Hamdi Zurqani, an assistant professor of geospatial science for the College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources and the Arkansas Forest Resources Center at the University of Arkansas at Monticello, developed the Arkansas Vegetation Drought Explorer v.2.0 as part of a drought mapping study. The user-friendly web app gives users access to maps showing drought levels in Arkansas by county, year and month.

In “The Miraculous from the Material,” MIT professor of the practice Alan Lightman offers 35 essays about scientific understanding, each corresponding to photos of spectacular natural phenomena, from spider webs to sunsets and from galaxies to hummingbirds.

In a study published in Science China Earth Sciences, research teams from China collaboratively reconstructed the tectonic evolution and sedimentary filling processes of the North Sea Basin through the lens of multi-spheric interactions. Their analysis reveals how deep dynamic processes, climate, and transgression evolution jointly controlled the formation and development of distinct gas-rich and oil-rich zones in the basin, while also discusses hydrocarbon exploration prospects in mid- to high-latitude regions.