Researchers at the Univesrity of Kansas have analyzed data from a website they built to document "lanback" returns, or returns of land to original Indigenous owners. Results show the returns have increased in frequency dramatically in recent years across the country. The returns have not been driven by law or policy, but by returns from private, non-profit, church, government and other owners deciding it is the right thing to do. These returns can help the field of public planning move beyond simple land acknowledgements in how they view land ownership and Indigenous communities, the authors argue.

16 June 2026/Kiel. A chain of remote islands and underwater volcanoes between Alaska and Kamchatka has revealed a much older chapter in Earth’s tectonic history than previously known. Along the Aleutian Arc, the Pacific Plate dives beneath the North American Plate, creating one of the most active and important plate boundaries on Earth. An international research team from Germany, Russia and the USA has now shown that this subduction zone began at least 56 million years ago, significantly earlier than previous models had assumed. The finding sheds new light on a major reorganization of plate motions around the Pacific and may also help scientists better understand ancient global climate change. The study has now been published in the renowned journal Nature Communications.