Feed aggregator

What lies beneath Fickle Hill in northern California? Maybe the answer to an earthquake mystery that has puzzled seismologists for decades.

The Amazon is the world's largest rainforest. It harbors immense biodiversity and plays a crucial role in the global climate system by storing vast amounts of carbon in its vegetation.

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

By the middle stage of a scientist’s career, expertise and reputation have been established, creating space to test out fresh opportunities and expand one’s comfort zone. For three scientists who wrote or edited books as mid-career researchers, this professional stage was very much a “happy medium.” They describe honing their research interests, gaining more autonomy to mold their work life, and finding joy in new roles within and beyond academia. Among these new undertakings was writing or editing a book. In the second installment of three articles, scientists contemplate why a book project was the perfect addition to the dynamic mid-career stage of their professional journeys.

Gaye Bayrakci coedited Noisy Oceans: Monitoring Seismic and Acoustic Signals in the Marine Environment, a comprehensive review of the sources and impacts of different types of marine noise. Bethany Hinga authored Earth’s Natural Hazards and Disasters, a textbook about the science behind natural events and how to prepare for disasters. Tamie Jovanelly authored Iceland: Tectonics, Volcanics, and Glacial Features, which explores the dramatic forces that have shaped the Icelandic landscape. We asked these researchers what developments shaped their mid-career stage, how a book fit in with their other goals and responsibilities, and to what extent their books influenced their next steps.

How would you describe the middle stage of a scientist’s career?

It’s a stage where you’re trusted with responsibility, but you also have the freedom to shape your role.

GB: Mid-career is genuinely exciting. I’m no longer dealing with early-career uncertainty, but I’m still actively thinking about what I want to focus on in the years ahead. It’s a stage where you’re trusted with responsibility, but you also have the freedom to shape your role, whether that’s through supervision, strategic planning, or external engagement. That sense of possibility is one of the best parts of this stage. It is also when you begin to think more about legacy, considering the kind of contribution you want to make in the long run, and that adds meaning and motivation to the work.

BH: I think for a lot of scientists this is the time when research programs and professional relationships are well cemented, and they have a growing bench of graduate students they’ve trained and are moving out into the world to do great things. My experience was different. Ten years post-PhD, I was in higher education administration and starting to branch out into other areas of expertise related to that administrative work.

Why did you decide to complete a book project? Why at that point in your career?

TJ: I decided to write a book after leading a field studies course in Iceland for over a decade. Throughout this time, I noticed a significant gap in the textbook market. While several publications touched on Iceland’s volcanology at a basic level, none provided a comprehensive overview of the island’s tectonics, volcanics, and glacial features. Recognizing this need, I felt compelled to contribute a resource that would serve both educators and students in the field of geology. My prior course preparation not only solidified my understanding of Iceland’s unique geological landscape but also allowed me to organize this knowledge effectively.

It was a chance to do something creative rooted in my scientific discipline.

BH: I had a twelve-month position in Academic Affairs at my university and the students and faculty were only on campus for nine months. I had three months of the year with time on my hands and a deep desire to start on a book that had been simmering in my head for years. I also had incredibly talented colleagues who were willing to write chapters in areas I felt were important to include in the book, but I didn’t have the expertise or comfort level to write myself. It was a chance to do something creative rooted in my scientific discipline, and it was a welcome change of gears from my job during the academic year, which had nothing to do with my discipline.

GB: The idea came when someone in my professional network, Frauke Klingelhoefer, was invited by AGU to propose a book on short-duration or non-earthquake seafloor signals. She contacted me, and we quickly realized that a broader book on ocean noise would be more valuable. It is a timely topic, relevant to biology, climate, defense, and offshore infrastructure, yet still underrepresented in the literature. Frauke, being very busy, suggested we co-edit and encouraged me to take the lead. It felt like the right moment to take on a creative, community-focused project.

What were some benefits of doing a book as a mid-career researcher?

It helped me see connections across disciplines and engage with researchers I might not have otherwise worked with.

GB: Editing the book gave me a much broader view of how scientists use pressure and sound to study both the water column and the shallow subsurface. It helped me see connections across disciplines and engage with researchers I might not have otherwise worked with. It was also a chance to step back, reflect on my own work, and rethink my scientific direction. I’ve since started new collaborations and found ways to apply similar techniques in my projects. The process confirmed that there’s still so much space to grow at mid-career.

TJ: Writing a book as a mid-career researcher offers several significant benefits. First, at this stage in my career, I had successfully navigated key responsibilities toward earning promotion and tenure. With these milestones behind me, I had the freedom to pursue projects that genuinely interested me making the writing process very enjoyable. Second, after years of publishing scientific journal articles, I had honed essential skills in conducting literature searches, synthesizing scientific arguments, and formulating key questions. These competencies not only streamline the writing process but also bolstered my confidence as an author. I felt capable of presenting complex ideas in a manner that is accessible to a broader audience. Third, writing a book allowed me to establish myself as a thought-leader in my field. By compiling my insights and research findings into a cohesive monograph, I have solidified my reputation as an expert on specific topics. This has led to greater visibility within the academic community, opened doors with new collaborators, and presented countless speaking engagements and other professional opportunities.

What advice would you give to mid-career researchers who are considering writing or editing a book?

Writing a book is an excellent way for a mid-career researcher to fall in love with science again.

TJ: My advice for any mid-career researcher considering writing a book is to realize that you are not an expert before you write the book; you are an expert after you write the book. Tackling a book project with this mentality automatically provides you with some grace when you are asking questions that you don’t yet have the answers to. Writing a book is an excellent way for a mid-career researcher to fall in love with science again, and it will make you a better classroom teacher and science communicator as a result.

BH: This is really the perfect time in your career to take on a project of this type!

—Gaye Bayrakci (g.bayrakci@noc.ac.uk, 0000-0003-1851-5021), National Oceanography Centre, UK; Bethany Hinga (Beth.Hinga@Newberry.edu, 0000-0003-0694-5331), Newberry College, USA; and Tamie Jovanelly (tamiejovanelly@gmail.com, 0000-0002-4374-0266), Adventure Geology Tours, USA

This post is the second in a set of three. Learn about leading a book project as an early-career researcher. Stay tuned for the third installment.

Citation: Bayrakci, G., B. Hinga, and T. Jovanelly (2025), Mid-career book publishing: bridging experience with discovery, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO255026. Published on 20 August 2025. 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 © 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): Oliver Mathiak, Lars Reichwein, and Alexander Pukhov

The separation of matter and antimatter in a plasma can be driven by the growth of the Weibel instability. The authors show this effect in a plasma of protons and antiprotons with a relativistic stream of electrons and positrons, by means of particle-in-cell simulations supported by analytical considerations.

#AdvancingField #OpenDebate

[Phys. Rev. E 112, 025208] Published Wed Aug 20, 2025

The odds of high-severity wildfire were nearly one-and-a-half times higher on industrial private land than on publicly owned forests, a new study found. Forests managed by timber companies were more likely to exhibit the conditions that megafires love—dense stands of regularly spaced trees with continuous vegetation connecting the understory to the canopy.

SummaryThe bulk component of the electrical conductivity of a porous material is related to the (connected) porosity and saturation by power-law functions defining the first and second Archie's laws. Recently, it was shown that for porous materials with fractal characteristics, the power-law exponent of Archie's law could be related to the fractal dimension of such materials. Similarly, the real and imaginary parts of the complex-valued surface conductivity are not just proportional to the specific surface area and saturation of the material but to power law functions of these properties defining two additional “interfacial” Archie's laws, which are called the third (saturated case) and fourth (unsaturated case) Archie's laws in this paper. These new laws have been poorly recognized and studied so far. A number of porous materials and especially clay-rich media are multiscale materials characterized by broad distributions of particle and pore sizes. We extend Archie's laws concept to describe the complex conductivity of such materials. We use both numerical simulations in fractal porous materials as well as published experimental datasets to propose a unified physical interpretation of the exponents entering the four Archie's type power-law relationships, which offer an updated complex conductivity model for natural porous media.

SummeryThe seismic hazard due to higher magnitude Himalayan earthquakes largely depends on the geometry of the underthrusting Indian Plate beneath the Himalayas, i.e., the Main Himalayan Thrust (MHT). For an objective assessment of seismic hazard in the central Himalayan seismic gap, we determine the geometry of the Main Himalayan Thrust (MHT) along 4 ∼SW-NE oriented arc-normal seismic profiles covering the central Himalayan seismic gap. We use teleseismic P- wave coda autocorrelation on waveforms recorded at 117 broadband seismic stations spread along these profiles, with an interstation spacing of 3-5 km. The results show that along these seismic profiles, the MHT is mostly of flat-ramp-flat geometry. However, the mid-crustal ramp of the MHT shows variations in its location, dip angle, and width. We also observe variations in the MHT near the Main Frontal Thrust (MFT) and Main Boundary Thrust (MBT). The observed variations in the MHT geometry within the central Himalayan seismic gap thus suggest the possibility of along-strike segmentation of the Himalayan arc, and different seismic hazard scenarios may be present during any possible higher magnitude earthquake in the central Himalayan seismic gap.

SummaryRayleigh wave is widely used for characterizing shallow subsurface structures. The conventional Rayleigh-wave methods rely on the manual picking of dispersion curves, and the dispersion curves of multi-component data are usually merged manually. The manual processing of multi-component Rayleigh waves reduces the efficiency of the method, especially when the data size and the number of modes are large. To overcome these limitations, we develop an energy-based clustering method, namely the Energy-Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (E-DBSCAN) algorithm. The E-DBSCAN algorithm extracts energy clusters and dispersion curves from a single dispersion image. It considers the dispersion-energy values of the surface wave and is able to pick the dispersion curve more reliably compared with the conventional DBSCAN algorithm. We propose a two-step clustering approach for the automatic picking of multi-mode dispersion curves from multi-component data: we first extract the energy clusters in the dispersion spectra of horizontal- and vertical-component data using E-DBSCAN, respectively, and combine them in the frequency-velocity domain. Then we extract multi-modal dispersion curves from the combined multi-component energy clusters with E-DBSCAN or DBSCAN. Numerical results show that our proposed method has fairly high accuracy and estimates more abundant multi-modal dispersion curves than the single-component method. Two field examples, including an active-source and an ambient-noise dataset, prove the validity of our method and the outperformance of multi-component results compared with the single-component results. Our proposed method has a relatively low dependence on parameter selection and is also applicable to multi-offset data, which is valuable for picking multi-modal dispersion curves.

SummaryRecently, there has been an increasing interest in employing rotational motion measurements for seismic source inversion, structural imaging and ambient noise analysis. We derive reciprocity and representation theorems for rotational motion. The representations express the rotational motion inside an inhomogeneous anisotropic earth in terms of translational and rotational motion at the surface. The theorems contribute to the theoretical basis for rotational seismology methodology, such as determining the moment tensor of earthquake sources.

Earth's climate is a dynamic system of interconnected physical processes and events occurring around the globe. Many of these processes are coupled so that changes in one event or process in one geographical area will result in changes in many other geographical areas. It is one of the challenges in climate science to understand the various processes, how they affect each other and how they change over time and space.

It's hard to believe that there is anything positive that could come out of wildfires. They have devastated homes, taken lives, erased memories, leveled cities and destroyed our forests and wildlands. But a University of Delaware professor has found that there is something of value to be learned from what's left behind in the remnants.

Last Saturday at 9:49am local time, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake occurred about 50km west of Gympie in Queensland. The earthquake was experienced as strong shaking locally, but did not produce any significant damage, likely because of the remote location of the epicenter.

Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago that is technically a part of Norway, lies about halfway between the northernmost part of Norway and the North Pole. Currently, about 60% of Svalbard's surface is covered in glaciers, but these glaciers are melting rapidly. During the summer of 2024, Svalbard experienced a record-breaking heat wave that melted more of its glaciers than ever before.

More trees will cool the climate and suppress fires, but mainly if planted in the tropics, according to a new UC Riverside study.

Heat waves—prolonged periods of abnormally hot weather—influence egg prices, energy bills and even public transit. And they're becoming more common as temperatures increase.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere enters the ocean at the surface and has been increasing the acidity of Pacific waters since the beginning of the industrial revolution over 200 years ago. A new study, led by University of Hawai'i at Mānoa oceanographers, revealed that the ocean is acidifying even more rapidly below the surface in the open waters of the North Pacific near Hawai'i.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences

The prevailing view of mammal activity in ecosystems is that they have marginal impacts to services like greenhouse gas emissions. However, that is not always the case, especially with large, feral ungulates. In northern Australia, the indigenous Yolŋu peoples connect and rely on coastal wetlands for spiritual connection, tourism, fisheries, and crocodile egg harvesting. These wetlands, however, suffer damage from invasive pigs and buffalo. The Yirralka Rangers of the region attempt to control these from the air.

Crameri et al. [2025] partnered with the local community to evaluate the impact of these feral ungulates on wetland greenhouse gas emissions and carbon stocks, an ecosystem service growing in value for climate change mitigation. Fenced enclosures allowed the authors to reveal a fourfold increase in carbon dioxide and methane emissions in unfenced areas, while fenced areas increased in belowground biomass with limited impact on soil organic carbon. The work demonstrates how research partnerships with local communities, as documented in the article’s Inclusion in Global Research statement, can support local land stewardship and contribute to global conservation and climate mitigation efforts.

Citation: Crameri, N. J., Mununggurr, L., Rangers, Y., Gore, D. B., Ralph, T. J., Pearse, A. L., et al. (2025). Feral ungulate impacts on carbon cycling in a coastal floodplain wetland in tropical northern Australia. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, 130, e2025JG009056. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025JG009056

—Ankur Desai, Associate Editor, JGR: Biogeosciences

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.

Water ice molecules are among the most common in the cosmos and influence the interior and exterior of many planetary bodies in our solar system. Glaciers shape parts of Earth’s surface, and dwarf planet Pluto, along with moons such as Europa, Ganymede, Titan, and Enceladus, have whole landscapes made up of ice alone, including boulders, mountains, and even volcanoes.

Under high-pressure or very low temperature conditions, ice forms different crystal structures than those that occur naturally on Earth. Identifying and measuring those structures on worlds such as Ganymede would provide unique data on the interiors of these celestial bodies, in the same way studying mantle rocks pushed to the surface on Earth reveals our planet’s deep geology.

In the lab, researchers can bombard ice with X-rays or neutrons to understand its structure. But such instruments aren’t practical to fly on spacecraft.

“The ices that we prepare in the lab only occur naturally in space.”

Now, new experiments conducted by Christina Tonauer and her colleagues at Universität Innsbruck in Austria show how to distinguish between ice structures using infrared spectroscopy. The analyses, published in Physical Review Letters earlier this summer, can be done using observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) or the European Space Agency’s JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) mission currently en route to Jupiter.

“The ices that we prepare in the lab only occur naturally in space,” said Tonauer, whose work combines her field of physical chemistry with her love for planets. “I’m also really interested in astronomy, and this is what hooked me to water ice.”

During Tonauer’s Ph.D. work in the early 2020s, JWST was still to be launched, but it was clear the infrared observatory would open avenues for studying the ice-covered moons of the outer solar system. When she and her collaborators delved into the literature, they realized that a lot of spectroscopic work on ice—research that largely predated the leaps in understanding gained from the Voyager and Cassini missions—considered infrared (IR) wavelengths longer than those JWST could measure.

It seemed fruitful to Tonauer and her colleagues to study the shorter-wavelength IR spectrum (near-IR) emitted by ice on these distant worlds.

Ice Maker, Ice Maker, Make Me Some Ice

As of 2025, 21 different phases of ice have been identified in laboratory experiments, although only one form exists under normal conditions on Earth. That form is called ice Ih (pronounced “ice one aitch”), where “h” refers to the hexagonal pattern the molecule’s oxygen atoms take when viewed from one direction.

The conditions that allow researchers to study other ice phases in the lab exist naturally on other planets and moons, however, and scientists have concluded the phases might exist there.

Ganymede and other worlds in the outer solar system likely have something akin to mantle dynamics, for example, but with ice instead of silicate minerals.

Ganymede’s mantle could be 800 kilometers thick and consist of several forms of ice that are known only from laboratory experiments on Earth. Tonauer and her collaborators selected ice V and ice XIII for their study, because they form under the high pressures and low temperatures present inside Ganymede and other moons. These phases have the same arrangement of oxygen atoms, but different orientations of hydrogen atoms: In ice V, hydrogen is jumbled around, whereas hydrogen in ice XIII is structured.

Making these types of ice in the lab requires cooling liquid water with liquid nitrogen under about 5,000 atmospheres (500 megapascals) of pressure. As long as the samples are kept cold after forming, Tonauer noted, they don’t require high pressure to remain stable because the atoms move so slowly.

However, that slow motion still stretches the bonds between molecules, a vibration that produces IR signals. Using spectroscopy to interpret the emissions, Tonauer and her colleagues discovered that these signals are different for ice V and ice XIII. That difference provided the first experimental demonstration of using IR to distinguish hydrogen configurations within different phases of ice. It also highlighted a way to identify them remotely.

The researchers used a JWST simulator to show that a few hours of observation would be enough to distinguish between these ice phases on Ganymede.

A Peek at Deep Ice

The stability of these ice phases is key to understanding their potential presence on the surface of Ganymede: The phases require high pressure to form, but if brought to the lower-pressure surface, they can maintain their exotic crystal structure indefinitely. In that way, the presence of ice V or XIII would provide details about the icy mantle that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Past and present missions to the Jovian system have clearly indicated that Ganymede’s interior contains a liquid water ocean sandwiched between ice layers, but the ices’ crystalline structures, as well as how the layers move and evolve, have not been verified by empirical data. According to models of icy moon interiors, the high-pressure environment should produce ice V, which phenomena such as the tidal force from Jupiter might bring to the surface.

“We can now potentially detect subtle structural differences on icy moons without needing a lander or sample return.”

These new infrared spectroscopy analyses show how to distinguish between ice Ih, ice V, and ice XIII—not to mention amorphous ice, which lacks a clear crystal structure—without having to return samples to Earth for laboratory analysis (a prohibitively expensive proposition). The method could provide an observational way to verify or refute models of interior ice dynamics, sharpen our picture of Ganymede’s internal structure, and help us understand how different flavors of ice behave and interact with each other in a natural environment.

“We can now potentially detect subtle structural differences on icy moons without needing a lander or sample return,” said Danna Qasim, a laboratory astrophysicist at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas who was not involved with the new study.

Qasim pointed out that if the grains of these ices are small and jumbled together, it might be difficult to extract their IR signature. As other recent research has shown, amorphous ice in space likely contains chunks of crystalline ice joined together at odd angles, which also might make identification more difficult.

However, the new method seems promising and could well answer vital questions about the internal structure of icy moons.

“We invest billions of dollars in these spectacular space missions,” Qasim said. “If we want to truly understand what the data is telling us about these enigmatic beautiful worlds, it is absolutely necessary to have laboratory experiments like the ones performed here.”

—Matthew R. Francis (@BowlerHatScience.org), Science Writer

Citation: Francis, M. R. (2025), Infrared instruments could spot exotic ice on other worlds, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250303. Published on 19 August 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.

This is an authorized translation of an Eos article. Esta es una traducción al español autorizada de un artículo de Eos.

No hace mucho, en un día de verano, 10 personas se reunieron para comer queso en nombre de la ciencia. Degustaron pequeñas porciones de Cantal, un queso firme de leche de vaca producido históricamente en el centro-sur de Francia, y evaluaron más de 25 atributos que incluyeron el color, el olor, el sabor, el aroma y la textura. La degustación era sólo uno de los componentes de un estudio más amplio sobre los efectos del cambio de la dieta de las vacas, del pasto al maíz, debido a la industrialización y el cambio climático. Los nuevos resultados subrayan la importancia de mantener al menos parte de la hierba en la dieta de las vacas. Los nuevos hallazgos resaltan la importancia de mantener al menos algo de pastos en la dieta de las vacas.

“Su fisiología y tracto digestivo están hechos para digerir pasto”.

Las vacas, con sus cuatro bolsas estomacales, están preparadas evolutivamente para consumir pastos y extraer todos los nutrientes posibles de ese forraje. “Las vacas son herbívoras”, afirma Elisa Manzocchi, investigadora láctea de Agroscope en Posieux (Suiza), que no participó en la investigación. (Agroscope es una organización gubernamental suiza dedicada a la investigación agrícola). “Su fisiología y tracto digestivo están hechos para digerir pasto”.

Pero en todo el mundo, los bovinos se alimentan cada vez más con un dieta basada en maíz a medida que prolifera la ganadería a escala industrial – a menudo es más fácil, más eficiente y escalable alimentar a las vacas con un comedero en lugar de permitirles forrajear en un pastizal.

El cambio climático también está impulsando este cambio. Incluso en regiones en las que por bastante tiempo han llevado a las vacas a pastizales verdes, los ganaderos se enfrentan a la escasez de pasto en verano debido a las sequías. Así ocurre en Marcenat, lugar donde se encuentra una granja experimental del Instituto Nacional de Investigación para la Agricultura, la Alimentación y el Medio Ambiente (INRAE), explicó Matthieu Bouchon, científico especializado en cría de animales de ahí. El verano hace más calor que antes, pero sigue lloviendo mucho en primavera, afirmó. “Las condiciones son perfectas para el cultivo de maíz”.

Ver campos de maíz en Marcenat, una región montañosa del centro-sur de Francia a una altitud de 1,000 metros, es desconcertante, dijo Bouchon. “No es algo a lo que estamos acostumbrados”.

Bouchon y sus colegas del INRAE, dirigidos por la microbióloga Céline Delbès, investigaron recientemente cómo la modificación de la dieta de las vacas tiene efectos secundarios en la cantidad, la calidad, el valor nutricional, y el sabor de su leche y el queso resultante. En trabajos anteriores se habían comparado los resultados de dietas a base de pasto y maíz, dijo Manzocchi, pero esta investigación es particularmente exhaustiva. “Es uno de los primeros estudios en los que se analizaron muchos parámetros”.

Del suelo al pasto, del pasto a la vaca, y de ahí a la leche y al queso

El equipo se centró en 40 vacas Prim’Holstein y Montbéliarde, dividiéndolas en dos grupos: uno alimentado con una dieta basada principalmente en pastos y otro con una dieta basada en el maíz con cierto acceso a pastar forraje. Después de dos meses, la mitad de las vacas del primer grupo comenzó a recibir una dieta con menos pasto, y a la mitad de las vacas del segundo grupo se les negó por completo el acceso al pasto. El resultado fue una cohorte de cuatro grupos de bovinos que, durante casi tres meses más, comieron aproximadamente un 75 %, 50 %, 25 % y 0 % de pasto, respectivamente.

A lo largo del experimento, Delbès y sus colaboradores recogieron muestras de leche dos veces por semana (las vacas se ordeñaban dos veces al día), muestras de suelo de los pastizales e incluso muestras de las ubres de las vacas. El objetivo era comprender mejor cómo un cambio en la dieta inducido por el cambio climático se traduce en cambios en los atributos de la leche de un rebaño y, en última instancia, en el queso. “Había muchas cosas en este experimento”, dijo Bouchon.

Los investigadores solicitaron la ayuda de una quesería cercana a la granja para producir pequeñas rondas de queso Cantal, de aproximadamente medio kilogramo cada uno, utilizando leche de las vacas de cada uno de los cuatro grupos. Los quesos se maduraron durante 9 semanas antes de ser servidos a un panel de catadores entrenados en la degustación de quesos tipo Cantal.

Conservar el pasto

En consonancia con hallazgos anteriores, los investigadores descubrieron que el queso elaborado con leche de vacas alimentadas principalmente con pastos era más sabroso y tenía niveles más altos de ciertos ácidos grasos en comparación con los quesos producidos a partir de vacas alimentadas principalmente con maíz. Sin embargo, las vacas alimentadas con dietas con una mayor proporción de pastos también producían menos leche en relación con la cantidad de alimento que consumían, señaló el equipo.

En general, Delbès y sus colaboradores descubrieron que el cambio de una dieta con un 25% de pasto forrajeado a una con un 0% de pasto forrajeado era más perjudicial para la calidad nutricional y sensorial del queso, que el cambio de una dieta con un 75% de pasto forrajeado a una dieta con un 50% de pasto forrajeado.

“Es sorprendente que sólo una cuarta parte de la dieta pueda [influir] tanto en la calidad sensorial del queso”.

El hallazgo sugiere que mantener al menos una mínima cantidad de hierba fresca es fundamental para garantizar la calidad del queso, afirmó Delbès.

“Es sorprendente que sólo una cuarta parte de la dieta pueda [influir] tanto en la calidad sensorial del queso”, dijo Manzocchi. Pero tal vez ese hallazgo debería tranquilizar a los productores de queso tradicionales que ya no pueden alimentar a sus rebaños con una dieta basada principalmente en pasto, agregó. “Quizás sea una buena noticia”.

Delbès y su equipo aún no han terminado con sus rebaños Prim’Holstein y Montbéliarde. El trabajo futuro se centrará en examinar cómo los microbios presentes en el suelo y las zonas de descanso de las vacas, por ejemplo, se correlacionan con los microbios presentes en el intestino humano después del consumo de queso.

—Katherine Kornei (@KatherineKornei), Escritora de ciencia

This translation by translator Stephanie Segura (@StephSeg_05) was made possible by a partnership with Planeteando y GeoLatinas. Esta traducción fue posible gracias a una asociación con Planeteando and GeoLatinas.

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.

A new study has revealed a stark and growing inequality in urban flood exposure across the globe, with developing nations facing risks that are multiples higher than their wealthier counterparts. The study warns that this gap is set to widen, posing a severe threat to sustainable development and highlighting an urgent need for equitable climate adaptation strategies.