Heat-stressed Victorian mountain ash forests are thinning fast, turning from carbon sinks to carbon sources, new research reveals. Published in Nature Communications, the research shows forests will lose a quarter of their trees by 2080 due to global warning.

Foraminifera (forams) are shelled microorganisms that are abundant in the Earth’s seabed. Analyzing different species of forams provides important information about climate change, the state of the marine environment, and suitable areas for carbon capture and storage.

JapanFlux2024 is Asia’s first large-scale open dataset of eddy covariance observations, compiled by Japanese researchers. Covering 83 sites across East and Southeast Asia, it tracks carbon, water and energy exchange in terrestrial ecosystems. The dataset fills a regional information gap and supports climate, land-use and carbon cycle research.

With climate change and more frequent extreme weather events, researchers predict that global yields of important crops like maize, rice, and soybeans could decline by 12 to 20% by the end of the century. To prepare, plant scientists are hoping to find ways to improve yields and grow hardier varieties of these crops. New insights into the genetic makeup of wild varieties of common crops show how domestication has changed crop traits over time and proposes a new cultivation method to improve genetic diversity.

CU Boulder engineer Nicole Xu fits moon jellyfish with microelectronic devices that enhance their natural swimming ability and will one day be able to gather data.

World-renowned plant biologist Lucia Strader, previously at Duke University, will join the faculty at the Salk Institute in October 2025. Her research will help Salk’s Harnessing Plants Initiative design more resilient crop varieties that can thrive in changing environments.

Ash dieback and other tree diseases are resulting in significantly more greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought because a large amount of carbon is escaping from woodland soils, a study has found. This is in addition to carbon losses from tens of millions of dying trees and reduced removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere due to the widespread deaths of mature ash trees. The research team led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) etimate losses from soils alone due to ash dieback in British woodlands resulted in 5.8 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions over five years (2016-21).