk of abrupt and potentially irreversible changes to the continent's ice, ocean and ecosystems that could have profound implications for Australia and beyond, unless urgent action is taken to curb global carbon emissions.