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

Coastal (tidal) wetlands are low-lying ecosystems found where land meets the sea, including mangroves, saltmarshes, and seagrass meadows. They are shaped by tides and support a mix of marine and terrestrial processes. However, agricultural and urban development over the past century have drained, modified, or degraded many of these coastal wetland ecosystems and now require restoration efforts.

A new article in Reviews of Geophysics explores how subsurface hydrology and biogeochemical processes influence carbon dynamics in coastal wetlands, with a particular focus on restoration. Here, we asked the lead author to give an overview of why coastal wetlands matter, how restoration techniques are being implemented, and where key opportunities lie for future research.

Why are coastal wetlands important?

Coastal wetlands provide many benefits to both nature and people. They protect shorelines from storms and erosion, support fisheries and biodiversity, improve water quality by filtering nutrients and pollutants, and store large amounts of carbon in their soils. Despite covering a relatively small area globally, they punch well above their weight in terms of ecosystem services, making them critical environments for climate regulation, coastal protection, and food security.

What role do coastal wetlands play in the global carbon cycle?

Coastal wetlands are among the most effective natural systems for capturing and storing carbon.

Coastal wetlands are among the most effective natural systems for capturing and storing carbon. This stored carbon is often referred to as “blue carbon”. Vegetation in these ecosystems, such as mangroves, saltmarsh, and seagrass, take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and transfer it to sediments through roots. These plants can store carbon 40 times faster than terrestrial forests. Because coastal wetland sediments are often waterlogged and low in oxygen, this carbon can be stored for centuries to millennia. In addition to surface processes, groundwater plays an important but less visible role by transporting dissolved carbon into and out of wetlands. Understanding these hidden subsurface pathways is essential for accurately estimating how much carbon wetlands store and how they respond to environmental change.

How has land use impacted coastal wetlands over the past century?

Over the past century, coastal wetlands have been extensively altered or lost due to human activities. Large areas have been drained, filled, or isolated from tides to support agriculture, urban development, ports, and flood protection infrastructure. These changes disrupt natural water flow, reduce plant productivity, and expose carbon-rich soils to oxygen, which can release stored carbon back into the atmosphere as greenhouse gases. In many regions, groundwater flow paths have also been modified by drainage systems and groundwater extraction, further altering wetland function. As a result, many coastal wetlands have shifted from long-term carbon sinks to sources of emissions.

How could restoring wetlands help to combat climate change?

Restoring coastal wetlands can help combat climate change by re-establishing natural processes that promote long-term carbon storage.

Restoring coastal wetlands can help combat climate change by re-establishing natural processes that promote long-term carbon storage. When tidal flow and natural hydrology are restored, wetland plants can recover, sediment accumulation increases, and carbon burial resumes. Importantly, restoration can also reconnect groundwater and surface water systems, helping stabilize (redox) conditions that favor carbon preservation in sediments. While wetlands alone cannot solve climate change, they offer a powerful nature-based solution that delivers climate mitigation alongside co-benefits such as coastal protection, biodiversity recovery, and improved water quality. Getting restoration right is key to ensuring these systems act as carbon sinks rather than sources.

What are the main strategies being deployed to restore coastal wetlands?

Common restoration strategies include removing or modifying levees and tidal barriers, reconnecting wetlands to natural tidal regimes, re-establishing natural vegetation through improving the hydrology of the site, and managing sediment supply. Increasingly, restoration projects are recognizing the importance of subsurface processes, such as groundwater flow and salinity dynamics, which strongly influence vegetation health and carbon cycling. Successful restoration requires site-specific designs that consider hydrology, geomorphology, and long-term sea-level rise.

What are some remaining questions where additional research efforts are needed?

Despite growing interest in wetland restoration, major knowledge gaps remain. One key challenge is quantifying how groundwater processes influence carbon storage and greenhouse gas emissions across different wetland types and climates. We also need better long-term measurements to assess whether restored wetlands truly deliver sustained carbon benefits under rising sea levels and increasing climate variability. Finally, integrating hydrology, biogeochemistry, and ecology into predictive models remains difficult but essential. Addressing these gaps will improve carbon accounting, guide smarter restoration investments, and strengthen the role of coastal wetlands in climate mitigation strategies.

—Mahmood Sadat-Noori (mahmood.sadatnoori@jcu.edu.au; 0000-0002-6253-5874), James Cook University: Townsville, Australia

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

Citation: Sadat-Noori, M. (2026), Coastal wetlands restoration, carbon, and the hidden role of groundwater, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO265003. Published on 9 February 2026. This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s). Text © 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.

After major disasters, public debate often treats them as unexpected or unprecedented. This reaction is not necessarily about the absence of warnings. It reflects how societies process shock—and how authorities often explain disruption as unavoidable, rather than the result of earlier choices.

As glaciers around the world continue to shrink and disappear, they are drawing more visitors than ever, not only for their beauty but for what they have come to represent in an era of climate change. A new study co-authored by Rice University anthropologist Cymene Howe examines this phenomenon, showing how melting glaciers have become powerful destinations for tourism, sites of collective grief and symbols of political meaning even as their loss threatens the communities that depend on them.

Source: Water Resources Research

If humans want to live in space, whether on spacecraft or the surface of Mars, one of the first problems to solve is that of water for drinking, hygiene, and life-sustaining plants. Even bringing water to the International Space Station (ISS) in low Earth orbit costs on the order of tens of thousands of dollars. Thus, finding efficient, durable, and trustworthy ways to source and reuse water in space is a clear necessity for long-term habitation there.

Current systems, like the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) on the ISS, offer a blueprint for closed-loop water reclamation, but they need improvements for future applications. Meanwhile, recent technological and scientific advances are pointing to new ways of finding, purifying, and managing water resources in demanding environments. In a new review, Olawade et al. provide an overview of the current state of extraterrestrial water management, as well as of the field’s prospects and challenges.

Water systems in space need to be closed loop, highly efficient, and durable, all while having low energy requirements, the authors say. Currently, the ECLSS is prohibitively energy intensive, and may not be efficient enough, for use on longer missions. Future suggested approaches for filtration and recycling include photocatalysis to purify water via light, bioreactors to filter urine and wastewater, ion-exchange systems to remove dissolved salts and heavy metals from extracted water, and ultraviolet or ozone disinfection to kill pathogens. Each comes with its own pros and cons: Microbial fuel cells in bioreactors could produce electricity, for example, but photocatalytic purification has low energy demands.

Sourcing water on places like the Moon or Mars would require either extracting water bound up in regolith or drilling into ice bodies. Sufficiently powering water reclamation systems is another concern, making energy-efficient systems a priority. Water system durability is also important, both to protect inhabitants and to reduce the need for onerous maintenance work.

Emerging technologies could meet many of these challenges. The authors point to advances in nanotechnology, which could be used to create highly tailored membranes for filtration that are more effective and resistant to fouling, and to the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to autonomously manage water systems, as two areas of promise. (Water Resources Research, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025WR041273, 2026)

—Nathaniel Scharping (@nathanielscharp), Science Writer

Citation: Scharping, N. (2026), A road map to truly sustainable water systems in space, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260023. Published on 9 February 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.

Author(s): Zhenhua Zhou, Xiaokun Wang, Hanyang Li, Julian Schulze, Peter Hartmann, Zoltán Donkó, Yongxin Liu, and Yangyang Fu

Similarity laws (SLs) describe how physical characteristics in plasma discharges remain consistent at different dimensional scales, and they have been verified in electropositive capacitively coupled radio-frequency (RF) plasmas across a wide range of discharge conditions. In this work, we explore t…

[Phys. Rev. E 113, 025202] Published Mon Feb 09, 2026

SummaryThe joint use of data from GRACE-like gravity missions and various ocean altimetry missions in a global inversion approach allows to quantify the individual contributions to global and regional sea level budgets. However, the contribution from the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) is subject to large uncertainties mainly depending on the applied strategy to account for effects due to glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). The large uncertainty of GIA affects estimates of AIS contributions as well as other elements of sea level budgets. Here, we investigate strategies to improve the representation of AIS mass changes within an existing global inversion framework. The framework employs pre-defined, time-invariant spatial patterns, so-called fingerprints, for representing the individual sea-level budget components, including AIS contributions. We improve this inversion method by including additional observations of satellite altimetry over ice sheets, and by further developing the parameterization of AIS ice mass changes. We extend from a basin-wise spatial resolution to a parameterization that resolves time-variable ice mass changes at about 50 km, enabling a better localization of the AIS contributions to global and regional sea level change. From real-data experiments, we obtain ice mass balance estimates that are well within the uncertainty bounds of published reconciled estimates utilizing similar datasets. In particular, inclusion of ice altimetry improves the spatial resolution and at the same time keeps the global inversion results in line with those from regional GRACE analyses. We find differences between inversion results with and without including ice altimetry as an additional observation. These differences are smaller for the time period after 2010 with the availability of CryoSat-2 altimetry having improved sensor technology and high-latitude coverage. This indicates that these differences are caused by ice altimetry errors, whose further characterization and consideration within the estimation remains a future task. Furthermore, the spatial distribution of the differences suggests that they are also related to GIA errors. The improved representation of ice sheets in the global framework developed here provides a prerequisite for working towards minimizing GIA-related errors while assessing the ice sheets’ mass balance.

SummaryGiven the scarcity of seismometers in marine environments, traditional seismology has limited effectiveness in oceanic regions. Submarine Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) systems offer a promising alternative for seismic monitoring in these areas. However, the existing machine learning model trained on land-based DAS data does not perform well with submarine DAS due to differences in noise characteristics, deployment conditions, and environmental factors. This study presents a machine learning approach tailored specifically to submarine DAS data to enable automated seismic event detection and P and S wave identification. Leveraging DeepLab v3, a neural network architecture optimized for semantic segmentation, we developed a specialized model to handle the unique challenges of submarine DAS data. Our model was trained and validated on a dataset comprising nearly 57 million manually and semi-automatically labeled seismic records from multiple globally distributed submarine sites, providing a robust basis for accurate seismic detection. The model adapts to a variety of deployment scenarios and can process DAS data from cables with different lengths, configurations, and channel spacings, making it versatile for various ocean environments. We thus provide an adaptable and efficient tool for automated earthquake analysis of DAS data, which has the potential to enhance real-time earthquake monitoring and tsunami early warning in submarine environments.

Africa's coastlines are under growing threat as sea levels climb faster than ever, driven by decades of global warming caused by human activity, natural climate cycles, and warming ocean waters. Between 2009 and 2024, the continent experienced a 73% increase in sea-level rise, according to a recent study published in Communications Earth & Environment.

A new study involving researchers from Oxford's Department of Earth Sciences has finally solved the mystery of what caused the collapse of an Ancient Chinese civilization—finding that widespread flooding was to blame. The findings have been published in National Science Reviews.

Publication date: 1 February 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 3

Author(s): Somaiyeh Sabri, Stefaan Poedts

Publication date: 1 February 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 3

Author(s): Ayşe Yadikar Habalı, Volkan Bakış

Using advanced computer simulations, researchers from the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) have concluded how and why strong ocean currents modify surface waves. "Our primary finding is that hurricane-generated ocean currents can substantially reduce both the height and the dominant period of hurricane waves," said Isaac Ginis, URI professor of oceanography. "The magnitude of wave reduction depends strongly on how accurately ocean currents are predicted. This highlights the importance of using fully coupled wave-ocean models when forecasting hurricane waves."

The western U.S. is a geologists' dream, home to the Rocky Mountains, the Grand Canyon, active volcanoes and striking sandstone arches. But one landform simply doesn't make sense.

Hybrid climate modeling has emerged as an effective way to reduce the computational costs associated with cloud-resolving models while retaining their accuracy. The approach retains physics-based models to simulate large-scale atmospheric dynamics, while harnessing deep learning to emulate cloud and convection processes that are too small to be resolved directly. In practice, however, many hybrid AI-physics models are unreliable. When simulations extend over months or years, small errors can accumulate and cause the model to become unstable.

With the departure of the research vessel Polarstern from Punta Arenas (Chile) scheduled for this weekend, the "Summer Weddell Sea Outflow Study" (SWOS) international expedition will commence. Up to early April, a multidisciplinary international research team will investigate the northwestern region of the Weddell Sea—an area of central importance for the global climate and ocean system, but one that can only be explored on site by research icebreakers such as Polarstern due to challenging sea ice conditions.

When and how quickly can ecosystems "tip" and how will they develop in the future? Researchers from the University of Potsdam, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Technical University of Munich have developed a new method for measuring how close an ecosystem is to a catastrophic tipping point. They are applying their findings to predict glacier surges, as well as rapid changes in other ecosystems. They have now published their study in Nature Communications.

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.

Students who have applied for the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) from the National Science Foundation (NSF) have had their applications returned without review—even though their proposed research appears to fall squarely within the fields of study outlined in the program solicitation.

In response, a group of scientists created a template letter for students to share concerns with their representatives.

GRFP provides 3 years of financial support over a 5-year fellowship program for outstanding graduate students pursuing full-time degrees in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM), including STEM education. The program solicitation, posted in September 2025, lists the following fields as eligible.

1. Chemistry
2. Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering
3. Engineering
4. Geosciences
5. Life Sciences
6. Materials Research
7. Mathematical Sciences
8. Physics & Astronomy
9. Psychology
10. Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
11. STEM Education and Learning Research

However, at least dozens of applicants in those fields have received emails, obtained by Eos, that stated that their proposals were ineligible.

 Related

•  Thread in the GRFP subreddit
•  Grant Witness Template for Letter to Representatives
•  Get Involved: AGU Science Policy Action Center

 

“The proposed research does not meet NSF GRFP eligibility requirements. Applicants must select research in eligible STEM or STEM education fields,” the email read.

Neuroscience, physiology, ecology/biogeochemistry, and chemistry of life sciences are among the proposal research topics that have been returned without review (RWR), according to posts on Reddit and Bluesky.

One Redditor described the RWR as “soul-crushing.” “The dropdown menu part is what gets me,” they wrote, referring to how they selected a category from a list within the application. “What do you mean I am ineligible in a category that YOU provided?!”

Karolina Heyduk, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Connecticut, shared on Bluesky that one of her student’s applications was rejected. Heyduk told Eos over email that she has no idea why, as the research—on photosynthesis in bromeliads—was “clearly within stated fields that are eligible, and had no agriculture, health, or policy angles.”

“The GRFP is an opportunity for new scientists to propose their best ideas and get their first shot at external funding. While not everyone will be funded, there is some expectation of a fair and transparent review process, and that doesn’t seem to be happening this year. For new grad students, or those applying this year, the outright rejection without a clear reason is incredibly discouraging,” she told Eos.

Rejected Appeals

Some applicants have appealed the decision, after having advisers look over their applications, and have received responses, also obtained by Eos, affirming that the decision is final.

“As your application was thoroughly screened based on these eligibility criteria, the RWR determination will stand and there will be no further consideration of your application,” the email text read.

Last March, the New York Times compiled, via government memos, agency guidance, and other documents, a list of words that the Trump administration indicated should be avoided or limited. The list included “climate science,” “diversity,” “political,” and “women.”

On Reddit threads, applicants who received RWR are speculating over whether their applications may have been automatically rejected for the use of so-called banned words. One student used the word “underrepresented” in a personal statement, to reference a program to which they had previously been accepted. Others, applying for neuroscience fellowships that involved studies with rats, wondered whether the word “ethanol” had been flagged. Another said they had tried to avoid using banned words, but that it was “unavoidable.”

“My project is about bears and ‘black’ is a trigger word,” they wrote. “Insane.”

Reaching out to Representatives

The group behind the template letter for students includes Noam Ross, who is among the creators of Grant Witness, a project to track the termination of scientific grants under the Trump administration. The letter notes that, after NSF awarded significantly fewer GRFP awards than usual in the spring, it released its guidance for this year’s application more than a month later than usual—leaving students with much less time than usual to complete their applications, and leaving others ineligible to apply.

“I request that you contact the NSF administrator to ask why eligible GRFP applications are being rejected without review and to ask them to remedy the situation quickly, as review panels are convening imminently,” the letter reads. “We cannot allow the continued degradation of our scientific workforce, and [the cutting] off the opportunities for so many future scientists.”

—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.

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

The solar wind is a continuous stream of charged particles released from the Sun into the solar system. It plays a major role in space weather, which can impact satellites, astronauts, and power systems on Earth. Forecasting the solar wind often depends on detailed maps of the Sun’s magnetic field and complex models of the solar corona, which introduce uncertainty and are not always available.

Owens et al. [2026] present a new approach that uses solar wind measurements near Earth to reconstruct solar wind conditions closer to the Sun. By tracing the solar wind back towards its source, the method provides realistic starting conditions for solar wind models without relying on magnetic maps. The authors show that this approach can produce realistic solar wind conditions while reducing assumptions and sources of error. This simpler set-up allows the method to be applied consistently across different modelling frameworks.

This work represents an important step towards more robust and accessible solar wind modeling. In the long term, it can help improve space weather forecasts and our ability to protect technology and infrastructure in space and on Earth.

Citation: Owens, M. J., Barnard, L. A., Turner, H., Gyeltshen, D., Edward-Inatimi, N., O’Donoghue, J., et al. (2026). Driving dynamical inner-heliosphere models with in situ solar wind observations. Space Weather, 24, e2025SW004675. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025SW004675

—Tanja Amerstorfer, Associate Editor, Space Weather

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 UT San Antonio-led international research team has identified chitin, the primary organic component of modern crab shells and insect exoskeletons, in trilobite fossils more than 500 million years old, marking the first confirmed detection of the molecule in this extinct group.

Researchers at Kyoto University have proposed a new physical model that explores how disturbances in the ionosphere may exert electrostatic forces within Earth's crust and potentially contribute to the initiation of large earthquakes under specific conditions. The study does not aim to predict earthquakes but rather presents a theoretical mechanism describing how ionospheric charge variations—caused by intense solar activity such as solar flares—could interact with pre-existing fragile structures in Earth's crust and influence fracture processes.