If global emissions continue unchecked, rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns could amplify tree pests and diseases across more than 80 per cent of North American forests within decades, jeopardizing critical carbon sinks, air quality and the forestry economy.

This is the key finding of a new UBC-led study published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution. The researchers found that insects pose the more immediate threat, with more than 60 per cent of the areas examined projected to experience 30 per cent more insect pressure by mid-century. Species like the spongy moth, already wreaking havoc in Canadian forests, could expand significantly in eastern North America by mid-century.

The United Nations hold well-developed and safe roads as an important part of infrastructure in their Sustainable Development Goals. Until now, however, there has been no benchmark for the condition and state of road networks worldwide. Researchers at the Institute of Geography of Heidelberg University and HeiGIT (Heidelberg Institute of Geoinformation Technology) have addressed this gap by using artificial intelligence and satellite imagery to create an open-access dataset that maps and classifies more than nine million kilometers of roads worldwide. The dataset also captures changes in road conditions over time, providing valuable information for humanitarian applications and serving as an important indicator for assessing socioeconomic development, particularly in data-scarce regions.

A team of hydrogeologists and geomicrobiologists from China and Germany has discovered that dissimilatory iodate-reducing microorganisms (DIRMs) do not live above marine oxygen minimum zones (OMZs), as long predicted. Instead, these microbes thrive within the OMZs, converting iodate into iodide and promoting the release of marine iodine into the atmosphere. The findings, published in National Science Review, refine the ecological niche of DIRMs and enhance the modeling for predicting oceanic iodine emissions under future climate changes.