EOS

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

Space weather impacts caused by interplanetary disturbances of solar origin, such as coronal mass ejections, are coupled to Earth’s ionized upper atmosphere by electric currents travelling along magnetic field lines (field-aligned currents). These have historically been difficult to routinely measure with high spatial resolution of global coverage, with the best global monitoring to date from the AMPERE project, driven by IRIDIUM-Next telecommunications satellite data (drawn from six orbital planes).

In recent years, the number of satellites in low-Earth orbit has increased significantly; the OneWeb constellation has seen over 1,300 additional launches from 2019 to 2024. This recent mega-constellation uses 12 orbital planes, with a tighter distribution of satellites along each orbital plane.

By using the engineering data from these satellites, Archer et al. [2025] demonstrate that this data set can be used to derive global field-aligned currents at unprecedented resolution, showing that non-science grade instrumentation and commercial satellites have enormous potential scientific utility. The work performed here also highlights the challenges that need to be addressed with industry partners if the scientific community is to enable further advances with these platforms, and in turn provide datasets for space weather research and operations applications, helping protect critical infrastructure.

Citation: Archer, M. O., Evans, V., Eastwood, J. P., Camus, L.-A., Waters, C. L., Brown, P., & Armogathe, F. (2025). First detection of field-aligned currents using engineering magnetometers from the OneWeb mega-constellation. Space Weather, 23, e2025SW004573. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025SW004573

—Steven K. Morley, Editor, Space Weather

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.

It is reported that 51 people have been killed by a series of debris flows in Kenya, triggered by heavy rainfall.

On 31 October 2025, heavy rainfall triggered a series of large landslides in the vicinity of Chesongoch in Elgeyo Marakwet County, Kenya. To date, 26 people are known to have been killed and it is believed that a further 25 are missing, although continued heavy rainfall has led to a suspension of the rescue efforts.

Chesongoch is located at [1.12864, 35.64426]. Immediately to the west lies the Elgeyo Escarpment, a part of the Great Rift Valley.

This is a Planet satellite image of the area captured on the day of the landslides, but before the rainfall arrived:-

The site of the 31 October 2025 landslides at Chesongoch, in Elgeyo Marakwet county, Kenya. Image copyright Planet, used with permission, dated 31 October 2025.

And here is the same area on 3 November 2025, after the disaster:-

The aftermath of the 31 October 2025 landslides at Chesongoch, in Elgeyo Marakwet county, Kenya. Image copyright Planet, used with permission, dated 3 November 2025.

And here is a slider to allow comparison:-

Images copyright Planet.

Note that the post-disaster image is a composite of two images taken at different times on 3 November, which is why there is a cloud with an apparently strange linear edge in the centre of the image.

The post-event image shows a series of large channelised debris flows that have started on the Elgeyo Escarpment and travelled towards the east. The precise number is unclear (there are further examples to the north of the area covered by the image) because of the cloud, but there are at least five complexes in the area. These are likely to have started as shallow failures on the higher slopes, and there is considerable evidence of them eroding their channels. This is the area around Chesongoch itself, for example:-

The aftermath of the 31 October 2025 landslides at Chesongoch, in Elgeyo Marakwet county, Kenya. Image copyright Planet, used with permission, dated 3 November 2025.

Note that on the lower slopes, some of the debris flows have escaped from the channel to flow across the open hillslopes. It is likely that this accounts for some of the fatalities.

We will need to await better imagery to understand fully the initiation of these landslides, but this is a very cloudy area.

On Sunday, a further landslide hit the area, striking the town of Kipkenda [0.76202, 35.54115] to the south of Chesongoch. It is reported that two people were killed.

In April 2020, this area was affected by another series of debris flows, killing 15 people.

Reference

Planet Team 2024. Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA. https://www.planet.com/

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Wildfires in the rainy, humid Amazon might once have seemed unlikely, but the region is changing. In 2010 and 2015, the Amazon experienced record-breaking droughts and hot weather. Again in 2024, those records were smashed, in part by an extreme El Niño. A new study published in Biogeosciences reveals that the resulting fire season was the worst in 2 decades, pushing fires past deforestation as the Amazon’s biggest carbon emitter.

A Survey of Fire

Deforestation permanently converts forests to other land uses, most often for agriculture. Forest degradation, on the other hand, involves temporary damage to forested land. Degradation can be caused by forces such as droughts, fires, and smaller-scale logging operations and is less well documented than deforestation.

Since 1990, Clément Bourgoin and René Beuchle, both remote sensing researchers at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and authors of the new study, have been documenting forest degradation in the Amazon by tracking forest cover in satellite images. “We follow the fate of every single forest, whether it’s undisturbed or degraded,” Bourgoin said. In 2024, they kept up with reports of droughts and wildfires torching vast swaths of the Amazon. But they noticed that there weren’t available statistics on exactly how much forest had been affected.

“We tried to put numbers [to] the diffuse notion that something extraordinary has been happening in terms of forest fires.”

“We felt a clear lack of information that was there,” said Beuchle. “So we tried to put numbers [to] the diffuse notion that something extraordinary has been happening in terms of forest fires.”

The researchers’ tropical moist forest dataset classifies forest disturbances as either deforestation or degradation. They combined this dataset with the Global Wildfire Information System dataset, which uses thermal sensors on satellites to detect wildfires. By overlaying the two datasets, the researchers could align regions of large-scale forest degradation with those that had experienced forest fires.

A 2-Decade Record

The researchers expected to see forest degradation from fire, but Bourgoin said they were “quite surprised about the magnitude.” The analysis revealed that 3.3 million hectares of forest—approximately the same area as the state of Maryland—were affected by fires last year. Though deforestation in 2024 actually dropped by 20% compared to the average from 2019 to 2023, forest degradation, linked mainly to fires, increased by 400%. By area, forest degradation surpassed deforestation by more than 4 times in 2024, marking a shift in the threats to the Amazon’s health.

“We were unprepared for the sheer mass of burnt forest that we found in Bolivia. It was a shock.”

Brazil and Bolivia suffered the worst losses. In 2024, Bolivia lost 9% of all its intact forest to fire. “We were unprepared for the sheer mass of burnt forest that we found in Bolivia,” Beuchle said. “It was a shock.” Brazil saw the highest level of forest degradation on record.

The researchers estimate that the fires released 791 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a sevenfold increase from the average of the preceding 2 years. This amount of carbon dioxide marks an ominous transition: that of wildfire emissions surpassing deforestation emissions. The consequences also extend far beyond a single year, as burnt forests may continue to emit carbon for 7 years or longer after a fire.

“Everyone knew [2024] was going to break the records 6 months before” the El Niño even started, said Bernardo Flores, an ecologist at the Instituto Juruá and the University of Santiago de Compostela who wasn’t involved in the study. He said the study was important to quantify the extent of fire damage and show how strong El Niños will increase the burnt area. “That’s good science.”

“Fires are probably one of the main drivers of degradation that could lead to a tipping point.”

Flores also noted a warning in the new study’s data that will make fire prevention even more crucial. The degradation caused by burning makes the forest more susceptible to burning again in the future, so the huge regions of the Amazon that burned in 2024 could contribute to worsening fires in future drought years. This feedback cycle could make it harder for the Amazon forest to regenerate. “Fires are probably one of the main drivers of degradation that could lead to a tipping point,” after which the forest would no longer be able to regenerate and would become permanently degraded, Flores said.

Public and governmental awareness of the magnitude of the wildfires is an especially important step in avoiding the tipping point in the Amazon, where nearly all fires are human caused—either for agricultural purposes or to facilitate illegal deforestation. Next, the researchers plan to track how past disturbances may influence future degradation and to study how well the regions that burned in 2024 recover over time. Still, for now, they are making their data publicly available to help guide fire-safe policies in the area in the hopes of preventing irreversible damage to the Amazon. “It helps to put degradation on the agenda,” Bourgoin said.

—Andrew Chapman (@andrewchapman.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Chapman, A. (2025), Fire, not deforestation, is now the Amazon’s biggest carbon emitter, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250411. Published on 3 November 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.

Marine heat waves describe instances of extraordinarily warm waters that can linger at the surface of the ocean for months. Much like the heat waves we experience on land, marine heat waves can alter environmental chemistry and disrupt biological processes. While catastrophic losses of megafauna are hard-to-miss indicators of a system in distress, researchers are now starting to amass enough data to understand how microbial organisms at the base of the ocean’s food webs are also responding to heat waves.

A new study published in Nature Communications presents a decade of measurements documenting two successive heat waves in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. The paper’s interdisciplinary team of authors used a combination of an autonomous robotic float, a research cruise, and satellite data to understand how microbial communities in the region reorganized in response to the extreme events.

The researchers discovered that production of organic matter increased at the ocean surface during the heat waves, but the carbon-rich particles didn’t sink or swim—rather, they just stayed in place.

The Biological Carbon Pump

Phytoplankton—tiny photosynthesizing microbes—prime the biological carbon pump. By using sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2) to grow, they draw carbon out of the atmosphere and into the ocean’s carbon cycle. Zooplankton graze on the vast fields of these plantlike organisms, transporting carbon deeper into the water column in the form of fecal pellets and chunks of half-eaten plankton. Eventually, some of these particles sink deep enough to feed ecosystems of the deep ocean.

“The capacity for the ocean to sequester carbon relies on microbes at the base of the food web.”

This carbon pump represents a globally relevant buffer against the impacts of climate change, as the ocean absorbs approximately a quarter of CO2 emitted by human activity. Some estimates suggest that our current atmospheric concentration of CO2 could increase by as much as 50% if the biological carbon pump stopped shuttling carbon to the depths of the ocean.

“The capacity for the ocean to sequester carbon relies on microbes at the base of the food web, so it’s very important that we start understanding what these impacts from marine heat waves are on the microbial communities,” explained Mariana Bif, lead author of the new study. Bif is an assistant professor at the University of Miami and was previously a researcher with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).

When the Food Web Gets Tangled

In both of the marine heat waves tracked in the study, researchers found that the biological carbon pump showed signs of overheating. Carbon-rich particles loitered at approximately 200 meters (660 feet) below the surface, but during the two heat waves, different mechanisms caused the pileup.

The first heat wave included in the study began in 2013, when unusually weak winds over the Pacific failed to blow the warm air of summer back to the mainland of the United States. The heat wave, dubbed “the Blob,” made headlines as warm, stagnant, oxygen-deficient waters resulted in massive die-offs of fauna from all corners of the Pacific before dissipating in 2015.

In 2019, patchy cloud cover over the ocean and a shallower mixed layer at the sea surface set the stage for another heat wave to sweep the northeastern Pacific. This second heat wave brought temperatures right back up and became known as “the Blob 2.0.”

Bif and her coauthors found that during both heat waves, the marine microbial community went through a change in its “middle managers.”

Within the initial Blob years, physical and chemical conditions favored smaller phytoplankton species, which in turn favored a new herd of zooplankton grazers. This discrete food web eventually created an ocean layer full of organic particles that were too light to sink into the denser waters of the deep.

During the Blob 2.0, concentrations of particulate organic matter were even higher, but the increase wasn’t all from primary production. This time, conditions favored thrifty species. Organisms that could opportunistically feast on detritus and lower-quality organic matter became more prevalent, showing that the system was cycling and recycling carbon to keep it at the top of the water column. Within this community, parasites thrived, and organisms (including a group of radiolarians) that had never previously been seen in the northeastern Pacific started becoming regulars.

Measuring in the Middle of Nowhere

The array of technology used in the study distinguishes it from previous efforts to catalog the effects of marine heat waves.

“We’re now moving into an era of ‘big data’ in ocean biogeochemistry, whereas before we were just restricted to what we could collect from ships.”

“We’re now moving into an era of ‘big data’ in ocean biogeochemistry, whereas before we were just restricted to what we could collect from ships,” said Stephanie Henson, a principal scientist at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, U.K. Henson was not involved in the study.

Henson explained that autonomous floats and other advanced monitoring systems are allowing researchers to work with datasets that span beyond the length of a research cruise.

“People have been studying marine heat wave responses in systems like coral reefs and so on,” Henson said, explaining that researchers have observed that not every biological response is the same from one marine heat wave to the next. However, she noted that this study was the first she’s seen that demonstrates that ocean carbon fluxes are also having complex responses to marine heat waves.

To check the vital signs of the Pacific before, during, and after each of the heat waves, the researchers tapped into the Global Ocean Biogeochemistry Array (GO-BGC). GO-BGC instruments are a subset of the Argo array, a global network of thousands of autonomous robotic floats. Each float drifts freely in ocean currents, keeping tabs on pH, salinity, temperature, and more.

Mariana Bif gets ready to deploy a GO-BGC float in the Bay of Bengal. The float will drift freely in ocean currents at approximately 1,000 to 2,000 meters deep, returning to the surface every 10 days to send data about ocean temperature, salinity, and chemistry via satellite to researchers back on shore. (The Indian Ocean was not part of the new study, but Bif used GO-BGC floats in the Pacific to conduct the research.) Credit: Sudheesh Keloth, July 2025

Despite all that they can do, the floats are not able to collect microbial samples. For this, instead of Bif seeking the data, the data came to Bif.

Steven Hallam, a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia and a coauthor on the new study, reached out to Bif after reading an interview with her about her work on marine heat waves. He had a hunch that the planktonic DNA samples stored in his lab’s freezer might be helpful for Bif’s investigation into the ocean’s carbon cycle. Scientists in Hallam’s lab group had previously published research about bacterial communities in the same region, using samples collected during research cruises along the Line P transect off the coast of British Columbia.

After some back-and-forth via email, Hallam’s lab group reran the samples, expanding the analysis from bacteria to the entire community composition, resulting in a significant contribution to Bif’s study.

While the story of how the planktonic DNA came to Bif is a testament to the power of science communication and collaboration, Henson noted that the Line P transects “don’t necessarily overlap spatially with the regions of greatest impact of the marine heat waves” and combining datasets of different scales (such as shipboard data and the autonomous float datasets) should be done cautiously.

Still, Henson added, “it’s the best we can do, at the moment.”

Lingering Uncertainties

As for future research, Bif is involved in a few new projects exploring marine deoxygenated regions but said, “My focus is always the BGC-Argo floats.”

Bif noted that it will be interesting to look at BGC-Argo data from the floats that are in the middle of the marine heat wave currently affecting the North Pacific. That heat wave is already showing signs of slowing down, though scientists say it will likely hang around through the winter.

“I’m not sure if this one is going to have the legs that some of these previous marine heat waves in the region had,” said Nick Bond, who was not involved in this research but studied marine heat waves as part of his previous role as the Washington state climatologist. He is now a senior research scientist at the University of Washington.

“What we don’t measure, we can’t understand. We need more investments into monitoring the ocean.”

Bond added that while there’s “tentative evidence” that climate warming may be increasing the frequency of marine heat waves in the Pacific, there’s still much more to learn before scientists can accurately forecast how they will behave in the future.

Meanwhile, another looming unknown for this field of research is developing back onshore.

“There is a bit of a concern in the community because at the moment, for the global Argo program, the U.S. contributes about half of the floats that are deployed,” said Henson, her concern alluding to recent budget cuts to nearly all areas of federally funded research in the United States. However, she explained that other countries are stepping up with contributions to keep the Argo program afloat.

“What we don’t measure, we can’t understand. We need more investments into monitoring the ocean,” said Bif.

—Mack Baysinger (@mack-baysinger.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Baysinger, M. (2025), Marine heat waves slow the ocean’s carbon flow, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250410. Published on 3 November 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

In a new study, Schnaubelt et al. [2025] examine how ‘atmospheric rivers’—bands of storms that carry large amounts of moisture through the atmosphere—impacted the Greenland Ice Sheet during a past warm period called the Last Interglacial, about 130,000 to 115,000 years ago. Using detailed computer models of Earth’s climate, the researchers find that changes in Earth’s orbit and atmospheric moisture controlled the timing and intensity of these storm systems reaching Greenland.

Early in the Last Interglacial, more atmospheric rivers occurred during summer months, causing significant melting around the ice sheet’s edges. Later in the period, atmospheric rivers became more frequent in winter, bringing increased snowfall instead.

The authors also find that conditions during that ancient warm period were similar to what scientists expect in future climate scenarios. This suggests that increased atmospheric moisture in the Arctic and more summertime atmospheric rivers will accelerate Greenland’s ice sheet melting in the coming centuries. By comparing past and future climates, this research shows how large-scale storm patterns and moisture transport influence ice sheet stability in a warming world.

Citation: Schnaubelt, J. C., Tabor, C. R., Otto-Bliesner, B. L., & Lora, J. M. (2025). Atmospheric river impacts on the Greenland ice sheet through the Last Interglacial. AGU Advances, 6, e2025AV001653. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV001653

—Francois Primeau, Editor, AGU Advances

Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Some videos have emerged from Afghanistan this morning, reportedly showing landslides and rockfalls triggered by the M=6.3 earthquake.

At 12:59 am on 3 November 2025 (local time, which is 20:29 UT on 2 November 2025), an M=6.3 earthquake struck near to Mazar-E Sharif in Afghanistan. Initial reports suggest at least 20 fatalities have occurred, but the USGS PAGER estimate is a 40% probability of fatalities in the range of 100 – 1,000, and a 37% probability of fatalities of >1,000. That this earthquake has struck as winter approaches is likely to increase the impact over the coming months.

There are some initial reports and images of landslides. Of course, at this stage these are unconfirmed. But on social media there are two reports of particular interest. The first purportedly shows a large failure in in Marmal district of Balkh province. I have stopped using Twitter, but Jahanzeb Khan, who is an independent journalist for women and human rights violations in Afghanistan, has posted this video there:-

#URGENT: The situation in Marmal district of Balkh province after the earthquake is extremely concerning. Local residents are in difficult conditions and in urgent need of medical and humanitarian assistance.

The situation is worsening in many other districts and provinces. pic.twitter.com/Xo7o2eyKPw

— Jahanzeb Khan (@Jahanzeb_Khan20) November 3, 2025

This appears to show a large, complex landslide, possibly rotational in nature:-

A landslide reportedly triggered by the 3 November 2025 earthquake in Afghanistan. Image from a video posted to Twitter by Jahanzeb Khan.

Meanwhile, another journalist, Abdulhaq Omeri, has posted a video that appears to show a road severely damaged by rockfalls. There appears to be some injured people from these events:-

په افغانستان کې وروستۍ زلزلې زیانونه اړولي دي. #earthquake #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/dhHhigSLQh

— Abdulhaq Omeri (@AbdulhaqOmeri) November 3, 2025

There are reports that the road between Kabul and Mazar is blocked by landslides. The USGS initial map of intensity and landslides looks like this:-

USGS MMI and landslide forecast map for the 3 November 2025 earthquake in Afghanistan. Map as of 07:20 UTC on 3 November 2025.

The east-west orientated ridge just to the north of the earthquake epicentre appears to have high landslide potential, and the Kabul-Mazar highway, which cuts through this area, is reported to be blocked. This could impede the delivery of assistance, worsening the impact of building collapses.

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

A new study by Hopkins et al. [2025], which was recently published in Community Science’s special collection on “Transdisciplinary Collaboration for Sustainable Agriculture,” looks at how small- and mid-scale farmers and ranchers see the future of agriculture. It also examines how uncertainty about that future affects their mental health, decision-making, and ability to keep their farms running.

The authors interviewed 31 farmers in Georgia, asking about the challenges they face. These included money problems, a shrinking farm workforce, more complex regulations, and difficulties in passing farms on to the next generation. Many of these personal concerns were tied to bigger worries about agriculture overall, such as the growing gap between farmers and non-farmers, the rise of corporate-owned farms, changing weather patterns, and possible risks to the country’s food supply. These challenges often left farmers feeling alone, undervalued, and discouraged.

The study gives a rare long-term view of how farming communities can remain sustainable and resilient. It calls for strategies and policies that truly reflect farmers’ experiences and concerns—both for today’s problems and for future challenges—and that address not just immediate issues but also the deeper, systemic causes of stress in agriculture.

Citation: Hopkins, N., Weatherly, C., Reece, C., & Proctor, C. (2025). “At some point, you just run out of road”: Farmers’ concerns about the future of agriculture. Community Science, 4, e2025CSJ000140. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025CSJ000140

—Claire Beveridge, Editor, Community Science

Text © 2025. 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: AGU Advances

NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) was the first space-based sensor designed to study the Earth’s global carbon cycle and retrieves precise and accurate measurements of column CO2 from which fluxes of carbon over land and ocean may be inferred. The spectroscopic measurements, calibrated against an in-situ network, sample the atmosphere so that regional-to-continental fluxes can be quantified.

Svoboda et al. [2025] point out the enormous societal value of the OCO-2 observations from these satellites that in the normal course of events could continue providing gold-standard data for another decade.

Over its decade-plus in operation, OCO-2 has unraveled long-standing mysteries (Liu et al., 2017) and quantified massive events like the Australian fires in 2019-2020 (Byrne et al., 2021). Its most unexpected result was not from the CO2 retrieval, but rather from a serendipitous by-product! By virtue of its spectral resolution, OCO-2 ‘sees’ the faint glow, invisible to the naked eye, plants produce as chlorophyl molecules absorb photons. This glow, quantified, has turned about to be an extraordinary tool for studying plants and has proved to be amongst the most sensitive early warning signs of plant stress. It is well on its way to being a crucial way of measuring growth and anticipating stress in forest and agricultural landscapes, yet the mission is proposed for early termination.

Citation: Svoboda, M., Kira, O., Sun, Y., Smith, W. K., Magney, T., Wood, J. D., & Parazoo, N. C. (2025). Monitoring the pulse of America’s natural resources from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions. AGU Advances, 6, e2025AV002063. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV002063

—David Schimel, Editor, AGU Advances

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This is an audio story from Eos, your trusted source for Earth and space science news. Do you like this feature? Let us know in the comments or at eos@agu.org.

TRANSCRIPT

Emily Gardner: Before Chelsea Clifford was an environmental scientist, she was a college student, working at White Mountain Research Center at UCLA, studying bugs.

Chelsea Clifford: While everyone else was doing really glamorous fieldwork in Yosemite, Kings Canyon, places like that, I was borrowing my aunt’s ex-husband’s ’91 manual transmission Honda Civic. I didn’t really know how to do manual and was scared of taking it up in the mountains. And so, when I had the opportunity to do independent research, I had gotten kind of fascinated staring out the window all that summer at these weird decorative ditches they had in the desert, diverted from the irrigation ditches into people’s backyards in the fancier suburbs.

Gardner: Clifford set out to study the invertebrate communities in these ditches, to see how they compared to the communities in natural creeks. That work sent her down a rabbit hole, and she’s still going down.

(The sound of running water fades in).

If you’ve never really thought about ditches, you’re not alone. In fact, according to a new paper written by Clifford and dozens of other researchers, most scientists don’t think about them either. Here’s AJ Reisinger, a freshwater ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist at the University of Florida, who was not an author of the paper.

Reisinger: I do think that ditches are understudied, particularly in terms of their ecological and environmental implications. I think that’s largely driven by the artificial nature of ditches and the fact that ecologists tend to gravitate towards natural settings, natural ecosystems, natural environments. That’s why we get into ecology in the first place, because we’re interested in the environment. And so the artificial nature of ditches kind of precludes a lot of people from being interested or wanting to work in those areas often, I think.

Gardner: And that’s a problem, some scientists say. Because ditches do more than just carry water: They can be sources or sinks of nutrients, transport pollutants, host distinct ecosystems, and even emit greenhouse gases. This is why Clifford and dozens of other scientists came together in 2023 for a workshop to raise the profile of ditch research. The group included biogeochemists, ecologists, biologists, and even archaeologists. They published a perspective paper on their work in Communications Earth and Environment.

Among these self-described “ditchologists” was Michael Peacock, a biogeochemist at the University of Liverpool, where the workshop was held, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala. He and Clifford led this paper together. They started out by—after much discussion—defining a ditch.

Peacock: I think we settled on the definition of a ditch for the paper was a linear constructed waterway that is usually filled with water and is aiming to take that water somewhere else, wherever people want it to go.

Gardner: In addition, ditches are usually narrower than 25 meters across. “Ditch” is also sort of a catchall term. Ditches used for irrigation might be called gripes, catchwaters, or dikes, whereas ditches used for transport might be called canals or waterways, for instance. As the paper points out, people might reach for these words because the word “ditch” has something of a negative connotation. To “ditch” also means “to abandon.” There’s also “dull as ditchwater” and “last-ditch efforts.”

Then the researchers laid out several of the reasons why ditches matter. Clifford gave the example of her hometown, Gloucester, Va., a sea level rise hot spot near the Chesapeake Bay. When saltwater intrusion occurs, it tends to reach ditches first, and is then transported further inland, compromising the freshwater used for crop irrigation or even drinking. Saltwater intrusion can also cause marsh migration, in which salt-tolerant crops move farther inland, and sometimes interfere with agriculture.

Clifford: Basically, what’s happening to the landscape as a whole is often happening to ditches first. Ditches are often headwaters of larger water bodies. So water may, you know, pass through them before going further downstream. So that can be a good spot to monitor and potentially intervene before there are larger issues.

Gardner: The paper points out that ditches can transport materials including microplastics, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, trace metals, pathogens, and PFAS [per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances]. These can affect humans, of course, and also the animal and plant communities in and around ditches.

Gea van der Lee is an aquatic ecology researcher at Wageningen University [and Research] in the Netherlands—a nation home to more than 300,000 kilometers, or about 186,000 miles, of ditches, or canals. In the Netherlands, she said, ditches are seen as a way to drain the land, but their role as a space for biodiversity is overlooked: They host bugs, plants, amphibians, and other animal life. A few years ago, she led a project that found that recording the sounds made in ditches can improve understanding of metabolism in ditches, because it can capture low-frequency sounds, like these, that may correspond to photosynthesis.

(A few seconds of a low-pitched sound play.)

Here’s van der Lee.

Reading List

Lines in the Landscape
(Communications Earth and Environment paper)

Freshwater ecoacoustics: Listening to the ecological status of multi-stressed lowland waters
(Ecological Indicators paper by Gea van der Lee & colleagues)

van der Lee: I found it really nice to be together with because there’s not so many people working on ditches, and then you come together with [a] whole group of ditch nerds that are really excited about ditches.

Gardner: Of course, outside of countries like the Netherlands, ditches don’t always take up a lot of room in the landscape. But Peacock offered a biogeochemistry perspective on why ditches still shouldn’t be overlooked.

Peacock: Generally, they’re small, and we ignore them, but we know they emit a lot of greenhouse gases, particularly methane, and they can sort of exert overwhelming effects on the ecosystem-scale methane balance.

You might have a field that is drained with ditches and the field is a net sink of methane because it’s dry. But the ditches, because they’re wet, which is where the bugs that make methane like to live, the ditches emit loads of methane. And if you add up the ditches and the fields, sometimes the ditches overwhelm the fields, and the landscape can be a small net source of methane. And you would never know that if you didn’t go and look at the ditches.

Gardner: Jeremy Biggs, a freshwater biologist, CEO of the Freshwater Habitats Trust, and visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University, who was also not involved in the paper, said this effort felt timely.

Biggs: It feels quite familiar to me because it feels like the same, the same kind of approach, the same line that we’ve taken with ponds and small waters more generally, that they’ve been neglected and overlooked.

Gardner: “Small waters” include freshwaters like ponds, headwater streams, springs, seepages, and of course ditches. They’re often ignored by researchers and regulators, Biggs said, simply because they’re small.

Biggs: We just assume small things are unimportant. And everyone just assumes that a big lake is more important than a small one and a big river is more important than a small one, and that’s why they’re not in regulations, in essence. But there’s a lot of them. That’s the thing. You don’t notice them, but there’s a lot of them.

Gardner: In earlier work, Peacock came up with the rough estimate that drainage ditches alone may cover up to 10.7 million hectares, or 26 million acres, globally. All this area means there’s also a lot of life in small waters.

Biggs: Although their individual site richness, or what ecologists call alpha diversity, is less than it is for a bigger water body, just as you’d expect, when you put them together in networks, it quite often turns out that they support more species collectively than do the bigger water bodies.

Gardner: Biggs is talking about standing waters and headwater streams here, but because headwater streams are a close proxy to ditches, he said he wouldn’t be surprised if the same was true for ditches, too. Ditches are home to communities of animals like wading birds, fish, and turtles, sometimes providing the only available refuge for such animals in highly farmed or urbanized landscapes. A ditch is also home to one of the rarest plant species in the U.K., the fen ragwort.

So what’s next for ditches?

Peacock: I suppose the first step in a way is just to notice them, that to realize that they’re there and they’re everywhere and that they shouldn’t be ignored. I think in one paper I called ditches “no-man’s-land,” because all the terrestrial scientists stop at the ditch edge. “That’s a ditch. That’s nothing to do with me.” And all the limnologists, the people who study waters, see a ditch and think, “That’s not an inland water. It’s a ditch.” And they just slip through the net. And I think we need to recognize that they are there. They are important. There’s a lot of them and they’re probably doing lots of different important things, some of them positive, some of them negative.

(“Swamp Walking Blues” by Chelsea Clifford fades in.)

Gardner: I’m Emily Gardner, reporting for Eos, the science news publication of AGU. You can find a reading list and a transcript for this story at Eos.org. Thank you to Chelsea Clifford, Michael Peacock, Gea van der Lee, AJ Reisinger, and Jeremy Biggs for speaking with me for this story. And an extra big thank you to Chelsea Clifford for providing the music you’re hearing right now. Thanks for listening!

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

Sound effect by Alexander Jauk from Pixabay

Citation: Gardner, E. (2025), The role of a ditch in the matrix, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250407. Published on 31 October 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.

In the Arctic, a major variable for future climate change lives in the ground, invisible.

Microbes in the layers of soil just above the frozen permafrost metabolize carbon, turning it into carbon dioxide and methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas. As these soils warm, more carbon is being unlocked, potentially setting in motion a warming feedback loop sometimes nicknamed the “methane bomb.” Now, new research on the microbial denizens of Arctic soils indicates that such a vicious cycle may not be inevitable.

“It could be that these systems for a variety of reasons are not actually producing the methane we believe that they’re capable of producing.”

By cataloging the kinds of microbes found in permafrost soils from around the Arctic, as well as in recently thawed permafrost itself, a group of researchers delivered a clearer picture of microbial diversity in Arctic soils, as well as how those microbial communities change as their environment warms up. One key finding in their paper, recently published in Communications Earth and Environment, is that under certain conditions there could be more methane-eating microbes than methane-making microbes in the Arctic, meaning the soil could actually end up being a carbon sink.

“It could be that these systems for a variety of reasons are not actually producing the methane we believe that they’re capable of producing,” said Jessica Buser-Young, a microbiologist at the University of Alaska Anchorage not affiliated with the research.

The Microbes and the Methane

Since 2010, a consortium of scientists from Europe has been gathering permafrost samples in the Arctic, digging through topsoil and subsoil and into the permanently frozen ground below. Gathering these samples is difficult in the vast, remote, and frozen northern reaches of the world, but the group retrieved samples from across Canada, Greenland, and Siberia.

In the new paper, the researchers conducted genomic analyses of the microbiome of eight pan-Arctic permafrost and soil samples as well as samples of both intact and degraded permafrost near Fairbanks, Alaska. They focused specifically on microbes, comprising both bacteria and archaea, that either release or consume methane, a greenhouse gas that can be 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

When the researchers looked at the data, the first surprise came from the lack of diversity among both methane-producing microbes, or methanogens, and methane-consuming microbes, or methanotrophs, said study coauthor Tim Urich, a microbiologist at the University of Greifswald in Germany.

Among methanotrophs, a single genus, Methylobacter, dominated samples at every location. These bacteria are found across the Arctic, often living in soil layers just above their methanogen counterparts, consuming the methane that bubbles up from below. Why this single genus has been so successful isn’t yet known, Urich said.

The analysis “really calls for studying representatives of this specific clade in more detail to understand the ecophysiology and their response to changing conditions in the soil,” Urich said.

Possibly Defusing the Methane Bomb

Urich and his coauthors also looked at sites where permafrost had thawed, comparing wet and dry locations. The site with sodden soils held more methanogenic microbes, which thrived in the oxygen-deprived conditions. At dry sites, by contrast, methanotrophic microbes won out, especially a variety with the unique ability to take methane from the air and turn it into less potent carbon dioxide. While these facultative methanotrophs have the ability to metabolize atmospheric methane, researchers noted, they don’t necessarily do it in practice.

“It really depends on the hydrologic fate of these soils.”

Regardless, Urich said, the upshot is that a warmer, drier Arctic may be a boon for the changing climate.

“It really depends on the hydrologic fate of these soils,” he said.

If the Arctic ends up on the dry end of the spectrum, its soils could become a net sink for methane (though not a large one) as microbes begin sucking gas from the air. The mechanism described by Urich and his colleagues is not the only potential negative methane feedback loop, either. In a recent paper in AGU Advances, Buser-Young and her coauthors found that microbes in Alaska’s Copper River Delta that use iron for their metabolism have begun outcompeting those that produce methane, potentially reducing methane emissions.

“We believe that this could be happening potentially everywhere there’s glaciers in the world,” Buser-Young said.

What studies like Urich’s are making clear is that while thawing Arctic permafrost is an obvious sign of climate change, its contribution to warming is less apparent, said Christian Knoblauch, a biogeochemist at the University of Hamburg who was not involved with the research.

“We had so many papers about this methane bomb,” he said. “I think this was an oversimplification or an overestimation of methane release.”

Future of Methane Still Uncertain

Researchers are still hampered by a paucity of data about the changing Arctic.

High on Urich’s list of potentially valuable datasets are studies on the ecophysiology of the methane-associated microbes he and his colleagues found in Arctic soils. Such studies would provide more data on how microbe metabolism changes in response to warming temperatures and varying levels of oxygen, among other things.

Urich also cautioned that his research did not measure levels of methane release or uptake from Arctic soils, leaving unanswered the question of the microbes’ actual impact on the environment.

Knoblauch reiterated the need for more data, noting that we still cannot say with certainty whether the future Arctic will be more wet or more dry and therefore what methane release will look like.

“We have a lot of models, and there are a lot of simulations, but we do not have so much data on the ground,” he said. “I think the big questions are really how fast is the material decomposed, how much will thaw and in [what] time it is decomposed and then released, and how the system will be affected by changing vegetation.”

—Nathaniel Scharping (@nathanielscharp), Science Writer

Citation: Scharping, N. (2025), In Arctic soils, methane-eating microbes just might win out over methane makers, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250400. Published on 31 October 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.

Tropical forests are biodiversity hot spots; preserving them is a crucial part of global efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. When these verdant ecosystems are destroyed, they release millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide each year, emissions numbers second only to those driven by fossil fuel consumption.

A host of international efforts have emerged to help curb tropical forest loss. The Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) program, established in 2005, is a United Nations–supported initiative for countries to sustainably manage and conserve forested land to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Countries receive financial incentives to preserve and maintain their forests—compensation intended to make forests more valuable intact than cut down.

There are more than 350 REDD+ projects worldwide, and in many project locations, habitats have been protected, and deforestation has slowed.

Many other projects, however, may not be delivering results as hoped, and their climate benefits may be overstated. A new study from an international team of researchers quantifies these concerns, suggesting that only 19% of REDD+ projects met their emissions targets and even fewer met their deforestation goals. But, the authors suggest, REDD+ shouldn’t be abandoned. Instead, it needs to be fixed.

REDD+ in Review

Most REDD+ projects are funded through the program’s sale of carbon credits, which are permits that represent 1 metric ton of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere. The companies, communities, or individuals that voluntarily buy carbon credits are doing so to offset their own emissions. By 2021, REDD+ projects accounted for two thirds of the 227.7 million land use carbon offsets traded (excluding agriculture) and represented $1.3 billion in market value. (Land use carbon credits include forest, wetland, and grassland conservation. Other carbon offsets include renewable energy projects and technology-based solutions such as carbon capture.)

In recent years, scientists and stakeholders have started to question the efficacy of REDD+ programs. Critics say some projects either fail to reduce deforestation or the results are smaller than claimed.

Many REDD+ projects lack additionality, explained Thales A. P. West, an environmental scientist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Additionality describes the concept of determining whether a project’s emissions reductions would happen without carbon credit revenue.

“Reductions are estimated based on a baseline scenario: What would have happened in the absence of the project. The more ‘catastrophic’ the baseline deforestation is, the more credits projects can claim. Thus, there is an incentive for project developers to exaggerate project baselines,” said West, who was not an author of the recent study.

Real REDD+ Results

To assess REDD+ efforts, researchers examined 66 REDD+ project units across tropical regions in 12 countries, focusing on avoiding unplanned deforestation (AUD) projects. AUD projects are a major component of REDD+ efforts to protect forests from small-scale farming, logging, and fuelwood use.

Researchers used a synthetic control method, a type of statistical analysis in which they compared areas with REDD+ projects in place with nearby locations that shared the REDD+ area’s environment and socioeconomic conditions. By comparing forest loss in the REDD+ area with its counterpart where no REDD+ interventions had occurred, the scientists could estimate the true impact of the REDD+ project. Finally, they compared these findings with the data reported as part of the REDD+ projects themselves to evaluate whether the carbon credits issued were backed by a real reduction in deforestation.

“We followed up on previous work that said, ‘Hey, you know, when you get the math right, this mechanism doesn’t seem very effective.’”

Twenty-one out of the 66 REDD+ sites studied (32%) showed significantly lowered deforestation—meaning successful climate mitigation. At one site in the Brazilian Amazon, deforestation rates were cut by up to 99%.

But other project sites painted a less positive picture. Seventeen percent of the REDD+ project areas showed increased deforestation compared with their controls. Thirty-five percent of the projects reported deforestation baselines that were 10 times higher than the researchers’ estimates, especially at sites in Colombia. When the researchers compared forest loss with reported carbon credits, only 13.2% could be verified by actual forest preservation, throwing the validity of the carbon credit system into question.

“We followed up on previous work that said, ‘Hey, you know, when you get the math right, this mechanism doesn’t seem very effective,’” said Jonathan Chase, an ecologist from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research and one of the study’s authors. “We show that these credits are not at the level that one would hope they could be.”

The Future of REDD+

This new study is important, West explained, because “it corroborates previous findings and contributes to the growing scientific evidence that many REDD projects do not deliver what they claim, consequently compromising the environmental integrity of their carbon offsets.”

“I think we can certainly do a better job with the statistics, but ultimately, it comes down to doing a better job with protecting these habitats.”

Despite the variable results from the REDD+ project areas covered in the new study, many sites still showed improvements, leading researchers to suggest that this program doesn’t need to be abandoned entirely, just reorganized or reformed. More attention could be paid to shifting political and economic trends, as those social factors can shape patterns of deforestation occurring in a particular country or region. Stricter baselines, increased transparency, and stronger oversight might also help build a more robust REDD+ program.

“I think we can certainly do a better job with the statistics, but ultimately, it comes down to doing a better job with protecting these habitats,” said Chase.

—Rebecca Owen (@beccapox, @beccapox.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Owen, R. (2025), REDD+ results and realities, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250408. Published on 31 October 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.

An early morning landslide, triggered by heavy rainfall, killed at least 22 people in rural PNG.

At about 2 am on 31 October 2025, a landslide struck a rural community at Kukas in Enga Province, Papua New Guinea. News reports suggest that it was triggered by heavy rainfall and that 22 bodies have been recovered to date, but that the final toll may be as high as 30 people.

Loyal readers will know that tracking down landslides in rural PNG is a major challenge – the quality of baseline mapping of villages is quite poor. However, an ABC News report indicates that the landslide occurred in the vicinity of Pausa, so I think the most likely location is in the region of [-5.67878, 143.91848]:-

The likely location of the 25 October 2025 landslide at Kukas in PNG. Image from Google Maps.

We will need to wait for Planet imagery to confirm, noting of course that PNG is notoriously cloudy.

There is a post on Facebook by a local from Kukas, Ben Mcpitu, that contains a short video of the site. Please be cautious, the post includes an picture of some of the victims. The post is here. It also includes a video of the aftermath of the landslide, from which this is a still:-

The aftermath of the 25 October 2025 landslide at Kukas in PNG. Still from a video posted to Facebook by Ben Mcpitu.

Assuming that this is indeed the site, this appears to have been a failure high on the slope in a natural gully. Note that the regolith has been stripped backin the mid-slope area, possibly to bedrock. The news reports indicate that at least one house, and possibly as many as three houses, were directly in the path of the landslide. Given the timing in the early hours of the morning, there would have been little chance to escape. However, the ABC report also describes the capricious nature of risk:

Mr Tumu [the deputy principal at a nearby school] said the dead were mostly visitors from a neighbouring village about 5 kilometres away that was undergoing local government elections.

“It came in force, and then it just covered the old house that they stayed [in] last night,” he said.

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

Global warming is expected to affect freezing and thawing (FT) water in the ground, thus changing the dynamics of rock and soil breakdown and weathering. To investigate trends in FT induced erosion, and the conditions leading to relevant impact, researchers employ numerical models calibrated to match field observations.

Kido et al. [2025] investigate FT processes in the Pekerebetsu River basin, Hokkaido, Japan, and show the key role played by snow, which insulates the ground thus decreasing the impact of warming. The results show that changes in FT under increasing temperature and snow cover are regulated by the interaction of insulation, warming and current state of FT processes. Some areas experience little change in FT because effects from increasing temperatures are offset by decreasing insulation. Other areas where such offsetting is weak may display increases in FT and, therefore, increased weathering.

Citation: Kido, R., Inoue, T., & Johnson, J. P. L. (2025). Predicting changes in hillslope freeze–thaw potential due to climate change. AGU Advances, 6, e2025AV001810. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV001810

—Alberto Montanari, Editor-in-Chief, AGU Advances

Text © 2025. 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: Water Resources Research

There is a consensus that beaver dams with associated ponding and floodplain inundation have a strong influence on ambient hydrologic and hydrogeologic conditions in mountainous alluvial valleys. However, very little quantitative information is available that sheds light on the impact on groundwater recharge and flow patterns.

In their comprehensive field and modeling study, Wang et al. [2025] show how vertical infiltration from flooded areas interacts with underflow in permeable gravel layers. Utilizing observations, sophisticated modeling, and efficient machine learning technologies, they are able identify flow patterns and rates. They also address uncertainty in groundwater storage changes and sensitivity to e.g. floodplain geometry, subsurface layering and heterogeneity in hydraulic subsurface properties. The ratio between the vertical flux and the underflow rules the flow patterns and is also key in solute transport, which has major implication for renaturation projects and water quality. A straightforward analytical solution is proposed that is transferable and can be used with remote sensing data for water balance estimations.

MODFLOW model discretization: A) Cross-section of the MODFLOW model discretization, including the soil layer, gravel bed, beaver dam, and pond level. B) Map view of the river extent colored by the constant head boundary condition for the baseflow steady state simulation. The labeled cross-section indicates the location for the cross section in A. Credit: Wang et al. [2025], Figure 4

Citation: Wang, L., Babey, T., Perzan, Z., Pierce, S., Briggs, M., Boye, K., & Maher, K. (2025). Quantifying groundwater response and uncertainty in beaver-influenced mountainous floodplains using machine learning-based model calibration. Water Resources Research, 61, e2024WR039192. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024WR039192

—Stefan Kollet, Editor, Water Resources Research

Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences

Nitrogen is an important component of the global environment, affecting agriculture, climate, human health, and ecosystems. The role of the nitrogen cycle has become more widely appreciated, yet the Earth system models (ESMs) used to predict global environmental change still do not fully incorporate it.

Kou-Giesbrecht argues for the inclusion of a fully interactive nitrogen cycle in ESMs, which would account for the complex and interconnected ways nitrogen moves between the land, oceans, and atmosphere. Nitrogen has only recently been incorporated into the land components of some ESMs and only as a limiting factor of primary productivity.

Nitrogen has roles far beyond plant growth, including as a potent greenhouse gas and a driver of ozone formation and aerosol components. Wildfires release nitrogen oxides and ammonia that contribute to particulate matter concentrations, while marine microorganisms both take up and release nitrogen. Nitrogen export to the oceans influences both ocean primary productivity and ocean nitrogen emissions, and excess nitrogen in marine waters leads to eutrophication, or excessive nutrient levels that can cause harmful algal blooms.

Though globally important, many components of the nitrogen cycle in ESMs are not fully interactive, if they are included at all; rather, they are static inputs to the models. Adding dynamic representations of nitrogen cycling between the land, oceans, and atmosphere would close a significant gap in our understanding of how Earth’s climate and environment will evolve in the near future, the author argues.

To achieve this goal, more observations to better benchmark models of terrestrial nitrogen cycling are needed, as well as experimental manipulations to provide empirical constraints on nitrogen-related processes. These advances could help us understand and meet the goals of the Colombo Declaration on Sustainable Nitrogen Management to halve nitrogen waste by 2030, which could save $100 billion per year and help mitigate climate change and improve biodiversity, food security, and public health, the author says. (Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JG009209, 2025)

—Nathaniel Scharping (@nathanielscharp), Science Writer

Citation: Scharping, N. (2025), Global climate models need the nitrogen cycle—all of it, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250401. Published on 30 October 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.

Managing fires in tropical forests can be a daunting task: Loggers and arsonists often move faster than first responders, resources are scarce, and the territory is immense. In the Brazilian Amazon, these obstacles strain a chronically underfunded environmental sector whose field agents face threats from farmers and, increasingly, organized crime.

In 2024, fires consumed 30.8 million hectares across Brazil—79% more than in 2023. More than 80% of the total burned area was inside the Legal Amazon, according to the environmental data platform MapBiomas. (The Legal Amazon is a government-designated region consisting of all nine of Brazil’s states in the Amazon basin.) Because of the scale of the fires, in August 2024, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) increased its fire patrols to 2,227 brigadiers (firefighters), with 1,239 of them—more than half—stationed in the Legal Amazon.

Millions of Hectares in Acre

Acre is Brazil’s westernmost state, borders Peru and Bolivia, and is part of the Legal Amazon. In Acre, four professional fire brigades with 68 full-time firefighters operate in three municipalities and one protected area. A volunteer brigade also works near the state’s capital and largest city, Rio Branco.

With about 14 million hectares of forest to patrol, these forces can cover only a fraction of Acre’s territory.

Science, it turns out, has been an important tool to close that gap, because the challenge of firefighting in Acre is not just a shortage of squads on the ground; it’s also related to data access. Brazil’s environmental information is scattered across myriad agencies: the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), federal environmental agencies like IBAMA and the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation, the National Water Agency (ANA), and Brazil’s National Center for Monitoring and Alerts for Natural Disasters, as well as individual state secretariats, each working with its own priorities and cadences.

Without data in compatible formats, crucial information can overlap or contradict. “To know where to act, we need qualified information—land tenure, zoning, fire hot spots. Without that, any public policy for fires or deforestation will be ineffective in the Amazon,” said Claudio Cavalcante, chief at the Center for Environmental Geoprocessing (CIGMA), the geospatial hub Acre created within its Environmental Secretariat in 2020 to connect deforestation and fire monitoring with policy response.

CIGMA has made efforts to integrate data from across Brazil’s federal and state agencies to inform agents on the ground. “We have worked with data stratification: deforestation [in areas] from 1 to 5 hectares, then areas from 5 to 10 hectares, and then from 10 to 50. Automating some data fluxes has been a really complex and labor-intensive process,” added Cavalcante, who took part in a meeting with researchers, communicators, and policy experts at CIGMA’s headquarters in July.

Eyes on the Data

All that integration takes place in CIGMA’s Situation Room, where scientists and analysts assess live feeds of fire alerts, air quality, river levels, rainfall, drought indices, and a host of other data.

“All the maps for action on the ground are developed here. We also prepare the monthly deforestation reports and technical notes,” said Quelyson Souza, who coordinates Acre’s Environmental Secretariat’s Environmental Command and Control Group.

Quelyson Souza, who coordinates the Environmental Command and Control Group in Acre, explains how logging alerts work and how those data might be integrated into regional firefighting responses. Credit: Bibiana Garrido/IPAM Amazonia

CIGMA’s system merges INPE fire alerts with land tenure and zoning data to identify potential violators. Hydrological data from ANA, the water agency, updates every 15 minutes and feeds data to the state’s Civil Defense and Fire Department. Air quality sensors detect smoke coming from forests within or beyond Brazil’s borders.

To the coordinator of Environmental Protection Operations of Acre’s Firefighting Corps, Major Freitas Filho, the scientific data his corps has access to on the ground “is essential to optimize and refine the use of operational resources.” Acre’s fire department leads the Controlled Fire Operation, which focuses on integrating teams of military and environmental agents to fight fires during the dry season, which spans the second half of the year.

According to a report on fire management in the Amazon forest released earlier this month by the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM Amazônia), Acre has a very effective model of linking data and governance that recommends early-warning systems and open data sharing so municipalities and communities can act quickly.

Lessons from Acre

Despite the challenges, Acre stands out as one of the few Amazonian states where scientists, firefighters, and policymakers share the same room.

“It’s inspiring to see the evolution of Acre’s Situation Room. I’ve used it as a national example because action happens on the ground, even across borders,” said Liana Anderson, a remote sensing researcher at INPE.

“It’s much harder to be fooled by offenders who try to get away with their environmental wrongdoing. It’s like lifting the blindfold over one eye when you’re playing blindman’s buff.”

As Brazil prepares to host COP30 (the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference) in Belém, scientists and policymakers hope Acre’s experience can be an example of science-focused environmental management: Unified datasets, shared dashboards, and collaboration can turn information into planning and action.

“When we get to a cleared area with the information we now have access to, it’s much harder to be fooled by offenders who try to get away with their environmental wrongdoing,” Souza said. “It’s like lifting the blindfold over one eye when you’re playing blindman’s buff.”

—Meghie Rodrigues (@meghier.bsky.social), Science Writer

Meghie Rodrigues visited CIGMA’s headquarters in Acre as part of a press trip organized by IPAM Amazônia.

Citation: Rodrigues, M. (2025), In parts of the Brazilian Amazon, science leads the fight against forest fire, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250406. Published on 30 October 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.

A c1.4 million cubic metre landslide, triggered by intense rainfall, killed 19 people.

On 22 May 2025, the large Qingyang landslide occurred in Dafang County, Guizhou Province, China. This landslide was widely reported to have “trapped” 19 people.

In a paper in the journal Landslides, Wen et al. (2025) provide an initial but very helpful description of this failure. It confirms that 19 people were indeed killed in the event.

In the aftermath of the landslide, Xinhua published this image of the failure:-

A drone photo taken on May 22, 2025 shows the site where the Qingyang landslide occured in Dafang County, southwest China’s Guizhou Province. Image by Xinhua.

The crown of the landslide is at [27.52004, 105.83551]. There is some drone footage of the landslide on Youtube:-

Wen et al. (2025) have calculated that the landslide had a total volume (including material entrained from the lower part of the slope) of 1.388 million m3. Based upon imagery on Planet, it had a total runout distance from rear scarp to toe of 1.35 km.

The authors note two key causal factors for this landslide. First, the Qingyang landslide is a bedding-plane failure, occurring on the interface between a sandstone layer that overlaid a limestone layer (this is visible in the upper part of the images above). The geological units were orientated parallel to the slope, a condition that frequently promotes instability. Second, the toe of the slope had been eroded by the river, undermining the stability of the mass.

The final failure was triggered by heavy rainfall. Wen et al. (2025) report that nearby rain gauges recorded over 200 mm of rainfall between 19:00 on 21 May and 06:00 on 22 May. A rain gauge located 1.4 km from the Qingyang landslide recorded 98.9 mm of rainfall in a three hour period.

Warnings were in place for this rainfall, but of course a slope failure of this type had not been anticipated. Other, smaller, failures also occurred in the local area.

China is able to respond rapidly to these types of events – probably more so than in most other places – but of course the likelihood of survival for those caught in such a landslide is low.

The challenge remains as to how such failures can be anticipated given the complexity of the topography and the geological conditions. The combination of an adverse geological structure and toe erosion is probably replicated widely across this area, but the vast majority of such slopes did not fail in this rainfall event.

Reference

Wen, H., Zhou, X., Xia, Z. et al. 2025. Preliminary reports of a catastrophic bedding-plane landslide in Qingyang Village, Dafang County, Guizhou Province, China, on May 22, 2025. Landslides https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-025-02641-5

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

A yearly analysis of climate change’s progress and effects shows a “planet on the brink” of ecological breakdown and widespread crisis and suggests that only rapid climate mitigation can avoid the worst consequences.

“We felt an ethical responsibility to document this turning point clearly.”

“We felt an ethical responsibility to document this turning point clearly and to speak directly to humanity about where we stand,” wrote William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University and coauthor of the new report, in an email. “What we’re seeing now are signs of systemic distress.”

The sixth annual report, published in BioScience, analyzes global data on Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, energy, ecosystems, food systems, and more. Researchers identified our planet’s so-called vital signs, including ocean temperature, surface temperature, sea ice extent, and carbon pollution. Of the 34 vital signs, 22 were at record levels, indicating a highly stressed Earth system. 

For example, 2024 surpassed 2023 as the hottest year on record. Ocean heat and wildfire-related tree cover loss are both at all-time highs. Deadly weather disasters surged in 2024 and 2025, with floods, wildfires, and typhoons killing hundreds in the U.S. alone. Atmospheric warming is showing signs of accelerating. Ice at the poles continues to melt, contributing to sea level rise. And the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a global network of currents critical for circulating heat on Earth, is showing signs of weakening, which could trigger further climate disruptions.

Sixteen of the 34 vital signs that researchers tracked as part of their 2025 State of the Climate report. Credit: Ripple et al. 2025, doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biaf149

“Without effective strategies, we will rapidly encounter escalating risks that threaten to overwhelm systems of peace, governance, and public and ecosystem health,” said Ripple in a press release. “In short, we’ll be on the fast track to climate-driven chaos, a dangerous trajectory for humanity.”

Another “State of the Climate” report was published in August. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society report, authored by more than 500 scientists, presented similar indicators of a stressed Earth system, including record-setting ice loss at the poles, unusually high global temperatures, and an increase in the frequency and severity of weather disasters and wildfires. 

Notable climate anomalies and events in 2024, based on information from NOAA’s State of the Climate reports. Credit: Blunden et al. 2025, doi.org/10.1175/2025BAMSStateoftheClimate.1 Climate & Consumption

The new report identifies resource consumption, especially meat and energy consumption, as a major driver of climate change and ecological harm. 

“We can’t fix the climate by technology alone; we have to rethink the way we live.”

Global gross domestic product, or GDP, a measure of the goods and services produced in a given year, reached an all-time high in 2025 according to preliminary data. While such economic growth is often celebrated, it is also typically coupled with ecological degradation and increased emissions, the authors point out. Reducing consumption, especially among the world’s wealthiest individuals (who tend to consume more resources), is essential to managing the effects of climate change, they write. 

“We need systemic change: rethinking what we value, shifting toward circular economies, and promoting well-being over endless growth,” Ripple wrote in an email. “We can’t fix the climate by technology alone; we have to rethink the way we live.”

 
Related

•  Read the BioScience report: “The 2025 State of the Climate Report: A Planet on the Brink”
•  Read the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society report: “State of the Climate in 2024”
•  New “State of the Climate Report” Delivers Sobering and Stunning Data
 

Though the use of solar- and wind-powered electricity is soaring, so is fossil fuel consumption. The State of the Climate authors emphasize that a rapid reduction of fossil fuel use is both necessary and possible, and that renewable energy sources have the potential to supply most global energy needs by 2050.

“We are in a planetary emergency, but we are not powerless,” Ripple wrote. “The science is clear, the mitigation strategies are known, and every fraction of a degree matters.”

—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 science or scientists? 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.

As global plastic production has ballooned, small fragments of plastic have infiltrated rivers, sea ice, and even our brains. When the minuscule fibers and shards seep into soils, they change how the soil interacts with water, according to a new study.

The study, published in Vadose Zone Journal, measured water retention and conductivity in soils from three regions of Germany with and without four different microplastics. The researchers found that a plastic concentration of just 0.4% by mass can change how quickly water flows through soil, depending on both the type of plastic and the type of soil. The altered hydraulic properties likely result from the hydrophobic nature of plastic and the microplastic particles changing the arrangement of individual soil granules, the authors said.

Tiny soil particles stick together to form clumps. The spaces between these clumps form conduits for water, nutrients, and plant roots to move through. The size and distribution of these spaces affect soil drainage and water-holding capacity, which have implications for plant growth.

“The water characteristics of a soil tell you how quickly water drains through the soil, which impacts crops and aquifers.”

“The water characteristics of a soil tell you how quickly water drains through the soil, which impacts crops and aquifers,” said the study’s first author, Katharina Neubert, a soil scientist at Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany.

Earlier research has shown that microplastics can alter soil structure and its hydraulic properties, but those studies each examined only one soil type or one plastic type. The new study is the first to evaluate how multiple types of microplastics affect multiple soil types.

The researchers collected soil from three distinct agricultural regions in Germany, which had varying textures, carbon levels, and pH levels. They then obtained four widely used microplastics ranging in size from 300 micrometers to 5 millimeters—polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, and polyester. They broke down the larger particles in a blender, then mixed each plastic with each soil type at a concentration of 0.4% by weight. Combined with a plastic-free control for each soil type, this yielded 15 unique soil‑microplastic combinations.

The authors poured each mixture into a metal cylinder connected to a suction device to see how quickly the suction would pull water through the soil. They performed the test on wet soil and dry soil, as moisture level also influences how quickly water drains through soil.

Unearthing a Nuanced Relationship

All four microplastics altered water flow rates in at least one of the soils, but the magnitude and direction of the effect varied widely. For example, polyester fibers, commonly shed from some types of clothing, boosted the speed at which water flowed through one soil by more than 50% when the soil was wet, yet reduced the flow rate by more than 50% under dry conditions.

“It’s very difficult to make a general statement about how soil changes with microplastics.”

“All of the results are context dependent,” said Rosolino Ingraffia, a soil scientist at Università degli Studi di Palermo in Italy, who was not involved in the research. “It’s very difficult to make a general statement about how soil changes with microplastics.”

Another recent study coauthored by Neubert showed how differences in flow rates could translate to agriculture. She grew wheat plants in the same three soil types with and without two microplastics: polyethylene and polyester. The results were similarly complicated, with the added plastic increasing, decreasing, or not affecting root growth, depending on the combination.

The plastic concentration of 0.4% used in both studies is much higher than that which most agricultural fields harbor today, said both Neubert and Ingraffia. For example, arable lands that have been treated with biosolids for a decade see concentrations closer to about 0.002%. But calculations based on the current rate of microplastic accumulation suggest that many areas could reach this 0.4% concentration in 50 or 60 years, Ingraffia added.

Neubert hopes her research leads to regulations that keep microplastics from ever reaching those levels. Germany plans to phase out the use of nutrient-rich sewage sludge as fertilizer in most agricultural fields, in part because of concerns about plastic pollution, she said. One study identified the practice as a major source of soil microplastics in Germany.

Keeping plastic out of the ground is important because “we don’t yet know what consequences it has for our soils,” Neubert said.

—Mark DeGraff (@markr4nger.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: DeGraff, M. (2025), Microplastics have widely varying effects on soil, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250396. Published on 29 October 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.

The term “ecosystem engineering” has been used for decades as a way to describe organisms that drastically alter their environment, changing the abiotic factors in their habitat as well as the lives of other organisms in their orbit. Beavers, bison, and possibly dinosaurs fall into this category.  

The idea has, over decades, helped ecologists move past the idea that animals are simply passive players in the environment toward an understanding that life itself affects its surroundings.

“Are we just a new version in a long line of the evolution of new processes that have fundamentally altered the planet? Or are we truly something new?”

A more expansive view of ecosystem engineering—one that identifies effects over geologic timescales—could be useful for Earth scientists as well as ecologists, according to a new framework recently published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution. The authors argue the framework could be useful for answering fundamental questions about humans’ role in Earth’s history.

“Are we just a new version in a long line of the evolution of new processes that have fundamentally altered the planet? Or are we truly something new?” said Kate Lyons, a paleoecologist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and coauthor of the new framework.

Engineering Earth

Lyons and the research team were inspired to create the new framework when they realized that many large-scale planetary changes caused by living beings didn’t fall strictly into the original definition of ecosystem engineering. “We felt we really needed a different term,” she said.

The framework distinguishes Earth system engineers from ecosystem engineers by the scale of their effects. Earth system engineers may be processes as well as organisms, and they affect their surroundings over longer periods of time and across larger, sometimes global, spatial scales. In many cases, Earth system engineers affect species they “don’t even coexist with,” Lyons said.

In fact, the fossil record shows that many biological and ecological processes both had a global impact and introduced changes in Earth systems that have lasted for millions and even billions of years. For example, the Great Oxidation Event, a period roughly 2.4 billion years ago during which single-celled organisms began to metabolize carbon dioxide and water, drastically increased the concentration of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere. We’re still experiencing the aftermath of the Great Oxidation Event—it’s why all animals on Earth today are alive. 

Calcium carbonate biomineralization—the process by which marine life takes up calcium and carbon from seawater and produces mineral skeletons or other hard structures—is another Earth system engineering process, the authors write. This process has been a major contributor to the sequestration of carbon in the ocean, which helps to control the global climate.

Planetary History, Here and Beyond

The new paper’s authors suggest their framework could be useful for answering questions about whether the scale of humanity’s changes to Earth systems is unique in Earth’s history.

Similarly, the authors expect the framework to help in investigations of how often such planetary-scale changes happen and how they usually play out: “[Are they] typically followed by mass extinctions? [Do they] typically spur speciation?” Lyons said. 

These questions also have applications for astrobiology because knowledge of how organisms affect their environments on planetary scales—creating oxygen via photosynthesis, for example—could give insight into how and why some planets become habitable, said Peter Wagner, a paleobiologist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and coauthor on the new study. 

There is “growing interest” in the question “When does life leave a mark on the planet?” said Clive Jones, one of the scientists who originally developed the concept of ecosystem engineering in 1994. “It’s very worthwhile thinking about,” he said.  

What’s in a Name?

Scientists have been grappling with these questions for years, however, and the idea that ecosystem engineering could be a planetary process has been implicit in previous published work, said Erle Ellis, an ecologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who was not involved in the new paper. In fact, in 2012, Jones published a paper presenting a theory of when and why certain species create geomorphological signatures in the landscape, responding to a 2006 paper that raised the question of when life leaves a mark.

“There are some really cool interfaces between…ecosystem science and Earth system science.”

Ellis also cautioned that the line between “ecosystem engineer” and “Earth system engineer” may be arbitrary. Though it is helpful to recognize that ecosystem engineering can scale up, “there’s not really a clean break” between which processes are planetary and which aren’t, he said.

Creating a binary like the one presented in the paper “tends to divide up the community of scientists…when they’re actually working on the same thing,” Ellis said. “That’s not necessarily an advance in the sciences.”

Jones still thinks the new Earth system engineering framework could be useful. Just as the idea of ecosystem engineering helped ecologists conceptualize organisms as active agents in the abiotic environment, the idea of Earth system engineering could help scientists better understand the spatial and temporal scales of interactions between animals and Earth systems, he said.

Jones also hopes the new framework spurs additional collaboration. “There are some really cool interfaces between…ecosystem science and Earth system science,” he said. “That’s where the productive territory will be.”

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

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Citation: van Deelen, G. (2025), Earth system engineers take planetary alterations to extreme scales, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250402. Published on 29 October 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.