Cities around the globe are increasingly experiencing dangerous heat as urban concrete and asphalt amplify rising temperatures. Tree-planting programs are a popular, nature-based way to cool cities, but these initiatives have been largely based on guesswork and extrapolation. A study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers a new tool for urban planners and decision makers to set more specific and science-based city-wide greening goals. 

The Amazon region is a global hotspot of biodiversity and plays a key role in the climate system because of its ability to store large amounts of carbon and its influence on the global water cycle. The rain forest is threatened, however, by climate change as well as by intensified deforestation activities. An international team of researchers that includes scientists from MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, the Faculty of Geosciences, and the Institute of Environmental Physics of the University of Bremen, have investigated how a change in Atlantic circulation would impact the Amazon Rain Forest. Their results were now published in Nature Geoscience journal.

University of Oregon researchers are strengthening the resilience of filbert orchards across the state to withstand climate change — an effort backed by a $2 million federal investment.

A new publication launched by leading European Ocean scientists, titled Navigating the Future VI (NFVI), highlights our lack of understanding of saltwater intrusion into coastal freshwater systems under current and future climate scenarios, and its impacts for coastal communities. How much salt water is reaching those systems? Are climate change impacts such as higher sea levels, and warmer weather leading to increased use of underground freshwater reserves, making that intrusion more likely? Written by a team of experts from the marine sciences, the Navigating the Future VI makes it clear that we can no longer consider and manage the Ocean and fresh water separately. Water resilience has already been identified as a key focus for the new European Commission college of Commissioners, and as they start their official hearings, we highlight the important role of the Ocean in ensuring it.

Research from Case Western Reserve University helps reconstruct an ancient climate and challenges the timing of the Andes Mountains uplift.

The continuing release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is a major driver of global warming and climate change with increased extreme weather events. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have now presented a method for effectively converting carbon dioxide into ethanol, which is then available as a sustainable raw material for chemical applications.

Restoring degraded ecosystems has emerged as a global policy priority to address the interlinked concerns of deforestation and land degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change while delivering social benefits, according to the United Nations.

The ForestPaths project has released a policy brief examining how European policies on climate and biodiversity impact forest management and wood use. Supported by Horizon Europe, the project aims to balance climate mitigation and biodiversity goals within forestry. The brief, authored by the Oeko-Institute, reviews policies that largely align positively with these goals, highlighting 17 key initiatives focused on protection, management, restoration and wood use, illustrating the diversity in current forestry policy across Europe.