By examining small air bubbles trapped in ancient ice, scientists studied a 2,000-year-old record of how atmospheric methane evolved over time. They discovered that the concentrations found in Nevado Huascarán, the world’s highest tropical mountain, broadly agree with global fluctuations recorded in polar regions – but are slightly higher.

These results support the longstanding hypothesis that methane emissions from tropical sources like the Amazon rainforest likely dominated the Earth during the pre-industrial period, while a rise in human-driven agricultural and industrial emissions contributed to methane increases in later periods.

“Huascarán is a Goldilocks spot for capturing global methane, partly because of its high elevation to capture gases and location close to the equator,” said Kara Lamantia, lead author of the study and a former graduate student at the Byrd Polar and Research Climate Center at The Ohio State University. “While past studies hypothesized the tropical dominance of past methane sources, with this new core we can confidently confirm that the region was likely responsible for more of these emissions than we assumed before.”

The study was published today (Aug. 19, 2026) in Nature.

The second-most abundant greenhouse gas after carbon-dioxide, methane traps about 28 times more heat, meaning it contributes greatly to the planet’s warming. This study was the first to sample ice cores from Huascaran to identify the historic sources of these powerful gases.

After collection, five ice core samples were selected from different depths in the core to correspond to key periods in time. Lamantia’s colleagues then tested it for the presence of specific isotopes, chemical signatures that are used to determine the origins of the greenhouse gases.

“Depending on the source signature, it is possible to differentiate where the methane originated, letting us separate natural sources from fossil fuels,” said Lamantia, now a Royal Society Newton International Fellow at the University of Bristol. “Our sample revealed a globally well-mixed signature, but methane emissions lean slightly towards a more biogenic source, potentially from the wetlands in South America or Asia.”

Researchers also found that more recent measurements from the ice matched well with observations from the Mauna Loa base station in Hawaii, the global center for monitoring greenhouse gases.

According to the study, previous reconstructions of historical methane records point to the same trends shown in this paper, but because those were built solely around polar ice cores — collected from Greenland and Antarctica — they may have underestimated the importance of tropical emissions.

The researchers noticed spikes in their tropical methane record that could be attributed to events like the rise and fall of the Inca Empire, as well as the Little Ice Age, which could be helpful markers for assessing their data against other models.

Overall, the data from this work strengthens historical climate records and further solidifies the significant role the tropics play in both monitoring and understanding the distribution of global greenhouse gas emissions, said Lamantia.

Learning more about global sources of greenhouse gases can help researchers propose steps to mitigate increased warming, but opportunities to extend the analysis to more targeted ice core sampling in the tropics are rare due to rapid glacier melt. Still, these findings open up new pathways to help resolve other pressing environmental uncertainties, said Lamantia.

“My hope is that this data will be integrated into future climate models,” she said. “Because if we can understand Earth’s past, we can better understand the present and plan for our future.”

This study was supported by the National Science Foundation and the Volo Foundation.

Other co-authors include Lonnie Thompson, Mary Davis, Emilie Beaudon, and Ellen Mosley-Thompson from Ohio State, as well as Ben Riddell-Young from the University of Colorado Boulder, Newton Nguyen from Stanford University, and Ivo Strawson and Edward J. Brook from Oregon State University.

As emerging threats such as warming temperatures, pollution and other cumulative stressors put pressure on freshwater populations and contribute to global biodiversity crises, experts have sought to assess how effective environmental protections are at curbing this decline. 

Now, researchers have revealed that long-term improvements in water quality, as well as the increased occurrence of certain aquatic species, are likely associated with the implementation of broad environmental regulations such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

“Rivers provide a lot of cultural, recreational and ecosystem services, and we also depend on fresh and clean water to survive,” said Casey Pennock, senior author of the study and an assistant professor in the aquatic ecology laboratory at The Ohio State University. “That’s really the motivation behind these conservation policies, to ensure that the natural environment is usable for both wildlife and all other things we care about.”

Aside from negatively impacting local biodiversity, contaminated water can destroy fishing industries and damage human health. It’s thanks to widespread environmental protections that water quality in the U.S. is better today than it was only a few decades ago, said Pennock. His team’s newfound evidence for this claim stems from water quality and aquatic species data collected between 1970 and 2023 across seven major river basins in Ohio. 

By using that data to analyze how fish, insects and freshwater mussel communities changed over time, the team’s findings showed that lower levels of pollutants in rivers — such as zinc, ammonia and lead — corresponded to increases in range for many aquatic species. These findings suggest the affected groups were those with heightened sensitivity to poor water quality.

Their observations indicated that as water quality improved, 71 fish species and 171 insect groups became more common across the state of Ohio, large river basins, with only a few species decreasing. Freshwater mussels, however, experienced mixed responses over time, with nine species increasing and 10 decreasing in occurrence. The composition of fish, aquatic insects and freshwater mussels also changed significantly over time in all seven river basins researchers studied.  

“Ecological communities are not static; they’re dynamic systems,” said Pennock. “Monitoring them is important to assessing how their trajectories change as new contaminants come online.” 

The study was recently published in the journal Ecological Indicators.

Despite how critical freshwater diversity is to the health of all of Earth’s ecosystems, it can be difficult for people to link the issue of conservation to the benefits they reap from it – such as protection from infectious diseases and a safe drinking water supply – in their everyday lives, said Lindsey Bruckerhoff, a co-author of the study and an assistant professor in the aquatic ecology laboratory at Ohio State.

“Our work revolves around trying to prevent further declines of imperiled species and keep diversity on the landscape,” she said. “So extensive research like this that highlights the positive effects of those systems on humans is incredibly rare.”

Additionally, as a lack of broad-scale monitoring efforts has made it difficult for researchers to document species-specific responses to prolonged environmental changes, this study, which compiles observations from numerous archives, is a vital addition to future conservation efforts.  

“We now have a dataset where we can actually analyze long-term biodiversity trends,” said Bruckerhoff. “It’s really exciting to be able to chart success in that way.”

According to the study, implementing nationwide policies also motivates municipalities to upgrade their own conservation initiatives. In response to the Clean Water Act, for example, Columbus instituted a $200 million municipal wastewater upgrade initiative for the Scioto River, leading to significant declines in levels of ammonia and heavy metals that continue to decrease today.

Overall, their results suggest that policies that promote conservation gains for animals like fish and insects and, by extension, protect human health, should remain in place, the researchers say. These outcomes also provide evidence of the benefits derived from environmental regulations. 

“This work shows there’s still more work to do,” said Pennock. “It tells us that if we deregulate or allow more pollution to happen, then those gains could reverse themselves, to our detriment.” 

This study was supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Ohio Biodiversity Conservation Partnership. Other Ohio State co-authors include Seth Drake and Nathaniel Shoobs, as well as Robert Miltner from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

In a large-scale field experiment, researchers planted 640 tree saplings across 20 parks in Dayton, Ohio, and implemented varying irrigation methods. After monitoring sapling survival, growth and health in response to their irrigation methods and nearby temperatures, the team found that the effects of both water treatment and surrounding heat varied among tree species. 

An analysis of saplings at season’s end revealed an overall survival rate of about 48%, indicating that irrigation approaches impacted species’ health differently: Certain species, such as red maple, northern catalpa and honey locust, consistently thrived over others, particularly the white oak, black gum and sassafras saplings. 

Understanding the causes behind these environmental disparities could make urban forests both a lucrative and sustainable option for preventive climate action, said Erika Wright, first author of the study and a graduate student in entomology at The Ohio State University.

“People don’t necessarily think of how their yard connects to the surrounding environment, but we all contribute to the urban forest by planting in our own space,” said Wright. 

Urban forests — essentially functioning as citywide ecosystems because they include all the green spaces in a community — also provide valuable benefits to the health and well-being of local residents. Besides beautifying the environment and supporting biodiversity and wildlife, increased shade offers natural cooling that can reduce consumers’ summer electricity usage.  

Yet obstacles to expanding urban forests often include limited financial and labor resources to care for and maintain them, said Wright. To better consider these challenges, researchers sought to partner on a planting project with a legacy city, an urban area that once had a booming economy but whose shrinking population now lacks the means to manage long-term reforestation projects. 

“It’s going to keep getting hotter in the future,” said Wright. “So we need to know if we should be trying to create environments that are more resilient to those changes.”

The study was recently published in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. 

The study goal was to test the efficacy of different irrigation strategies on tree development, but with the saplings scattered throughout the city, researchers did not have access to public water sources and had to rely on water transported from nearby fire hydrants. 

Nonetheless, the team predicted that irrigation investments with higher input costs would lead to higher sapling survival, increased growth and improved health compared to less costly irrigation investments, outcomes expected to be partly related to lower water stress in regularly watered saplings.  

Actual sapling survival rates turned out to be slightly lower than the five-year post planting survival rates recorded in previous studies, but the researchers did find that the best watering tactic involved using gator bags – plastic bags that are typically applied for slow-release watering. 

While filling them once per month was not labor-intensive, researchers did note that the up-front and replacement cost of gator bags was high, illustrating the challenging nature of even securing the right supplies to successfully establish and expand urban forests, said Mary Gardiner, senior author of the study and a professor of entomology at Ohio State.

“When a city invests in reforestation of a park, you have to plant more trees than you want to last long term because there will be some percentage that dies off,” said Gardiner. “But even small differences in management can mean huge variations in survivorship.”

According to the study, of the 640 trees seeded, a large portion either went missing or were destroyed by outside factors, likely due to environmental or human interference. “Even after the trees were pretty well established, we saw losses, which was surprising,” said Wright.   

For legacy cities, such threats make gator bags a low- to mid-cost irrigation option as long as precautions like protective fencing are taken to ensure that the bags are not damaged. These investments, combined with having volunteers ensure sapling stock is of high quality before planting, could lead to impressive strides in future forest growth, said Gardiner. 

Overall, while the study’s results indicate that certain species performed better under heat and water stress, researchers don’t recommend limiting planting to only those few species, as urban forests with a mix of trees tend to be more resilient to pest and disease outbreaks.   

Instead, researchers recommend a tailored approach that takes elements like tree species, irrigation resources and surrounding infrastructure into consideration. It may also be worth exploring whether urban forest resilience could be bolstered by non-native tree species.

“Looking for cost-effective strategies for cities to be resilient in the face of a warming climate is an important tactic,” said Gardiner. “Conservation like this leads to a great payoff in the long term.”

Other co-authors include Ellen Danford and Samuel Ward from Ohio State and Christopher Riley with the Bartlett Tree Research Laboratories.

Now, using a novel technique that enables researchers to directly analyze millions of individual particles at once, a new study has revealed that specks of dust trapped in Antarctic ice likely originated from a common source during the last Ice Age, between about 120,000 and 11,500 years ago. 

To determine this, a team led by Stanislav Kutuzov, lead author of the study and a researcher in earth sciences at The Ohio State University, examined more than 2 million particles from ice core samples taken from Taylor Glacier in coastal East Antarctica. The researchers found that major shifts in the number and concentration of dust grains that settled during this time period were likely linked to large-scale environmental shifts in Earth’s southern hemisphere. 

“This result implies that atmospheric circulation changed when we transitioned to a warmer period, and sources like Australia and New Zealand began to contribute to local dust deposition,” said Kutuzov.

Gaining a better understanding of these sources can offer clues into ancient climate systems, as well as improve  predictions about how those systems may behave in the future. 

Overall, the breadth of compositional data gathered in this work is consistent with results from past ice core investigations. However, this team’s more precise measurement method – identifying and analyzing thousands of distinct particles with a specific type of mass spectrometry – offers substantially more insight about the mineralogy of the dust particles, confirming that this new technique can act as a powerful tool for environmental nanoscience. 

“Normally, we are limited with analysis due to our sample volume,” said Kutuzov. “But the way this new technique works, it only requires a tiny amount of water to detect a huge amount of information about each particle.”

The study was recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Ice cores, precious scientific tools for studying Earth’s past environmental memories, are increasingly endangered as global temperatures rise. Before they are lost to glacier melt, scientists are racing to survey and preserve them from as many global areas as they can. 

Tropical glaciers such as the Quelccaya Ice Cap or Nevado Huascarán, for instance, have dust records that reflect regional signals, whereas dust found in more environmentally pristine areas such as Greenland and Antarctica tends to capture global changes to Earth’s atmosphere. 

What’s more, unlike traditional ice cores that are drilled vertically from the glacier’s surface down to bedrock, the Taylor Glacier ice core samples were collected horizontally, a method that can give researchers a more detailed look into a single specific time period. 

This ability allowed the team to observe that the type and amount of dust in the atmosphere changed during this period, as well as note an uptick of iron in the air, a critical nutrient associated with ocean bioactivity. 

“We went from a much colder, drier, dustier world to transitioning toward a more humid world leading up to the Holocene,” said Kutuzov. “We see a relative enrichment in iron oxide at this time and with so much soluble iron available, theories suggest these conditions could have supported a lot more life.”

Their analysis also identified the presence of thousands of volcanic particles in the ice core, likely as a result of occasional Victoria Land volcano eruptions nearly 14,800 years ago. Kutuzov said scientists could use these findings to develop a much-needed reference database for various minerals such as volcanic glass and dust from well-known source regions, especially as next-generation technologies inspire new ways to study ice cores. 

“Using this new method to confirm what was known before with more certainty shows that it could be applied to different places and events where we don’t know what happened,” he said. Other such places could even include other planets, as researchers prepare for future glacial explorations on those that also have water-ice, like Mars or Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons. 

“There’s so much excitement for these instruments that more and more researchers are applying them to look at their data from a completely different angle,” said Kutuzov. “There are still unknowns, but discoveries like this are what push science.”

Co-authors include John Olesik, Madeleine Lomax-Vogt and Lucas Carter from Ohio State; Gregory Lowry, Garret Bland, Jonas Wielinski and Ryan Sullivan from Carnegie Mellon University; and Paolo Gabrielli from the University of Turin in Italy. This study was supported by the U.S. Ice Drilling Program. 

As one of the most mysterious of our planet’s natural disasters, earthquakes’ location and timing have been impossible to precisely predict. But scientists do know that the most destructive of these events occur in subduction zones, regions where tectonic plates often collide and shift past one another. 

These zones of immense activity make them ideal places to search for phenomena that could herald future quakes. To that end, previous studies have suggested that satellite data could be the key to early warnings months ahead of big earthquakes, challenging the belief that large earthquakes are immune to precision forecasting in time. 

Now, by analyzing measurements made by NASA’s GRACE and GRACE-FO satellites, researchers found that relying on precursors formed from single data points is largely invalid, said Lei Wang, author of the study and an associate professor in civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at The Ohio State University. 

“Earthquake risk can be affected by a lot of different factors,” said Wang. “Many also happen over hundreds and tens of hundreds of years apart, so a few decades of modern data isn’t sufficient enough to accurately predict them.” The research was recently presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

While scientists have gained insights into the processes that trigger earthquakes, being able to offer advance notice of these volatile events is still a challenge they haven’t overcome. Instead, such programs work by detecting fast-moving seismic waves quickly enough that those nearby can be alerted, usually only seconds to minutes before shaking arrives.

In contrast to earthquake data gathered by sensor instruments on the ground, the twin GRACE satellites monitor changes in Earth’s gravity and track mass water redistribution in reservoirs over land, ice and in the oceans. In this study, the team used their data to determine if large-scale gravity changes had been detected several hundred miles below ground in the months before the 2010 8.8 Maule earthquake in Chile and the 2011 9.0 Tohoku megathrust earthquake in Japan. 

After comprehensively analyzing and comparing multiple gravity data solutions with other anomalous GPS statistics around the globe, the team concluded that satellites are no better at predicting changes under the earth than any other conventional geodetic techniques. 

“If satellites actually could detect anomalous changes to Earth’s uniform gravity, it would revolutionize our understanding of earthquake mechanisms and shed new light on prediction and mitigation science,” said Wang. “But there’s no solid evidence for it.”

Even if satellites could reveal signs of future earthquakes, it’s likely this method wouldn’t be useful on a global scale, especially in areas that show distinct earthquake mechanisms, said Dhamsith Weerasinghe, co-author of the study and a PhD student in civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at Ohio State. 

“Even if we modeled a known place, we couldn’t apply those findings to another because of the different geometry and different material in that environment,” said Weerasinghe. “It’d take too long to discover and understand certain changes.”

To keep refining the method, the team plans to examine if there were any notable gravity precursors to the 8.8 earthquake that took place this year in Kamchatka, Russia. In the meantime, Wang hopes this work will help future scientists learn how to combine historical data with new advances in geodesy and environmental monitoring. 

“To accurately predict an earthquake that is days or hours away, the technology we have now is a little premature,” said Wang. “That’s why we need some young people with passion to jump in and make promising strides in the field.”

Trees are the planet’s living lungs; they remove carbon from the atmosphere to clean the air, and filter our water. Yet depending on their species, not all record long-term environmental changes, such as fires, floods and droughts, in the same way. 

By analyzing how various types of tree rings grow in response to these distinct weather-related events, researchers discovered that some can act as useful tools in managing local watersheds, that drain water into nearby streams and rivers. 

Specifically, they found that trees in the Midwest are extremely apt at recalling past wet and dry conditions, noting that using more than one type of tree’s rings to reconstruct previous environmental periods can paint a much more accurate picture of the region’s current water ecosystem.

“One human lifespan is not going to show us the big picture,” said Alessandra Bertucci, lead author of the study and a graduate student in food, agricultural and biological engineering at The Ohio State University. “So using trees to address these gaps of understanding is really important for managing water resources, even in intensively managed watersheds.“ 

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, healthy watersheds serve nature by helping to ensure water quality, connecting aquatic habitats and ecosystems, and shaping diverse biological communities. But when left unprotected, they eventually degrade, leading to issues like less productive fisheries and polluted drinking water.

Consequently, as the planet continues to warm and water resources are impacted, learning new ways to manage altered watersheds is an urgent priority, said Bertucci. The research was presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

While tree ring chronologies are often used to understand long-term climate changes in the western United States, the tool is often left out of similar studies of the Midwest, where large-scale agricultural production relies heavily on the health of local watersheds. Additionally, already scarce instrumental data in some areas can make it difficult for researchers to grasp historical trends in the region, resulting in misleading estimates about past events, said Bertucci. 

These hurdles motivated Bertucci’s team to retrieve tree cores from places where watershed data reporting is sorely lacking, such the Old Woman Creek State Nature Preserve near Lake Erie in northern Ohio. There, they took samples from three species of common riparian trees and will plan to compare aspects like ring width and density to real recorded climate data.

Now, with updated measurements, the team expects to be able to build models that could predict how weather and local water flow will change over the next few decades. 

“If we can round out that historical data and understand what to expect, we can better plan for how to manage our water resources in the future,” said Bertucci. These improved solutions might include helping local resource managers determine which environmental conditions to focus on accounting for when coming up with smart water-saving strategies. 

In the future, the team will work to increase the range of tree species they sample and utilize the expanded data they gather to create better reconstruction models of other important watersheds. These models may be especially helpful to farmers in the Midwest, and later on, the United States as a whole. 

“Water is life,” said Bertucci. “We literally cannot live without it, so it’s important to protect and make sure that we are taking care of it, because that is our lifeline.”

Bertucci conducted the research with Lorrayne Miralha, assistant professor of food, agricultural and biological engineering at Ohio State. 

By studying how six months of elevated ocean temperatures would affect a species of coral from the northern Red Sea called Stylophora pistillata, scientists found that although these organisms can certainly survive in conditions that mimic future warming trends, they don’t thrive.

Stylophora pistillata tend to be tolerant of high ocean temperatures, but when continuously exposed to temperatures of 27.5 and 30 degrees Celsius (81.5 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit) — baseline warming expected in tropical oceans by 2050 and 2100 — scientists saw various changes in coral growth, metabolic rates, and even energy reserves. For instance, coral in 27.5 degrees Celsius waters survived, but were 30% smaller than their control group; those placed in 30 degrees Celsius waters wound up being 70% smaller. 

“In theory, if corals in the wild at these temperatures are smaller, reefs might not be as diverse and may not be able to support as much marine life,” said Ann Marie Hulver, lead author of the study and a former graduate student and postdoctoral scholar in earth sciences at The Ohio State University. “This could have adverse effects on people that depend on the reef for tourism, fishing or food.”

Overall, the team’s results suggest that even the most thermally tolerant coral species may suffer in their inability to overcome the consequences of warming seas. 

The study was published today in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

While current predictions for coral reefs are dire, there is some good news. During the first 11 weeks of the experiment, researchers saw that corals were only minimally affected by elevated baseline temperatures. Instead, it was the cumulative impact of chronic high temperatures that compromised coral growth and caused them to experience a higher metabolic demand. 

The coral later recovered after being exposed for a month to 25 degree Celsius waters, but had a dark pigmentation compared to corals that were never heated. This discovery implies that despite facing ever longer periods of threat from high ocean temperatures in the summer months, resilient coral like S. pistillata can bounce back when waters cool in the winter, researchers say. 

Still, as ocean temperatures are expected to increase by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100, expecting coral reefs to predictably bend to projected climate models can be difficult, according to the researchers. 

This team’s research does paint a more detailed picture of how coral reefs may look and function in the next 50 years, said Andrea Grottoli, co-author of the study and a professor in earth sciences at Ohio State.

“Survival is certainly the No. 1 important thing for coral, but when they’re physiologically compromised, they can’t do that forever,” said Grottoli. “So there’s a limit to how long these resilient corals can cope with an ever increasing warming ocean.”

Gaining a more complex understanding of how warming waters can alter coral growth and feeding patterns may also better inform long-term conservation efforts, said Grottoli. 

“Conservation efforts could focus on areas where resilient coral are present and create protected sanctuaries so that there are some ecosystems that grow as high-probability-success reefs for the future,” she said. 

For now, all coral reefs are still in desperate need of protection, researchers note. To that end, Hulver imagines future work could be aimed at investigating the resilience of similar species of coral, including replicating this experiment to determine if sustained warming might cause trade-offs in other biological processes, such as reproduction. 

“For coral, six months is still a very small snapshot of their lives,” said Hulver. “We’ll have to keep on studying them.”

Other Ohio state co-authors include Shannon Dixon and Agustí Muñoz-Garcia as well as Éric Béraud and Christine Ferrier-Pagès from the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, and Aurélie Moya, Rachel Alderdice and Christian R Voolstra from the University of Konstanz. The study was supported by the National Science Foundation and the German Research Foundation. 

While only 10% of Earth is covered in glacial ice, these masses have far-reaching impacts on all the world’s ecosystems. Rapid melting can trigger natural disasters, and glaciers help to regulate the planet’s temperature and sea level and are sources of pristine fresh drinking water.

To better differentiate between seasonal ice loss and that caused by long-term climate trends, researchers studied the fluctuating heights of three glaciers: the La Perouse Glacier in North America, the Viedma Glacier in South America and the Skamri Glacier located in Central Asia.

Their analysis revealed that between 2019 and 2023, the Viedma Glacier (Argentina) and the La Perouse Glacier (Alaska) experienced consistent thinning, but the Skamri Glacier (Pakistan)  had been stable enough to experience a small net gain of ice, said Rongjun Qin, co-author of the study and an associate professor of civil, environmental and geodetic engineering at The Ohio State University.

Measurements in this study were made using daily high-resolution images gathered by the PlanetScope satellite constellation, which researchers then used to create 3D reconstructions of how glacial ice flows evolved over time. By incorporating local and global climate data into these models to explore seasonal variations of glacier melt, the team essentially designed a way to monitor the behavior of glaciers across diverse regions.

“This is something that we’ve been thinking about for a long time, because existing glacier studies have such sparse seasonal observations since it’s difficult to get data out of remote areas,” said Qin, who is also a core faculty member of Ohio State’s Translational Data Analytics Institute. “What we wanted to do is to use medium-to-high resolution data to broaden those capabilities and improve the accuracy of the 3D models generated from that data.”

The study was recently published in the journal GIScience & Remote Sensing.

According to the study, while many modern 2D tracking techniques can provide valuable insights into glacier flow, previous studies tend to capture only short-term snapshots or else offer observations without in-depth motion analysis or high-resolution 3D data. This team’s work may help scientists keep better track of seasonal climate issues like glacier melt and expand long-term observations of these masses, and their 3D model method also reveals new data about how quickly the glaciers react to changes in the weather.

The Viedma and Skamri Glaciers, for example, exhibit a 45-day lag time in response to changes in local climate conditions like rain or snow. The La Perouse Glacier, however, was shown to react to changes almost immediately, meaning that its flow can very quickly become faster or slower based on how much precipitation it has accumulated.

In another finding, researchers concluded that behavior differences in all three are driven by distinct environmental and climatic conditions, but suggest that both local and global factors, rather than any single one, are responsible for patterns in glacier motion dynamics worldwide.

Such observations are vital to deepening our global understanding of glacier science, and with further improvements, this study’s algorithm could also be a useful tool for future disaster prediction and management, said Qin. Already, scientists have used similar systems to warn communities of natural disasters that would have led to tragedy.

In all, researchers hope that supporting modeling works like this one will inspire more scientists to utilize satellite data to investigate other types of important environmental research questions.

“Hopefully we can build on all sorts of applications that people are interested in with this,” said Qin.

Shengxi Gui of Ohio State was a co-author. This work’s data was provided by PlanetScope.

Take, for instance, the Pacific Ocean. The largest and deepest ocean basin on the planet, it is a vital wheel in many complex ecological systems, including the carbon cycle. But despite its vast influence, much of what scientists know about the Pacific stems from only a few continuous long sediment core records recovered over the last five decades, said Elizabeth Griffith, co-author of a new paper and a professor in earth sciences at The Ohio State University.

“It's easy to forget that two-thirds of our planet is covered with salty ocean water, especially when you don’t live near the coast,” said Griffith. “It’s also hard to realize just how much of it we haven’t explored yet.”

The commentary paper was recently published in the journal Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology.

In past decades, studying the physical environment of the deep ocean could be a challenging endeavor, partly due to how difficult and time-consuming it is to reach these dark and undiscovered depths. Fortunately, scientists today largely rely on scientific ocean drilling to collect important marine samples, a process that involves specialized ships that use cutting-edge technology to bore down and extract sediment cores from the ocean floor.  

Depending on where sediment cores are collected, scientists are able to learn many novel things about Earth’s history and dynamics. For example, samples retrieved from places known as Pacific Highs, undersea shallow geological features that have the potential for well-preserved paleoceanographic records, have helped scientists answer key research questions about subjects like the evolution of life, past extinction events, Earth’s tectonic and volcanic history as well as slight changes in its orbit. 

While only eight of these sites, found in the central and western North Pacific, have ever been explored using modern drilling technologies, discoveries made in these locations offer valuable insights into some of the most dynamic environmental shifts of the past 100 million years, said Griffith. 

“When you’re extrapolating from such a huge time and spatial scale, you need more than one or two data points to get complete records and ground truth modeling,” she said. 

Yet as global temperatures continue to rise and cores collected from these sites are depleted of material that might help reveal key events, new data is needed to continuously improve future climate models and transform our understanding of Earth’s complex life systems. 

To better prioritize research questions best answered by future ocean drilling discoveries, the international scientific ocean drilling community held a workshop in October 2024 at The Ohio State University’s Stone Laboratory.

Participants determined that in order for ocean discovery science to move forward, scientists will need to create both short- and long-term plans for recovering these sediments. 

“One of the benefits of the ocean drilling community has always been that it’s a larger effort,” said Griffith. “There’s support for this idea that we’re answering big questions on a scale that you just can’t do in a single lab or just working with a small subset of people.”

Overall, researchers suggest that future reconstructions of Earth’s past environmental stages will require more data, as gaps in spatial and temporal data coverage hinder the community’s ability to test various hypotheses and validate model simulations of the Pacific Ocean’s behavior during different climate states. Notably, existing sediment core materials are too degraded to apply some new techniques to test these models. 

The paper also notes that taking the time to dig deep into whatever long-buried secrets our ocean floors hold will also be beneficial in predicting what tomorrow’s climate future might entail, said Griffith. “Warm periods in Earth’s recent history might tell us something about future conditions on Earth and how life will respond to those changes,” she said. 

Nevertheless, while drillship expeditions allow scientists to study some of Earth’s most challenging environments, they also require massive amounts of coordinated international collaboration. Ocean drilling science must expand on these opportunities to grow, but with the recent loss of a U.S. riserless drillship, next-generation scientists worry that losing access to vital data now could jeopardize the field. 

“Working with legacy core material is a crucial part of my research, but it will never replicate the experience of sailing on a deep-sea scientific drilling expedition and fostering international collaboration at sea,” said Batoul Saad, co-author of the paper and a PhD student in earth sciences at Ohio State. 

While private and public sector leaders work to preserve U.S. federal research funding, scientific experts suggest identifying new opportunities to expand international, collaborative science and help sustain ocean drilling science.

“As individuals, much of the work of supporting science involves just being curious about the planet that we live on and that sustains us,” said Griffith. “Once you become curious, realizing how much you impact your surroundings leads to better decisions and new scientific discoveries.”

The U.S. Science Support Program provided financial support for U.S. participants in the workshop, while Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation), European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling MagellanPlus Workshop Series Travel Grant, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, and Australian and New Zealand International Scientific Drilling Consortium provided support for international participants. The National Science Foundation is supported by the U.S. Science Support Program. 

Thomas Westerhold of the University of Bremen in Germany was a co-author. 

Despite feeling like a stationary mass, most solid ground is undergoing a process of deformation, sinking and rising in response to many environmental factors. In Antarctica, melting glacial ice means less weight on the bedrock below, allowing it to rise. How the rising earth interacts with the overlying ice sheet to affect sea level rise is not well-studied, said Terry Wilson, co-author of the study and a senior research scientist at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center at The Ohio State University. 

In the new study, Wilson’s colleagues at McGill University developed a model to predict how these interactions could impact global sea level, finding that if humans can lower greenhouse gas emissions and global warming is slowed, upward shifts in the solid earth could reduce Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise by about 40%, significantly bolstering the best case scenarios for global sea level rise. In this low-emissions scenario, land uplift slows the flow of ice from land to ocean, allowing for more of the ice sheet to be preserved. 

Conversely, if humans are unable to lower carbon emissions in time, ice retreat will outpace uplift, pushing ocean water away from Antarctica and amplifying sea level rise. These events could significantly worsen the most dire models of projected sea level rise along populated coastlines, said Wilson. 

“Our measurements show that the solid earth that forms the base of the Antarctic ice sheet is changing shape surprisingly quickly,“ said Wilson. “The land uplift from reduced ice on the surface is happening in decades, rather than over thousands of years.” 

The study was published today in Science Advances. 

To arrive at these conclusions, the team developed a 3D model of the Earth’s interior using geophysical field measurements from the Antarctic Network (ANET) of the Polar Earth Observing Network (POLENET) project. The mission is focused on studying the changing polar regions by collecting GPS and seismic data from an array of autonomous systems across Antarctica.

Researchers then performed a number of simulations to capture many possible evolutions of Antarctica’s ice sheet and the extent of global sea level rise Earth may experience until the year 2500, according to those parameters.  

 “We can project what difference it actually will make if we all contribute to a low-emission scenario now, versus what’s come to be called ‘business as usual’ emissions,” said Wilson, who is also the lead investigator of the ANET-POLENET project. 

She attributes the model’s unprecedented level of detail to how deftly it incorporates data from Antarctica. GPS stations monitor how the land is moving and seismometers measure how fast seismic waves from earthquakes travel through the earth, yielding important insight into where the land uplift will be fast or slow. 

Surprisingly, according to some of the team’s GPS observations processed by researchers at Ohio State, Wilson said, the Antarctic Ice Sheet is currently experiencing a solid earth uplift of about 5 centimeters per year, about 5 times the rate that North America experiences.  

Another significant aspect of the study is how the changes in Antarctica under different carbon emissions scenarios will impact coastlines around the world. Because sea level change will not be uniform, the study notes that nearly 700 million people around the world living in coastal regions will be most impacted by rising seas due to Antarctic ice loss.

Since some regions, such as small island nations, will be more vulnerable than others, mitigating environmental conditions like atmospheric and ocean warming is a vital issue for society, said Wilson. 

“Many people are now more aware they’re experiencing the effects of climate change,” she said. “This work reinforces that our actions as individuals, nations and globally can make a difference in what kind of Earth our offspring will experience in their lifetimes.”

The study results highlight how complex the relationship between the solid earth and the processes that happen atop it is, as well as the importance of continuing to gather enough data to make prompt and accurate predictions about what the next few centuries of our planet will look like. 

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in every model and every prediction that you make,” said Wilson. “But to document how fast our world is changing, it’s very important to continue advancing our ability to make predictions that are more certain, which is the only path that will allow us to tend to our future in a meaningful way.”

Wilson completed the study with colleagues from McGill University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Columbia University, Washington University, Colorado State University and the Union of Concerned Scientists. This study was supported by the U.S National Science Foundation and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. 

The animal, named Megalonyx by Thomas Jefferson in 1799, was the first genus of fossil named from the United States. Thought to have roamed North America during one of the last ice ages, the extinct giant ground sloth was an herbivorous mammal resembling a large bear — at full size, it likely reached nearly 10 feet tall (3 meters) and weighed about as much as a small elephant. 

The report made by Jefferson, an avid fossil collector who was known to keep bones at the White House, was among the earliest papers in the scientific field that would eventually become paleontology, and may have played a role in the development of certain zoological naming conventions.

Though Jefferson named only the genus Megalonyx, public misinterpretation of the spelling of the scientific name began with the second published paper on this giant ground sloth. Later on, confusion about the true author and timing of the report caused paleontologists to debate over what the specimen’s true name should be. 

In an effort to settle the dispute, Loren Babcock, a professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University, reviewed the nomenclatural history of the animal and argues that misinterpretation or spelling errors of the original harm the scientific process and disregard the importance of early paleontological work.

In an article published recently in the journal ZooKeys, Babcock asserts that since Jefferson fulfilled all the necessary requirements for establishing the formal zoological name of the giant ground sloth, he should be recognized as the true author of the genus. And because Jefferson’s original moniker was spelled as Megalonyx, any other subsequent spellings of the name, like some that utilize the -onix suffix, are incorrect. Additionally, the report notes that the original spelling of the animal’s species-group name, Megalonyx jeffersonii, is only correct when written with an –ii ending.

“At the time, there were no standards for publication of new names in zoology,” said Babcock. “There was a binomial system of nomenclature, a genus and species name that would be attached to things, but there were no rules other than that.”

Today, when a new species is discovered, scientists give it a name with two parts: The first name describes the animal’s genus, or group, and the second is its species name. Until the mid-1800s, it was common practice to label animals with only a genus name, which is how Jefferson’s original paper described Megalonyx. Although his observations were published more than a quarter century before paleontology was considered a formal science, it does meet modern naming requirements – meaning his authorship of it is valid, said Babcock.  

“We have rules in science just like we do in other aspects of our culture,” said Babcock. “They ensure that the correct procedures are followed and we can give credit where it is due.”

Resolving some of these long-standing issues is important, Babcock said, and it’s worth setting the record straight. “I want to set the original usage in stone because Jefferson had done it correctly from the start,” said Babcock. “It’s pretty black and white. There’s not much room for ambiguity when you go back and read the original manuscripts.”

In the long run, having strict naming conventions also helps scientists accurately document the history of life on Earth, because what paleontologists choose to call a specimen can have profound implications for how it’s studied and how those findings are communicated. 

Megalonyx jeffersonii, for instance, was initially mistaken as a carnivore when its “giant claw” was compared to that of a large African lion. Jefferson soon corrected this, but his initial observations of the giant ground sloth’s remains contributed to the way that Megalonyx would later be reconstructed and influenced some of the earliest developments of the discipline, and earned him the title of father of American paleontology, said Babcock. 

Decades later, the first relatively complete skeleton of Megalonyx jeffersonii was found in 1890 in Holmes County, Ohio. “This skeleton has had a major impact on the history of science,” Babcock said. “It’s really influenced so much of the perception of paleontology and paleontological art over time.”

As one of the earliest free-standing prehistoric specimens to be mounted and displayed in an American museum, it’s been used as a unique learning tool for past and future paleontologists alike. It was also a model that was later applied for dinosaur skeleton reconstructions, said Babcock. This popularity has led many other versions of Megalonyx jeffersonii to appear across digital media and pop culture throughout the past century, most notably in the “Ice Age” films as Sid the ground sloth. 

Today, the reconstructed skeleton of Megalonyx jeffersonii resides in Ohio State’s Orton Geological Museum, where it has been on display since April 13, 1896. And for decades, it’s been known by many as simply “Jeff” for short. 

Although few truly know all the details of its backstory, Babcock, who is the current director of the Orton Museum, remains confident that the legacy of Thomas Jefferson’s Megalonyx jeffersonii will stand tall for centuries to come. 

“Understanding the history of paleontology casts light not just on the evolution of organisms, but on the evolution of science and how we interpret that evolutionary history,” he said. “So names are something that I think historians will always pay attention to.”

Zooplankton, aquatic microorganisms that reside in nearly all bodies of water, are extremely sensitive to changes in their ecosystem. This hypersensitivity makes them important bioindicators of water quality, and studying how they interact with their environment can provide researchers with detailed snapshots of a region’s present ecological condition. 

By taking a new look at more than two decades of plankton monitoring data, researchers at The Ohio State University found that in western Lake Erie, zooplankton communities are undergoing a substantial change in the timing of certain events in their life cycles. 

Using data collected from previous studies, the team examined the behavior patterns of four common types of zooplankton populations in Lake Erie between 1995 and 2022. Their analysis showed that due to factors like rising temperatures, the presence of invasive species and the availability of high-quality food, the period when zooplankton concentrations are at their highest now varies by as much as three weeks in the summer months.  

“Warming is making natural events happen earlier, as we can see across basically all ecosystems,” said Jim Hood, lead author of the study and an associate professor in evolution, ecology and organismal biology at Ohio State. “These systems are really complex, and any disruption is likely to have unseen negative effects.”

Even in lakes, zooplankton play a central role in the local freshwater food web, from determining which types of algae thrive to helping sustain local fish populations, said Hood. Yet as the research notes, early warming can often advance the emergence of spring plankton while delaying fall populations, which can have a big impact. Because of their vital place in the food chain, major changes in plankton behavior could cause damage to other top-down and bottom-up processes that rely on them.  

The study, recently published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography Letters, marks one of  the first times scientists have tried to unpack the complexity of these dynamics in Lake Erie and the Great Lakes region. 

Some of the most dominant changes observed in the timing of zooplankton emergence were caused by temperature variation as well as an invasive phytoplankton species called B. longimanus, which was likely carried over from Europe by shipping boats, said Hood. 

“It’s this invasive predator and the increase in harmful algae blooms that are really altering the timing of zooplankton concentrations,” he said. “In some cases, they’re causing them to move in earlier, in some cases, they’re moving them in later.” 

Though Lake Erie has been plagued by harmful algal blooms for decades, warmer temperatures during the summer cause the organisms to grow thicker and faster. Because large blooms release toxins that endanger the health of humans and other animals and threaten important utility infrastructures, environmental scientists have been steadily working toward ways of addressing the multiple causes of their excess growth. 

“It’s not just climate change,” said Hood. “All of the things humans are doing to these systems, like bringing in invasive species, are creating a complex series of interactions that are going to influence big things that people care about, like harmful algal blooms and fisheries.”

This study’s analysis period took place between May and September of each year when the four zooplankton species whose behavioral patterns being surveyed were especially abundant. Though they all had different diets and life histories, they surprisingly each had varying reactions to B. longimanus and its effects on the ecosystem, revealing that the mechanisms that drive the timing of certain plankton behaviors are more sophisticated than they seem, said Hood. 

“It was really noteworthy how these four taxa that we focused on all had different responses to this invasive species, which really highlights the need for more research on them,” he said. 

Hood and co-author Jenna Bailey suggested that further research should aim to extend monitoring in temperate lakes to learn how winter conditions influence zooplankton life cycles, offering insight into other freshwater ecology issues related to climate change. 

“It’s difficult to predict the effects human activity has on our ecosystems,” said Hood. “But we need to step back and understand how all of these things that we’re doing are interacting with one another and incorporate that into our management.”

This study was supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Wildlife, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

These deposits, known as megabeds, were found in the western Marsili Basin, an area at the bottom of the Tyrrhenian Sea that surrounds the Marsili Seamount, a large undersea volcano. 

By combining geophysical data acquired from a Spanish research project and data from sediment cores collected from a nearby Ocean Drilling program site, scientists were able to show that three deposits are made up of alternating beds of volcaniclastic sand and mud, while the fourth is a volcaniclastic debris flow, a more dense mixture of volcanic sediment and water. 

The study’s findings, published in the Journal Geology, suggest that these structures were deposited during a volatile time when the Campi Flegrei caldera and the Neapolitan Yellow Tuff supereruption were active. 

The new study suggests that these megabeds originated not from nearby volcanoes, but from a volcanic province to the north. That province, researchers think, was an area once near the Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) supereruption of Campi Flegrei, the largest one of its volcanic eruptions since the caldera’s formation nearly 50,000 years ago.

This still volcanically active region could pose immense danger in the future, said Derek Sawyer, lead author of the study and an associate professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University. The discovery of these previously unknown megabeds is pivotal for understanding and measuring the impact of such recurring geohazards over time.

“Megabeds are important components of deep-sea basins and are thought to be the result of major catastrophic events,” he said. “So studying them can serve as an important archive into how these events affected the Earth.”

The CI supereruption was so violent an incident that it had a profound effect on the planet and had a hand in shaping Earth’s climate and ecosystems, as well as a huge chunk of human migratory and geologic history. Thanks to the huge amounts of dust and ash that were left behind on land and eventually traveled into the ocean, Sawyer and his team were able to discern the age and composition of the four sediment deposits, and determined that their interpretation that the megabeds originated from the Campi Flegrei caldera to the north is likely supported.

More evidence supporting the theory came from the researchers’ discovery that tiny marine microbes called benthic foraminifera that reside within these megabeds were found not to have originated from Marsili as previously assumed, but from the Campi Flegrei caldera.  

Though scientists can now better predict potential ruptures and other types of seismic hazards, recent volcanic and hydrothermal activity in the Mediterranean has raised scientists’ concerns over whether the Marsili Seamount, which rises 3,500 meters from the seafloor to a depth of 489 meters below sea level, will erupt soon. 

“This is the part of Italy, the Phlegrean Fields, where Mount Vesuvius is and it’s still a very volcanically active area, so it’s a known hazard and continuously monitored,” said Sawyer. “In doing marine geoscience studies like these, we’re working to help understand past eruption events to aid in the effort to build resilient communities that have as much information as they can in order to avoid getting displaced.”

If a volcano in this region were to erupt today, the movement of such vast magma deposits beneath the surface could trigger tsunamis threatening nearby coastal cities and cause a variety of other ecological disasters.

While the study did find that megabeds recur in the Marsili Basin about every 10,000 to 15,000 years, Sawyer said that because not every eruption creates a megabed, scientists should be vigilant in watching for events that don’t adhere to these timescales. As the last one is estimated to have happened about 2,100 to 3,000 years ago, there’s still some uncertainty regarding when the next one will occur. 

“We have to be cautious about these predictions, but in order to be prepared for it, more research is needed,” Sawyer said.

Other co-authors are Roger Urgeles and Claudio Lo Iacono, both of the Institute of Marine Sciences in Spain. This study was supported by the National Science Foundation, as well as the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and Agencia Estatal de Investigación.