Publication date: 15 March 2026
Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 6
Author(s): Liang Chen, Guanqiao Wang, Ying Zhao, Zijia Wang, Huizhong Zhu, Chunhua Jiang, Chuanfeng Song, Congjie Chen
Plowing, or tilling, is an age-old agricultural practice that readies the soil for planting by turning over the top layer to expose fresh earth. The method—intended to improve water and nutrient circulation—remains popular today, but concerns about soil degradation have prompted some to return to regenerative methods that disturb the soil less.
The history of Earth is written on the great tablets of tectonic plates. The motions of plates shaped land masses, formed oceans, and created the varied climates and habitats that set the stage for evolution and the diversity of life. But this grand drama begins with a deep mystery: just when did the continental and oceanic plates begin to drift? Did the lithosphere begin to move soon after the formation of Earth 4.5 billion years ago or only in the last billion years?
Swedish old-growth forests store 83% more carbon than managed forests, according to a new study from Lund University. The difference is substantially larger than previous estimates and is mainly due to large carbon stocks in the soil.
Scientists have long sought to explain a key mismatch in Earth's early history: oxygen-producing photosynthesis evolved hundreds of millions of years before atmospheric oxygen began to rise during the Great Oxidation Event. This delay has been linked to limited phosphorus—a nutrient essential to life—but the specific processes controlling phosphorus availability in the iron-rich oceans of Archean Earth (approximately 3.2–2.5 billion years ago) remained unclear.
Idaho's Silver Valley has produced about 1.2 billion ounces of silver since the late 1800s, enough to cast a solid cube roughly as tall as a five-story building, along with huge amounts of lead and zinc. Now a new study led by Washington State University researchers helps explain how mineral deposits in the Silver Valley and other mineralized parts of the Belt Supergroup began to form more than 1.2 billion years ago. The Belt Supergroup is a massive stack of rocks stretching across eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana that also hosts the Idaho Cobalt Belt, the most significantly mineralized cobalt district in the United States.
SummaryThe singularity points are very common in the low-symmetry anisotropic media. The presence of these points results in complications of the wave fronts (or group velocity images) for waves forming the singularity points. We show the effect of singularity points in multilayered anisotropic media with triclinic symmetry.
SummaryQuantification and control of the in situ mechanics of calcite precipitation in the subsurface are notorious problems often encountered in hydrogeological and engineering applications. Difficulties arise here due to the general inaccessibility and texture of pore spaces, as well as the precipitation reaction’s dependence on fluid chemistry and the composition of the pore surfaces. To mitigate the uncertainties introduced by these inaccessible variables, we propose the use of spectral induced polarization (SIP) as a non-invasive tool to gain insight into the textural and electrochemical parameters controlling the precipitation rate within confined pore spaces and incorporate the gained information into a reactive transport model for quantification. We present SIP monitoring data from three laboratory experiments on diffusive mixing, inducing CaCO3 precipitation in sandstone. During the experimental runs, we identify a clear pattern showing the onset of the chemical reaction in the low-frequency (< 0.1 Hz) response of the imaginary conductivity and the formation of an associated high-frequency peak (> 10 Hz) in the later stages of the experiment. The changes to pore space geometry and precipitation yield were estimated with multiple independent methods. Using information gained from the monitoring data, we predict the dynamics of the precipitation reaction by including textural information, the inner surface area, and the grain size of the precipitate, as well as constraints on the effective diffusivity. These parameters were determined for each sample, based on empirical relations to the polarization response, and incorporated into an accompanying reactive transport model (phreeqc). The experimental results highlight the benefits SIP monitoring can provide to reactive transport models, even if precipitation yield is close to the detection limit of commonly applied methods, such as X-ray powder diffraction or fluorescence.
New analyses of ancient ice from Antarctica and the air contained inside it are extending the history of Earth's climate records and expanding researchers' understanding of how the planet has changed over the last 3 million years.
For modern residents of the Levant, the "Red Sea Trough" usually brings a brief, dusty transition between seasons. But 127,000 years ago, this same weather pattern may have been the literal key to human history. A new study, led by Ph.D. student Efraim Bril, Prof. Adi Torfstein and Dr. Assaf Hochman from the Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and published in Climate of the Past, reveals that during the Last Interglacial (LIG) peak, the Levant wasn't just a dry bridge between continents, it was dynamic with more relatively wet conditions fueled by intense, localized rain. This shift in ancient weather likely provided the water sources necessary for early humans to successfully migrate "out of Africa."
A severe drought, powerful Santa Ana winds and a not-fully-extinguished brushfire combined to create the most destructive wildfire in the history of Los Angeles in early 2025. The Palisades Fire, which fully ignited on Jan. 7, destroyed Los Angeles' Pacific Palisades neighborhood, killing 12 people and burning 6,800 homes and buildings.
Hydrological models represent water movement in natural systems, and they are important for water resource planning and management. But the models depend on reliable input data for weather factors, and precipitation can be very difficult to measure and represent accurately. A recent study in Environmental Modelling & Software by an international research team describes a novel method to better represent precipitation uncertainty in hydrological models, thereby improving their performance.
Tides not only affect regions along the coast, their periodic fluctuations are carried upstream inland through coastal rivers. River sections particularly affected by these tidal pulses are exposed to an increased risk of flooding. It is therefore important to localize these regions, as well as the extent of the river tide. However, until now, a global and accurate overview has not yet been established.
An international team led by the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH) has just published a paper in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews reconstructing episodes of highstands of the Black Sea during the last glacial period, based on the analysis of coastal terraces in the eastern Sinop Peninsula (Turkey). These findings reveal alternating connections of the Black Sea with the Mediterranean and the Caspian Sea, refining the history of its highstands during the Late Pleistocene.
Sea ice around Antarctica expanded for several decades until a dramatic decline in 2015. The reasons behind this are revealed by research led by the University of Gothenburg, which is published in Nature Climate Change.
Beavers could engineer riverbeds into promising carbon dioxide sinks, according to a new international study led by researchers at the University of Birmingham. The paper, published in Communications Earth & Environment, has for the first time calculated the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted and sequestered due to engineering work done by beavers in suitable wetland areas.
SummaryPrevious studies of the 2021 Mw 7.4 Maduo earthquake have primarily focused on the early postseismic phase, while the dominant mechanisms driving postseismic processes and the seismic moment released by afterslip remain debated. Longer-term observational constraints are needed to address these issues. In this study, we integrate ~3.5 years of postseismic InSAR and GPS time series data to effectively separate the contributions of afterslip and viscoelastic relaxation. The results show that afterslip released a cumulative seismic moment of approximately 3.91 × 1019 N·m, accounting for ~23.3 per cent of the coseismic moment—equivalent to a new Mw 7.0 earthquake. The optimal steady-state and transient viscosities of the lower crust are estimated to be 1.35 × 1019 Pa·s and 1.5 × 1018 Pa·s, respectively. Afterslip remains the dominant mechanism driving near-field deformation throughout the observation period, while viscoelastic relaxation governed far-field deformation beginning about 4 months after the mainshock. The stress-driven afterslip is comparable with the inverted kinematic afterslip, and poroelastic rebound is negligible. These findings provide valuable insights into stress perturbations on surrounding faults induced by the coseismic rupture, afterslip, and viscoelastic relaxation, and offer new constraints on the recurrence interval of Mw 7.4 earthquake on the Jiangcuo Fault.
SummaryMachine learning models offer powerful predictive capabilities for geoscientific applications but remain limited by their ”black-box” nature and lack of rigorous uncertainty quantification. We developed a comprehensive, generalizable uncertainty quantification framework that decomposes predictive uncertainty into aleatoric and epistemic components using Quantile Regression Forests. Additionally, we applied unsupervised k-means clustering to isolate homogeneous data regimes, thereby reducing aleatoric uncertainty across spatially heterogeneous geoscientific datasets. To facilitate interpretation and quality assessment, we introduced five spatial diagnostic tools: bandwidth, variance, robustness, confidence, and explainability maps that characterize prediction reliability and identify dominant uncertainty sources. To demonstrate the framework’s applicability, we tested it on three synthetic datasets varying in size and a real-world geothermal heat flow application with 14 geophysical observables across continental Africa. Results show that clustering substantially reduces aleatoric uncertainty while maintaining stable epistemic uncertainty. Clustering also improves predictive accuracy and sharpens prediction intervals, with gains most pronounced in homogeneous regions. Applied to the African geothermal heat flow, the framework reveals region-specific geological controls (lithospheric architecture dominates stable cratons, while tectonic proximity governs active rift zones) and guides targeted data collection by distinguishing high-epistemic regions requiring additional sampling from high-aleatoric zones needing improved observables. While theoretically applicable to other geographic regions and geophysical datasets, the framework’s performance in different geological settings requires validation. This interpretable, uncertainty-aware approach enhances trustworthiness of predictions in spatially heterogeneous, data-sparse geoscientific problems.
How can we measure time more than 500 million years into the past? A study recently published in Nature Communications by researchers at the University of Lausanne presents a new geological "rock clock" that allows major climate events from the dawn of complex animal life to be dated with unprecedented precision.
New paired studies from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities show that machine learning can improve the prediction of floods. The studies, published in Water Resources Research and the Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, demonstrate how "knowledge-guided" artificial intelligence can assist forecasters in saving lives and protecting infrastructure as the frequency of extreme weather increases.
