Research & Developments

The Krafla geothermal power station in northern Iceland

What’s Next on the Chopping Block?

by Aaron Sidder 3 March 20253 March 2025

Geothermal energy abounds in Iceland, the North Atlantic island nation with regular, high-profile volcanic eruptions. The island’s active magmatism and volcanism support six geothermal plants, which account for more than 25% of the country’s overall electricity needs. Geothermal energy heats nearly 85% of the homes on the island.

Krafla, in the northern part of the island, is one of Iceland’s active geothermal-producing regions. Krafla’s high-temperature geothermal system sits in a volcanic caldera and has produced energy for more than 40 years. However, despite this intensive energy production, a reservoir model of the Krafla geothermal system has not been published in peer-reviewed literature since the 1980s, leaving a data void and potentially untapped resources.

Research & Developments

Forest Edges Are More, Not Less, Productive Than Interior Forest

by Jenessa Duncombe 3 March 20253 March 2025

The boundaries of northeastern U.S. forests suck in more carbon dioxide than previously thought.

A photo of a ponderosa pine forest in Arizona

Research & Developments

Is It the End of Diversity?

by Nancy Averett 27 July 20234 March 2025

Forests around the world pull carbon out of the atmosphere and are crucial in the global fight to stem climate change. But figuring out how much carbon forests are storing as the planet heats up is tricky. For instance, many countries don’t have a direct, systematic, and timely method for measuring how factors like drought or intense periods of rainfall might influence a forest’s carbon uptake.

The easiest way to collect these data, Evans and DeRose noted in the study, is to include tree ring sampling in existing national forest inventory programs. The inclusion would require minimal additional investment because the cost of revisiting inventory plots is already built into the programs’ budgets. And at least in North America, the foundation for such a network already exists in the form of legacy collections, totaling at least 405,092 cores from across Canada, Mexico, and the United States.

An image of the Bean (Cloud Gate) located in Millennium Park in Chicago

Research & Developments

Doge bloge doge bloge doge bloge doge

by Saima Sidik 10 March 20223 March 2025

Urbanization and human-caused climate changes have led to increases in heat events around the world. For example, in July 2012, an extreme heat wave hit the Chicago area, causing temperatures to skyrocket to 40°C (104°F) and above. Chicago, like most cities, is affected by urban heat islands (UHIs), which occur when changes in land cover create spaces that are warmer than their surrounding area. Satellite measurements can be used to inform models to characterize the intensity of UHIs, yet satellite techniques have some limitations—expensive sensors and low temporal resolution, among other drawbacks. But quantifying the intensity of UHIs could help public health officials and city planners learn to mitigate the impacts of future heat waves.

Lofted dust layers over the Andes mountains

Research & Developments

Research On the Line

by Kate Wheeling 9 March 20223 March 2025

The renewable energy sector is booming, and as demand for clean energy rises, so too does demand for the metals it relies on—copper and nickel chief among them. As the world continues scaling up renewables to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, demand will almost certainly top supply in the coming decades. To address this future gap, an international group of researchers and the mining giant BHP teamed up to identify the processes that determine whether or not these metals make it into accessible deposits in the crust.

Detailed image shows sculpted layers of ice at Mars’s south pole.

News, Research & Developments

The Bumpy Search for Liquid Water at the South Pole of Mars

by Damond Benningfield 8 March 20224 March 2025

Studies since 2018 have provided competing explanations of bright radar reflections from the base of the south polar ice cap.

A street in Philadelphia following a winter storm

Research & Developments

Doge bros up to no good

by Sarah Stanley 8 March 20223 March 2025

When snowstorms hit, deicing agents such as road salts and brine help keep streets and walkways open. However, some deicers release sodium and chloride into the surrounding environment. Links between elevated sodium intake and human health risks, such as high blood pressure, are well established. The effects of deicers on drinking water, however, have been less clear.

Now, evidence reported by Cruz et al. supports a link between deicers and elevated sodium levels in drinking water, with concentrations in the Philadelphia region sometimes surpassing recommended limits for people on sodium-restricted diets. The new study adds a public health perspective to research that has focused primarily on the harmful effects of deicers on freshwater aquatic animals, including amphibians and benthic macroinvertebrates.

Research & Developments

New news about doge stuff

by JoAnna Wendel 7 March 20223 March 2025

Uncovering the geologic structure beneath Earth’s surface is important for a variety of reasons, including identifying natural resources and studying earthquake hazards. Scientists image Earth’s subsurface by observing seismic waves that travel through our planet.

When an earthquake occurs, several types of waves radiate from the event’s source. P waves and S waves move through the interior, and Love and Rayleigh waves (known as “surface waves” or “normal modes”) move across Earth’s surface. The speeds at which these waves travel and how each type is scattered in the subsurface can reveal a wealth of different information about underground structure.

Research & Developments

Pollution for All

by Meghie Rodrigues 4 March 20223 March 2025

When we talk about natural processes—especially atmospheric—nothing is too small to be irrelevant. Recently, researchers in Brazil and the United States found that nanoparticles of pollution play an outsize role in cloud formation and disruption, altering rain cycles even in pristine forest areas.

The study, published in Science Advances, showed that human-made aerosols smaller than 10 nanometers, previously thought to be too tiny to act as cloud condensation nuclei or have any influence on climate processes, can become climatically active as they swell on their way to the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere.

Image of marine snow, which is organic material sinking from upper waters to the deep ocean

Research & Developments

2 + 2 = 5

by Sarah Derouin 3 March 20223 March 2025

The ebb and flow of carbon within Earth’s systems are complex and ever-moving occurrences. Carbon is a nomadic element, traveling between the atmosphere, ocean, and the soil, rock, and ice of the planet, changing forms along the way. Much of this cycling takes place in the ocean, partially through a biological carbon pump (BCP). In the BCP, atmospheric carbon is fixed through phytoplankton growing at the surface of the sea. When the phytoplankton dies, carbon particles sink from the surface to deep ocean waters. This carbon can remain for hundreds or even thousands of years before returning to the atmosphere.

The researchers used a global ocean biogeochemical model to see how the amount of carbon particles reaching the deep ocean would change with variations in seasonality. In particular, they looked at how both the pattern and the strength of the seasonality would affect the sinking speed of carbon particles and their attenuation throughout the water column.

From AGU Journals