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Mangroves could store less carbon—and even begin releasing it—as sea levels rise, suggests new research in Earth's Future. Mangroves are made up of salt-tolerant plants that grow in coastal areas. They cover less than 1% of Earth's surface but store about 15% of all ocean carbon, most of it in their soils. This ability to store carbon makes them important in efforts to limit climate change. Previous research has suggested rising seas could increase carbon storage in mangroves, but the new study challenges this.

“I’ve just always felt like art and science are flip sides of the same coin.”

Scientists use tools ranging from models to microscopes to make sense of the world around them. Some might say artists do the same thing using tools such as paintbrushes and musical instruments.

“I’ve just always felt like art and science are flip sides of the same coin, with maybe different outcomes or different processes, but they’re both just getting at the truth of the world,” said Sara Bouchard, a sound artist and composer and adjunct faculty member in the Department of Kinetic Imaging at Virginia Commonwealth University’s (VCU) School of Art.

A recent National Science Foundation–funded collaboration between scientists and artists brought this principle to life.

In fluxART, artists partnered with scientists from FLUXNET, an international network of researchers using eddy covariance techniques to measure how gases move between ecosystems and the atmosphere.

Researchers and artists collaborated on art projects based on data collected at FLUXNET towers. A view from the top of one such tower near Sisters, Ore., is seen here. Credit: Alexander Irving

The scientist-artist pairs worked together in yearlong residencies and produced art pieces—ranging from music compositions and video installations to ceramic works and paintings—that they presented at the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts in Corvalis, Ore., in early 2026.

“Part of the framing of the residency was around flux as this metaphor for connection and belonging and relationships.”

“The metaphor that people use to describe what this science network measures, or does, is that it’s monitoring the breath of the biosphere,” said Maoya Bassiouni, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who directed and developed the residency. “Those fluxes are sort of this giving and receiving between the land and the atmosphere, and it’s exactly what the scientists are doing in the community. So, part of the framing of the residency was around flux as this metaphor for connection and belonging and relationships.”

Bassiouni, who also created artworks in the residency, presented a lecture about the series alongside two other fluxART artists in late May at the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s (NCAR) Mesa Lab in Boulder, Colo.

An installation at NCAR’s Mesa Lab Library featuring all four fluxART projects also opened on 27 May and will be on display through the end of 2026.

En Masse

Bouchard, the sound artist, was paired with Chris Gough, a biogeochemist who serves as the executive director of the Rice Rivers Center at VCU.

Gough studies how factors such as climate and disturbances affect ecosystems, particularly forests and wetlands. Bouchard learned more about Gough’s work by spending a year in his lab.

Virginia Commonwealth University’s Rice Rivers Center Marsh, an AmeriFlux site whose data were used in this project, is located along the James River, seen here. Credit: Megan May Photography

The result was a composition for choir and percussion called En Masse, which explores the connections between communities and ecosystems in a time of climate crisis. The piece’s five movements represent the movement of carbon through the environment: “Air,” “Wood,” “Soil,” “Fire,” and “Breath.”

In addition to vocals and instruments, the composition features birdsong, recordings from a compost pile, sonified data from Gough’s lab, and spoken words gathered from real people sharing their climate anxieties. An excerpt from the “Fire” movement reads,

Future! / Heavy weight on my ribcage / dusty, fragmented
Fire! / Clenched jaw, copper taste in my mouth / stark, shifted
Fire! / I worry about my kids / desperate, unbreathable
Fire! / and their future / squeezed, extreme
Future! Fire! Fire! Fire!

Both Bouchard and Gough said they were moved by the piece as it was performed in Corvalis and by seeing the mix of artists and scientists who attended, many traveling from other states.

“I was struck by how engaged both the scientific and artistic communities were,” Gough said. “We walked out, and it was a full room of people. It was energizing, and I think it felt meaningful in a way that stepping up on a conference stage to deliver the traditional convention talk [isn’t].”

September: Orange

In another pairing, video artist Julia Oldham partnered with Christopher Still, a plant ecophysiologist at Oregon State University.

The partnership started with Oldham visiting a 175-foot-tall (53-meter-tall) FLUXNET tower near Sisters, Ore., that Still and his team monitor.

Video artist Julia Oldham visited a FLUXNET tower near Sisters, Ore., with scientist Christopher Still in preparation for creating an art piece based on data gathered at the tower. Credit: Alex Irving

At the top of the tower, a PhenoCam takes photos of the surrounding Deschutes National Forest every half hour. Still uses data from these images to examine how the greenness of the canopy changes over time because such changes can provide information about fluxes in carbon, water, and energy.

“I learned more about what Chris uses the PhenoCam for and got superexcited about the fact that Chris is using color data to understand forests,” Oldham said. “I thought that that was a really beautiful point of overlap for us as a scientist and an artist, to think about color and forests and what we can learn from color as a scientific tool.”

The pair created two pieces. 18//Flux shows how the colors and light from one PhenoCam site changed from 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. throughout the year for 13 years. Each frame is divided into 13 strips, with each strip representing 1 hour of the monitoring period.

The two had conversations throughout the duration of the project about the growing role of wildfires in the area. In fact, one of the FLUXNET towers they were using in the project burned down.

Their conversations led to September: Orange, a three-channel video showing footage from 24 different PhenoCams in the northwestern United States and Canada. When all of the landscapes are the same shade, the video briefly pauses. In September, when wildfires sweep through Cascadia, orange becomes the dominant color. The piece is accompanied by field recordings from Oregon forests and sonified canopy greenness data.

“I think the installation was a wild success, and I had a lot of people tell me how much they enjoyed it and appreciated it,” Still said. “Most people don’t respond to a 2D graph of data…whereas I think almost everyone responds to images, and photographs are really meaningful to people. So I think that is a really brilliant way to draw people into the science.”

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

Citation: Gardner, E. (2026), Artists and scientists partner to bring atmospheric data to life, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260178. Published on 3 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: Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems

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

大约 6 亿年前，各大洲在地球上漂移，尚未最终定格在现在的位置。在埃迪卡拉纪时期，各大洲的位置对于科学家来说一直难以确定。地球的磁场似乎表现得异常不稳定，而利用标准方法根据磁场记录来计算大陆位置的做法却得出了一些难以置信的结果。尤其是，科学家们对一块名为波罗的大陆的古老大陆的位置存在争议，这块大陆如今是欧洲的一部分。

为了探究这一问题，Xue等人前往挪威埃格尔松德，采集了波罗的大陆地壳被撕裂、岩浆从下方涌出时形成的岩石样本。随着这些岩浆冷却凝固，它们记录了地球磁场的瞬时变化，并在此过程中存储了有关波罗的大陆位置的信息。

对这些样本的研究结果揭示了远比科学家们最初设想的更为复杂的古代岩石图景。这些岩石中至少包含了六种不同的磁信号，构成了一幅复杂的混合图景。其中一些信号似乎是在更现代的地质过程改变原始岩石时形成的。埃迪卡拉纪时期可能保存了三种不同的信号，其中两种与将波罗的板块置于赤道附近的最合理的埃迪卡拉纪信号相悖。这些相互矛盾的信号进一步支持了地球磁场在当时异常活动的观点，使原本就扑朔迷离的图景更加复杂。

基于新的研究结果，研究人员将埃迪卡拉纪时期埃格尔松德古地磁极的位置确定在北纬20.8°、东经89.0°——这与之前的研究结果有所不同——并提出波罗的板块当时位于赤道附近，毗邻古老的劳伦古陆，但相对于之前的重建结果，其位置略有顺时针旋转。这项研究表明，保存在古代岩石中的磁信号极其复杂，并凸显了将这些记录分解成各个组成部分的重要性。研究人员认为，这样做可以为埃迪卡拉纪时期地球磁场的神秘行为提供新的线索。(Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GC012730, 2026)

—科学撰稿人Saima May Sidik (@saimamay.bsky.social)

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

Read this article on WeChat. 在微信上分享本文。

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

As the AGU Books Program celebrates its 70th anniversary in 2026, we reflect on the longevity of scientific work published in book format and the enduring nature of readership—sometimes for decades after publication. We spoke with Volume Editors and Authors of AGU books published in each of the past 3 decades about why they decided to pursue book projects and why readers are still discovering their work years later.

2000s: Filling Gaps in the Existing Research

Ernie R. Lewis and Stephen E. Schwartz decided to write a book after finding a gap in the literature when conducting their own research. Sea Salt Aerosol Production: Mechanisms, Methods, Measurements, and Models, published in 2004, explores the major influences that sea salt aerosol exerts over diverse areas of geophysics.

Why did you decide to write an AGU monograph? 

Sea salt aerosol is the dominant background aerosol in the atmosphere and the topic of Lewis and Schwartz’s 2004 book. Credit: Richard Dorrell, Wikimedia Commons

We were looking for a quality venue for publication that would lend respect to the book and could accommodate many large, complicated color figures, which were essential to the book. AGU’s Geophysical Monograph Series met these requirements.

We had been examining the literature pertinent to the production of sea salt aerosol, the dominant background aerosol in the atmosphere, to develop means of representing it in chemical transport models for aerosol influences on clouds and climate. We found major discrepancies in reported production flux (orders of magnitude) and in its dependence on controlling variables. Ultimately, we decided we needed to write a book dealing with the physical processes and comparing the numerous prior studies.

How has the study of sea salt aerosols evolved since the publication of your book?

This field has grown enormously since publication of the book in 2004, especially with new studies identifying the role of organics affecting production of aerosol particles, particle composition, hygroscopic properties, and rate of exchange of water between gas and condensed phase.

Why do you think your book continues to be of value to readers?

Perhaps the greatest strength of the book is its emphasis on processes and material properties. The chapter on fundamentals is nearly 100 pages; the chapter on measurements and models required to determine production fluxes is nearly 200 pages. The material in these chapters is essential to understanding the governing processes.

We are gratified by the continuing influence of the book, a measure of which is that the book has been cited over a thousand times, with an average annual citation rate of more than 70 over the past several years—some 20 years after publication.

2010s: Finding the Cutting Edge from AGU Events

A successful 2012 AGU Chapman Conference convinced Venkataraman Lakshmi that a book was needed to document key outcomes from the conference. He went on to co-edit Remote Sensing of the Terrestrial Water Cycle, published in 2014, which examines the use of satellite data for quantifying the spatial and temporal variations in the hydrological cycle.

Why did you decide to edit a book? 

The reason to edit any book is a lack of content on the subject and that the topic is cutting-edge in the research sphere. All the books I have edited with AGU, including Remote Sensing of the Terrestrial Water Cycle, have been outcomes of either sessions organized at the AGU Annual Meeting or a Chapman Conference. The book then serves as a state-of-science for the community and is still widely read.

AGU Annual Meetings and Chapman Conferences have been integral to Lakshmi’s path as a book editor. Credit: Beth Bagley

How has the field of remote sensing as it relates to the terrestrial water cycle evolved since the publication of your book?

The field of remote sensing of the terrestrial water cycle doubles in knowledge every few years. New Earth observing missions have been launched or will be launched soon, and these missions hold promise for unraveling the mysteries of the hydrological cycle.

Why do you think your book continues to be of value to readers? 

The book captures what we can expect from Earth observing missions and sets the stage for how the science questions regarding the water cycle have evolved over the past few decades.

2020s: Building on the Success of Earlier Work

Yongliang Zhang and Larry J. Paxton, from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, edited not one but five books, published in 2021. This five-volume collection, Space Physics and Aeronomy, presents the latest scientific observations, models, and theories about the Sun and the solar wind, magnetospheres in the solar system, Earth’s ionosphere, Earth’s upper atmosphere, and space weather.

Why did you decide to edit a set of books?

Following a successful AGU 2014 session on auroral dynamics to which about 60 abstracts were submitted, we were invited by editors of three publishers in the United States and Europe to edit a book on auroras. We accepted the invitation from AGU–Wiley as there was a lot of interest in auroral study in the AGU community. We submitted a proposal for a book titled Auroral Dynamics and Space Weather. The book,published in 2015, was successful and a few years later, we were invited to edit multiple books as a major reference work in the field of heliophysics. We took the opportunity and finished the five-book set in 2021.

How have space physics and aeronomy evolved since the publication of your books?

First, new satellite missions and more ground observations are available that fill some of the measurement gaps that existed when we published the books. Second, recent advances in AI capability together with increasing data volume in space physics enable a better specification of the space physics phenomena as well as space weather forecasting.

Why do you think your books continue to be of value to readers? 

These five volumes (six, counting Auroral Dynamics and Space Weather) provide, in one set, a detailed overview of the science of the space environment from the Sun to the Earth and its variability, or “space weather.” A series of books like this is invaluable as a survey of real knowledge that provides readers the opportunity to discover new insights in heliophysics.

As of early 2026, two major imperatives that drive NASA research are facilitating the space economy and supporting the Moon to Mars initiative with an emphasis now on supporting the return to the Moon. Heliophysics, the focus of our books, enables the outward journey to near-Earth space, the Moon, and beyond. Scientists at all stages in their careers are sure to find in these six volumes useful insights that they can use to address new NASA funding opportunities.

Heliophysics, the focus of Paxton and Zhang’s set of books, is essential to new NASA missions. A view of Earth taken by NASA astronaut and Artemis II commander Reid Wiseman from the Orion spacecraft in April 2026. Credit: NASA

These three experiences are just a snapshot of the more than 750 volumes published by AGU Books since the 1950s. While the methods and technologies used in scientific research have evolved dramatically, as has the process and formats for publishing books, the need for volumes covering the breadth of Earth and space sciences remains strong. The AGU Books Program has proven that books—whether the outcome of a gap discovered in the literature, a popular conference session, or the success of previous works—have a lasting place in the ecosystem of scientific publishing.

—Dara Liling (dliling@agu.org, 0009-0005-6828-2811), American Geophysical Union, USA; Venkataraman Lakshmi (0000-0001-7431-9004), University of Virginia, USA; Ernie R. Lewis (0000-0002-2023-7406), Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA; Larry J. Paxton (0000-0002-2597-347X), Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA; Stephen E. Schwartz (0000-0001-6288-310X), Stony Brook University, USA; and Yongliang Zhang (0000-0003-4851-1662), Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, USA

Citation: Liling, D., V. Lakshmi, E. R. Lewis, L. J. Paxton, S. E. Schwartz, and Y. Zhang (2026), 7 decades of books leave a lasting legacy, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO265024. Published on 3 June 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.

When China banned plastic waste imports in 2018, countries like the United States, the Netherlands, Australia, and Japan didn't stop exporting plastic waste—they diverted their shipments to countries in Southeast Asia.

Author(s): Ashmita Panda, Jim Browning, and Allen L. Garner

While the behavior of virtual cathodes (VCs) in a space-charge limited gap in the absence of a magnetic field is well understood, it is less characterized for crossed-field gaps with perpendicular magnetic and electric fields. Thus, this study examines VC formation at steady state in a crossed-field…

[Phys. Rev. E 113, 065202] Published Wed Jun 03, 2026

Author(s): Maxim Tereshchenko

The cyclotron resonance dynamics of ions in a uniform magnetic field under the action of a plane left-handed polarized wave is considered. The dynamics of initially slow ions is nonlinear: they periodically synchronously (regardless of the initial phase of interaction) gain and then lose energy. The…

[Phys. Rev. E 113, 065203] Published Wed Jun 03, 2026

SummaryThis paper describes the implementation of the direct solution method (DSM) using radial spectral elements for the calculation of synthetic seismograms in self-gravitating, spherically symmetric, non-rotating, anelastic, and transversely isotropic Earth models. In contrast to previous implementations of the DSM that used a potential formulation within fluid regions, we use a displacement formulation throughout. It is this feature that allows us to extend the DSM to account fully for self-gravitation along with arbitrary fluid stratification. Our code, DSpecM1D, is benchmarked against the normal mode summation code specnm as well as the direct radial integration code YSpec. Agreement between the codes is excellent for both elastic and anelastic models.

Diminishing periods of snow cover in northern forests, shortened by climate change, are poised to disrupt a delicate balance in some of the planet's most climate-sensitive regions—according to new research from McMaster University, VU Amsterdam, and the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are long, narrow bands of intense water vapor transport that move large amounts of moisture from low to midlatitudes, resembling giant rivers in the sky. They are gaining widespread attention because of their potential to trigger flooding across the Japanese archipelago. Researchers at the University of Tsukuba have discovered that, influenced by global warming and the strengthening of the North Pacific Subtropical High, the intensity of water vapor transport in ARs has increased by about 8% over the past 42 years, from 1981 to 2022. The findings are published in the journal Climate Dynamics.

Atmospheric rivers act like "rivers in the sky," shuttling intense bands of warm, heavy moisture from lower to higher latitudes. When an atmospheric river encounters cold air or mountainous terrain, the moisture it carries condenses and falls as heavy rain or snow. In Antarctica, the arrival of an atmospheric river can help build surface ice mass. Much of Antarctica is very dry; an atmospheric river can bring the moisture needed to potentially offset some ice loss.

The Amazon rainforest responded to the most severe drought ever recorded in the basin with an unexpected defense mechanism. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, found that during and after the intense 2023–2024 El Niño cycle, the most intense drought ever recorded in the region, vegetation significantly changed its chemical emissions to cope with environmental stress. The study was published in Communications Earth & Environment.

Publication date: 1 June 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 11

Author(s): Peerawat Artitthang, Chuang Yao, Mingpei Lin

Publication date: 1 June 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 11

Author(s): Xiaohan Mei, Wenkai Zheng, Yiqin Cong, Shengxin Sun, Cheng Wei

Publication date: 1 June 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 11

Author(s): Jiahao Qin, Hongxia Wang, Xudong Gao, Qian Wang, Xi Chen

Publication date: 1 June 2026

Source: Advances in Space Research, Volume 77, Issue 11

Author(s): Xiaoyu Zuo, Ke Li, Ziyuan Yang, Lin Chen

When you think of Antarctica, you might imagine a stark, otherworldly continent of endless, white ice, with the only sound being the wind punctuated by the crack of a glacier calving in the distance.

The Euphrates River is the longest river in Western Asia and runs through the eastern side of the Fertile Crescent. Flowing over 1,700 miles from Turkey through Syria and Iraq, the river played a crucial role in sustaining the region known as the "Cradle of Civilization." Yet, researchers aren't sure about the river's origins or how tectonic activity might have shaped its evolution. A new study, published in Nature Geoscience, suggests that two ancient rivers, diverted by shifting plate tectonics, merged to form this vital river.

Scientists have identified the two biggest reasons that once-pristine rivers across the Arctic are growing cloudy with toxic orange iron particles that smother insects and suffocate fish.

Researchers have uncovered a key mechanism behind Japan's extreme winter weather, revealing how distant climate patterns interact to intensify cold waves and heavy snowfall.