EOS

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences

“Le Léman”, Lake Geneva, is the title and subject of F.-A. Forel’s seminal book series (1892-1904) that examines its catchment, climate, organisms, and solutes such as carbon and organic matter (OM), essentially establishing “limnology” as a holistic freshwater science. At the time, Forel wondered whether it was possible to fully understand the dynamics of organic material in the lake’s water, given that the influencing factors were so complex, and the variation in concentration so small. Today, we have detailed knowledge about the aquatic carbon cycle, but because much of this comes from the study of smaller and organic-rich northern lakes, it is still uncertain what actually applies to lakes of Geneva’s type.

Adding a piece to this longstanding puzzle, White et al. [2025] analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics of organic and inorganic (radio-)carbon dissolved in Lake Geneva and its biggest tributary, the Rhone. Using detailed data on the carbon composition and age, the researchers substantiate that organic carbon (OC) is primarily sourced from the lake’s large inorganic carbon (IC) pool by photosynthesizing plankton, rather than being imported from catchment soils and vegetation.

However, the authors also find exceptions to this rule. Glacial meltwater bears a characteristic signature of old organic matter and young IC that revealed large carbon imports to the lake during the record heat of 2022. Quantitative understanding of such inflows is important for comprehending the functioning of lakes in a warming alpine region. In the future, glaciated catchments will reach “peak water”, after which the receding glaciers contribute less and less to summertime streamflow, potentially exporting from former glaciated/permafrost areas more soil-derived OC, nutrients and also more IC.

These results also coincide with a renewed interest in lakes’ IC dynamics and associated calcite precipitation. During past investigations of terrestrial exports of carbon and energy, hardwater lakes were largely overlooked. Due to the simultaneous CO2 and calcite (CaCO3) formation by plankton (owed to the precipitation stoichiometry), hardwater lakes can become counterintuitive aquatic greenhouse gas sources. Better knowledge about the carbon sinks and sources there, as provided by the authors, consolidates the mechanisms active in similar, numerous and ecologically important peri-alpine lakes. Surely, Forel would approve.

Citation: White, M. E., Mittelbach, B. V. A., Escoffier, N., Rhyner, T. M. Y., Haghipour, N., Janssen, D. J., et al. (2025). Seasonally dynamic dissolved carbon cycling in a large hard water lake. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 130, e2024JG008645. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JG008645

—Maximilian Lau, Associate Editor, JGR: Biogeosciences

Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Vox is a blog from AGU’s Publications Department.

Evapotranspiration is a scientific measurement representing the combined sum of evaporation from the soil (or water) surface to the atmosphere and transpiration from plants, where liquid water inside the plant tissue vaporizes and enters the atmosphere, predominately through stomata. This topic cuts across many disciplines and is important to understand as crops are subjected to increasing environmental stress and management practices.

A new article in Reviews of Geophysics explores the effects of changing environments, abiotic stresses, and management practices on cropland evapotranspiration. Here, we asked the lead author to give an overview of evapotranspiration, how scientists measure it, and what questions remain.

Why is it important to study cropland evapotranspiration?

As a key component of water balance in agricultural systems, evapotranspiration represents the ultimate consumption of agricultural water resources.

Evapotranspiration (ETa) is intricately linked to crop physiological activities and closely coupled with carbon cycle processes. As a key component of water balance in agricultural systems, evapotranspiration represents the ultimate consumption of agricultural water resources. Moreover, variation of regional cropland evapotranspiration reflects the changes of the regional agro–ecological environment. The varying vegetation cover and irrigation methods in cropland will lead to differences in mass and energy exchanges between the surface and the atmosphere, which in turn further affect the local climate and atmospheric circulation. Therefore, accurate evapotranspiration information is important for the development of irrigation systems, establishment of crop planting zones, implementation of regional water–saving agriculture practices, efficient assessment of water resources, and effective development, management, and allocation of water resources, among others.

What sets your review paper apart from previous reviews on this subject?

Given the significance of evapotranspiration, there are numerous reviews covering this subject. The varying perspectives concerning evapotranspiration have been recently reviewed, such as the role of evapotranspiration in the global, terrestrial, and local water cycles; the modeling, climatology, and climatic variability of global terrestrial evapotranspiration; best practices for measuring evapotranspiration; evapotranspiration partitioning methods; land-scale evapotranspiration from a boundary-layer meteorology perspective; spatiotemporal patterns of global evapotranspiration variations and their relations with vegetation greening. However, there is a gap in covering issues related to cropland evapotranspiration, which exhibits high variability due to its fast response to numerous factors.

There is a need to re-examine the primary factors influencing cropland evapotranspiration given the proliferation of long-term manipulation experiments, advancements in estimation models, and exponential growth in new and improved measuring methods at multiple spatial and temporal scales. In our new review, the focus is on factors encompassing key changing environments, abiotic stresses, and management practices that impact cropland evapotranspiration, along with their quantification methods.

What different methods are used for measuring evapotranspiration?

Evapotranspiration can be measured by using several methods such as plant physiology, hydrological, micro-meteorological, and remote sensing methods for different spatial and temporal scales. The leaf and plant scale transpiration can be measured by (potometer) portable photosynthesis system and sap flow method, respectively. The plot and field scale evapotranspiration can be determined by water balance, weighting lysimeter, sap flow plus micro-lysimeter, Bowen-ratio energy balance, eddy covariance, residual in the energy balance, surface renewal, and (microwave) scintillometer method. For regional scale evapotranspiration, remote sensing energy balance and remote sensing using vegetation indices are common methods.

Measurement methods for cropland evapotranspiration. Credit: Qiu et al. [2025], Figure 4

What factors do scientists consider when deciding to use one method over another?

When selecting methods to measure evapotranspiration, scientists prioritize a balance between spatial-temporal requirements, accuracy, and practicality. The choice often hinges on the scale of study: small-scale methods, such as weighting lysimeters or eddy covariance methods, provide high-resolution field-level data but lack regional coverage, whereas satellite-based remote sensing methods offer broader spatial insights at the cost of finer temporal or spatial resolution. Accuracy demands must also align with resource constraints: high-precision tools, like weight lysimeters and eddy covariance, require high financial investment, technical expertise, and maintenance, while low-cost methods, such as the water balance method, introduce large error. Environmental context further guides decisions, such as, uniform vegetation may favor Bowen-ratio energy balance and eddy covariance systems.

What are the main factors that affect cropland evapotranspiration?

Cropland evapotranspiration is affected by the meteorological conditions (e.g. radiation, air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed), changing environments (e.g. elevated carbon dioxide concentration (e[CO2]), elevated ozone concentration (e[O3]), global warming), various abiotic stresses (e.g. water, salinity, heat stresses, waterlogging), management practices (e.g. planting density, mulching, irrigation method, fertilizer application, control of diseases and pests, soil management), underlaying surface (e.g. geography, soil types), and crop–specific factors (e.g. crop type, variety, and development stages). The effect of meteorological conditions on evapotranspiration can be surrogated to a reference evapotranspiration. Therefore, in this review, the focus is on the impacts of key changing environments (e[CO2], e[O3], and global warming), abiotic stresses (water, salinity, and heat), and management practices (planting density, mulching, irrigation method, and nitrogen application) on cropland evapotranspiration.

Factors affecting cropland evapotranspiration. Credit: Qiu et al. [2025], Figure 3

What major conclusions have been drawn about these factors?

There is general agreement that e[O3], water and salinity stresses, and adopting drip irrigation all lead to lower total growing–season evapotranspiration for almost all crops. However, total growing–season evapotranspiration in response to e[CO2], warming, heat stress, planting density, and nitrogen application were inconsistent across studies.

The impacts of e[CO2] and e[O3], water and salinity stresses on total growing-season evapotranspiration are mainly through stomatal conductance, the ability of soil to conduct water to roots, development of roots and leaf area, microclimate, and possibly phenology. The effect of warming on total growing–season evapotranspiration can be largely explained by both variations in ambient growing–season mean temperature and growing duration. Total growing-season evapotranspiration in response to heat stress (or mulching and appropriate nitrogen supplement) is a compromise between reduced (or enhanced) transpiration and increased (or decreased) evaporation, along with possibly a shortened growth period. Differences in evapotranspiration under varying planting densities can be explained by the direct and indirect effects of leaf area on the constitutive terms of evapotranspiration. The variation of total growing–season evapotranspiration under drip irrigation compared to conventional irrigation was affected by smaller soil wetting area, shortened growing season, less energy partitioning to evapotranspiration, and changes in crop characteristics and microclimate.

What are some of the remaining questions where additional modeling, data, or research efforts are needed?

1. The influence of elevated ozone concentration on stomatal conductance can be represented using an adjusted version of the Jarvis function. However, there has been little effort to integrate this response into the Penman-Monteith model, which is used to estimate evapotranspiration.
2. Many controlled manipulation experiments are underreported varying types of warming on crop evapotranspiration. Water balance method, the residual in the energy balance method, sap flow plus micro–lysimeters, or even weighting lysimeters can be used to observe cropland evapotranspiration under several warming scenarios.
3. There are few studies on evapotranspiration responses to heat stress, and most are based on pot experiments in phytotrons or artificial climate chambers. Obtaining larger–scale data of evapotranspiration under heat stress is beneficial to understand heat stresses on evapotranspiration.
4. Models for describing effects of elevated CO2 and ozone concentration on evapotranspiration using a modified Priestley–Taylor and crop coefficient models are rarely reported. More efforts are needed to develop and test these two models.
5. In practice, cropland evapotranspiration is jointly affected by multiple factors. The impact of multiple factors on cropland evapotranspiration is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon that requires long–term consideration of many environmental stressors and their interactions.

—Rangjian Qiu (qiurangjian@whu.edu.cn, 0000-0003-0534-0496), Wuhan University, China

Editor’s Note: It is the policy of AGU Publications to invite the authors of articles published in Reviews of Geophysics to write a summary for Eos Editors’ Vox.

Citation: Qiu, R. (2025), Decoding crop evapotranspiration, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO255015. Published on 6 May 2025. This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s). Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans

In shallow coastal waters around the world, mud and other fine-grained sediments such as clay and silt form critical blue carbon sinks. Offshore infrastructure such as wind turbines and oil platforms, as well as fishing practices such as bottom trawling, can have major effects on the seafloor. So knowing the locations of these mud-rich sedimentary deposits is key to making coastal management decisions.

Ward et al. set out to map three mud depocenters—large offshore muddy deposits—in the coastal waters around Great Britain and Ireland. The mud-rich areas they selected were Fladen Ground, northeast of Scotland in the North Sea; the Celtic Deep, southeast of Ireland; and the Western Irish Sea Mud Belt, in the Irish Sea.

Their location at the bottom of the ocean makes these muddy deposits notoriously difficult to map. Furthermore, contemporary sedimentary deposits do not necessarily stem from modern conditions—some deposits are relicts from past ocean behavior.

To address these challenges, the authors built a paleotidal model that can re-create factors dictating the behavior and movement of ocean water, such as water depth and the speed and path of tidal currents. They reconstructed ancient seafloor topography using past sea level changes interpreted via glacial isostatic adjustment models. Using this reconstruction, they were able to simulate the tidal conditions driving the formation of the mud deposits as far back as 17,000 years ago.

The model revealed that mud settled differently across the three focal areas. In the Celtic Deep and the Western Irish Sea Mud Belt, mud appears to have accumulated over the past 10,000 years and continues to accrue today. Conversely, in Fladen Ground, the mud deposits are the result of past sea conditions and are preserved by today’s calmer tidal conditions. The results demonstrate how modeling past conditions can help map today’s carbon stores, especially in data-limited areas. The approach offers a valuable tool for managing coastal waters and preserving blue carbon, the authors say. (Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JC022092, 2025)

—Aaron Sidder, Science Writer

Citation: Sidder, A. (2025), Mapping the ocean floor with ancient tides, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250172. Published on 6 May 2025. Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.

A fascinating new paper (Corominas et al. 2025) has just been published in the journal Geoenvironmental Disasters that describes the compilation and analysis of a new dataset on fatal non-seismic rockfalls in Spain. The dataset extends back for 220 years – a remarkable feat in itself – although the detailed analysis focuses on a 150 year period between 1872 and 2021. Even better, the paper has been published open access and under a creative commons license, which means that the information can be widely circulated.

Over the period of the study, Corominas et al. (2025) identified 1,118 fatal rockfalls in Spain, causing 1,550 deaths. This is the occurrence with time:-

Temporal distribution of rockfall events and fatalities in Spain within the last 220 years. Source: Corominas et al. (2025).

The reason for starting the analysis in 1872 is clear. It is always most interesting to look at the event rate (rather than the number of deaths) – the grey line – as this is less noisy.

It is notable that the rate has fluctuated considerably with time, but that there is a distinct increase in the last 20 years.

Corominas et al. (2025) have put a great deal of effort into understanding these trends. They correctly note that a fatal rockfall is the consequence of a complex interaction of a range of factors, which can include the topography, the climate, human modification to slopes and changes to vulnerability. To illustrate this, take a look at these two graphs, from the paper:-

Temporal evolution of the number of victims caused by landslides on quarries and excavations grouped by decades. Vertical dashed blue lines represent the wettest periods identified. Source: Corominas et al. (2025). Evolution of the number of victims of road accidents caused by rockfalls. grouped by decades. Vertical dashed blue lines represent the wettest periods. Source: Corominas et al. (2025).

As before, take a look at the event rate (the grey lines). In the case of quarries and excavations, the event rate has dropped very substantially in more recent years. This is the result of changes to regulation and practice in quarries – in other words, these locations have simply become safer. The authors describe this in some detail:-

“The reason must be sought in the operational changes introduced in the quarries. One hundred years ago, quarries and slope cuts were excavated with non-technical criteria or with poor engineering design. In our opinion, the observed decrease is due to improvements in excavation procedures and the adoption of occupational safety measures. These include the Regulation of Basic Mining Safety Standards in force since 1985 and the Occupational Risk Prevention Law in force since 1996. Studies on occupational and mining safety in Spain have highlighted the role of safety standards and safety measures and risk prevention in the substantial reduction of accidents.”

On the other hand, the event rate on roads has increased dramatically, although number of actual deaths shows no clear trend. A part of this might be better reporting – perhaps rockfalls in remote mountain areas are better reported than in the past. However, Corominas et al. (2025) note the following:-

“…[T]he vast majority of events occur in mountain roads, including those of the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands. It is therefore logical to assume that the higher incidence is due to the increase in traffic on the most dangerous mountain road sections.”

And…

“The increase in the number of victims contrasts with the investment made by the administration in mitigation measures against rockfalls and the execution of road bypasses as mentioned in the previous section. This apparent lack of effectiveness of the set of preventive actions has been observed on other mountain roads … In any case, the trend of increasing accidents highlights the difficulty of risk management on roads that cross mountain ranges following the course of the main river valleys. These are stretches affected by a diffuse hazard originated far above the road and with innumerable source areas.”

Similar increases in events and losses were also noted in mountain trails and in coastal settings, which Corominas et al. (2025) ascribe primarily to changes in human activity – i.e. more recreational activities in the mountains and on the coast. As someone once put it to me, rather starkly, there are simply more targets in these locations than used to be the case.

This summary does no more than skate over the surface of a really fabulous piece of work. There s huge insight and richness in the data, demonstrating the complexity of these events. It would be fantastic to see more studies of this type.

Reference

Corominas, J., Lantada, N., Núñez-Andrés, M.A. et al. 2025. Fatal non-seismic rockfalls in Spain. Geoenvironmental Disasters 12 [17]. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40677-025-00317-9.

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Whale carcasses sinking to the ocean floor bring a buffet of nutrients to the deep sea. But whales don’t have to be dead to be big movers of nutrients. Migrating baleen whales transport more than 3,700 tons of nitrogen and more than 46,000 tons of biomass each year from high-latitude feeding areas to warm, shallow breeding waters near the tropics, according to a recent study published in Nature Communications.

“In places like Hawaii, or the Caribbean, or the coastal waters of Western Australia, where nitrogen is often a limiting nutrient, migrating whales can have a big impact on the local biogeochemistry,” said Joe Roman, lead author of the new study and a conservation biologist at the University of Vermont.

“It’s a bit like adding fertilizer to a garden in New York City,” he said. “On the scale of the entire city, any change is probably undetectable, but the garden is profoundly affected.”

Roman and his colleagues found that in some breeding areas, the transport of whale-borne nutrients like nitrogen can be as significant as that from nonbiological processes, such as nutrient-rich upwellings. In the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, nitrogen brought in each day by migrating humpback whales can be 125%–175% that of nitrogen from abiotic processes during the breeding season.

Though whales move only a small portion of the total nutrients swirling through the oceans, they still have a significant effect on the ecosystems in the breeding area, according to Matt Savoca, a marine ecologist at the Stanford University Hopkins Marine Station, who wasn’t involved with the study. “It’s a bit like adding fertilizer to a garden in New York City,” he said. “On the scale of the entire city, any change is probably undetectable, but the garden is profoundly affected.”

Nitrogen in Whale Pee

Roman and his colleagues used publicly available databases and whale sightings from ships and aerial surveys to estimate populations in feeding and breeding areas. They focused on gray, humpback, and right whales. (They avoided other baleen whales such as blue, fin, and minke because less is known about the migration patterns of these species.)

To calculate how much nitrogen migrating whales transport to breeding areas, the researchers turned to a perhaps unexpected animal: the northern elephant seal. “What makes northern elephant seals and baleen whales similar is that they are both capital breeders,” Roman said. Capital breeders bulk up for part of the year while in their feeding grounds. Then, after traveling to their breeding areas, they gestate, give birth, and lactate, all while fasting. This behavior contrasts with that of income breeders, such as seabirds, which feed throughout the year.

The elephant seal is the only capital breeding marine mammal for which data on nitrogen levels in urine for feeding and lactating animals exist. The researchers used information on elephant seal urine and supplemented the calculations with limited existing measurements of urine from whales in feeding and breeding areas to estimate how much nitrogen whales transport. (They didn’t include data on whale feces because adult baleen whales that are not feeding while in the breeding areas rarely defecate.)

Each year, whale species in the study may be adding more than 3,700 tons of nitrogen and more than 46,000 tons of biomass—which includes placentas released during births as well as carcasses of newborn and adult whales that die—to breeding areas. More conservatively, mothers and calves alone may transport more than 2,300 tons of nitrogen and 12,000 tons of biomass per year.

The Great Whale Conveyor Belt

Scientists still don’t fully agree on why whales migrate, usually from cold, nutrient-rich waters in high latitudes to warmer, nutrient-poor tropical waters. Some baleen whales make tremendously long journeys—gray whales can travel more than 11,000 kilometers from the waters around Sakhalin Island, Russia, to Baja California, for example.

“Other mammals and birds also migrate long distances, but what makes baleen whales different is their size and the fact that they are capital breeders,” Roman said. That means “most of the waste generated by the whales in the breeding areas, from placentas to urine, introduces external nutrients into the ecosystems.”

And baleen whales urinate a lot; a 2003 study estimated that one fin whale can produce almost a thousand liters of urine each day. Even whales that are fasting while in the breeding areas urinate copiously because they are breaking down stored fats and proteins to make milk for calves. Whale urine contains many elements, including phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, and nitrogen. The researchers were interested in nitrogen because it is often a limiting nutrient in many marine ecosystems.

“This study helps us realize that whales are not only charismatic species, but they also provide vital ecosystem services by connecting environments separated by thousands of miles.”

The researchers estimate that the nitrogen that whales bring in could increase the amount of food available in breeding waters. Whale urine contains nitrogen mainly in the form of urea, which organisms such as phytoplankton can readily use to convert carbon dioxide into thousands of tons of biological carbon per year through photosynthesis.

Some uncertainty is unavoidable when researching large marine mammals that travel huge distances, Savoca said. “But the study provides data-driven estimates that are as good as it gets at this time.”

“We are at the early stage of understanding how the nutrients, like nitrogen, that the whales bring in move through the ecosystems and the food chain,” Roman said. This understanding is especially important as whale populations face various threats, including pollution and climate change. “This study helps us realize that whales are not only charismatic species, but they also provide vital ecosystem services by connecting environments separated by thousands of miles,” Savoca said.

—Adityarup Chakravorty, Science Writer

Citation: Chakravorty, A. (2025), A great whale conveyor belt transports nutrients across oceans, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250171. Published on 5 May 2025. Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: AGU Advances

There is increased interest in the potential to store carbon in soils to improve soil health and offset some fraction of fossil fuel emissions. One reason we think carbon is stable in soils is that it is old, as evidenced by radiocarbon dating.

However, Evans et al. [2025] point out that many soils are developed on sedimentary rocks or deposits that contain ancient organic matter. The authors highlight several questions that still need answering: how much can this petrogenic carbon contribute to soil carbon stocks and the old ages of deep soil organic matter? Is it just passively transiting the soil system to be eroded and eventually end up in sediments again, or is some of it metabolized within the soil? And finally, how important can its presence influence our interpretation of the cycling of biologically-sourced organic carbon in soil, aquatic, and sedimentary environments?

Citation: Evans, D. L., Doetterl, S., Gallarotti, N., Georgiadis, E., Nabhan, S., Wartenweiler, S. H., et al. (2025). The known unknowns of petrogenic organic carbon in soils. AGU Advances, 6, e2024AV001625. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024AV001625

—Susan Trumbore, Editor, AGU Advances

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body {background-color: #D2D1D5;} Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

President Trump’s proposed 2026 budget, released today, slashes non-defense discretionary spending by $163 billion, a 22.6% reduction from 2025.

In the budget request, sent from Russell T. Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, to Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins, Vought wrote that the suggestions came after a rigorous review of the 2025 budget, which was found to be “tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.”

Among the proposed cuts:

 

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• Get Involved: AGU Science Policy Action Center

 

• A 9.4% cut, or $4.7 billion, to the Department of Energy
  • In addition, the budget proposes cancelling “over $15 billion in Green New Scam funds, committed to build unreliable renewable energy, removing carbon dioxide from the air, and other costly technologies burdensome to ratepayers and consumers.”
• A 54% cut, or $5  billion, to the Environmental Protection Agency
  • This includes eliminating the EPA’s environmental justice program and atmospheric protection program, as well as cutting funds for the Hazardous Substance Superfund and the Clean and Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Funds.
  • “Trump’s plan to virtually eliminate federal funding for clean, safe water represents a malevolent disregard for public health. Even by Trump’s appalling standards, this direct attack on a benchmark water safety program is unconscionable,” said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter in a statement.
• A 30.5% cut, or $5.1 billion, to the Interior Department, including $198 billion from the Bureau of Land Management, $900 million from the National Park Service, and $564 million from the U.S. Geological Survey
  • From the proposal: “Eliminates programs that provide grants to universities, duplicate other Federal research programs and focus on social agendas (e.g. climate change) to instead focus on achieving dominance in energy and critical minerals.”
• A 24.3% cut, or $6 billion, to NASA, including a 47% cut to the science budget
  • Among many other cuts, the budget “eliminates funding for low-priority climate monitoring satellites,” “reduces Space Technology by approximately half,” and “terminate[s] unaffordable missions such as the Mars Sample Return Mission.” It suggests cutting the lunar Gateway, Space Launch System rocket, and Orion capsule, as well as the Office of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) engagement. NASA’s overall cut takes into account a proposed $647 million budget increase for human space exploration.
  • In a statement, The Planetary Society urged Congress to reject the proposed budget, calling it “a historic step backward for American leadership in space science, exploration, and innovation.”
  • In a statement, the American Astronomical Society expressed “grave concerns” over these cuts, and said, “This will derail not only cutting-edge scientific advances, but also the training of the nation’s future STEM workforce.”
• A 55.8% cut, or $4.9 billion, to the National Science Foundation
  • From the proposal: “The Budget cuts funding for: climate; clean energy; woke social, behavioral, and economic sciences; and programs in low priority areas of science. NSF has fueled research with dubious public value, like speculative impacts from extreme climate scenarios and niche social studies.”
• An approximately 25% cut, or $1.5 billion, to NOAA
  • From the proposal: “The Budget terminates a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs, which are not aligned with Administration policy-ending “Green New Deal” initiatives.”

The budget proposal also includes suggestions to increase defense spending by 13%, to $1.01 trillion; and for “a historic $175 billion investment to, at long last, fully secure our border.”

Read more about the budget proposal at AGU’s The Bridge.

—Emily Dieckman (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

body {background-color: #D2D1D5;} Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

The National Science Foundation (NSF), one of the world’s leading funders of basic research, will “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice,” including awarding new grants and disbursing funds for existing grants, according to Nature. 

Staff at NSF were told of the policy change in a 30 April email. The email did not give a reason for the funding freeze and did not say whether or when the agency would resume awarding funding. 

 
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• Get Involved: AGU Science Policy Action Center
 

Each year, the agency awards about 12,000 new grants with an average duration of three years, meaning tens of thousands of projects may be affected by the new policy. NSF funds about a quarter of all federally supported research in the United States.

Unless the funding freeze is lifted, it will “destroy people’s labs,” Colin Carlson, an epidemiologist at Yale University, told Nature. The latest development at NSF is a “five-alarm fire for American science,” Carlson wrote in a Bluesky post.

This is going to kneecap science in this country for years. www.nature.com/articles/d41…

— Matt Peeples (@pattmeeples.bsky.social) 2025-05-02T03:52:21.765Z

NSF had already drastically tightened its disbursement of funding—in the past two weeks, the agency terminated more than 1,000 grants, together worth $739 million. Hundreds of those grants were related to diversity, equity, and inclusion or misinformation and disinformation. In April, the agency returned all grant proposals to program officers, asking for extra review of whether each followed directives from the Trump administration. 

In addition to causing turmoil among scientists who are now unsure their work can continue, such dramatic cuts to U.S. research funding may also cause long-term economic harm. One recent study by researchers at American University found that just a 25% reduction in federal funding for scientific research and development would reduce the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of economic health, by an amount comparable to the Great Recession and would make the average American poorer.

www.nature.com/articles/d41…I am a scientist and an educator. I cannot believe that everything so many of us have dedicated our adult lives to is being destroyed – burned down – for no reason other than knowledge imperils their vision of the future. This must be reversed. Pls share widely!

— Dr. Mandy Joye (@oceanextremes.bsky.social) 2025-05-02T02:05:48.901Z

“This country’s status as the global leader in science and innovation is seemingly hanging by a thread at this point,” one NSF staff member told Nature.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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As the world blows past 1.5°C of anthropogenic warming and looks increasingly likely to hit 2.6°C–3.1°C by the end of the century, plenty of controversy still exists, even among geoscientists, about how to slow, stop, or reverse the rapid climate change we are causing. As so many studies have documented, such warming will cause inundation of many coastal cities, trillions of dollars in damage from extreme weather, widespread species extinctions, and unrelenting heat waves. It will also fundamentally threaten financial sectors and economies at all scales.

The scale of mitigation needed to keep warming to below 2°C–3°C goes beyond reducing annual emissions.

One thing is clear: To mitigate these outcomes, humanity’s first priority should be to drastically reduce its annual emissions of roughly 40 gigatons (billion metric tons) of carbon dioxide (CO2), the greenhouse gas most responsible for driving warming. Without this reduction, other measures will be only modestly effective at best.

But unfortunately, at this point, the scale of mitigation needed to keep warming to below 2°C–3°C goes beyond reducing annual emissions. We must also remove and store carbon that has accumulated in the atmosphere.

Reducing Annual Emissions Isn’t Enough

The need for emissions reductions has been articulated accurately, passionately, and compellingly for decades. Yet global emissions continue to set new records, increasing 1% in each of the past 3 years. Meanwhile, even as clean and renewable energy (CRE) growth has recently set its own records, global fossil fuel energy consumption has continued to rise, with oil, gas, and coal still accounting for more than 81% of total energy consumption (only 4% less than 20 years ago).

Even under favorable political conditions, CRE consumption, which as a share of global primary energy consumption is growing at roughly 1% per year, has a long way to go to catch up to the roughly 2% annual growth in global energy consumption. Even once CRE growth catches up, it could take decades to reach something like global energy decarbonization, during which we would emit several times more CO2 than we already have.

Not only has focusing on annual emissions over the past few decades failed to reduce them, but it’s also not our annual emissions today (and into the future) that are causing the 1.55°C of warming we’re witnessing. It’s how much CO2 we have already emitted. Our cumulative emissions of 1.8 trillion tons (1,800 gigatons) of CO2 from energy and industry—heavier than the combined mass of all living things on Earth—taken from geologic reservoirs and dumped into the atmosphere, will stay there (and in the ocean) for thousands of years. Even on that happy day when we finally start reducing emissions, we will be the farthest we have ever been from solving the problem, and in fact, we will still be adding to it.

A Big Opportunity

Scientists and practitioners across many disciplines and sectors can play roles in climate change mitigation. Research in the geosciences is fundamental to understanding carbon reservoirs and fluxes between them, as well as past, present, and possible future effects on climate. But it seems clear by now that more climate science, and even better communication of it, is unlikely to inspire the collective or political action needed to activate significant mitigation. So what else can geoscientists offer?

Some see a role in helping to extract natural resources to fill the staggering projected demand for metals such as copper and rare earth elements and to promote the kind of technology-driven sustainability invoked by the mining industry. Geoscientists also contribute to informing approaches to adaptation and resilience, though neither of those constitute mitigation and, in the long run, they are much more expensive than mitigation. The economic impacts of warming have been estimated to be about 12% of global GDP (gross domestic product) per 1°C of warming, and our current trajectory is projected to reduce global GDP by as much as 40% by 2100, with much greater losses in some regions.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is far less risky than the centuries-long geoengineering experiment of using the atmosphere as a sewer.

The biggest opportunity—and perhaps the biggest responsibility—for geoscientists to contribute to mitigation is through facilitating durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Concerns are sometimes raised about CDR as a form of climate intervention, or geoengineering, yet it is far less risky than the centuries-long geoengineering experiment of using the atmosphere as a sewer. Indeed, removing gigatons of CO2 per year is essential to net zero strategies and avoiding disastrous amounts of warming, as unequivocally stated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Energy Transitions Commission, and American Physical Society.

Keys to Carbon Removal

Three principles are generally considered fundamental to CDR. First, CO2 already in the atmosphere must be taken out. This principle distinguishes it from point source carbon capture and storage (CCS), which simply reduces new CO2 emissions from fossil fuel energy and industry sources while competing with clean energy.

The Mammoth direct air capture facility in Iceland, operated by Climeworks, began pulling carbon dioxide from the air in 2024. Credit: ©Climeworks

Many approaches to CDR exist. Direct air capture (DAC), for example, is a rapidly growing method in which CO2 is pulled straight from the atmosphere. Biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) methods capture a fraction of the 480 gigatons of CO2 that plants naturally absorb each year and prevent it from cycling back to the atmosphere by converting biomass to forms that can be isolated and stored.

Other CDR approaches focus on managing ecosystems to stimulate more CO2 removal than would occur naturally, the second of the three principles of CDR. Examples include various strategies for enhanced rock weathering in croplands or forests and for marine CDR, such as using nutrients to promote biomass growth and raising the alkalinity of seawater so it pulls more CO2 from the air.

However CO2 is removed, it must be stored durably, with minimal likelihood to return to the atmosphere for a long time.

Third, and most important, is the fact that however CO2 is removed, it must be stored durably, with minimal likelihood it can return to the atmosphere for a long time. Using captured carbon to create marketable stuff like fertilizer and chemicals may seem economically savvy, but it’s not a durable approach. The entire global industrial demand for CO2 is less than 1% of our annual emissions, and much of this carbon goes right back to the atmosphere or is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) to extract more petroleum.

So-called nature- or land-based CDR approaches like afforestation, agricultural practices, and soil management are intuitively appealing alternatives that can remove and store CO2 and, if done right, improve ecosystem health. But these methods are also not very durable. Land plants hold a mass of carbon (~1,650 gigatons in all terrestrial vegetation) almost equivalent to our cumulative emissions, and soils hold 4 times more. However, most of the carbon in plants and soil cycles back to the atmosphere through natural decomposition and disturbances on timescales of years to decades.

Furthermore, anthropogenic warming–driven disturbances to forests and soils, which are becoming bigger and more frequent, may further weaken the durability of nature- and land-based CDR. The 2023 Canadian wildfires alone released almost 3 gigatons of CO2, almost 4 times the annual emissions of global aviation. (These disturbances also threaten to destabilize ancient peat and permafrost, which globally hold a carbon stock equivalent to 5 times our cumulative emissions—yet another reason to pursue CDR.) So although nature- and land-based CDR provides collateral benefits and is inexpensive and ready to deploy, in the context of net zero emissions accounting, it makes sense only as an offset for analogous biogenic (e.g., land use and forestry) emissions, not for the 82% coming mostly from fossil fuel burning.

Apart from the three fundamental principles of CDR, the potential to apply approaches at a large enough scale to make a significant difference is a key consideration. The scalability of DAC on large scales, for example, faces energy and expense concerns. And making a dent in the cumulative emissions load with nature- and land-based approaches like afforestation would require unreasonably huge amounts of land that already has many other competing uses. Meanwhile, the ocean, which already holds about 140,000 gigatons of CO2, offers potential because of its vast size as well as its longer residence times compared with other near-surface reservoirs, notwithstanding questions about its future warming-induced durability.

The Substantial Subsurface

It is becoming increasingly clear that for both capacity and durability, it’s hard to beat subsurface geologic reservoirs.

CDR approaches are diverse and evolving, but it is becoming increasingly clear that for both capacity and durability, it’s hard to beat subsurface geologic reservoirs. The amount of carbon in Earth’s crust is millions of times larger than in all near-surface reservoirs combined, and it stays down there orders of magnitude longer. Estimates suggest that enough subsurface storage capacity exists for at least tens of thousands of gigatons of recaptured CO2, and recent feasibility analyses showed that achieving storage rates of at least 5–6 gigatons of CO2 per year by 2050 is realistic and consistent with current technological trajectories.

Realizing gigaton-scale CDR will be a major challenge—one that requires building  support and further developing the needed methods. A few approaches show the most potential.

Captured CO2 can be compressed and injected as a supercritical fluid (sCO2) into saline aquifers or depleted oil and gas fields deep below fresh groundwater and overlain by impermeable rocks. This approach is likely the main storage route for CO2 captured by DAC, as well as by emissions-sourced CCS, and it is something we already know how to do from decades of practice (albeit mostly for EOR). Under the right conditions, several trapping mechanisms minimize the chances of escape for CO2 stored this way.

At sites like this one, the Icelandic company Carbfix injects carbon dioxide dissolved in water into geologic reservoirs underground, where it reacts with rock to form carbonate minerals. Credit: Siljaye/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Another promising approach is direct mineralization, which involves injecting CO2, either as a supercritical fluid or dissolved in water, into reactive mafic and ultramafic rocks to form carbonate minerals. Use of this method is ramping up to scales of millions of tons per year in some places.

Other, relatively new but promising BiCRS methods that leverage plants’ carbon-capturing power involve subsurface injection (often into depleted oil and gas reservoirs) of biomass-derived carbon in the form of bio-oil, pyrolyzed agricultural or forest waste, or other organic (e.g., municipal or livestock) waste.

Challenges for Geoscientists

Given our still-increasing emissions trajectory and need for scalable carbon storage solutions, it’s hard to imagine that CDR through durable subsurface storage won’t grow in the next few decades, especially if carbon policies and incentives shift from favoring emissions reductions and avoidance to removals. With the fossil fuel industry’s interest in propping up its energy production assets, CDR’s cousin CCS may also proliferate. Either way, it is likely that the subsurface will increasingly be the focus of attention and action.

As this focus grows, we must recognize that the subsurface is an increasingly busy place, where water, energy, and mineral resources—not to mention as much as 90% of all microbial life and 10%–20% of all biomass on the planet—interact. This is where the geosciences come in.

It is time for geoscientists to step up and take on a central role in advancing mitigation solutions.

After a century of the fossil fuel industry directly and indirectly defining much of the discipline’s research and educational emphases, it is time for geoscientists to step up and take on a central role in advancing mitigation solutions, specifically durable carbon storage and responsible subsurface management. There will be no shortage of challenges.

Mining, geothermal, and oil and gas production and disposal activities have already increased subsurface fluid fluxes well beyond pre-Anthropocene rates, and projections of these fluxes in 2050 are many times higher. In the United States alone, in addition to the more than 4 million oil and gas production wells, almost a million underground injection wells dispose of a huge variety of both hazardous and nonhazardous materials and waste.

Scaling subsurface carbon storage to gigatons per year will mean injecting massive quantities of a variety of CO2 and carbon-bearing solutions into a wide range of geologic reservoirs and associated waters, creating not only engineering challenges but also challenges of illuminating the efficacy and hazards of injections under many different conditions. Although we understand relatively well how sCO2 and dissolved CO2 behave in some types of subsurface environments, we know almost nothing about the behaviors of novel carbon storage fluids like bio-oil and slurried or torrefied biowaste.

Hydrogeochemists Ji-Hyun Kim and Rebecca Tyne sample groundwater in the Paradox Basin, Utah, to understand connections among subsurface rocks, fluids, and microbial communities and how they may be affected by anthropogenic activities, including carbon storage. Credit: Jennifer McIntosh

Geoscience’s role in responsible subsurface management will also involve providing new perspectives on basins and igneous provinces to address questions of rock permeability and composition that are important for durable storage, as well as assessing critical risk factors. Risk factors include how fluids migrate and interact with faults and other permeability barriers, the potential for mineral dissolution to mobilize metals and change fluid fluxes, fresh groundwater contamination, and induced seismicity.

Much of this work will necessarily be transdisciplinary, challenging scientists accustomed to traditional and disciplinary emphases to develop shared language and approaches. For example, understanding how carbon storage affects microbial communities (e.g., through species diversity and methanogenesis) and human communities and translating this understanding through public engagement and policies will require geoscientists to collaborate and communicate with biologists, engineers, planners, industry, governments, Indigenous communities, and others.

Rising to the Occasion

Durable carbon storage for CDR may be beneath us literally, but we cannot let it be beneath us figuratively.

Public sentiment toward CDR is improving, although many geoscientists still consider it a distraction from cutting emissions or, worse, a deterrent that will disincentivize emission reductions. But this largely theoretical risk—which, it’s worth pointing out, is also posed by pursuing adaptation and resilience—can be addressed by creating separate targets for CDR and emissions reductions and by other means of deploying CDR strategically. Others may see durable CDR as being complicit with the fossil fuel industry and its tragic delay and distraction tactics or as antithetical to intuitively appealing nature-based approaches.

We need to be clear-eyed about the fact that humanity’s cumulative emissions put us on a path that requires gigatons per year of durable CDR to have any hope of avoiding 2°C–3°C of warming.

But we need to be clear-eyed about the fact that humanity’s cumulative emissions, both to date and in the future (even under optimistic projections), put us on a path that requires gigatons per year of durable CDR to have any hope of avoiding 2°C–3°C of warming. And however it is done, most of that captured carbon needs to be stored in geologic reservoirs.

Developing and responsibly managing subsurface carbon storage pose historic challenges for the geosciences. Rising to meet these challenges will serve society and the planet by helping mitigate disastrous outcomes of climate change. It may also shift long-standing public perceptions of the field as anachronistic and out of touch and create an inspiring mission for new generations of geoscientists.

Author Information

Peter Reiners (reiners@arizona.edu), University of Arizona, Tucson

Citation: Reiners, P. (2025), Real climate solutions are beneath us, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250168. Published on 2 May 2025. This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s). Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Source: Community Science

Communities on small islands are on the front lines of worsening flood risks—not just from severe storms but from persistent tidal flooding events. Scientists estimate that within 15 years, high-tide flood events could triple for two thirds of communities along the East and Gulf Coasts of the United States.

Sea level rise and tidal flooding can vary depending on local land morphology, offshore bathymetry, and wind direction and intensity. To test how a community science partnership might better determine flooding risks, Bertram et al. focused on Little Cumberland Island, Georgia. The community comprises about 40 residences connected by unpaved roads, though no road connects it to the mainland.

In 2021, island residents agreed to allow faculty and students from the College of Coastal Georgia to conduct field research on the island. They asked the researchers to focus on developing a way to predict the frequency and severity of future floods and ultimately provide insight into how to develop more resilient roads.

For the next 2 years, the researchers visited the island every 1–2 months. Each time, an island resident hosted the team for dinner and shared stories about past flooding events and some of their greatest concerns. The scientists shared research updates with the residents, including water pressure recordings in flood-prone areas and comparisons between wind-enhanced high-tide measurements and predicted tidal flooding.

Residents reported that flooding of low-elevation roads has grown more common over time and that this flooding was worse when winds arrived from the northeast. The researchers’ measurements, which supported these observations, allowed the team to determine how wind velocity affects tidal flooding and to predict future flood frequency.

The researchers suggest that grading roadways so they dip downward on the sides, combined with increasing the size of sediment used for the roads from sand to gravel, could be enough to protect the roads until 2030. However, they predict that by 2040, “nuisance flooding” of 30 centimeters or less will double to triple in frequency.

Considering the findings, the researchers suggest that more permanent changes to the roads, such as building a raised wooden bridge, should be implemented within the next decade. They note that though the project was successful at addressing residents’ concerns and incorporating local knowledge, future work could further involve community members in data interpretation and developing recommendations. (Community Science, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023CSJ000058, 2025)

—Sarah Derouin (sarahderouin.com), Science Writer

Citation: Derouin, S. (2025), Flood prediction could boost road resilience off Georgia’s coast, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250169. Published on 2 May 2025. Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Community Science

Two new articles published in Community Science offer evidence and experience-based guidance for doing climate-related research in partnership with Indigenous communities–guidance that applies to community science in general.

This map shows the traditional harvest areas for members of the Organized Village of Kake Tribe and residents of the Community of Kake. Colors represent different Kwaans, or clan groups, who share stewardship with the Keex’Kwaan people of Kake. Credit: Figus et al. [2025], Figure 2

Figus et al. [2025] focus on the experience working in Kake, Alaska using Indigenous evaluation and Ellam-Yua coproduction. Indigenous evaluation is place-based, grounded in Indigenous perspectives, and emphasizes meeting community needs. Ellam-Yua co-production prioritizes processes for equitable collaboration, knowing good practices produce good outcomes, and doesn’t begin with a predetermined scientific goal. Using Indigenous evaluation in the Ellam-Yua co-production allowed for a broader understanding of success, generated a more expansive set of project outcomes, and helped connect climate services with other elements of community wellbeing, including workforce development and healing from trauma. 

Rudolf et al. [2025] provide a way to understand and generalize these findings from Figus et al. [2025] and show how the Indigenous approaches and dispositions can enrich the practice of co-production of knowledge, or CPK. CPK is a process of bringing together diverse perspectives to achieve shared research and practice goals. The paper offers a tool that teams can use to identify individual (perhaps implicit) perspectives on research and how those perspectives interact with other perspectives on research. A second tool helps teams understand different factors that contribute to project success and how they show up in projects.

Together, the research provides guidance for including Indigenous knowledges, practices, and values in community science. As well as showing how including Indigenous knowledges, practices, and values advances the theory and practice of community science overall.

Citations:

Figus, E., Friday, S., O’Connor, J., McDonald, J. J. K. S., James, C., Trainor, S. F., et al. (2025). Sharing our story to build our future: A case study of evaluating a partnership for co-produced research in Southeast Alaska. Community Science, 4, e2023CSJ000073.  https://doi.org/10.1029/2023CSJ000073

Rudolf, M. H. C., Trainor, S. F., O’Connor, J., Figus, E., & Hum, R. (2025). Factors in and perspectives of achieving co-production of knowledge with Arctic Indigenous Peoples. Community Science, 4, e2023CSJ000074.  https://doi.org/10.1029/2023CSJ000074

—Rajul Pandya, Editor, Community Science

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The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.

On 28 April 2025, a major debris flow travelled down a channel from a major mountain, Vallunaraju, striking the communities lower down the slope. At least 100 houses were destroyed and two or three people were killed.

I am not in a position to be able to say definitively how this event occurred. Christian Huggel from the University of Zurich has a LinkedIn post that provides some detail. This is a part of what he has posted:-

“Summarizing some information on the recent glacier lake outburst flood (GLOF) that occurred in the early morning of 28 April from one of the glacier lakes at the toe of Vallunaraju (5680 m asl) and badly impacted rural and urban parts of Huaraz in the Andes of Peru. According to videos taken by mountaineers the likely origin of the GLOF (or aluvión) is a rock slope failure into a lake in some 300 m distance of the glacier margin … The analysis suggests that the rock fall triggered an impact wave in the lake with a subsequent debris flow that rushed downvalley along the Casca river, damaged some 100 houses, destroyed about 15 buildings and road infrastructure, and unfortunately also claimed the lives of 2-3 persons. The glacier lake probably formed around the 1970’s as the glaciers of Vallunaraju receded.

“Some lines of evidence suggest that there were rock fall events prior to the 28 April GLOF at this location, including pre-event slope failures likely the day before the disaster.”

This is a cloudy area, so at present I cannot access satellite imagery that shows the slopes affected by the landslide that initiated this event. However, Planet Labs has captured imagery on both 26 April 2025 (before the event) and 30 April 2025 (after the event) that provides some insights into the downstream consequences.

Let’s start with the main channel higher in the slopes of Vallunaraju. This Planet Labs image shows the valley immediately below the steep slope from which this event originated. The marker is at [-9.44993, -77.45431]:-

Planet Labs image before the 28 April 2025 Glacial Outburst Flood (GLOF) / landslide at Vallunaraju in Peru. Image copyright Planet Labs, used with permission. Image dated 26 April 2025.

This is the same area after the landslide / GLOF:-

Planet Labs image of the aftermath of the 28 April 2025 Glacial Outburst Flood (GLOF) / landslide at Vallunaraju in Peru. Image copyright Planet Labs, used with permission. Image dated 30 April 2025.

And here is a slider to compare the two images:-

Clearly, cloud is a major issue in the 30 April 2025 image, and we cannot see the main part of the slope itself, but at the foot of the steep slope extensive scour and erosion is evident, and there is substantial change in the channel below.

This has then led to major impacts in the channel downstream. This is a part of the 30 April 2025 image, with the channel running roughly east to west, with extensive evidence of the aftermath of the debris flow:-

Planet Labs image of the downstream impacts of the 28 April 2025 Glacial Outburst Flood (GLOF) / landslide at Vallunaraju in Peru. Image copyright Planet Labs, used with permission. Image dated 30 April 2025.

Once again, this event highlights the hazards posed by events that occur high in mountain chains, but then travel into populated areas.

Reference

Planet Team 2025. Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA. https://www.planet.com/

Return to The Landslide Blog homepage Text © 2023. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems 

Understanding and predicting the evolution of the ocean is crucial for improving climate projections and anticipating future environmental changes. A significant source of uncertainty in current oceanic climate models is the accurate representation of mesoscale ocean features, such as eddies and currents.

Silvestri et al. [2025] present a breakthrough in ocean modeling by leveraging GPU-specific programming strategies to accelerate computations drastically. A GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) is a specialized processor designed to perform many calculations simultaneously and process large amounts of data. The model called “Oceananigans” resulting from this study enables routine mesoscale-resolving ocean simulations that were previously impractical due to computational constraints. This work marks a significant step toward next-generation Earth system models, paving the way for higher-fidelity simulations while managing environmental costs in terms of energy consumption.

These findings not only highlight the power of GPUs in climate modeling but also contribute to clarifying the roadmap for porting or redesigning other Earth system components. Moreover, the choice of the Julia programming language opens up numerous opportunities for automatic differentiation, which is fundamental to AI technologies, and for training young researchers in ocean modeling.

Citation: Silvestri, S., Wagner, G. L., Constantinou, N. C., Hill, C. N., Campin, J.-M., Souza, A. N., et al. (2025). A GPU-based ocean dynamical core for routine mesoscale-resolving climate simulations. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 17, e2024MS004465. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024MS004465

—Florian Lemarié, Associate Editor; and Stephen Griffies, Editor-in-Chief, JAMES

Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Coastal waters worldwide are rapidly losing oxygen, causing declines in marine life and affecting communities who rely on the health of coastal waters.

Prominent examples of low-oxygen coastal waters are found in the Baltic Sea, for instance, where oxygen loss in recent decades has led to major ecosystem changes. Potentially toxic cyanobacterial blooms have become frequent and widespread, spawning grounds for cod have been greatly reduced, and fish kills have been observed in coastal waters [Conley et al., 2009]. Similar issues have afflicted the Gulf of Mexico, the Adriatic Sea, the East China Sea, and numerous other areas.

Dead fish are seen in coastal waters near Ostend, Belgium, following a low-oxygen event in 2018. Credit: Grégoire et al. [2023], European Marine Board, CC BY 4.0

The main cause of declining coastal ocean oxygen is well-known: Since the 1950s, phosphorus and nitrogen from agricultural runoff and wastewater have flowed into coastal seas, where they stimulate phytoplankton blooms that, upon their decay, consume oxygen. This process, called eutrophication, is not the only cause of declining oxygen and so-called dead zones in coastal waters: Increasing global temperatures are contributing by reducing both the solubility of oxygen in seawater and vertical mixing of the ocean water column, thereby limiting the aeration of deeper waters [Breitburg et al., 2018].

Indeed, even coastal systems not experiencing eutrophication, such as the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, may be under threat of low oxygen because of changes in ocean circulation linked to climate change [Wallace et al., 2023].

Various means of artificial reoxygenation have been suggested and studied as possible local to regional solutions to coastal oxygen loss.

Long-term reductions in nutrient inputs from land are widely acknowledged as essential to mitigate coastal eutrophication, but such reductions will take time to have an effect. Nutrients have been accumulating in many coastal systems for decades, and switching off inputs will not immediately lead to lower concentrations [Conley et al., 2009]. Moreover, reducing nutrient releases from agricultural lands in many regions is proving challenging. Attempts to curtail the global use of fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions substantially have also been less successful to date than what is required to affect ocean oxygen [Breitburg et al., 2018].

Amid the challenges of achieving global-scale solutions, various means of artificial reoxygenation have been suggested and studied as possible local to regional solutions to coastal oxygen loss [Stigebrandt et al., 2015]. Yet these approaches come with risks that must be assessed carefully before implementation [Conley et al., 2009].

Such assessments are becoming urgent with the emergence of potential new artificial reoxygenation technologies linked to green hydrogen production. This process of splitting water by electrolysis to generate hydrogen also generates oxygen [Wallace et al., 2023], which could be put to use in coastal waters, particularly where green hydrogen production facilities are located close to the sea.

Oxygen Supply Versus Demand

Coastal seas gain oxygen naturally through air-sea exchange, vertical and lateral mixing of seawater, and photosynthetic production by phytoplankton (Figure 1). They lose oxygen through respiration of organic matter in the water column and the underlying sediment. Surface waters typically remain oxygenated because of rapid air-sea exchange and primary productivity, but in deeper waters, oxygen removal may dominate, especially in systems with limited vertical mixing [Fennel and Testa, 2019].

Fig. 1. The oxygen budget for coastal ocean systems involves several main processes.

The main goal of artificial reoxygenation is to increase the supply of oxygen to deeper waters enough that the water and sediment at the seafloor surface become or remain oxygenated. The oxygen supply needed to achieve this goal depends on the local oxygen demand, which itself depends on the input of organic matter from sinking phytoplankton biomass and the eutrophication history of the system. If organic matter inputs remain high or a lot of organic matter has accumulated on the seafloor, oxygen demand may remain high for a long time. This “legacy” effect can hinder the reoxygenation of a coastal system, as shown in the Baltic Sea [Hermans et al., 2019].

A secondary goal of reoxygenation is to limit recycling of phosphorus from sediments, which, in turn, may reduce the availability of phosphorus as a nutrient for phytoplankton in surface waters. Decreasing how much organic matter is produced and then sinks to the seafloor may lower the oxygen demand for respiration and hence increase oxygen concentrations in deeper waters [Conley et al., 2009].

Inspired by methods used to reoxygenate lakes with some success, two broad approaches have been proposed for artificially reoxygenating coastal systems (Figure 2): bubbling pure oxygen or air into the ocean [Koweek et al., 2020; Wallace et al., 2023] and pumping oxygenated surface water to greater water depths, a process called artificial downwelling [Stigebrandt et al., 2015; Lehtoranta et al., 2022].

Fig. 2. Two key methods for artificially reoxygenating coastal waters include bubble diffusion (left) and downwelling (right). O2, oxygen. Credit: Adapted from Koweek et al. [2020], CC BY 4.0

Bubble diffusers have been used in lakes to oxygenate deep water directly [Koweek et al., 2020] and in shallow coastal systems to destratify and aerate the water column by inducing mixing [Harris et al., 2015]. Artificial downwelling has been tested for local applications in only a few small coastal systems [Stigebrandt et al., 2015; Lehtoranta et al., 2022].

The Imperfections of Artificial Reoxygenation

Studies to date show that artificial reoxygenation can be applied successfully in small estuaries and bays but that its effect lasts only as long as operations are maintained.

Studies to date show that artificial reoxygenation can be applied successfully in small estuaries and bays but that its effect lasts only as long as operations are maintained. This outcome was observed, for example, in two Swedish bays following their reoxygenation through pump-driven downwelling [Stigebrandt et al., 2015; Lehtoranta et al., 2022]. Similarly, when aerators were switched off in a shallow subestuary of the Chesapeake Bay after several decades of aeration, low-oxygen, or anoxic, levels returned within a day [Harris et al., 2015].

The rapid return of anoxia upon discontinuing artificial reoxygenation operations—also known from applications in lakes—illustrates that these approaches alone do not provide permanent solutions to deoxygenation because they do not address its root causes. Moreover, adding oxygen to the water column does not mitigate wider water quality problems. Nuisance algal blooms in many coastal areas will still occur if the availability of nutrients for phytoplankton remains high.

In the Baltic Sea, for example, natural decadal-scale reoxygenation of deeper waters linked to lateral inflow of oxygenated North Sea water does not lead to a removal of phosphorus in the sediment [Hermans et al., 2019]. This lack of an effect results from the highly reducing conditions in the seafloor sediment, which hinder formation of phosphorus-containing minerals. Consequently, reoxygenation of the water column in the Baltic does not necessarily decrease recycling of phosphorus [Hermans et al., 2019], which may continue to fuel cyanobacterial blooms [Conley et al., 2009].

Reoxygenation via artificial downwelling may also be unsuccessful if it causes warming of deeper waters, which is a risk, especially when surface water pumps are used to reoxygenate temperature- and density-stratified coastal waters. Transferring warm surface water to colder, denser depths near the seafloor may weaken stratification and enhance vertical mixing. Although this process may increase the downward transfer of oxygen, it can also boost upward mixing of nutrients, which may enhance biological productivity. This enhancement can ultimately increase the oxygen demand in deeper waters to such an extent that a net decrease in oxygen results [Conley et al., 2009; Lehtoranta et al., 2022].

Warming at depth can also lead to greater metabolic activity and increased respiration of organic matter, further decreasing oxygen concentrations instead of increasing them as intended.

Side Effects on Climate and Habitats

Artificial reoxygenation may have other undesirable effects as well. It can alter the dynamics of greenhouse gases in coastal waters, for example, because increased aerobic respiration increases carbon dioxide production.

Furthermore, bubbling air through shallow coastal waters can enhance upward transport of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in the water column and its emission to the atmosphere [Lapham et al., 2022]. In eutrophic coastal systems, reoxygenation does not necessarily suppress the release of methane from sediments [Żygadłowska et al., 2024], implying that upon bubbling, methane emissions from coastal waters may be greater than without reoxygenation.

Reoxygenation operations may also alter ocean habitats and have unintended consequences for marine life. Bubbling generates underwater noise, turbulence, and gradients in oxygen pressure that differ from naturally occurring conditions. Artificial downwelling not only changes water column temperatures but also alters vertical salinity distributions, with unknown consequences for marine organisms [Conley et al., 2009; Wallace et al., 2023]. In addition, the return of bottom-dwelling animals with reoxygenation may cause increased sediment mixing that remobilizes sediment contaminants [Conley et al., 2009].

Assessing Artificial Reoxygenation as a Solution

Artificial reoxygenation, when applied, should always be only one of various measures used to improve water quality.

Taken together, the body of evidence from reoxygenation studies to date indicates that long-term improvements in the oxygen levels and quality of coastal waters require reductions in nutrient inputs and greenhouse gas emissions. Hence, artificial reoxygenation, when applied, should always be only one of various measures used to improve water quality.

In heavily managed coastal systems, reoxygenation may be a temporary solution, as illustrated by its successful application in a subestuary of the Chesapeake Bay [Harris et al., 2015]. Elsewhere, such as in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, reoxygenation might be harnessed to maintain the current oxygen state of the system [Wallace et al., 2023]. However, responses to reoxygenation in eutrophic systems with strong legacy effects, where sediments act as a source of nutrients and a sink for oxygen, are very difficult to predict [Conley et al., 2009; Hermans et al., 2019].

The dependence of reoxygenation effects, either from aeration or from pumping, on site-specific biological, chemical, and physical characteristics, which are often poorly known and differ greatly worldwide, also hinders predictions of responses. Yet accurately predicting the effects of artificial reoxygenation before implementing it is critical and consistent with the precautionary principle that in the absence of scientific certainty, we should act to avoid harm.

This principle can be interpreted to suggest that no measures should be taken in some cases and that in other cases, measures should not be postponed because delay could lead to even more harm. Thus, careful case-by-case assessments of the suitability of artificial reoxygenation at given sites are needed—as is careful monitoring when operations are implemented. Modeling studies are valuable for such assessments [e.g., Koweek et al., 2020] but must be paired and validated with field data.

The potential availability of substantial oxygen supplies to support artificial reoxygenation as a result of increasing green hydrogen production further raises the urgency of suitability assessments [Wallace et al., 2023]. If such supplies can be tapped near coastal areas, they may help make artificial aeration operations logistically more viable and sustainable.

Foundations for Responsible Reoxygenation

For areas found to be potentially well suited for artificial reoxygenation interventions, consensus best practices should be followed when initiating pilot studies or larger implementations. As informed by discussions during a recent meeting organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission’s Global Ocean Oxygen Network, several elements are foundational to these best practices.

Relevant government bodies, such as national and local water management authorities; stakeholders, including representatives of local communities; and scientists should be involved from the outset to safeguard the interests of all parties. Field trials and implementations should consider perceived environmental benefits and risks of the intended intervention, as well as relevant ethical issues, taking into account the intrinsic value of nature.

Monitoring is important for understanding baseline conditions and assessing the effects of reoxygenation on water quality and ecology, including termination effects after an intervention ceases.

Key biological, chemical, and physical parameters of the system where the intervention will occur (as well as of a reference site) should be monitored before, during, and afterward. This monitoring is important for understanding baseline conditions and assessing the effects of reoxygenation on water quality and ecology, including termination effects after an intervention ceases. Continued measurements over years to decades are also critical to determine longer-term effects.

Finally, the results of all field trials, including failures, should be reported completely, transparently, and publicly.

Artificial reoxygenation is unlikely to be a permanent solution to declining ocean oxygen, and it cannot replace essential measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient inputs to ocean waters. But with science-based suitability assessments and ethical, environmentally safe practices, reoxygenation interventions might prove beneficial in some places, allowing temporary mitigation of the detrimental consequences of coastal deoxygenation.

Acknowledgments

This feature article summarizes the discussion of a workshop on marine reoxygenation organized by the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO2NE) on 10–11 September 2024. We thank all participants for their contributions: D. Austin, L. Bach, L. Bopp, D. Breitburg, A. Canning, D. Conley, M. Dai, B. DeWitte, H. Enevoldsen, E. Ferrar, A. Galan, V. Garcon, M. Gregoire, B. Gustafsson,, D. Gutierrez, A. Hylén, K. Isensee, R. Lamond, M. Li, K. Limburg, I. Montes, J. Sterling, A. Tan Shau Hwai, J. Testa, D. Wallace, J. Waniek, and M. Yasuhara.

References

Breitburg, D., et al. (2018), Declining oxygen in the global ocean and coastal waters, Science, 359, 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aam7240.

Conley, D. J., et al. (2009), Tackling hypoxia in the Baltic Sea: Is engineering a solution?, Environ. Sci. Technol., 43, 3,407–3,411, https://doi.org/10.1021/es8027633.

Fennel, K., and J. M. Testa (2019), Biogeochemical controls on coastal hypoxia, Annu. Rev. Mar. Sci., 11, 105–130, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-010318-095138.

Grégoire, M., et al. (2023), Ocean Oxygen: The Role of the Ocean in the Oxygen We Breathe and the Threat of Deoxygenation, edited by A. Rodriguez Perez et al., Future Sci. Brief 10, Eur. Mar. Board, Ostend, Belgium, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7941157.

Harris, L. A., et al. (2015), Optimizing recovery of eutrophic estuaries: Impact of destratification and re-aeration on nutrient and dissolved oxygen dynamics, Ecol. Eng., 75, 470–483, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2014.11.028.

Hermans, M., et al. (2019), Impact of natural re-oxygenation on the sediment dynamics of manganese, iron and phosphorus in a euxinic Baltic Sea basin, Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, 246, 174–196, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2018.11.033.

Koweek, D. A., et al. (2020), Evaluating hypoxia alleviation through induced downwelling, Sci. Total Environ., 719, 137334, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137334.

Lapham L. L., et al. (2022), The effects of engineered aeration on atmospheric methane flux from a Chesapeake Bay tidal tributary, Front. Environ. Sci., 10, 866152, https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.866152.

Lehtoranta, J., et al. (2022), Different responses to artificial ventilation in two stratified coastal basins, Ecol. Eng., 179, 106611, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2022.106611.

Stigebrandt, A., et al. (2015), An experiment with forced oxygenation of the deepwater of the anoxic By Fjord, western Sweden, Ambio, 44(1), 42–54, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0524-9.

Wallace, D., et al. (2023), Can green hydrogen production be used to mitigate ocean deoxygenation? A scenario from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Mitigation Adapt. Strategies Global Change, 28, 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-023-10094-1.

Żygadłowska, O. M., et al. (2024), Eutrophication and deoxygenation drive high methane emissions from a brackish coastal system, Environ. Sci. Technol., 58, 10,582–10,590, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c00702.

Author Information

Caroline P. Slomp (caroline.slomp@ru.nl), Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands; also at Utrecht University, Netherlands; and Andreas Oschlies, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany

Citation: Slomp, C. P., and A. Oschlies (2025), Could bubbling oxygen revitalize dying coastal seas?, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250163. Published on 1 May 2025. Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Historic wildfires broke out in South Korea in late March 2025, killing 32 people, injuring 45, and displacing about 37,000. In total, the fires burned more than 100,000 hectares (about 247,000 acres), nearly quadruple the area that burned in the country’s previous worst recorded fire season in 2000. (In comparison, the January 2025 Palisades and Eaton Fires in Southern California burned about 91,000 hectares, or 37,000 acres.)

“This study adds to a growing body of science showing how climate change is making weather conditions more favorable to dangerous wildfires.”

A new study by scientists with World Weather Attribution (WWA) suggests that atmospheric warming—caused primarily by fossil fuel burning—made the hot, dry, and windy conditions that drove the South Korean fires about twice as likely and 15% more intense.

About 5,000 buildings burned, including homes, industrial structures, farms, and cultural heritage sites such as the Gounsa Temple in Uiseong, which was originally built in 618 CE.

Credit: World Weather Attribution

“The scale and speed of the fires were unlike anything we’ve ever experienced in South Korea,” said June-Yi Lee, an atmospheric scientist at Pusan National University and the Institute for Basic Science, in a statement. “This study adds to a growing body of science showing how climate change is making weather conditions more favorable to dangerous wildfires.”

Hot, Dry, and Windy

WWA researchers examined the Hot-Dry-Windy Index (HDWI) across the entire country for the month of March. This metric calculates fire risk from temperature, humidity, and wind speed observations.

The combination of high temperatures, low humidity, and high wind speeds that occurred from 22 to 26 March were unusual, even for today’s climate, the researchers found. Such conditions are expected to occur in March only once every 340 years. But this combination of conditions would have been even rarer in a preindustrial climate, occurring only once every 744 years.

The study suggests that the trend in the HDWI was driven primarily by unseasonably high temperatures.

“From March 22–26, the daily maximum average temperature in southeastern Korea averaged around 25°C, which was 10°C higher than the normal March average,” Lee said in a press briefing. Little rain fell in the region this winter, which, combined with high temperatures, led to drier, more flammable fuels. Relative humidity was around 20% at the time of the fires, not unusual for March. Wind speeds on 25 March reached up to 25 meters per second, a short-lived spike that helped the fires spread quickly.

The WWA team also calculated that if the climate warms by another 1.3°C by 2100, the HDWI will continue to increase, with the conditions behind such fires growing another 2 times as likely.

The nature of WWA’s rapid response studies means they are not peer reviewed, but they have published peer-reviewed studies on the methodology they use in all of their analyses. The study marks the World Weather Attribution’s 100th rapid analysis since the organization formed in 2014. It is the sixth to focus on a wildfire.

Credit: World Weather Attribution A Strong Case

ClimaMeter, another project that examines how extreme weather events may have been affected by a changing climate, released a study about South Korea’s wildfires on 25 March. (As with the WWA study, it was not peer reviewed but used peer-reviewed methods.)

ClimaMeter uses a different methodology than WWA does but had similar findings, reporting that the meteorological conditions leading up to the fires were about 2°C hotter, 30% drier, and 10% windier compared with similar past events.

“For the moment, it’s more difficult to prove that climate change did not affect an event.”

Davide Faranda, a physicist with the French National Centre for Scientific Research and coordinator of ClimaMeter, pointed out that their study showed climate change strengthened the meteorological conditions conducive to fires, not necessarily that climate change caused the fires. He was not involved with the WWA study but noted that the two groups’ rapid response studies often arrive at similar or complementary findings.

“For the moment, it’s more difficult to prove that climate change did not affect an event,” he said.

“A decade ago, the influence of climate change on events was less clear. But now it’s undeniable. The wildfires in South Korea are a case in point,” said Friederike Otto, WWA colead and a climatologist at Imperial College London, in a statement.

—Emily Dieckman (@emfurd.bsky.social), Associate Editor

Citation: Dieckman, E. (2025), Climate change heightened conditions of South Korean fires, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250170. Published on 30 April 2025. Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Source: Community Science

Research shows that communities are best able to mitigate the effects of climate change when they can work alongside scientists on adaptation plans. Hanson et al. recently extended this finding to Indigenous communities in the Colorado Plateau, including members of the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe, and Ute Mountain Ute Tribe.

To learn more about the qualities that make climate education most accessible to these groups, the researchers conducted a series of listening circles, interviews, and consultations with Indigenous peoples and Westerners with extensive experience working in Indigenous communities. They collaborated with members of the Nature Conservancy’s Native American Tribes Upholding Restoration and Education, or NATURE, program, which aims to equip Indigenous college students with natural resource management skills.

Several themes emerged. Indigenous students are most likely to engage in climate education when they’re actively recruited for a program, when mentors are willing to learn from students as well as teach them, and when a program emphasizes the value of integrating Traditional Knowledges with Western science, for instance. Small class sizes and ample one-on-one instruction also keep students engaged.

On the basis of these findings, the researchers created a climate module that can be taught as part of a broader college-level environmental science curriculum, for example, as part of a program like NATURE. The module is “menu style,” meaning that instructors and students can choose the activities they find appealing from an array of options. One option is classroom lessons on issues that are relevant to the Colorado Plateau, such as water conservation and cattle management. Another involves field trips, such as a day trip down the Colorado River, during which guides provide insights into how climate change is altering the landscape.

Indigenous students are “uniquely positioned to engage in environmental restoration” because they have deep connections with natural systems, the researchers wrote. This collaboratively designed program could help students achieve this potential, they say. (Community Science, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023CSJ000054, 2025)

—Saima May Sidik (@saimamay.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Sidik, S. M. (2025), Teaming up to tailor climate education for Indigenous communities, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250166. Published on 30 April 2025. Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Source: AGU Advances

Hundreds of millions of people live in areas that could be affected by volcanic eruptions. Fortunately, clues at the surface, such as earthquakes and ground deformation, can indicate movement within underground magma dikes—sheets of magma that cut across layers of rock. Scientists can use these clues to make potentially lifesaving predictions of eruptions.

But there is room for improvement. Eruption predictions rely on modeling magma dikes, and most models treat magma as a simple Newtonian fluid (like water) whose viscosity stays constant under stress. However, magma’s crystals and bubbles make it more likely to behave as a non-Newtonian fluid whose viscosity decreases under greater stress (known as shear thinning). That’s especially true as it approaches the surface. Ketchup behaves similarly: It pours more easily from a jar when shaken.

Lab experiments by Kavanagh et al. reveal new insights into the potential dynamics of non-Newtonian magma flow in dikes. These findings could ultimately help improve eruption prediction strategies.

To mimic magma dikes, the researchers injected various fluids into a translucent and elastic solid gelatin material representing Earth’s crust. The injected fluids contained suspended tracer particles that could be illuminated by laser light, allowing the researchers to track each fluid’s flow within the forming dike as it traveled up from the injection site to the surface, where it “erupted” from the gelatin. They compared the behaviors of two non-Newtonian shear-thinning fluids, hydroxyethyl cellulose (a thickener often found in cosmetics) and xanthan gum (a thickener often added to foods), to water, a Newtonian fluid.

The experiments showed that the flow patterns of these fluids were very different from the flow patterns of water. However, even though their internal flow patterns differed, all fluids formed dikes with a similar shape and speed as they approached the surface.

These findings suggest that the primary information currently used to predict impending eruptions—such as the shape and speed of magma dikes—does not necessarily correlate with information about magma flow dynamics within the dikes. This result is significant because flow dynamics depend on magma characteristics that can affect how explosive an eruption will be or how quickly or how far the lava will travel.

Further research could help link these findings to real-world geological evidence and explore how they might help to improve eruption forecasting, the researchers say. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024AV001495, 2025)

—Sarah Stanley, Science Writer

Citation: Stanley, S. (2025), Matching magma dikes may have different flow patterns, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250167. Published on 30 April 2025. Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth

Supercritical fluids—hydrous silicate liquids where water and melt become fully miscible—are believed to play a key role in chemical transport and element redistribution in subduction zones. However, the atomic-scale processes underlying their high mobility are poorly understood.

Chen et al. [2025] use first-principle molecular dynamics simulations to examine the diopside–H2O system over a wide range of water contents, pressures (up to 12 gigapascals), and temperature (3000 kelvin). Their results show that water promotes the breakdown of the silicate network by converting bridging oxygens (BOs) into non-bridging oxygens (NBOs), leading to the formation of smaller, less polymerized silicate clusters with greater diffusivity and structural stability. This depolymerization enhances atomic mobility and reduces viscosity, with strong linear correlations observed between polymerization degree and transport properties. The findings identify water-induced depolymerization as the primary mechanism behind the high mobility of supercritical fluids.

These insights have broad implications for understanding magma transport dynamics and the geochemical signatures—such as uranium-thorium disequilibria—in arc lavas. The study highlights the critical role of water in regulating the structure and dynamics of silicate fluids in subduction-related magmatic and mineralizing processes.

Citation: Chen, B., Song, J., Zhang, Y., Wang, W., Zhao, Y., Wu, Z., & Wu, X. (2025). Water dissolution driving high mobility of diopside-H2O supercritical fluid. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 130, e2024JB030956.  https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JB030956  

—Jun Tsuchiya, Editor, JGR: Solid Earth

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The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.

I have frequently highlighted the growing impact of multiple landslide events triggered by extreme rainfall around the world. Whilst there is little doubt that such events are becoming more common, they have occurred through history too. I recently came across a paper (Fiorillo et al. 2019) that documented such an event in 1954. The account is fascinating.

The paper sought to use historic aerial images and topographic data to reconstruct an inventory of the landslide triggered during this event. The location is the area around the villages of Vietri sul Mare and Maiori, which are sited on the beautiful Amalfi Coast in the Campania region of southern Italy. This is the area in the vicinity of [40.67, 14.73] – the Google Earth image below shows the landscape as it is today:-

Google Earth image of the modern setting of the 1954 landslides on the Amalfi Coast in Italy.

The analysis of Fiorillo et al. (2019) indicates that in parts of this area, 500 mm of rainfall fell in the storm that triggered these landslides. They have mapped over 1,500 landslides triggered by the storm – these are shown in the map below:-

Landslides triggered during the 1954 rainfall event on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. Map by Fiorillo et al. (2019).

As the map shows, the density of landslides was extremely high in the hills above Vietri sul Mare and Maiori. The failures were mostly shallow landslides, with many transitioning into channelised debris flows.

In total, it is believed that 316 people lost their lives in this disaster. There is some archive footage of the aftermath in the Youtube video below:-

Reference

Fiorillo, F., Guerriero, L., Capobianco, L., Pagnozzi, M., Revellino, P., Russo, F., and Guadagno, F. M., 2019. Inventory of Vietri-Maiori landslides induced by the storm of October 1954 (southern Italy). Journal of Maps, 15 (2), 530–537. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2019.1626777

Return to The Landslide Blog homepage Text © 2023. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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body {background-color: #D2D1D5;} Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

The EPA plans to cancel 781 grants, almost all focused on environmental justice, according to a court document filed last week.

In Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council v. Department of Agriculture, a coalition of nonprofits is challenging the Trump administration’s freezing of funding from the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. In the recent court document, Daniel Coogan, an administrator in the Office of Mission Support for the EPA, stated that the agency completed a grant-by-grant review of its awards to ensure that grants aligned with administration priorities. Those that were not aligned were targeted for termination.

All 781 grants targeted for termination fall under programs formed by the IRA, a 2022 law that helped to promote clean energy and bolster environmental projects. Most of the grants are part of EPA programs focused on environmental justice and include projects to help some of the United States’ most environmentally disadvantaged communities be resilient to the effects of climate change and protect residents from pollution. 

According to the court document, 377 grantees have been notified that their funding has been terminated, and the remaining 404 grantees will receive notices within the next two weeks. 

Hundreds of grantees’ projects will be affected by the terminations. In one such project, San Diego nonprofit Casa Familiar expected to receive $12.7 million to help a majority-Latino community obtain low-cost, zero-emission transportation and indoor air monitors and purifiers. The group has been unable to withdraw funds for months and now awaits notification that their grant has been terminated. In another example, the community of Chiloquin, Oregon, now expects that a planned community center and disaster shelter may never be built after the EPA suspended funding for the project.

 
Related

•  EPA is Canceling Nearly 800 Environmental Justice Grants, Court Filing Reveals
•  Democrats Demand EPA Reverse Termination of Grants for Clean Air and Water
•  Court Filing From Daniel Coogan
• Get Involved: AGU Science Policy Action Center
 

The news of the cancellations comes shortly after hundreds of EPA employees working on diversity, equity, and inclusion and environmental justice issues were given notice that they would be fired or reassigned.

According to the Washington Post, experts are concerned that the EPA did not conduct the full grant-by-grant review process required to terminate ongoing grants. “They’re claiming to the court that each one of those was done on an individualized basis, even though they haven’t shown any evidence,” Jillian Blanchard, vice president of climate change and environmental justice at Lawyers for Good Government, told the Washington Post.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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