EOS

Source: Community Science

When a local community gets involved in environmental monitoring, their efforts can build awareness of local environmental issues and provide more plentiful data than scientists can collect on their own. But how does the quality of the data compare to readings taken by professionals?

The state of Bihar, India, was the perfect place to find out. More than 90% of the population relies on groundwater for cooking and cleaning, but at times, that same groundwater has been reported to be contaminated with arsenic, iron, manganese, nitrate, and uranium, all of which can cause health problems. Richards et al. compared the results of community members’ efforts to monitor groundwater for contaminants with those of professional scientists.

The researchers recruited community members who were affiliated with one secondary school, three colleges, and one professional institution. Many participants were teenage students, but some were adult employees of the schools. All told, the team included 583 people. The participants collected water samples from places people access water during their daily lives, such as hand pumps that supply drinking water. The research team brought the samples back to the University of Manchester on commercial flights, then analyzed the samples at the Manchester Analytical Geochemistry Unit laboratories.

The results were broadly similar to those collected by professional scientists, showing that participatory science is an excellent way to increase the amount of data environmental scientists have to work with, the authors say. With more data, scientists can spot spatial patterns that might be overlooked with a smaller workforce. Participatory science can also generate interest in research, potentially bringing more women and minorities into the field. (Community Science, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025CSJ000136, 2026)

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

Citation: Sidik, S. M. (2026), Students enable widespread water monitoring in India, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260233. Published on 20 July 2026. Text © 2026. 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.

Reports suggest 42 people were killed in a large rockslope failure. Imagery suggests that suspicion will fall on a cutting at the foot of the slope.

On Friday 17 July 2026, at 9:08 am local time, a large landslide occurred on the banks of the Wujiang River at Hanjia, located within of Pengshui Miao and Tujia Autonomous County in Chongqing, China. Media reports indicate that 42 people have been killed. Ten people were rescued.

Xinhua has released this image of the aftermath of the landslide:-

The aftermath of the 17 July 2026 landslide at Hanjia in Chongqing, China. Image from Xinhua.

There is some dramatic footage of the landslide in action and the immediate aftermath:-

The location of this landslide appears to be [29.27760, 108.16604]:-

Google Earth image of the site of the 17 July 2026 landslide at Hanjia in Chongqing, China.

The images and video suggest that this was a rockslope failure – note the size of the blocks – with a strong element of toppling. The very planar form of the rear scarp suggests to me that release has come from an existing joint or fault.

The media reports indicate that rainfall was the final trigger – this makes sense from a timing perspective – but the focus might be on the underlying causes. My attention is immediately drawn to the building beside the road on the slope side of the site. It appears that the slope has been cut to create the space for the building. The building was under construction in 2014, but this image from 2017 shows the cut more clearly. I have annotated the top of the cut slope:-

Annotated Google Earth image from 2018 showing the site of the 17 July 2026 landslide at Hanjia in Chongqing, China.

This would be my starting point in terms of likely causation of this landslide. Interestingly, there are other locations along this road with large cut slopes, so an immediate priority will need to be an assessment of the stability of those sites.

Return to The Landslide Blog homepage Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Wetlands are the largest natural source of methane on Earth. Though the waterlogged lands offer benefits that include hosting thriving ecosystems and protecting our shorelines from flooding, researchers are eager to better understand their contribution to the warming climate.

Researchers report that typical global wetlands surveys overlook an astronomical number of small wetlands: about 160 million of them.

In a paper published in Nature Climate Change, researchers report that typical global wetlands surveys overlook an astronomical number of small wetlands: about 160 million of them.

These small wetlands, which range in size from a large swimming pool to 100 hectares (250 acres), are responsible for 25% of the present global methane emissions, the research found. The results also revealed that these methane emissions increased by 9.9% from 2003 to 2022. This increase reflected both a growing number of small wetlands and climatic changes that spurred them to generate more emissions.

The work shows our current grasp on these environments is woefully incomplete.

The new research “points to the strong need to study these ecosystems further,” said Kyle Delwiche, a biogeochemical scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved with the research.

Methane Mania

Wetlands come in myriad flavors and are found on every continent except Antarctica. Groundwater feeds peat-rich bogs and fens in places like Scotland and Scandinavia, and the Amazon and Congo Rivers support sprawling, forested swamps. Though the mechanisms underlying each wetland differ, the environments are united by a group of methane-producing microbes that thrive in their oxygen-starved soils.

Researchers have long known wetlands are major sources of global methane, a greenhouse gas with significantly more near-term warming potential for our climate than carbon dioxide. But quantifying these wetlands to assess their emissions is no simple task.

To study wetlands on a global scale, researchers typically use coarse-resolution satellite data, said Fa Li, an Earth system scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the study. These data have a relatively low resolution (one pixel from these satellites represents 25 square kilometers) but can pierce through dense foliage, making them invaluable for wetlands research, Li said.

In the new research, Li and his colleagues turned to high-resolution satellite imagery. One pixel from these satellites is 30 square meters, which is just over half the size of an Olympic swimming pool. By combining this imagery with emissions data, the researchers were able to refine methane emissions calculations on a global scale.

Most of the 160 million small wetlands the survey revealed were concentrated in northern latitudes in places like Canada and Siberia.

“It’s really high, but I think this value [of 160 million] is certainly underestimated,” said Li.

Small tropical wetlands in particular tended to punch above their weight class, he added.

Such work will ultimately reveal “what level of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane removal is needed to keep our planet hospitable.”

“Our results show that tropical small wetlands contribute disproportionately to methane emissions,” Li said. “Although tropical regions account for only 15.1% of global small-wetland area, they contribute 37% of methane emissions from small wetlands.”

Though higher-resolution satellite imagery can capture smaller wetlands, the technology is incapable of piercing through tree canopies. Because of this trade-off, forested swamps and other covered wetlands were excluded from the study.

“Methane emission rates are positively related to the temperature,” said Li. As the global temperature increases, these methane-emitting microbes become more productive. “It’s like a snowball that gets bigger and bigger,” he said. Rising global temperatures likely triggered the increased emissions and will continue to feed the tumbling snowball in the future.

Delwiche is excited about the new work and would like to see it extended to eventually cover forested wetlands. “We need accurate estimates of emissions and trends,” she said. Such work will ultimately reveal “what level of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane removal is needed to keep our planet hospitable.”

—Taylor Mitchell Brown (@tmitchellbrown.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Brown, T. M. (2026), Big trouble from little wetlands, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260232. Published on 17 July 2026. Text © 2026. 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.

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.

Scientists have gotten much better at parsing how severe events are linked to climate change, a long-awaited report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has found. 

“A human influence is now being clearly detected in several important categories of extremes.”

The report was developed by 14 experts (including climatologists, meteorologists, and atmospheric scientists) and updates a 2016 report on the same subject. That report found that climate change was partly responsible for worsening heat waves, cold events, droughts, and heavy precipitation events, but that improvements to attribution science—a branch of climate science that aims to determine the extent to which individual extreme weather events are caused by climate change—were needed.

A decade later, the new report notes that advances in attribution science have allowed researchers to determine more effectively the link between climate change and specific weather events. In particular, improvements in observations of Earth systems, better satellite measurements, and longer observational records have “substantially increased our confidence” in attributing long-term changes in the frequency of extreme events to climate change, said Jim Hurrell, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University who was part of the panel that created the report, in a presentation about it. 

According to the report, confidence in attributing events to climate change is still highest for extreme heat and cold events, followed by heavy precipitation events and drought. The report notes that “significant advances” have been made in the science of attributing tropical cyclones, but that scientists still have low confidence in attributing specific hurricanes or typhoons to climate change. Similarly, due to the many drivers of wildfires, there is still low confidence in scientists’ ability to attribute specific wildfire events to climate change. 

“A human influence is now being clearly detected in several important categories of extremes,” Hurrell said.

Attribution studies, the new report notes, may help improve public understanding of climate change, support governments’ risk management and planning, and inform policymakers about the effects of climate change.

Climate Litigation

The report’s findings could also be used to bolster dozens of legal cases against energy companies being pursued by states, municipalities, tribes, and even individuals. These lawsuits claim that fossil fuel and energy companies are directly to blame for harms resulting from climate-related events such as heat waves, fires, and storms. One wrongful death case, for example, seeks damages from ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, Shell, and other companies for their role in fueling an extreme heat wave in the Pacific Northwest in 2021 that killed more than 1,400 people. 

“A report with the kind of gravitas that the National Academies can bring will be a huge boost to the plaintiff’s cases.”

“A report with the kind of gravitas that the National Academies can bring will be a huge boost to the plaintiff’s cases,” Patrick Parenteau, an emeritus professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, told POLITCO. 

Because the report may be useful for such lawsuits, its release has faced criticism from skeptics of anthropogenic climate change. Such opposition, which included records requests to collect scientists’ emails and efforts to discredit attribution science, pressured two people to leave the group producing the report, according to POLITICO.

On the day of the first meeting of the National Academies’ panel to assemble the new attribution report, Roger Pielke Jr., a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, called the project “institutionalized stealth advocacy in support of climate litigation.” 

The goal of such opposition is “to keep attribution science out of court,” Alice Hill, a former federal prosecutor who worked on climate policy in the Obama administration, told POLITICO. “And what is the ultimate reason for that? To shield the fossil fuel companies from liability.”

Advancing Attribution Science

The report’s authors write that further improvements to attribution science have “significant potential” to help researchers understand the economic, health, and other impacts of climate change-fueled extreme events. 

 
Related

•  Read the Report: Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and their Impacts
•  Inside the Campaign to Discredit a Key Climate Science Report
•  The First Wrongful Death Suit Against Big Oil Is Not Going Their Way
•  Top Science Panel Backs Research Linking Extreme Weather to Climate Change
•  Get Involved: AGU Science Policy Action Center
 

To further strengthen attribution science and its usefulness in mitigating the effects of extreme weather, the report suggests a range of actions are needed, including producing higher-resolution global climate models, conducting more studies that apply multiple attribution science approaches to the same event, providing additional peer review of attribution studies, and making improvements to the observational datasets underlying attribution science, especially in the Global South.

“Continuing to improve observing systems remains a priority, because attribution science ultimately depends on reliable observations,” Hurrell said. “There are still vast regions of the world that just have mostly inadequate data records.”

—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 © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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As a child going to school in Timika, Indonesia, the nearest major town to Puncak Jaya, Alion Belau could see, on a clear day, that there were glaciers atop the 4,884-meter (16,024-foot) mountain. Some Indigenous peoples, including Belau’s tribe, the Moni, call them “the eternity glaciers” (or, in Indonesian, Salju Abadi).

At 4,884 meters (16,024 feet) tall, Puncak Jaya, in the Indonesian part of the island of New Guinea, is the tallest mountain in Oceania. Credit: Klaus Thymann

Now, as a pilot who flies over Central Papua’s Sudirman mountain range nearly every day, Belau is not seeing as much ice as he used to, even compared to when he first began flying 9 years ago.

“It’s really sad,” he said. “It’s not the eternity iceberg or the eternity glaciers anymore. It’s going to be ‘the 5-year glaciers’ or ‘10-year glaciers.’”

Alion Belau captured this footage as he flew a route over Puncak Jaya in 2016. Over the past 9 years, he’s watched the extent of the mountain’s glaciers shrink. Mapping What Remains

Klaus Thymann, an environmental scientist and explorer, as well as the founder and director of the nonprofit Project Pressure, recently created the first photogrammetry model of the glaciers on Puncak Jaya, aiming to document their current extent and raise awareness about their decline. Photogrammetry uses photography to gain information about the dimensions and location of an environment.

Past research has suggested that in 1850, about 18.8 square kilometers of Puncak Jaya were covered by glaciers. By 2002, that area had shrunk by 88.6%, to 2.14 square kilometers.

According to calculations by the Project Pressure team, the mountain’s East Northwall Firn Glacier had shrunk by 95% since 2002 and is no longer considered a single glacier, but three discrete patches of ice.

A still image from the final 3D photogrammetry model is seen here. In blue is the fragmented East Northwall Firn Glacier, which has decreased in area by approximately 95% since 2002. Model Credit: Klaus Thymann & Pix4D

Thymann has long been interested in documenting “white spots on the map,” or areas with little data. But he’s been particularly interested in equatorial glaciers. In 2024, he and a team of dozens trekked up Uganda’s Rwenzori Mountains to document the decline of glaciers on Mount Stanley.

“We think of palm trees, and furry animals, and warmth, and exotic fruit when we talk about the tropics, not ice,” Thymann said. “The [idea of] tropical glaciers is hugely fascinating.”

They aren’t just fascinating to people from other countries. Belau said one reason the decline of the glaciers is saddening is because their presence used to attract people from across Indonesia to his home province of Papua.

“People, when they go back to Jakarta or other provinces in Indonesia, they will tell their families, ‘Hey, we have ice! We have icebergs. We have glaciers in this country.’ And then they talk about Timika,” he said. “So it’s just something that attracts people to come to visit Timika, and they witness it. But now, not so many people talk about it.”

Ice once covered both of these ridges on Puncak Jaya, but now it is concentrated in the saddle between the two. Credit: Klaus Thymann “Just a Name Now”

Glaciers the world over are shrinking or disappearing altogether in the face of climate change. Since 2000, Earth’s glaciers (excluding the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica) have lost an average of 273 billion metric tons of ice per year, according to the European Space Agency. And the loss is accelerating: The amount of ice lost from 2012 to 2023 was 36% higher than the amount lost between 2000 and 2011.

This pair of images, captured by the Thematic Mapper on Landsat 5 in 1988 and by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 in 2017, shows the loss of Puncak Jaya’s glaciers over the course of less than 3 decades. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey

As the tallest peak in Oceania, Puncak Jaya is also one of the Seven Summits, or the highest peaks on each continent and a common goal for die-hard mountaineers. The climb up Puncak Jaya is a technical one, but part of what makes it so difficult to summit is the logistics. Thymann obtained a permit and coordinated with local authorities to fly into Timika, where he waited until conditions were safe for a helicopter to take him up the mountain.

“I called it the cloud lottery,” he said.

Even on the mountain, there were more cloud lotteries while Thymann waited for enough visibility. On its face, the work, done over the course of several days, was simple.

Thymann worked with a local military guard who had accompanied him to place colorful ground control targets around the area. These targets helped Thymann’s drone to calibrate its location as it captured hundreds of high-resolution images. These images were later combined to create the photogrammetry model.

Klaus Thymann used a drone to capture hundreds of photos of Puncak Jaya and what’s left of its glaciers. These images were combined to create a photogrammetry model. Credit: Klaus Thymann

“I was surprised to see there was still some ice left,” Thymann said. “But mountains are like fractals. It’s very difficult to judge scale. And, of course, it’s very very little that’s left.”

Francine Hematang, a forestry and environmental scientist at Papua University in Indonesia, was not involved with Project Pressure’s efforts but recently led a study that used satellite data to document the decline of Puncak Jaya’s glaciers from 1980 to 2024. The study’s results suggested that the glacier area atop the mountain declined by 97% in that 44-year period. Four of the mountain’s six glaciers disappeared completely. Hematang called Project Pressure’s survey “excellent.”

“It uses photogrammetry, which will certainly capture the details of the glacier much better than satellite imagery,” he told Eos in an email. “With photogrammetry, we might be able to see the glacier’s boundaries and slope gradients in detail, and perhaps estimate its volume as well.”

Belau said that the accurate mapping data could allow locals to share the stories of the glaciers with future generations. After all, he said, “eternity glaciers…is just a name now.”

Indigenous peoples living near Puncak Jaya, including the Moni, call the glaciers atop Puncak Jaya the “eternity glaciers.” “It’s just a name now,” said Alion Belau, a Moni pilot. Credit: Klaus Thymann

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

Citation: Gardner, E. (2026), The “eternity glaciers” are almost gone, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260228. Published on 16 July 2026. Text © 2026. 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.

Methane is one of the most abundant greenhouse gases on Earth, and, when compared with carbon dioxide, it is 28 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

As the climate warms, it’s increasingly urgent to understand where methane comes from. Researchers can analyze the ratios of different carbon isotopes within methane to learn whether that sample came from fossil fuels or from other sources, such as wetlands or agriculture.

“I think this could end up being a landmark study.”

Sometimes, though, even these isotopic fingerprints leave room for uncertainty. New research examined several hundred liters of air gathered from compacted snow in Greenland in an even more precise way. The study, which marks the first time researchers have reconstructed the clumped isotopologue signature of atmospheric methane from past air, was published today in Science Advances.

“I think this could end up being a landmark study,” Edwin Schauble, a geochemist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research, told Eos via email. “Methane is such an important greenhouse gas and tracer of the carbon cycle that the prospect of getting a better understanding of its history and future is exciting.”

The Nitty-Gritty

Methane (CH4) is made up of one carbon and four hydrogen molecules.

Isotopes, of course, refer to atoms of the same chemical element that have different numbers of neutrons. For instance, carbon naturally occurs in three isotopes: carbon-12, carbon-13, and carbon-14, with carbon-12 being the most common. Hydrogen has three naturally occurring isotopes, including deuterium (which has one proton and one neutron).

The word “isotopes,” explained Jiayang Sun, a geochemist who was a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland when he coauthored the new paper, refers to elements at the atomic level.

“But when we say ‘isotopologue,’ it’s a word on the molecular level,” he said. “For clumped isotopologues, it’s two or more rare isotopes substituted into one molecule.”

This could mean that the carbon-12 in a methane molecule is replaced with a carbon-13 and one of the molecule’s hydrogens is replaced with deuterium, or it could mean that two of the hydrogens in the same molecule are replaced with two deuteriums.

“In some cases, the information from clumped isotopologues gives you information that’s independent from that provided by the straight isotopes,” said James Farquhar, a geochemist at the University of Maryland. “It gives us a little bit of a better understanding, or better constraints.”

Higher anthropogenic emissions result in lower clumped methane concentrations. However, clumped methane molecules take many years to reach equilibrium, so an increase in methane emissions might not show up in the clumped isotope signal for decades.

New Insights from Old Air

Modeling reflects that emissions of methane have changed over the course of the industrial era. NOAA data show that atmospheric methane levels have risen since the 1980s, with a plateau from 1999 to 2006. The new study’s researchers wanted to take a closer look at these changes by examining the clumped isotopes in air samples from the past.

“The overall trend is kind of clear, but when it comes to detailed allocation of total emissions to each source…the uncertainties related to that are still high,” Sun said.

Because methane makes up only about 2 parts per million of air, and clumped isotopes only represent part of that, the team would need a lot of air to undertake this investigation.

A team of researchers gathers a firn sample. Credit: Thomas Röckmann

But where do you get several hundred liters of decades-old air? One method is to use air found in firn, compacted snow that is the intermediate stage between snow and glacial ice. Researchers from Utrecht University, including atmospheric scientists Malavika Sivan and Thomas Röckmann, happened to have several hundred liters on hand.

The samples were gathered in 2018 as part of the East Greenland Ice-Core Project (EastGRIP). A team of researchers, including Röckmann, drilled a hole into the ice and inserted a 5-meter-long bladder and a set of three tubes. The bladder was inflated to seal the hole and prevent contamination. The tubes then pulled 30-year-old air out from the pores within the firn and pumped it into containers on the surface.

The Utrecht team was interested in examining the clumped isotope levels, but they didn’t have a mass spectrometer that could conduct such analysis on their relatively limited sample size. This made the University of Maryland researchers, who had the spectrometer but not the samples, a perfect partner.

After measuring the samples, the team used modeling to conclude that clumped methane reached a low in approximately 1993.

“Our model suggests that was caused by the increased anthropogenic methane emissions during the industrial period (the 1800s),” Sivan wrote in an email to Eos. “Clumped methane molecules take a very long time to equilibrate after such perturbations, hence the lag in the signal.”

Future Methane Levels

By helping us understand more about our past, this work could be combined with traditional bulk isotope measurements to improve modeling of future atmospheric methane levels.

“Not only do their results tell us much more about methane’s past history, their findings may also be very helpful in targeting pathways to bring methane’s rise under control.”

“It provides the data that would be needed to understand how we got here in terms of the isotopic compositions, and that’s a constraint that will be of value if we’re going to make interpretations about changes that happen in the future,” Farquhar said.

Euan Nisbet, an Earth scientist and professor emeritus at Royal Holloway University of London, said that clumped isotope research is “very much the forefront” of improving understanding of the global methane budget, and that this new work is “a very fine study.”

“Not only do their results tell us much more about methane’s past history, their findings may also be very helpful in targeting pathways to bring methane’s rise under control,” he said.

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

Citation: Gardner, E. (2026), These “clumped” molecules could offer clues about Earth’s climate, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260235. Published on 15 July 2026. Text © 2026. 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.

When Hanna Rae Martens visits the solar park she studies in northern Germany, she finds meadow pipits perched on the panels. They launch off to catch insects, then return, using the panels like tree branches.

This solar park, built on rewetted peatland, hosts a more diverse bird community than adjacent drained farmland, according to a new study in Ecological Solutions and Evidence. The findings suggest that combining peatland restoration with solar energy development could benefit birds.

Healthy peatlands hold large quantities of organic matter and, as a result, store more carbon than any other terrestrial ecosystem type.

In drained peatlands, on the other hand, that stored carbon is released to the atmosphere, presenting a major climate problem. In Germany, 95% of peatlands are degraded, and they account for 37% of all annual agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Globally, drained peatlands emit 5% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gases. That is roughly twice what air travel produces.

Installing solar panels on rewetted peatland is one proposed [solution]: The land gets restored while landowners earn income from energy production.

Rewetting peatlands reduces emissions, but it also makes most crops impossible to grow, reducing the land’s economic prospects. Installing solar panels on rewetted peatland is one proposed way to resolve that: The land gets restored while landowners earn income from energy production.

Martens, a peatland ecologist at the University of Greifswald, led what she says is one of the first studies to examine what that setup means for birds. She and her colleagues tracked bird species at the solar park and at nearby drained grassland throughout the 2024 breeding season.

An Unusual Flock

The team used six low-cost AudioMoth recorders at the solar park and six at the drained grassland site. From March through October 2024, each recorder captured 40-second audio clips of the landscape every 4 minutes. The team generated a large dataset that was then run through BirdNet, an open-source neural network trained to identify bird species from their calls. To reduce false positives, the researchers applied species-specific confidence thresholds before counting any detection.

The solar park attracted a mix of species, including some typically found in wetlands, wooded edges, and urban areas. “The presence of wetland species like reed bunting and the endangered meadow pipit shows that the solar park is truly rewetted,” Martens said. “But we also recorded species like Eurasian tree sparrow and tree pipit, which are not typically found in peatlands. They all appear to use the structure of the solar panels.”

A solar park built on rewetted peatland hosts a more diverse bird community than adjacent drained farmland, new research suggests. Credit: Wattmanufactur, CC BY

Though the overall number of species was similar across both sites, the solar park scored significantly higher on two standard diversity indices—the Shannon and Simpson indices. In other words, it hosted a more even and consistently present community of common species.

Promising, with Caveats

Outside scientists said the results were worth attention but cautioned against reading too much into them.

“I think this is a great idea to study,” said Michael Schummer, an associate professor of wetland wildlife at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry who was not involved in the research. But he pointed to a methodological concern: The audio recorders inside the solar park were spaced as close as 90 meters apart, below the 250-meter minimum standard for bird monitoring surveys. At that distance, multiple recording stations may capture sounds from the same bird territory, potentially inflating diversity estimates.

“Just as we want more biodiversity in the world, I think we need more diversity in our landscapes.”

Guido Bakema, a soil scientist at Wageningen University who was also not part of the study, raised a separate issue. The study, he said, compared the rewetted solar park to drained grassland but not to a rewetted peatland without solar panels, raising the question of whether it was the rewetting or the solar panels that accounted for the change in bird diversity. “It would be better if they had separated this,” he said.

The authors acknowledged these limitations directly, agreeing that a lack of replicates in this study means that the effects of rewetting and the addition of solar panels cannot be isolated. However, at the time of the study, no other operational rewetted peatland solar park existed nearby for comparison.

Martens is already working to address those gaps. She has expanded her research to five sites this year and plans to examine how design choices such as panel height, spacing, and row width affect which species show up.

“Just as we want more biodiversity in the world, I think we need more diversity in our landscapes,” she said.

—Larissa G. Capella (@CapellaLarissa), Science Writer

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Citation: Capella, L. G. (2026), For the birds: Solar panels over peatlands may increase avian biodiversity, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260229. Published on 15 July 2026. Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Source: AGU Advances

Ocean tides push upstream along coastal rivers, in some cases reaching hundreds of kilometers inland. These inland stretches are known as tidal rivers, and they’re the scene of complex interactions between the river current and tidal oscillations. When rivers flood, tidal dynamics can sometimes add to a river’s height, increasing overall peak water levels and amplifying flooding.

This heightening mechanism occurred in China’s Yangtze River, where disastrous floods in both 1954 and 2020 were aided by tides. To learn more, Guo et al. combined data on river discharge and tides from both flood periods, along with a tidal model, to explore how interactions between the river and incoming tides conspired to create anomalously high water levels.

The authors found that peak water levels in both floods occurred around 1 to 2 weeks after peak river discharge during perigean spring tides when both the Sun and Moon are in optimal positions to create high tides. They hypothesize that peak river discharge rates suppress subharmonic tidal amplitudes, while intermediate rates of discharge allow for greater amplitudes and therefore higher water levels. Additionally, river water takes some time to fully move downstream, meaning that water levels are higher in the days following floods, adding to the effects of tidal inflows.

Comparing the two floods, the authors noted that channel deepening caused by sediment depletion from the Three Gorges Dam helped create higher water levels in 2020 than in 1954. Additionally, higher sea levels in 2020 helped water move upstream, also contributing to peak water levels.

Looking to other tidal rivers around the world, the authors say that cumulatively, more than 3,380 kilometers of tidal rivers are potentially exposed to floods caused by similar mechanisms. Other rivers, such as the Mekong and the Amazon, also see similar tidal subharmonics, meaning the same forces could conspire to create extra-large floods as swollen rivers and incoming ocean water combine. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV002247, 2026)

—Nathaniel Scharping (@nathanielscharp), Science Writer

Citation: Scharping, N. (2026), How tides and river water combine to amplify floods, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260230. Published on 14 July 2026. Text © 2026. 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.

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In the United States and elsewhere, ocean research infrastructure is facing a funding crisis. The U.S. National Science Foundation recently proposed dismantling hundreds of deep-ocean observation instruments, though it reversed the decision after public outcry. Still, a lagging NOAA budget and cuts to federal research funding have slowed the deployment of U.S.-owned instruments that measure ocean metrics and left the future of Argo, a global fleet of robotic instruments drifting in the ocean, in question. In addition, the number of observational floats deployed by Europe, as well as the number of active European floats, has dropped steadily since about 2020.

A study published in Nature Climate Change quantifies the impact that changes in funding could have on ocean data. Through a series of experiments, the research team showed that even small changes to the availability of data within the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), a United Nations–supported network of ocean observations, would significantly decrease the quality of ocean heat information available to researchers, making global climate and weather predictions more difficult.

Without U.S. contributions to the network, for example, “we lose the capability to monitor ocean warming,” said Lijing Cheng, an oceanographer at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and coauthor of the new study. Cheng is a member of the World Meteorological Organization’s Ocean Observations Physics and Climate Panel, which evaluates the status of global ocean observation systems and recommends strategies to keep such systems sustainable.

“It’s a really important paper because it is addressing the precarity of our current global ocean observing system,” said Hilary Palevsky, a marine biogeochemist at Boston College who was not involved in the study.

Data Degradation

GOOS is a network of observing platforms, ship observations, buoys, and Argo floats that measure various essential ocean variables such as temperature, salinity, nutrients, biodiversity, and more. In particular, the network provides high-quality data on ocean heat content, a measurement of the amount of energy stored in Earth’s oceans. Scientists use ocean heat content to project global sea level rise, tropical cyclones and hurricanes, marine heat waves and their impacts on ecosystems and fisheries, and more.

“If we want to know how much the climate is impacting ocean ecosystems, we have to monitor ocean temperature and ocean heat content changes,” Cheng said.

According to Cheng, much of the information gathered about the health of ocean observation systems like GOOS is simply inventories—counts of how many observations exist. Rarely does anyone evaluate how the number of observations available affects the quality of the data, he said. And with various global threats to data stewardship and funding, making that assessment could be more important than ever.

To see how a hypothetical loss of GOOS observations could affect ocean heat content data, Cheng and the research team ran two experiments. First, they randomly removed 20%, 40%, 60%, and 80% of the available GOOS ocean heat content observations to mimic possible changes to the system. Losing these data degraded measurements of the global annual ocean heating rate in all cases, increasing the relative error of the measurement by about 33%, 57%, 79%, and 97%, respectively.

“That’s a really risky place for us as the global ocean sciences community to have any country play such a pivotal role.”

Next, they removed the datasets by country, creating hypothetical scenarios where a country’s entire contribution was deleted from the network. Removing data from the five countries with the highest contributions (the United States, Australia, Japan, France, and Germany) degraded ocean heating rate measurements significantly in each case. Removing data contributed by the United States, for example, increased the relative error of the global annual ocean heating rate measurement by 163%, making the measurement difficult to distinguish from noise.

Cheng was surprised by the extent to which losing data maintained by the United States affected ocean heat content observations. The United States contributes more than 50% of the ocean observation data in GOOS and provides crucial observational coverage of the Arctic Ocean and the tropics. “We knew it was important, but it’s even more important than we thought,” Cheng said.

“Historically, I had been proud of how much the U.S. has contributed to the ocean observing enterprise globally,” Palevsky said. But, she added, “that’s a really risky place for us as the global ocean sciences community to have any country play such a pivotal role.”

The authors write that their results may be underestimates of how data loss will affect measurement quality because in many cases, observational equipment and data infrastructure are shared between countries, meaning a change to one country’s ability to collect observations could “propagate through the system.”

The team also tested only how a loss of observations would affect ocean heat content data. Other essential variables could fare even worse because they are already limited by having fewer observations than ocean heat content, Palevsky said.

Coordination and Collaboration

Cheng said the results indicate a need for countries to collaborate more closely to ensure long-term global coverage of ocean observations. “This should be done in a much more coordinated way,” he said. The World Meteorological Organization’s Global Telecommunication System (GTS) offers a possible model, he said. To access data from GTS, a country must also contribute data.

“Some of the U.S. contributions don’t have funding to take us all the way to having those conversations [in 2029].”

Scientists, too, could coordinate better by teaming up with each other when heading out on scientific cruises, Cheng said. He imagines a global platform scientists can use to communicate to see whether their research goals and cruise routes match up with those of scientists elsewhere in the world. The ocean observation community meets every 10 years; the next meeting will occur in Qingdao, China, in 2029. Cheng said the gathering will be a good opportunity for “everyone to sit together and create a high-level agreement about how to move forward” toward better coordination. “I think we can achieve this,” he said.

However, 2029 may come too late to address some of the uncertainty facing U.S. ocean research, Palevsky said. “Some of the U.S. contributions don’t have funding to take us all the way to having those conversations [in 2029].”

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

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2026), Changes in funding could tank quality of ocean heat content data, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260226. Published on 13 July 2026. Text © 2026. 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.

Source: Earth’s Future

This is an authorized translation of an Eos article. 本文是Eos文章的授权翻译。

航天产业正在迅猛发展。未来几年，预计将有近 10,000 颗航天器被发射至近地轨道，用于全球监测、太空旅游以及提供互联网服务的卫星“巨型星座”等多种用途。

火箭发动机的尾气，以及失效卫星和火箭部件重返地球大气层时燃烧产生的物质，都会释放出一系列污染物。鉴于航天产业以往规模较小，这些化学物质长期以来被认为对气候影响不大。如今，该行业的快速增长将导致排放量激增，但科学家目前尚未完全掌握其对环境的具体影响。

Vliex 等人对 2022 年发射的火箭进行的一项分析显示，航天活动会消耗臭氧层并加剧全球变暖。其中，很大一部分臭氧损耗归因于物体重返大气层时释放的氮氧化物。

 研究人员计算了 2022 年发射的所有 186 枚火箭以及472个重返大气层的物体所产生的排放量，这些物体总质量近 5,000 吨。他们针对每次发射的飞行轨迹及100 公里以内不同高度处的排放情况进行了计算机模拟，并计算了物体重返大气层时释放的排放量。此外，他们还考虑了火箭尾气中发生的化学反应所产生的影响，这些反应会改变排放物的化学成分。  

将计算出的排放数据纳入大气化学计算模型 GEOS-Chem后，研究揭示了这些排放物对臭氧层的消耗作用及对地球的增温效应，并确认重返大气层过程中的排放是导致臭氧损耗的关键因素。研究人员发现，将羽流反应纳入考量后，航天飞行排放物的影响估算值有所降低。这凸显了在未来评估中考量羽流化学过程的重要性。

该分析还强调了不同类型火箭燃料所产生的影响的差异。在近期NASA旨在将宇航员送回月球的“阿尔忒弥斯2号”（Artemis II）任务中，火箭助推器使用了固体燃料。数据显示，相对于推进剂的质量来说，此类燃料造成的臭氧损耗最为严重，而火箭级煤油则导致了最显著的升温效应。

基于上述研究结果，研究人员呼吁，随着航天产业的持续扩张与演变，有必要针对重返大气层的排放物及火箭羽流化学开展进一步研究。

—科学撰稿人Sarah Stanley

This translation was made by Wiley. 本文翻译由Wiley提供。

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Text © 2026. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans

Typhoons are becoming more frequent and more intense as a result of climate change, and scientists are working to understand the transient but impactful changes these storms have on ocean biogeochemistry.

A typhoon stirs up the stratified water of the ocean, redistributing nutrients and organisms, as well as changing the temperature and salinity of the seawater.

Previous research found that this mixing process can change the makeup and activity of bacterioplankton communities and stimulate primary productivity. Those two changes can temporarily alter the water column’s food web and its role as a carbon sink or source.

But that work relied on the field’s relatively scarce opportunities for data collection. Sampling is often performed months apart, for instance, typically in the nontyphoon season and then following a typhoon. It has also traditionally focused mostly on coastal, estuarine, or lagoonal environments. These gaps left open questions about the timeline of change and recovery in the open ocean.

While on a research cruise in 2018 in the East China Sea, Lo et al. were interrupted by the category 5 Typhoon Maria. It was a rare opportunity to, for the first time, sample the bacterioplankton communities throughout the water column immediately before and after a typhoon.

The team collected environmental data and bacterioplankton samples for 3 and 4 days before and after the storm, respectively, at four depths in the water column.

As expected, nutrient concentrations, primary production, and bacterial activity all increased after the storm.

The researchers also documented a shift in community structure. Contrary to their expectations, overall bacterioplankton diversity did not change. But the composition of bacterial communities became more homogeneous between distantly spaced layers of the water column. And copiotrophic taxa that thrive in nutrient-rich conditions increased, while oligotrophic taxa that prefer low-nutrient conditions decreased.

These observations have given scientists novel insights into how typhoons enhance microbially mediated biogeochemical cycling in the ocean, which, as storms increase, could affect whether the ocean acts as a local carbon source or sink.

Fuller analyses of the microbial community’s gene expressions (metatranscriptomics), which may help elucidate metabolic activity and functional responses, would be valuable future work, as would a longer sampling period to reveal the time needed for the community to return to a pretyphoon state, the researchers note. (Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JC023738, 2026)

—Rebecca Dzombak, Science Writer

Citation: Dzombak, R. (2026), Typhoons mix up bacteria and biochemistry, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260222. Published on 10 July 2026. Text © 2026. 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.

From geomorphology and marine ecosystems to satellite orbits and planetary motion, the subjects that Earth and space scientists study often span three—or more—dimensions. However, much of the visual analysis and communication of results from this work has traditionally been confined to 2D.

Across disciplines, scientists, engineers, and educators are leveraging this potential for fieldwork planning, data analysis, education, and outreach.

With the evolution and widespread adoption of extended reality (XR) and spatial computing technologies, scientists can now work natively in 3D. Innovative tools offer the ability to access otherwise unreachable environments, gain new perspectives, perform data analysis more naturally and intuitively than ever before, and showcase and explain findings in profoundly new ways.

Across disciplines, scientists, engineers, and educators are leveraging this potential for fieldwork planning, data analysis, education, and outreach. The scientific community has an opportunity to embrace and advance this trend. However, effectively integrating spatial computing technologies into scientific practice and communication first requires determining where XR excels, where it falls short, and how scientists can best support and engage with these technologies.

A variety of XR technologies exist, and we briefly review them here. These technologies offer benefits for and could be integrated into numerous uses across Earth and space science (ESS) research, education, and communication. Doing so will require overcoming challenges, including growing researchers’ fluency with XR and creating opportunities for them to apply it.

We encourage you to examine several interactive examples of 3D models related to ESS in the following embedded viewer.

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You can also scan the QR code below using the XR-capable computer you likely carry in your pocket to view the same examples via augmented reality (AR).

A Spectrum of Immersion To view 3D models in augmented reality, open the QR code (or, on a desktop with a webcam, navigate to https://kcollins.github.io/xr-notes/AR/AR11.html) and grant camera permissions to the page. Then, aim the camera at the markers on this page to view a variety of AR objects. Try making the markers larger or smaller, moving them around, or printing them out and taping them to objects around you to place the virtual objects into your real-world environment.

Visual and spatial analyses of data and information have long been essential in Earth and planetary sciences. Since the early days of mapmaking and modeling, researchers have continually embraced innovative resources to represent and understand spatial relationships and patterns.

Tools such as geographic information systems (GIS) and Google Earth, which today are standard for analyzing and disseminating georeferenced data, have greatly improved our ability to assess spatial data qualitatively and quantitatively. However, they remain limited to 2D representations, even when viewed on a globe, because 3D data are still mainly accessed through 2D media such as screens or printed materials.

A growing body of work is transforming this landscape by integrating research products with advanced 3D technologies such as virtual reality (VR), data sonification, and immersive group experiences like planetariums and cave automatic virtual environments (CAVEs) (Table 1). (We use XR as an umbrella term for immersive and augmented reality 3D visualization technologies and their applications.)

Table 1. Extended Reality Technologies and Terminologies, with Associated Hardware Platforms and Notable Examples

TermDefinitionPlatforms and Hardware: Noteworthy ExamplesVirtual reality (VR)A fully immersive, often interactive, experience replacing the real-world environmentVR head-mounted displays (HMDs), haptic controllers: The Lab on Steam Google Earth VR,a OpenBrush (formerly TiltBrush), VR video gamesExtended reality (XR)An umbrella term for all immersive visualization technologiesAll HMDs, smartphones, WebXR: Meta Quest, HTC Vive, XR Elite, Apple Vision ProAugmented reality (AR)An experience that overlays virtual objects onto the real world, usually via a smartphone or tabletAR HMDs, smartphones, tablets: Pokemon Go, Microsoft HoloLens,a Google Glass,a Ray-Ban Meta glasses, Google ARCoreMixed reality (MR)Like AR, but virtual objects are independent of real-world objects; Microsoft’s preferred term, associated with the HoloLensHMDs: Microsoft HoloLens,a Magic Leap, Windows Mixed RealitySpatial computingTerm broadly referring to technologies that facilitate the creation, visualization, and interaction with objects in 3D space, whether on screens, through HMDs, or via augmented reality interfacesHMDs, computers, mobile phones: Apple Vision Pro, ARKit, ARCoreCave automatic virtual environment (CAVE)A room-sized, often highly customized VR space using projection screens, computer graphics, and motion tracking, although technologies varyCustomized projection rooms, such as planetariums: StarCAVE, Iowa State’s C6, CAVE2 at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Electronic Visualization Lab, Industrial Light and Magic’s StageCraft, KeckCAVES, and many others; often supported by custom software with projection mapping capability, such as OpenSpaceMultiuser virtual environment (MUVE)A shared virtual space where immersed VR users interact; an immersive cyberspaceVRChat, Planetary ParfaitSonificationThe transformation of data into sound for analysis and outreach, often used in concert with other XR technologiesInternational Community for Auditory Display, NASA’s Data Sonification Project, Sonification Handbook, sonification.designHapticsThe use of touch-based feedback, such as vibrations or force responses, to enhance immersion and interaction in virtual environmentsRumble motors in VR hand controllers, force feedback, ultrasonic displays360 VideoVideo recordings in which a view in every direction is recorded at the same time, shot using an omnidirectional camera or a collection of cameras; can be played back on a spherical or panoramic display or on a flat display where the user controls the viewing direction of the cameraMany examples are available on YouTubeStereoscopy/stereo imagingA range of methods that produce the illusion of 3D depth on a 2D surface using the observer’s binocular vision, sometimes with the aid of 3D glasses; can be used to create limited 3D illustrations in printed media at low cost and can be employed in other media as well, including 3D movies3D glasses (including red/blue anaglyph, ChromaDepth, Pulfrich effect, and others), stereophotographs, autostereograms (Magic Eye)

aLegacy platform or hardware; long-term support is no longer available.

XR uses a variety of digital objects and environments that merge the digital world with the physical world to varying degrees of immersion and interactivity. These environments range from AR, in which digital assets are superimposed on real-world objects, to fully immersive worlds in VR. Between those ends, mixed reality (MR) environments feature digital assets that behave dynamically and interact with the real-world environment surrounding the user.

The user experience of a given XR tool or application is largely determined by where it falls on the spectrum of immersion. Understanding the full scope of XR technologies is crucial to developing and deploying them effectively across platforms and audiences.

How XR Is Used in Earth and Space Sciences

Increasingly, extended reality (XR) is also being used as a storytelling tool, helping to express highly technical scientific findings as engaging narratives.

The use of XR in ESS has advanced significantly from early applications in planetariums and AR-assisted field research to fully interactive 3D models of complex geophysical data describing, for example, groundwater flow, coral reefs, and high-resolution lidar scans. Increasingly, XR is also being used as a storytelling tool, helping to express highly technical scientific findings as engaging narratives that resonate with multiple audiences and influence policymaking.

Bailenson [2019] offers a practical framework for determining how XR can best be used, suggesting it is appropriate for simulating experiences that are dangerous, impossible, counterproductive, or expensive in real life. In a virtual environment, users can engage in activities such as climbing inaccessible areas (dangerous), teleporting through solid rock (impossible), marking features in a landscape (which would be counterproductive in real life if done, for example, with spray paint), or hovering above landscapes like a drone (expensive).

Virtual field trips, classroom exercises, and museum-style VR exhibits are all examples of XR being used in an explanatory capacity in which it not only conveys information but also reduces both risks and costs. For example, a digital, browser-based VR field trip to the Whaleback anticline eliminates the risks and costs of traveling to and hiking around this site in east central Pennsylvania while providing a comprehensive and interactive study of structural geology. VR field trips can also improve the accessibility of nature and science for students with disabilities and those who may otherwise be unable to participate [Bursztyn et al., 2022].

However, researchers have cautioned that such virtual experiences should be designed carefully and intentionally to complement traditional field trips rather than replace them, because virtual experiences cannot replicate all aspects of and insights gained from in-person exploration [Carabajal and Atchison, 2020]. Nonetheless, the educational innovations and potential for scientific storytelling that XR offers can enhance students’ understanding and appreciation of real-world settings.

A user virtually explores Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf through the Inside the Ice Shelf augmented reality experience. The projection of the ice shelf, here superimposed on the photo, was created using lidar and ice-penetrating radar data from the Uncovering the Ross Ocean and Ice Shelf Environment and Tectonic setting Through Aerogeophysical Surveys and Modeling (ROSETTA-Ice) project. Credit: Boghosian et al. [2019], CC BY 4.0

Beyond field trips and education, researchers have developed a variety of XR experiences for scientific data visualization, analysis, and interpretation. Examples include applications for refining interpretations of mantle plume tomographic models [Lu and Rudolph, 2024], analyzing digital models of geologic outcrops to estimate fault characteristics [Seers et al., 2022], displaying and sonifying earthquake data and citizen-based observations, analyzing ice sheet radar and lidar data to understand ice sheet structure and history [Tack et al., 2023; Boghosian et al., 2019], assessing flood risks in New York City [Zhang et al., 2026], and improving weather model analysis [Grubb et al., 2023].

These studies demonstrate XR’s potential for advancing research in specific domains. However, much of the existing literature related to ESS lacks robust user studies to assess the actual impact of XR innovations on scientific discovery and analysis [Gallagher et al., 2022]. The prevalence of these user-focused analyses in computer science offers a good model for other fields to follow. It also suggests a need for interdisciplinary collaboration to help researchers create, test, and use XR tools to further develop the potential of these technologies (see “Building XR Experiences” box).

Benefits for Collaboration, Convergence, and Classrooms

The studies and use cases of XR we’ve encountered in our work and that are discussed in this article support—and, in fact, require—interdisciplinary work. They all combine the tools and perspectives of computer graphics, game design, and human-machine interfaces with domain-specific data and concepts from the field being studied.

XR experiences are scalable and offer potential for widespread collaboration, codesign, and decentralized science.

In addition, XR experiences are scalable and offer potential for widespread collaboration, codesign, and decentralized science. Open VR worlds can allow collaboration in the same way multiplayer online games do—Minecraft is an example—by creating persistent virtual spaces or multiuser virtual environments that change with time and in response to external inputs. Such collaborations can be enabled through “metaverse” platforms such as VRChat.

VR also enables users to perform certain 3D tasks, such as point cloud classification, with greater fidelity, and it can enable people around the world to collaborate virtually in real time—capabilities that can support fieldwork or mission coordination, planning, and execution. Field researchers, when viewing a new location in VR, naturally develop a spatial understanding of the terrain. A geographically distributed field team can therefore use VR to coordinate and rehearse plans before meeting in the field.

Many of these benefits extend to science education, where XR tools used in research can be adapted for authentic STEM learning. In the classroom, taking on the role of a scientist in a virtual world can profoundly affect students’ STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) identities. Dede [2009, p. 67] noted that digital immersion can help lower-performing students “to build confidence in their academic abilities” and to change “their frame of self reference to successful scientist in the virtual context.” Thus, well-designed immersive experiences and instruction “may have the potential to release trapped intelligence and engagement in many learners” [Dede, 2009, p. 67].

XR tools are highly customizable and can be used to cocreate educational experiences that are personally or culturally resonant with the learner. Such authentic learning experiences particularly benefit students who do not otherwise have strong STEM inclinations or identity, in part because they can inspire deep creative engagement with digital tools—a phenomenon that Turkle [2005] called “computer holding power.”

Overcoming Barriers to Advancing XR

We argue that XR technology and applications should be further centered in ESS to benefit research and education. However, working at this interface will raise challenges for new practitioners—as it has for us—including quickly evolving hardware driven by the tech market and the increasingly ubiquitous problem of developing and maintaining high-quality, open-source scientific software.

These two issues are main contributors to what we call the “problem of orphaned demos” in the research community—that is, promising research tools that languish in the demo phase and never reach wide adoption. For example, VR field trips made by and for researchers and educators often end up as “unicorns” (i.e., one of a kind, stand-alone products) frozen in time, whereas industry-developed VR continuously improves as its platforms and approaches rapidly evolve. On top of a steep learning curve to upskill in computer graphics and 3D user interfaces, such challenges may further dissuade researchers from pursuing XR.

Scientific visualization engines such as OpenSpace help address this problem by encouraging standardization, reuse, and sharing of assets in a unified software environment. Communities of practice that bring together researchers, open-source developers, educators, and artists can also be effective for sharing best practices and maintaining longer-term support of scientific XR projects.

Fig. 1. Counts of extended reality- (XR)-related abstracts (gray bars) and total abstracts (blue curve) presented at AGU’s Annual Meeting (formerly Fall Meeting) since 2000 are plotted here. Data were obtained using SciX. The code used is available here. An interactive version of this figure breaking down XR abstracts by AGU section and identifying individual abstracts is available here. Click image for larger version.

Scientific conferences are another key opportunity for learning and information sharing about XR. Interest in XR technologies at AGU’s Annual Meeting (formerly Fall Meeting), for example, has risen over the past 2 decades, as evidenced by an increase in abstracts with relevant keywords (Figure 1). We have also anecdotally observed a small, but growing, trend of presenters bringing head-worn displays to poster sessions, demonstrating a new mode of engagement with scientific data and results.

However, growing interest in XR at ESS meetings doesn’t appear to be fully reflected in the scientific literature yet. A recent literature review of immersive geovisualizations since 2010 found only 25 peer-reviewed journal articles and 6 conference papers when querying multiple databases across geoscience and computer science journals [Gallagher et al., 2022]. And an informal literature meta-analysis we conducted suggests that far more XR-related abstracts have been presented at AGU’s Annual Meeting (Figure 1) in recent decades than XR-related publications have appeared in AGU journals over the same time frame. This trend may be because of a lack of appropriate outlets for reporting scholarly XR use within ESS and because this work is instead reported through other technical societies or through informal channels.

Nathaniel Frissell (left, wearing a Valve Index VR headset) and Jaime Aguilar Guerrero (right, wearing a HoloLens 2 headset) view a 3D point cloud of a coral reef in Vrifier. The live view from the Valve headset is shown on a monitor (left), enabling the wearer to discuss the data with others as they interact with them in virtual reality. Credit: Kristina Collins

We recommend that practical steps be taken to support Earth and space scientists in thoughtfully and productively engaging with XR for research and education. At meetings, organizers can provide physical spaces that are safe for the use of headsets and other XR technology and that have adequate power supplies. Also, new session formats could be designed to facilitate presentations highlighting XR skills, demos, and development workflows.

In addition, professional societies, journal publishers, and scientific funders could develop new avenues to support experimentation with new and emerging media and to help the ESS community build fluency in XR. They could, for example, create opportunities for researchers to publish XR research and data products in new or existing journals. They could provide venues for and support research community-led efforts to share knowledge and training on XR. And they could provide targeted funding opportunities for XR-related research and education projects. Public-private partnerships in particular would be well-positioned to mitigate the orphaned demos challenge that arises in XR-related ESS research.

Each of these approaches would bring needed exposure to the uses and benefits of XR as well as drive innovation. We summarize XR’s potential with the words of futurist Jaron Lanier: You “just realize what you would otherwise have to describe” [Lanier, 2017, p. 294]. Ultimately, XR can bring enhanced spatial awareness to scientific analysis and education and help to close accessibility gaps in science communication through the use of 3D visual, spatial, and haptic representations.

Developing XR tools for widespread adoption by the research community will take time, but the application of 3D technology in scientific fields that are heavily visual and spatial by nature—as the Earth and space sciences are—is a worthy goal.

Building XR Experiences

Do you have data you’d like to visualize or interact with in XR? It’s important first to consider how you can best visualize the data and what benefits XR may have for your application. For example, are you trying to show changes in riverbed morphology, requiring you to render many digital elevation models? Or are you looking at slow geophysical processes, with 3D slices of complex imagery representing your data?

In ESS, creating XR applications involves using scientific data to design 3D experiences that are deployed on one or more hardware platforms. Determining appropriate visualization methods and hardware requires thinking deeply about your specific data and what information or insights you want to glean. Common visualization techniques include 3D slices, extrusions, point clouds, and isosurfaces (Table 2). XR games can also be great sources of inspiration in spatial analyses.

Table 2. XR Visualization Techniques for Volumetric Data Analysis

Visualization Techniques for Volumetric Data AnalysisGood Usage Examples3D slicesDescribing multi-instrument/measurement systems, model couplings, cross-sectional analyses, tomography3D lines and arrowsSatellite tracks, magnetic field lines or field-aligned data, flows and gradientsExtrusionsLayered data and their boundaries, topography and digital elevation modelsIsosurfacesFluids, tomographyPoint clouds (voxels)Fluids, lidar scans, satellite data such as attitude and tracks, satellite point measurements (Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), magnetic fields)Immersive spacePerspective- or scale-sensitive observations such as all-sky imaging, spatially or directionally sensitive systems such as field trips

Before beginning to develop a new XR experience, you must convert your raw data from instruments or simulations into a 3D format. The memory requirements posed by large datasets offer common challenges for such conversions, but they can be addressed by converting data to more portable formats such as GLB and USDZ.

With 3D data in hand, you may want to start visualizing them by using existing XR programs that don’t require additional coding. Free visualizers are available for most standard 3D file formats. Just seeing the data in a 3D environment, even if not a custom one, may offer new perspectives and spark useful conversations. Existing tools enable morphological comparisons, integration of data from multiple datasets, and other capabilities.

If you want to develop a bespoke visualization specific to your data, integrate data processing into your XR application, or visualize something abstract (like a toy model), you will need to build a custom application using a game engine such as Unreal Engine or Unity. With these resources, developers can build interfaces to facilitate interaction with data and with multiple users. Developing a robust user interface is crucial to the success of an XR application, and it is best undertaken in collaboration with colleagues knowledgeable in user interface design.

The process of going from raw data to a full XR application, a research front in its own right, is often nonlinear. Technical challenges in 3D visualization include problems accurately depicting morphologies or scaling, the occurrence of data occlusions or limited fields of view, the creation of ambiguous geometries or unclear intersections among data, and difficulties representing complex systems or dealing with inconsistent data formats. Future developments in XR, to the point where scientists can conduct research in 3D, must address these challenges. Needed advancements include improvements in interactivity (e.g., on-demand geometric transformations and slicing), 3D mathematical analyses (e.g., true 3D filters and spectral analysis), validation (e.g., ensuring clearly discernible geometric relations, scales, and positions), and discovery (e.g., capabilities for identifying patterns, structures, and correlations).

Acknowledgments

We thank our colleagues who have helped us lead XR-themed scientific conference sessions in the past, as well as our collaborators in XR projects, including Nick Hedley, Jaqueline Ryan, Robert LiKamWa, Joe Roberts, Beverly French, Jennifer Hoey, Jared Bendis, Andrew Rossi, Anne Holland, and others. This work is supported by National Science Foundation grant OPP-2218996.

References

Bailenson, J. (2019), Experience on Demand: What Virtual Reality Is, How It Works, and What It Can Do, WW Norton, New York, wwnorton.com/books/experience-on-demand/.

Boghosian, A. L., et al. (2019), Inside the ice shelf: Using augmented reality to visualise 3D lidar and radar data of Antarctica, Photogramm. Rec., 34(168), 346–364, https://doi.org/10.1111/phor.12298.

Bursztyn, N., et al. (2022), Virtual strike and dip—Advancing inclusive and accessible field geology, Geosci. Commun., 5(1), 29–53, https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-5-29-2022.

Carabajal, I. G., and C. L. Atchison (2020), An investigation of accessible and inclusive instructional field practices in US geoscience departments, Adv. Geosci., 53, 53–63, https://doi.org/10.5194/adgeo-53-53-2020.

Dede, C. (2009), Immersive interfaces for engagement and learning, Science, 323(5910), 66–69, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1167311.

Gallagher, C., S. Turkay, and R. A. Brown (2022), Towards designing immersive geovisualisations: Literature review and recommendations for future research, in OzCHI ’21: Proceedings of the 33rd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, pp. 307–326, Assoc. for Comput. Mach., New York, https://doi.org/10.1145/3520495.3520511.

Grubb, T., et al. (2023), Using XR for improving scientific discovery with numerical weather models, in IGARSS 2023 – 2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, pp. 1,537–1,540, IEEE, Piscataway, N.J., https://doi.org/10.1109/IGARSS52108.2023.10282886.

Lanier, J. (2017), Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality, Henry Holt, New York, us.macmillan.com/books/9781250097408/dawnoftheneweverything/.

Lu, Q., and M. L. Rudolph (2024), A synoptic view of mantle plume shapes enabled by virtual reality, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 25(6), e2024GC011517, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GC011517.

Seers, T. D., et al. (2022), Virtual outcrop geology comes of age: The application of consumer-grade virtual reality hardware and software to digital outcrop data analysis, Comput. Geosci., 159, 105006, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cageo.2021.105006.

Tack, N., et al. (2023), Development and initial testing of XR-based fence diagrams for polar science, in IGARSS 2023 – 2023 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, pp. 1,541–1,544, IEEE, Piscataway, N.J., https://doi.org/10.1109/IGARSS52108.2023.10281776.

Turkle, S. (2005), The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/6115.001.0001.

Zhang, Z., et al. (2026), Using virtual reality to study human response to flood risk across controlled experiments, Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct., 132, 105956, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105956.

Author Information

Kristina Collins (kvcollins@spacescience.org), Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.; Alexandra Boghosian, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, N.Y.; and Jaime Aguilar Guerrero, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Fla.

Citation: Collins, K., A. Boghosian, and J. Aguilar Guerrero (2026), Extended reality offers opportunities for scientific show-and-tell, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260221. Published on 10 July 2026. Text © 2026. 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 major landslide triggered by monsoon rainfall killed eight people this week. The failure occurred at the site of works for a new road tunnel – there is speculation that poor handling of excavated materials may have been the cause. Imagery suggests that the event might have been slightly more complex, though.

On 7 July 2026, the Kalladi landslide was triggered by heavy rainfall in Wayanad District, Kerala, India. Eight people were killed and ten were injured in a landslide that has attracted considerable attention in India and beyond.

The site of the landslide was the construction site for a major road tunnel project, known as the Wayanad Tunnel or the Anakkampoyil-Kalladi-Meppadi tunnel road (a variety of other names are also used).

The landslide was caught on an extraordinary, dramatic video that is on Youtube:-

The video shows some very lucky escapes, and probably some who were less fortunate. It also shows that the landslide occurred during heavy rainfall and that it was very mobile.

The location of the landslide was [11.52184, 76.13315]. Interestingly, Google Maps has this image of the site before the failure, collected in April of this year:-

Photograph from Google Maps of the site of the 7 July 2026 Kalladi Landslide in India.

Note the reinforced (shotcrete?) wall in the background, with forest on the slopes above, and the large volume of dumped, loose material in the middle distance.

Youtube also has a drone video of the aftermath of the landslide:-

In the media there has been a great deal of speculation that this landslide was caused by poor management of excavated material – in effect, that this is a fill slope type failure. Indeed, the Deccan Herald has this quote:-

“Kerala Minister T Siddique on Tuesday said the incident at the Kalladi tunnel project site was not a natural landslide but a ‘man-made landslide’ caused by the unscientific dumping of excavated earth.”

And there ae solid reports that concerns had been raised abut the handling of excavated materials at the project site.

I do not dispute the notion that this was a manmade disaster, nor that poor management of excavated soil played a role by contributing liquefiable material into the landslide. But I also find this still from the video quite interesting:-

Still from a video posted to Youtube of the site of the site of the 7 July 2026 Kalladi Landslide in India. Video posted by Asianet News.

The remains of the shotcrete wall can be seen on either side of the landslide scar, and pieces of the wall are visible in the debris too. But the crown of the landslide appears to extend beyond the site of the wall, with a planar surface on the left side of the scar. There is also some possible evidence of rotation on the right side of the scar.

I wonder therefore whether this is actually a failure in the slope behind the shotcrete wall perhaps caused by the build up of pore pressure due to poor drainage? The failure of this portion of slope may then have created an undrained loading situation on the excavated materials, driving liquefaction and the high mobility landslide.

The Kalladi landslide needs a proper, forensic investigation – I am only speculating – and once again lessons need to be learnt. I have highlighted on numerous occasions that too many infrastructure projects in the mountains of India involve grossly inadequate slope management.

Return to The Landslide Blog homepage Text © 2026. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Since 2000, the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has been responsible for publishing the National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated evaluation of the effects of climate change on the United States released every four years. 

Now, the program—and the assessment—is headed by Matthew Wielicki, an outspoken climate change denier, self-described “Earth science professor-in-exile,” and former University of Alabama geochemist, according to POLITICO. 

 
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Wielicki frequently casts doubt on established climate science on social media, with one recent post referring to climate change as an “imaginary problem.” He also runs a blog called Irrational Fear, which includes posts in which Wielicki posits that increasing solar radiation, rather than carbon dioxide, is responsible for regional warming signals; argues that the 2009 Endangerment Finding ignored the benefits of climate change for human societies; and casts doubt on the conclusions of the 2000 and 2009 National Climate Assessments.

“For too long, the USGCRP has been used as a vehicle for political agendas instead of sound science,” a White House spokesperson told POLITICO regarding Wielicki’s appointment. “We look forward to restoring the USGCRP and ensuring it fulfills its legal mandate.” 

In a 29 June post on the social media platform X, Wielicki solicited ideas about what readers may want to be included in the Sixth National Climate Assessment. 

What do you want to see in the Sixth National Climate Assessment (NCA6)?

–@usgcrp

— Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki (@MatthewWielicki) June 29, 2026

The Sixth National Climate Assessment was originally scheduled to be published in 2028. However, in April 2025, scientists working on the report were dismissed by the Trump administration. In December 2025, the administration invited a group of researchers known for their climate skepticism to replace the dismissed scientists and begin work on the Sixth National Climate Assessment once again. 

The same group of climate contrarians now working on the Sixth Assessment was responsible for writing a climate report for the Department of Energy last year that was used to justify the rescission of the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which concluded that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and require regulation. Multiple reviews from scientists found that the DOE report was misleading and relied on flawed science.

To maintain the momentum of research supporting national and subnational assessments of climate risks and solutions, AGU, along with the American Meteorological Society, plans publish the U.S. Climate Collection, a special collection of climate research papers.

—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 © 2026. 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.

A supermoon is reflected in the Fred C. Babcock/Cecil M. Webb Wildlife Management Area’s marsh, near Punta Gorda, Fla. New research suggests that wetland loss in the contiguous United States has increased residential flood insurance claim payments by billions of dollars, with costs particularly high in coastal Florida. Credit: Diana Robinson/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Wetlands are biodiversity hot spots and provide important carbon storage. During heavy rains, they act like natural sponges on the landscape by storing and slowing the flow of stormwater—reducing downstream flooding and protecting infrastructure.

As the climate changes and extreme flooding events become more frequent and intense, flood protection from wetlands may become even more valuable for both the natural and built environment. However, since 1700, at least 40% of the wetland area in the United States has been lost to development and agriculture, meaning these benefits are being lost.

A new study in Nature Water puts a price tag on one key wetland service: reducing flood risk. Wetland loss across the contiguous United States between 1985 and 2023 has increased residential flood insurance claim payments by more than $10 billion, accounting for 9% of all riverine flood loss payments, the study suggests, with the highest costs in Houston, southeastern Louisiana, and coastal Florida.

“That number is actually a large underestimate of how much wetland loss has increased flood damages in total,” said Jesse Gourevitch, a former economist with the Environmental Defense Fund and one of the study authors. Because only about 30% of flood losses are insured through the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), the main source of claim data in the study, the true economic cost of wetland loss is likely much higher, Gourevitch explained.

An infrared Landsat time series of Louisiana’s Bay Dosgris from 1985 to 2024 shows wetlands converting to open water as sea level rise and storms reshape the Gulf Coast. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Wetland Loss Mapped Across the Country by Costs

Researchers used payment data from NFIP claims connected to river flooding, a direct way to tie individual properties to specific flood losses. They then connected these data to maps of wetlands in upstream subwatersheds and tracked how much a given wetland area changed since 1985. They also accounted for factors that may have influenced flood severity, such as heavy rain events and changes in impervious surfaces like roads and roofs.

This study tracked individual properties with multiple flood-related claims, comparing the property before and after upstream wetland changes occurred. The approach was “one of the most direct ways in which we can observe flood losses at a property level,” said Gourevitch.

Parts of New Orleans, seen here from the International Space Station, are sinking by millimeters per year. These sunken areas are more vulnerable to floods and storm surges, especially as wetlands degrade. Credit: NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center/Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

The researchers also examined the monetary value of wetlands throughout U.S. subwatersheds. On average, 1 hectare of wetland provides $15,738 in avoided flood damages, though that value varies throughout the country. In the top 10% of subwatersheds, wetlands are valued at an average of $24,783 per hectare. The top 1%, located in Appalachia and New England, along the Gulf Coast, and in parts of Oregon, California, and Washington, are valued at an average of $301,268 per hectare. These high-value areas are concentrated in regions with high downstream flood exposure and losses.

“We see that in about 16% of subwatersheds, marginal benefits provided by wetlands solely in terms of their flood mitigation benefits outweigh the cost of conservation,” Gourevitch said.

The cost of flood insurance claims has risen in the United States since 1985, with some of the highest costs in Houston, Texas. This marsh near Galveston is less than an hour from Houston. Credit: Corey Leopold/Flickr, CC BY-NC 4.0 Protecting Wetlands Protects People and Property

Wetland loss also affects people unevenly. Flood risk is often higher in lower-income communities and communities of color, where residents may live in low-lying and flood-prone locations because of decades of discriminatory zoning and housing policies.

“Future flood risk will continue to disproportionately impact vulnerable communities. We know that wetlands reduce this risk, and if we don’t protect them, we’re adding to the risk for those most vulnerable communities.”

“Future flood risk will continue to disproportionately impact vulnerable communities. We know that wetlands reduce this risk, and if we don’t protect them, we’re adding to the risk for those most vulnerable communities,” said Helena Garcia, a recent Ph.D. graduate from the University of North Carolina’s Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program and one of the study’s authors.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Sackett v. EPA to reduce protections for wetlands that don’t have a surface water connection to other federally protected waterways. A proposed rule from the Trump administration threatens to change the definition of a wetland even further by winnowing down protected areas to only those that have long-term surface water.

The wetland areas no longer protected would provide $177 billion in flood mitigation benefits to residential properties, the authors suggest, and the flood damage stemming from this wetland loss would be greater in census tracks with lower income and nonwhite households.

“We really see parts of the southeastern U.S. emerge as these areas where [wetlands are] providing a lot of value and are unprotected,” Gourevitch said. “Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia are certainly areas of concern.”

A change to the definition of “wetland” proposed by the Trump administration would mean that wetland areas that provide $177 billion in flood mitigation benefits to residential properties would no longer be protected, new research suggests. Credit: eagle102.net/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

The study includes an interactive map tool for local leaders and residents to see where future wetland loss may translate to expenses greater than the cost of conservation.

“Wetlands are inherently valuable spaces for many reasons. If we lose wetlands upstream, we’re losing that capacity of the landscape to filter out pollutants. We’re losing the capacity of the landscape to soak up water. We’re losing the capacity of those habitats to support ecosystems,” said Anne Smiley, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of North Carolina’s Institute for the Environment who was not part of the study.

The Fred C. Babcock/Cecil M. Webb Wildlife Management Area protects about 32,700 hectares (80,772 acres) just south and east of Punta Gorda, Fla. Credit: Diana Robinson/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

“This study is a really important contribution, because [the researchers] have quantified something that’s been very difficult to quantify,” said Smiley. “They’re communicating the value of these wetlands in a new way.”

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

Citation: Owen, R. (2026), Calculating the costs of wetland loss, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260217. Published on 9 July 2026. Text © 2026. 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: AGU Advances

Hillslopes in Arctic regions with frozen soils can host a suite of geometric patterns, from circles and stripes to polygonal patterned ground. They can also have solifluction patterns, or markings left behind when partially thawed permafrost slips and flows down a slope. Solifluction patterns look like pairings of flat, terraced soil—like a big staircase—and rounded lobes of soil at the terrace’s base.

Understanding how these patterns form is important for predicting and working to fix unstable slopes in Arctic environments as climate change increases the rates at which frozen ground thaws. It could also be useful for understanding past climates on Mars, as scientists have spotted similar patterns on the planet’s surface. But solifluction patterns have defied explanation, and in a new study, Glade et al. use mathematical and physical models along with remote sensing to explain how they form.

Icy soil moves very slowly, just millimeters to centimeters per year, and behaves in complex ways, acting at times like a fluid and at others like a solid. This complexity is due to seasonal variability in water and temperature, as well as the fundamental physics of soil.

The researchers ruled out other common fluid analogues, including paint dripping down a wall, buckling instabilities seen in folding lava, and roll waves; reviewed the soil literature; ran physics-based computer models of terrace and lobe formation; and ran mathematical models of different fluid behaviors. After all that, they landed at last on a suitable analogue: waves that form in Oobleck, a non-Newtonian fluid made of cornstarch mixed with water. Its velocity changes under different stresses, and counterintuitively, it becomes harder to move the harder you push on it.

Oobleck’s unique properties make it a common classroom experiment, and it matched up the best with the frozen features researchers have observed in nature. Differences in soil moisture could lead to differences in soil velocity, creating a spatially variable buildup of soil that eventually collapses before the process of solifluction begins again.

It’s still not a perfect fit, the researchers noted. The Oobleck waves reflect only rheology, or the material makeup of the soil (or fluid) in question. Real-world frozen soil is more complex than a simple mixture of cornstarch and water.

Additionally, factors like topography and vegetation affect the pattern, not only the material’s composition. There must be a bump to begin with for soil to build up behind, and there must be enough soil moisture to accumulate ice.

The researchers would like to validate their model in the field, but because it takes hundreds of years or more for the features to form, observing that is difficult, but not impossible, and they’re determined to try. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026AV002392, 2026)

—Rebecca Dzombak, Science Writer

Citation: Dzombak, R. (2026), Patterned frozen soils get their shape from gravity and funky physics, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260223. Published on 9 July 2026. Text © 2026. 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.

14 July: This article has been updated with final data regarding responses to the proposed OMB rule. The public comment period closed yesterday with 341,699 comments submitted.

9 July: Six weeks ago, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed a new rule that would drastically alter the federal grantmaking process. The proposed rule would give political appointees the power to approve or deny funding to scientific projects.

Among other changes, the rule would also allow federal agencies to terminate active grants they deem inconsistent with agency priorities and to prohibit federal grants from being used for publication costs and open access fees.

 

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The OMB is accepting public comments on the proposal until 13 July, and organizations across the country have mobilized to coordinate responses during the 45-day comment period. As of 9 July, more than 98,900 comments have been submitted. Some, such as one from Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) asked OMB director Russell Vought to extend the comment period by no less than 90 days.

The most vocal public response has been from the scientific community, which largely opposes the proposed rule. Organizations such as Stand Up for Science, the American Physical Society, and AGU have launched tools to make the comment submission process easier.

“This is not a routine regulatory update,” wrote AGU President Brandon Jones in June. “[W]hat it actually does is restructure the foundational rules of U.S. science funding—with cascading impact for global collaborators—to serve political priorities rather than the public good.”

A tool created by Tech Policy Press analyzed the more than 50,000 comments that have been made public as of the closure of the comment period. The analysis found that 94% of the public comments opposed the new rule, with the top concern mentioned being the politicization of grant decisions. About 16% of the analyzed comments (8,414 of them) were from form letter campaigns. A disproportionate number of the form letter comments (2,549 of them), were in support of the rule.

Below is a sampling of comments. To submit your own comment on the proposed rule, join 1,000+ others who have shared their concerns through AGU’s Action Center.

Comments From Scientists

• “Because most grants in my field have durations between 2 and 6 years, this rule would make planning long term experiments and sustaining support for trainees nearly impossible. Depending on the outcomes of yearly elections and the oppositional priorities of political parties, grants could be cancelled on a whim any given year of a research project, leaving the promising science that was funded unfinished, scientists suddenly without jobs, and promising students abandoning opportunities that may have changed their life.” –Robert Denton, a biology professor at Ball State University
• “Scientific communication, whether through professional meetings or peer-reviewed publications, is the only way to share scientific findings. An individual working alone, with no route to sharing their work, does no good to society. Ideas thrive when they are shared, tested and amended, all of which happens through publications and presentations. Restricting this avenue to share results damages our nation and leaves us unable to compete.” –Tanya Furman (AGU board member)
• “I am really frightened by OMB’s proposed change to 200.340, which would allow agencies to terminate active grants at any time if they are determined to be inconsistent with federal priorities. This turns grantmaking into an entirely political process, and means that the kinds of science we’re able to do could shift every 2-4 years. Scientific progress that serves the American people takes longer than 2-4 years to come to fruition. With this kind of disruption, America would quickly lose our status as a leading scientific power.” –Hannah Mark, geoscientist
  • Note: The proposed changes to 200.340 involve allowing the agency to cancel grants that no longer serve “Federal agency program goals or priorities.” “Part 200” is also known as “Uniform Guidance.”
• “It goes without saying that all Americans – regardless of political affiliation – want health care that more quickly addresses their needs and reduces their risks for harms such as bloodstream infections and prolonged hospitalizations. Yet allowing unqualified political appointees to interfere with the scientific process imperils these universally held goals.” –Scott Halpern, professor of medicine, epidemiology, medical ethics, and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania
• “The passage of Vought’s ‘Uniform Guidance’ would be nothing short of catastrophic for American science. This rule would funnel decision power about what science is done, by whom, for whom, with whom, and effectively isolate scientists from the rest of the world. This is anti-democractic [sic] and anti-American.” –Colette Delawalla, founder of Stand Up for Science
• “I am a scientist. The US scientific system is the best in the world. Our universities, labs, and companies attract the most brilliant scientists from everywhere in the world to come to the US and keep us as the undisputed world leader in fields from AI to crop science. This creates jobs and wealth for our country. This proposed rule change threatens to obliterate science in the US.” –Edward Ricemeyer
• “The proposed OMB changes to grants would have severe negative effects on American science, and I oppose all of the proposed changes. … The peer review system used to evaluate research proposals at the NSF and NIH is a gold-standard system that is the envy of the rest of the world. I have served on NSF grant panels and also evaluated proposals for national grant agencies in Canada and multiple European countries. I am confident that our system leads to funding for the best science proposals, and our current peer review system leads to improvements in proposals and funded projects.” –Brian I.
• “Taken collectively, the provisions in the proposed regulations will limit agency flexibility to effectively engage with the scientific community and stakeholders to fund the best science and will impair the most positive outcomes for Americans. Simply put, this proposal, if implemented, will undermine the American scientific enterprise and global leadership.” -AGU. AGU’s full comment on the proposal outlines several concerns, and can be viewed here.

Comments in Favor

• “I support generally support any and all federal rules and regulations that help reduce waste, fraud, and abuse with respect to expenditure of taxpayer monies. In particular, I support the proposed OMB 2026-0034 Rule 200.450. … I support the OMB’s proposed reforms to strengthen oversight of the federal grant and assistance programs. It will improve protections against waste, fraud, and abuse.” –Marc Jensen
  • Note: Proposed changes to section 200.450 would “expressly prohibit funding any voter registration campaigns, drives, or related activities under Federal awards.”
• “American taxpayers deserve confidence that federal funds are being spent responsibly and for their intended purposes. Recent reports of improper payments, fraudulent claims, and inadequate oversight have highlighted weaknesses in the current system that must be addressed. Strengthening verification requirements, improving recipient vetting, and providing agencies with greater authority to suspend or terminate funding when fraud or misuse is identified are reasonable and necessary steps.” – Tamara Harrison, with the same comment from Wayne Worden
• “I strongly support the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed reforms in federal grant and assistance programs. I want stronger verification including identity verification of grant applicants, tighter recipient vetting, and agency authority to suspend or terminate funding when fraud or misuse.” –Agnes Puzak

–Emily Gardner (@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 © 2026. 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 tropical dry forest where Susan Perry’s Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project exists in Costa Rica has very distinct humid and dry seasons.

The Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project takes place in the tropical dry forest of Costa Rica, where Susan Perry and colleagues study 12 different groups of capuchin monkeys. Credit: Keith Hayward

“Even capuchins have their limits. And we need to start paying attention.”

Plants, insects, and larger animals, like the forest’s white-faced capuchin monkeys, are well adapted to these changes. But in 2015, during an abnormally severe drought influenced by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Perry, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, observed behaviors that once seemed impossible.

Under normal conditions “The [capuchin] mothers are quite devoted,” she explained. “Now, I was seeing babies crying on the ground piteously. And the mothers just looking down like ‘Too much trouble’ and walking off, abandoning their infants.”

“Even capuchins have their limits,” Perry said. “And we need to start paying attention because all the weather predictions are saying that we’re going to get more unpredictability and more climate extremes.”

Monkeying Around

Odd Jacobson, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, was a student at Lomas Barbudal in 2016, a year after this severe drought. His focus was on understanding how the study site’s 12 different capuchin groups were moving through the forest. But now he’s set out to investigate how else climate extremes may affect the behaviors and social structures of these monkeys.

In a paper published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, Jacobson and his coauthors—including Perry—analyzed how climate variability correlated to the 33 years of geolocation data they had on the capuchins.

Their first step was understanding how the size of each group was affecting the relationships between monkeys within the same group. To do this, they observed variables such as daily fruit intake, the size of the group’s home range, and the distance the group traveled each day to find food.

The researchers then analyzed how these variables changed during normal wet and dry seasons, as well as during El Niño and La Niña events.

A capuchin monkey holding its baby enjoys some fruit at the Lomas Barbudal site in Costa Rica. Capuchins are omnivores, but they mainly eat fruit. Credit: Keith Hayward

Finally, to understand how monkey groups interacted, they used a “hierarchical social relations model,” which allowed the scientists to predict how two different monkey groups would move through the forest and where their territories would overlap.

The team repeated this process, two monkey groups at a time, until they analyzed the interactions between all 12 monkey groups at Lomas Barbudal. Then, they added the climate-over-time layer to predict how the home range overlap and encounter rates (meaning moments where capuchins from two different groups engaged, often violently) would change with the seasons.

Strength (and Weakness) in Numbers

Generally, large monkey groups have advantages and disadvantages in the forest. One key advantage is the ability to control resource-rich areas, such as land with fruiting trees known as food patches. A key disadvantage is increased intragroup competition for food, meaning the daily fruit intake of individual monkeys was lower.

The researchers found that during climatic extremes, such as extremely wet or dry seasons, this intragroup competition intensifies, making the group less efficient at foraging overall. Behavior between groups changed with the climate as well. For example, in a typical dry season, large groups often overpower smaller ones to take over areas with more available fruit, such as along rivers.

But the new research found that this long-understood idea doesn’t always hold true: During extreme climate events, like a dry season made even drier by the effects of El Niño, capuchins didn’t try to hoard the higher-quality areas.

“We don’t really know exactly why,” Jacobson said. “Maybe there’s not as much heterogeneity in the landscape during these resource poor times, and so there’s not much that larger groups can monopolize.”

Climate extremes, the research suggests, may be upsetting the balance that determines the optimal size of monkey groups. And, as a warming atmosphere makes climate extremes like El Niño or La Niña more intense, it’s growing increasingly important to understand how these changes will affect animal societies.

Filippo Aureli, an ethologist at the Universidad Veracruzana, in Mexico, was not involved with this study, but he has studied the effects of extreme weather events on spider monkeys in Mexico. He also registered the infant mortality rates of capuchin and spider monkeys in the Costa Rican dry tropical forest during that 2015 drought. Capuchin populations experienced high infant mortality during the extreme event, while spider monkey populations tended to stop reproducing.

“With climate change, [climate extremes] are going to be more frequent and intense,” Aureli said. “And we don’t know what’s going to happen. For this period [so far], they’ve held on very well, the spider monkeys, but we don’t know for how much longer.”

For Jacobson, the 30+-year dataset provided by the Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project provided a baseline of monkey behavior.

Two monkeys from the same group get into a small altercation over a piece of fruit, an example of in-group competition. Credit: Keith Hayward

Perry agreed, noting “the importance of having a baseline when you’re trying to study rare events like El Niño droughts.”

“We know what normal is,” she explained. “If you just try to drop in right now in all the chaos that we’re starting to feel around the planet, then you really can’t study it.”

—Roberto González (@perrobertogg.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: González, R. (2026), Climate extremes may be reshaping monkeys’ social structures, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260198. Published on 18 June 2026. Text © 2026. 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: Space Physics

Sending a spacecraft to the underexplored planet Uranus is at the top of many planetary scientists’ wish lists. But which spacecraft-mounted instruments would be the most useful for answering questions about the mysterious ice giant?

Several missions to other parts of the solar system have included an instrument that detects energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) zipping through space. An ENA is created when a fast-moving, positively charged ion collides with a neutral particle and “steals” an electron. The now-neutral atom maintains its high energy, and because it is no longer charged, it escapes any influence of a magnetic field and flies onward in a straight line—perhaps right into a spacecraft-mounted ENA detector.

By measuring the numbers, directions, and energies of ENAs produced in a magnetic system, scientists can create three-dimensional images that illuminate the structure and dynamics of that system. ENA imaging previously deepened understanding of the space environments surrounding Earth, Mars, Saturn, and the Sun and highlighted interaction mechanisms occurring at the edge of our solar system.

However, whether ENA imaging would be useful in future exploration of Uranus has been unclear. New simulations by Santos-Costa and André suggest that ENAs are, indeed, likely detectable at Uranus and that studying the ice giant with ENA imaging could return valuable insights into its complex magnetosphere.

The simulations incorporate realistic parameters drawn from what scientists already know about Uranus, such as its strangely offset magnetic field, clouds of neutral particles surrounding its icy moons and the planet itself, and the presence of protons trapped in the planet’s magnetic field. The researchers used the simulations to explore what scientists might have seen if an ENA detector similar to that mounted on the Saturn probe Cassini had been on board the spacecraft Voyager 2 during its brief flyby of Uranus in 1986.

On the left, Uranus is seen by Voyager 2’s analog cameras during the 1986 flyby, when the spacecraft was a few dozen planetary radii from Uranus. The composite image on the right illustrates the hypothetical observation of Uranus’s magnetosphere from an energetic neutral atom perspective based on one of the case scenarios of charged and neutral particle distributions around Uranus discussed by the authors. The Z and M axes indicate the orientation of the planetary and magnetospheric systems, respectively. Credit: Left: NASA/University of Arizona/Erich Karkoschka; right: SwRI/Daniel Santos-Costa

The results point to the strong probability that a “Voyager 2 ENA detector” would have observed ENAs created by collisions between protons and neutral particles that escape the atmosphere and populate a vast region of space—aiding understanding of Uranus’s magnetospheric system. Because the distribution of protons within Uranus’s magnetosphere is poorly understood, the researchers ran the simulations with a few different distribution scenarios. Even in their worst-case scenario, ENAs remained detectable.

ENAs could also result from collisions between protons and neutral particles surrounding Uranus’s moons, rather than the neutral environment originating from the planet itself, but the simulations did not conclusively show whether a Cassini-like detector might capture them.

The researchers conclude that their simulations make a compelling case for including ENA imaging in future exploration of Uranus. (Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026JA035080, 2026)

—Sarah Stanley, Science Writer

Citation: Stanley, S. (2026), The speedy particles that could help us learn more about Uranus, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260196. Published on 18 June 2026. Text © 2026. 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: Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres

Methane is the second largest radiative forcing on climate after carbon dioxide with an atmospheric lifetime of about 9 years. The emissions of methane arise from a variety of sources, including wetlands, fires, agriculture, and industry. Most climate simulations set fixed concentrations of methane that vary by latitude (see top row of figure above), and do not explicitly account for variable emissions.

In contrast, Feng et al. [2026] perform novel simulations that: (1) account for emissions, chemistry, and transport leading to regional differences (bottom row of figure), and (2) track individual source regions to their global contributions. The authors find that emissions from Europe are initially up to 30% more effective at increasing surface concentrations than the global average. In other words, reducing a gram of methane in Europe is more effective at lowering global concentrations than a gram in North America or Asia. This is because Europe is situated at higher latitudes, and whose emissions tend to transport towards polar regions where atmospheric chemistry is slower and methane lives longer. Along with magnitude, the location of emissions also matters for understanding the global burden of methane.

Citation: Feng, C., Xu, Y., Mirrezaei, M. A., Buechler, R., & Gaubert, B. (2026). Distinct efficacy of regional methane emissions in affecting global and regional concentrations: An emission-driven CESM2 modeling study with methane tags. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 131, e2025JD045301. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JD045301

—Brian McDonald, Associate Editor, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres

Text © 2026. 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.