Publication date: Available online 16 March 2026
Source: Advances in Space Research
Author(s): Ephrem B. Seba, Stefaan Poedts
Publication date: Available online 16 March 2026
Source: Advances in Space Research
Author(s): Mefe Moses, Trisani Biswas, Haris Haralambous, Krishnendu Sekhar Paul
Publication date: Available online 16 March 2026
Source: Advances in Space Research
Author(s): Roman Krückel, Thomas Hobiger
Green clay tennis courts are able to absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide via enhanced rock weathering, according to a new study in Applied Geochemistry. Enhanced rock weathering—the process of using silicate rocks like basalt to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the rocks' chemical reaction with rainfall—has emerged in recent years as a promising method of reducing carbon emissions. Green clay tennis courts in the US are made of metabasalt, a type of basalt with similar properties allowing for carbon sequestration.
Arctic rivers wind through remote tundra and boreal forests, freezing solid in winter and surging each spring with snowmelt, eventually emptying into the ocean. Runoff—water that does not soak into the ground but instead flows over the land surface—further increases the volume of freshwater entering the sea.
The soil beneath our feet is a huge carbon bank storing up to approximately three times more carbon than the entire atmosphere. That makes it a significant player in the future of our climate. If even a small fraction of the carbon escapes into the air as carbon dioxide, it could accelerate planetary heating. But what determines whether the carbon stays in the ground or escapes? According to new research published in the journal Nature Climate Change, water is the deciding factor. The wetter the soil, the more carbon stays in the ground.
In Science of The Total Environment, researchers demonstrate the broad distribution of particulate thiols in the western North Pacific and show that their main source is marine phytoplankton. The analysis indicates that differences in thiol concentrations between ocean areas are significantly influenced by water mass properties, phytoplankton composition, and environmental stress.
Publication date: Available online 16 March 2026
Source: Advances in Space Research
Author(s): Xiaoxue Min, Cheng Wang
Alaska's glaciers respond to climate change by melting for three additional weeks with every 1 degree Celsius increase in the average summer temperature, data from satellite-mounted radars show.
For half the world's population, the water in their drinking glasses comes from below them. Groundwater also supplies 40% of global irrigation projects. Alarmingly, more than a third of the planet's aquifers, or groundwater basins, are dropping. Declining water tables leave entire regions vulnerable to drought, land subsidence or seawater intrusion while damaging ecosystems and reducing water access. Properly securing this resource is a matter of social, humanitarian and environmental security.
Every time we do a load of laundry, tiny fibers of polyester escape from our clothes and slip down the drain. These microfibers, so small they can be invisible to the naked eye, are among the most common forms of microplastic in the ocean. Yet, new research published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans shows that most of them may not make it that far.
A potentially huge underground reservoir of freshwater beneath the Great Salt Lake is coming into sharper focus with a new study that used airborne electromagnetic (AEM) surveys to X-ray geologic structures under Farmington Bay and Antelope Island off the lake's southeastern shore.
New research reveals that "foundation models" trained on vast, general time-series data may be able to forecast river flows accurately, even in regions with little or no local hydrological records. The approach could improve flood warnings, drought planning and water-resource management in parts of the world where monitoring data is limited.
SummaryThe Southern Apennines—Northern Calabrian boundary is a region marked by lithological heterogeneity, complex geodynamics and tectonics, and prone to significant seismic hazard. This sector is part of a complex geodynamic system, where Africa-Eurasia convergence, Ionian subduction, and slab retreat coexist. Its structure and seismic activity derive from extensive lithospheric heterogeneity and fluid-related processes, both of which are poorly constrained. Here, we present a novel application of seismic attenuation and scattering tomography of the area at a regional scale. We estimated seismic wave attenuation and scattering for the Southern Apennines—Northern Calabria region using a dataset of 1581 waveforms related to 95 M ≥ 3.0 earthquakes that occurred between 2004 and 2024 and were recorded at 32 stations. We constrained the heterogeneous properties and fluid saturation of the Southern Apennines—Northern Calabrian region by mapping P-wave Peak Delays and inverting coda-normalized energies for total attenuation (1/Q). Results consistently reveal different seismic energy dissipation mechanisms between the two domains, reflecting their different characteristics in terms of Peak Delay and attenuation patterns. The Southern Apennines exhibit high Peak Delay values at all depths and almost no remarkable total attenuation anomalies, consistent with weakly consolidated, fractured sedimentary sequences and limited fluid content. Nevertheless, at a depth of 5.4 km, a relatively high attenuation pattern is detectable, likely linked to the presence of less cohesive and potentially fluid-saturated units. Conversely, Northern Calabria shows low Peak Delay and high attenuation in the investigated depth range, reflecting wave propagation through coherent crystalline rocks with significant fluid circulation, likely favored by overpressurized materials or active migration pathways. The spatial correlation between high attenuation, low seismic velocities, and thermal anomalies shows that fluids modulate seismic wave behavior, providing new constraints on the crustal structure and seismotectonic segmentation of the region. The joint interpretation of our results with other geophysical models and responses highlights the complex interplay between lithology, tectonics, and fluid dynamics across this critical segment of the central Mediterranean.
SummaryThe earthquake fault as observed by seismic motion primarily manifests as a surface of displacement discontinuity within a linear elastic continuum. The displacement discontinuity and the surface normal vector (n-vector) of this idealized earthquake source are measured by the tensor of potency, which is seismic moment normalized by stiffness. We exploit this theoretical relation to formulate an inverse problem of reconstructing a smooth, three-dimensional fault surface from an areal density field of the potency tensor. In this problem, the surface is represented by an elevation field that parametrizes the vertical variation of the surface relative to a reference, and the nodal planes of a given potency-density-tensor field describe the n-vector field. The remaining subject is the n-vector-to-elevation transform, the operation inverse to defining the n-vector field on a given surface. Whereas this transform is a well-posed one-to-one mapping in two dimensions where the n-vector has one degree of freedom, the transform becomes overdetermined in three dimensions because the n-vector has two degrees of freedom while the scalar elevation has only one, generally admitting no solution. This overdetermination originates from a reduction in degrees of freedom from six to five upon modeling the source as a displacement discontinuity rather than general potency density, namely inelastic strain. The sixth degree of freedom unmodeled by displacement discontinuities and n-vectors manifests as a local violation of the determinant-free constraint in point potency sources; however, in areal sources of potency density, it raises a conflict with the global consistency of the n-vector field. Recognizing that this conflict derives from the capacity of the potency-density-tensor field to describe inelastic strain source incompatible with displacement discontinuity on a surface, we explicitly introduce an a priori constraint to define the fault surface as the smooth surface that best approximates the surface distribution of inelastic strain by displacement discontinuity. We derive an analytical solution for the surface reconstruction thus formulated and demonstrate its ability to reproduce smooth three-dimensional surfaces from synthetic noisy n-vector fields. Lastly, we integrate the derived formula into the potency density tensor inversion and validate it in an application to the 2013 Balochistan earthquake. The estimated fault geometry agrees better with the observed fault trace than that of the previously proposed quasi-two-dimensional surface reconstruction, highlighting the importance of accounting for three-dimensional fault geometry.
SummarySimulating the behavior of geological materials represents a fundamental objective in geophysical research. To achieve this goal, various models have been developed for different scenarios. While continuum models based on continuum mechanics are most commonly employed, non-continuum approaches such as the discrete element model and the lattice model have also been developed to address the pervasive discontinuities inherent in geological materials. However, existing non-continuum models are predominantly limited to isotropic conditions, significantly constraining their applicability. The dynamic lattice method proposed in this study aims to overcome this limitation. By independently assigning elastic properties to lattice bonds based on their spatial orientation, we have successfully introduced anisotropy into a three-dimensional lattice model. The linear relationships between the lattice model parameters and their continuum counterparts are established in terms of elastic properties. This advanced three-dimensional lattice model has been effectively applied in elastic seismic wave simulations in arbitrary anisotropic media.
Publication date: Available online 16 March 2026
Source: Advances in Space Research
Author(s): Chingiz Hajiyev, Demet Cilden-Guler
Publication date: Available online 16 March 2026
Source: Advances in Space Research
Author(s): Arash Tayfehrostami, Yazdan Amerian
Publication date: 15 March 2026
Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 6
Author(s): Andrea Muciaccia, Francesca Letizia, Mirko Trisolini, Lorenzo Giudici, Stijn Lemmens, Juan Luis Gonzalo, Camilla Colombo
Publication date: 15 March 2026
Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 6
Author(s): Jan Grabowski, Andrea Bellome, Leonard Felicetti
