A research team developed a novel method using bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) spectra combined with the PROSPECT-PRO model and modified ratio indices to estimate nitrogen content nondestructively.

In semiarid farmlands, microbes are quietly shaping the planet's carbon cycle.

Pollinators, such as bumblebees, are essential providers of ecosystem services for agriculture, yet their numbers are declining due to landscape structure simplification and habitat loss. To explore this issue, an international research group  set up 56 commercial bumblebee colonies in Eastern Austria and Western Hungary—two regions once divided by the Iron Curtain and now markedly different in field size: Austria with very small, narrow fields (around 2 hectares) and Hungary with large fields (around 17 hectares). Their goal was to find out how local factors (crop type) and landscape-scale features (mean field size and proximity to semi-natural habitat) affect colony success—specifically traffic rate (a proxy for bumblebees activity), growth, and reproduction. They also examined pollen diversity and tested bumblebee navigation abilities by relocating workers and recording how quickly they returned to the colony, using small radio frequency identification tags.