Kyoto, Japan -- Mangrove forests are natural wonders that protect coastal areas, particularly in tropical and subtropical regions. They are able to dissipate wave energy and limit flooding, which can even mitigate tsunamis and coastal inundations during tropical cyclones. For this reason, mangroves are attracting attention as Nature-based Solutions, or NbS: natural infrastructure with the potential to enhance coastal resilience in an environmentally friendly way.

As climate change is altering ocean conditions and intensifying storms, many coastal communities face growing risks from flooding and extreme wave events; hence mangroves can serve to both mitigate disasters and help communities adapt to climate change. However, these forests remain underutilized in engineering applications due to a limited understanding of how they interact with hydrodynamic forces. Accurately modeling their complex root structures, known as prop-roots, while quantifying their wave attenuation effects has posed a particular challenge.

A collaborative team of researchers from Kyoto University's Disaster Prevention Research Institute resolved to address this knowledge gap. "Japan has a long history of using pine trees for coastal defense, and we want to apply this knowledge to mangroves to develop smart, cost-effective disaster risk reduction," says first author Yu-Lin Tsai.

The Pacific Northwest has seen below-normal snow this season — and new research from Portland State University suggests that the region's snowmelt-dependent water resources could face growing challenges in the years ahead as forest fires and winter rainstorms become more frequent.

Researchers have created the first map of a network of subglacial lakes in the Canadian Arctic showing 33 bodies of water under glaciers.

Using a decade of ArcticDEM satellite data of the Earth’s surface height, a team of researchers including the University of Waterloo developed a method that allowed them to track the draining and filling of active subglacial lakes in unprecedented detail.

A newly discovered fossil site in southwest China has transformed our understanding of how complex animal life emerged on Earth, revealing that many key animal groups had already evolved before the start of the Cambrian Period. The study, led by researchers at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History and Department of Earth Sciences as well as Yunnan University in China, has been published today (02 April) in Science.

New research in Geology uses images from the Curiosity rover to decode the planet’s atmosphere at a time when the surface was potentially habitable