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The remains of landscapes thought to have formed when ancient rivers flowed across East Antarctica have been discovered—and could help predictions of future loss from the ice sheet.

A new study conducted by geologists from the University of Florida and the University of Maryland reveals that, as land is exposed by melting glaciers, chemical reactions in the newly uncovered glacial sediments initially suppress greenhouse gas emissions.

A new study published in Nature Communications has found that 17.31% of tropical tree cover—an area spanning 395.9 million hectares (Mha)—has been consistently overlooked by global forest monitoring systems, exposing significant gaps in efforts to track deforestation and ecological degradation.

Four years ago, summer floods in Limburg—in the south of the Netherlands—drastically altered the riverbed of the Meuse, making accurate high-water forecasts even more difficult than usual. "This shows just how vulnerable and unpredictable the Meuse really is," says researcher Hermjan Barneveld.

A new real-time monitoring system captures minute-by-minute changes in toxic metals resulting from traffic pollution. Research indicates that non-exhaust sources, including brake wear, significantly contribute to urban health risks.

A total collapse of the roughly 80-mile-wide Thwaites Glacier, the widest in the world, would trigger changes that could lead to 11 feet of sea-level rise, according to scientists who study Antarctica. To better predict fractures that could lead to such a collapse—and to better understand the processes driving changes in Antarctic ice shelves—a team led by researchers at Penn State developed a new method to evaluate cracks that destabilize ice shelves and accelerate those losses.

Colossal volcanic eruptions like the kind that may have obliterated the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago are caused by mantle plumes that rise from shifting underground mountains deep within the Earth's mantle, new research led by University of Wollongong (UOW) geophysicists and statistical scientists has revealed.

Mud volcanoes may be less imposing and less familiar than their distant cousins, lava volcanoes, but they come with hazards of their own, and their presence can signal hidden geologic processes shaping a landscape.

A team of geologists has now made a global map of submarine mud volcanoes, which they hope will help further the understanding of these little-known landforms. The study, published earlier this year in Scientific Data, mapped more than a thousand mud volcanoes in shallow seas. A million more may sit undiscovered deep in the world’s oceans.

No one had put all the mapped mud volcanoes in a single dataset until now, said study author Daniele Spatola, a marine geologist at Sapienza Università di Roma. Patterns that Spatola and his colleagues spotted in the dataset were published in another study appearing in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering.

Hazards and Emissions

Mud volcanoes erupt when the pressure of gas trapped in rock becomes so strong that the rock is not able to hold it anymore, Spatola explained. Instead of lava, mud volcanoes spew a mix of gas, sediment, dissolved minerals, organic matter, water, and other fluids.

Fields of mud volcanoes are found in different geologic settings around the world, including in oil and gas fields, above mantle hot spots, near active faults, and at the edge of tectonic plates. Their presence and activity can give scientists important clues about tectonic and volcanic activity, said Nils Asp, a marine geologist at the Universidade Federal do Pará in northern Brazil who was not involved in the research.

“Mud volcanoes can be really dangerous.”

The unstable ground mud volcanoes create can put oil rigs, telecom cables, and other subsurface infrastructure at risk. “Mud volcanoes can be really dangerous,” Spatola said, particularly those on land.

They are also a not-insignificant source of methane and can also spew oxide-rich material and gases like carbon dioxide. “Carbon balances and climate models don’t take these emissions into account, and locally, they can be a problem in terms of increasing water acidity,” Asp said.

Having a global inventory of what submarine mud volcanoes look like and where they occur could help scientists estimate how much methane is bubbling through these vents and reveal where hazards lie.

Digging Through Records

Spatola and his colleagues gathered data from earlier published studies for roughly 1,100 submarine mud volcanoes—the majority in water no deeper than about 200 meters (650 feet). For 700 of them, the researchers either had full size, shape, and location information or had location information and were able to estimate geometry.

From these data, Spatola’s team created a freely available and downloadable database.

Most of the mud volcanoes in the database (65%) are located in the Mediterranean Sea. This distribution may reflect sampling bias, according to the authors. Areas in the eastern Mediterranean are often prospected for oil and gas, for example, and had more data available for the researchers to mine.

Other regions are less well mapped. “Probably, the number of mud volcanoes in the Atlantic is higher than what [appears in] the database, for example,” Spatola said.

Roughly 60% of mud volcanoes in the database are medium sized, with an area of 0.5–9 square kilometers. Small (<0.5 square kilometer) and large (>9 square kilometers) volcanoes together make up less than a third of the mapped volcanoes.

Giant mud volcanoes (defined as those covering an area larger than 20 square kilometers) are the rarest features in the database, making up about 4.5% of the mapped and classified total. Most of the very large or giant mud volcanoes are found in an area southeast of Japan where the Pacific and Philippine tectonic plates meet.

An initial analysis of the database showed that the more small-sized volcanoes a region has, the fewer large or giant volcanoes there are. This kind of pattern, known as a power law, is recognizable in many geologic processes, including earthquake distribution. The researchers also found that the size of a mud volcano is not necessarily related to how deep it sits below the sea surface.

The database could help inform regional health and safety measures, the study suggests, as the morphology of a mud volcano influences its geohazard potential. Tall and narrow volcanoes, for instance, are the most hazardous because they are more prone to instability.

Deep Challenges

Asp said that the database is “a solid starting point to be extended upon in further studies.”

Researchers don’t know how many submarine mud volcanoes there are because only a small portion of the ocean floor has been mapped.

“We need the help of the scientific community to improve this dataset. The more information we put into it, the better it will be.”

“In many areas, there might be a dozen kilometers of distance between one mapped stretch and another,” Asp said. “So we have no information of what is in that [unmapped] part of the seafloor.”

Some satellite imagery can penetrate a few dozen meters below the surface but not the deep ocean floor. To look that deep, marine researchers need ships capable of bathymetric mapping, but such instrumentation, including sonar and lidar equipment, is often prohibitively expensive.

The new study is a first attempt to create a database of submarine mud volcanoes, one that can be refined as more data are contributed. “We need the help of the scientific community to improve this dataset,” said Spatola. “The more information we put into it, the better it will be.”

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

Citation: Rodrigues, M. (2025), Mapping mud volcanoes in shallow seas, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250245. Published on 10 July 2025. Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists

Our modern society is increasingly reliant on multiple technologies that are vulnerable to the adverse effects of space weather. This necessitates effective public communication and awareness of various space weather phenomena as well as increased public engagement and preparedness for risk mitigation.

Chabanski et al. [2025] advocate for the development and implementation of a standardized naming convention of geomagnetic storms, along the lines of existing naming conventions in meteorology, astronomy, and geography.

The authors surveyed the top 50 geomagnetic storms over the past 47 years (since 1978), of which only five had names assigned by the scientific community. Drawing on lessons learned in other scientific disciplines, they propose the possible formation of an international working team comprised of International Space Weather Coordination Forum participants. This international team would implement a theoretical framework and a unified international standard for defining the criteria, protocols, and procedures for naming and cataloguing geomagnetic storms based on their minimum Disturbance Storm Time (Dst) indices and their solar origins.

This proposed initiative is about not only assigning names to geomagnetic storms but also empowering the public with the knowledge necessary to navigate the challenges of the 21st-century space environment.

Citation: Chabanski, S., de Montety, F., Lilensten, J., Poedts, S., & Spogli, L. (2025). The power of a name: Toward a unified approach to naming space weather events. Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists, 6, e2025CN000285. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025CN000285

—Andrew Yau, Editor, Perspectives of Earth and Space Scientists

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

Author(s): Tie-Huai Zhang, Wei-Min Wang, Yu-Tong Li, and Jie Zhang

Seeking for a high-gain fusion scheme is a hot issue in inertial confinement fusion community, especially after the successful fusion ignition at National Ignition Facility. Fast ignition provides an alternative due to its potential to reduce the energy of driven lasers and achieve higher target gai…

[Phys. Rev. E 112, 015204] Published Thu Jul 10, 2025

Author(s): Martin Lemoine

Building on his previous work, the author develops an analytical theory for particle acceleration due to electric fields in magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. The theory, that is also valid in several nonturbulent cases – and captures nonresonant mechanisms such as Fermi and betatron acceleration, magnetic pumping, curvature drift, and transit-time damping – should be of high value in the area of astrophysics, in particular for the study of relativistic particle acceleration.

#ClearMotivation #TechnicalAdvancement

[Phys. Rev. E 112, 015205] Published Thu Jul 10, 2025

A leading expert in the health impacts of plastic pollution and microplastics is calling on the UN to end the use of toxic chemicals in all plastics, cap and reduce plastic production and argues against a treaty focused on waste management and recycling, as part of an international Plastics Treaty.

The Independent Review Board has released its report into a 6 million cubic metre landslide in Canada. It indicates that an initial rotational failure triggered a flow slide that travelled 1,400 metres.

On 24 June 2024, a very large landslide affected a heap leach facility (HLF) at the Eagle Gold Mine in Yukon, Canada. I wrote about this event at the time. The failure was of sufficient scale to force the mine into administration – creating a very big pile of problems (if you’ll excuse the pun) for the government. The administrator is PWC, which has now released a report by the Independent Review Board established to understand what happened. The report can be downloaded as a PDF and makes interesting reading. As expected, it is a comprehensive piece of work.

This was a large landslide – the IRB report indicates a volume of 5,946,000 m3 (about 12.3 million tonnes) with a runout distance of 1,400 m. The report includes some nice imagery of the failure, including this picture of the main body of the landslide:-

Figure 1: The main flow slide at the Eagle Gold Mine. Image from the IRB report.

Also included is this image of the upper portions of the landslide:-

Figure 2: The upper portions of the landslide at the Eagle Gold Mine. Image from the IRB report.

The IRB report provides a detailed understanding of the sequence of events that led to the failure. In creating the HLF, the operators created an oversteepened section of ore (locally the slope angle as 36.5o), which was vulnerable to failure. The system for collecting the fluids that were being circulated through the HLF was deficient, allowing the water table to rise within the ore body, and this section of the HLF had low permeability, impeding drainage. Starting in mid-April, the operator increased the level of irrigation within the HLF, allowing the water table to rise until the factor of safety reduced to one.

On 24 June 2024, a rotational failure occurred in the oversteepened section of the HLF at the Eagle Gold Mine. This can be clearly seen in Figure 1. This was a rotational failure which remained within the HLF – see the intact benches in Figure 2.

Within 10 seconds, this triggered a flow slide through static liquefaction, which rapidly moved down the slope (as shown in Figure 2). In Appendix A2, it is estimated that the landslide moved at 9 to 18 metres per second, suggesting that the total time duration of the failure was 1.5 to 2.5 minutes.

I speculated at the time that this was a rotational failure that transitioned into a flowslide.

The IRB report into the Eagle Gold Mine landslide makes a series of recommendations (see page 123 and the following pages). These seem sensible – I can only hope that they are adopted. There has been a long succession of investigations into mining landslides that have also made very sensible recommendations, but failures continue to occur.

But, I would also highlight from an external perspective that some of these recommendations seem surprising. Thus, for example, the IRB recommends that the such facilities should have independent review boards; that a single individual (a “Responsible Person”) should be in place to monitor on-site activities; that there should be a detailed monitoring and surveillance system in in place to ensure that design assumptions are correctly satisfied; and that there should be active monitoring of the performance of the HLF.

All very sensible indeed, and it is impossible to disagree, but it is deeply shocking that such recommendations are needed for a large-scale mining facility in a properly regulated country with very extensive experience of mining.

Return to The Landslide Blog homepage Text © 2023. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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SummaryThe mantle transition zone (MTZ) plays an important role in the global material circulation, slab dynamics, and seismogenesis of deep earthquakes in subduction zones. Here we construct fine MTZ structures of both P and SH waves beneath the northeast Asia continental margin using improved grid-search waveform modelings, based on high-quality triplicated waveforms of three deep Kuril earthquakes recorded by the China Digital Seismograph Network (CDSN). We find a high-velocity anomaly (HVA, average 3.3 per cent δVp and 2.3 per cent δVs) with a thickness of 130-138 km in the lower MTZ. The HVA hosts a top interface with positive velocity contrasts (δVp: 4.3 per cent, δVs:3.2 per cent), while the 660-km discontinuity (660) shows reduced velocity contrasts (δVp: 3.6 per cent, δVs: 5.1 per cent) and negligible depressions of less than 10 km. The HVA we detected likely implies the thickened stagnant Pacific slab that may alter localized heat exchanges between the MTZ and lower mantle. The increased Vp/Vs ratio (∼1.85) indicates a water-rich state (∼0.42 wt per cent) inside the stagnant slab, evidencing the deep water transportation by the slab subduction. We infer that the interior localized dehydration of hydrous minerals within the stagnant slab may trigger the large outboard 1990 Mw 7.2 Sakhalin (Kuye) earthquake. Our results can provide more insight into slab dynamics and seismogenesis of deep earthquakes in northeast Asia.

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.

At least 2,145 high-level NASA employees are set to leave as the agency faces pressure from the Trump administration to reduce its staff, Politico reported on 9 July. More than half of these employees, all of whom hold GS-13 to GS-15 positions, work within core NASA mission sets including science and human spaceflight. Staff were offered early retirement, buyouts, and deferred resignations.

The departures are spread across NASA’s 10 regional centers, with the largest loss of staff (607) concentrated at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The president’s budget request for NASA calls for an overall staff reduction of more than 5,000. One departing staffer told Politico that their decision to leave was out of fear for NASA’s uncertain future.

“Things just sound like it’s going to get worse,” they said.

 
Related

•  Over 2,000 senior staff set to leave NASA under agency push
•  NASA FY 2026 Budget Technical Supplement
•  Get Involved: AGU Science Policy Action Center
 

The Trump administration has made loud noises about sending humans back to the Moon and then to Mars. These priorities were made clear in its budget request to NASA, which cut nearly 50% of the budget for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate while boosting funding for its human spaceflight program (this is within a 25% reduction in NASA’s overall budget). The proposed budget would shut down 41 space missions. The budget reconciliation bill that was signed on 4 July also included about $10 billion for NASA’s human spaceflight efforts.

Despite the boost in funding, it’s hard to see how the Moon-to-Mars goals are achievable in a reasonable timeframe with the massive drain of experience these departures represent.

“You’re losing the managerial and core technical expertise of the agency,” said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society. “What’s the strategy and what do we hope to achieve here?”

—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@astrokimcartier.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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An international research team led by Aalto University has just published the first large-scale analysis based on long-term satellite data on the effects of peatland restoration. The paper is published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

New international research led by Professors Willy Baeyens and Yue Gao of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), published in One Earth, demonstrates that plankton is not only the basis of the marine food chain but also a crucial natural ally in combating global warming.

The climate we live in affects our lives in profound ways: hot summers, cold winters, dry spells and wet weather all leave their mark.

In the late 2010s, when Assistant Professor Flavio Lehner worked for the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, water managers often asked him about the drought in the Southwest. Was the low precipitation simply an unlucky draw in the cycle of long-term weather variations? What role did climate change play? Most importantly, was the drought there to stay?

At the year's halfway point, the National Interagency Fire Center reported active fires in 10 states, marking the highest number of individual fires in a decade. Some of the more vulnerable homes lie at the intersection of forest and town—the wildland-urban interface.