https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. The climate warmed up almost as quickly 56 million years ago as it is doing now. When a huge amount of CO2 entered the atmosphere in a short period of time, it led to large-scale forest fires and erosion. Mei Nelissen, Ph.D. candidate at NIOZ and UU, and her colleagues were able to see this very clearly in the layers of sediment drilled off the Norwegian coast. The research was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on January 19. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-ancient-surge-triggered-widespread-forest.html Earth Sciences Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:00:05 EST news687788889 Since humanity's first steps on the moon, the aspiration to extend human civilization beyond Earth has been a central objective of international space agencies, targeting long-term extraterrestrial habitation. Among the celestial bodies within reach, Mars is considered our next home. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-dynamic-duo-bacteria-mars-versatile.html Space Exploration Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:01 EST news683806321 Earth's largest mass extinction occurred about 252 million years ago, wiping out the majority of marine and terrestrial life, disrupting the global carbon cycle for several hundred thousand years, and earning the title "the Great Dying." Global warming, changing temperature gradients, shifts in nutrient cycling, and oxygen depletion wiped out 81% of all marine life at the time. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-algae-life-outlast-extinction.html Ecology Thu, 13 Nov 2025 14:50:01 EST news682267796 The global demand for wood-based products is constantly increasing, creating a challenge for the logging industry. In an attempt to keep up in a sustainable manner, the industry replaces logged areas with tree farms and nurseries to eventually replenish supplies. This use and regrowth of wood has also been thought to help maintain a carbon sink. While this may be true to some extent, a new study has found that an important source of carbon loss is often being left out of the equation. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-soil-runoff-forests-reactive-carbon.html Earth Sciences Tue, 09 Sep 2025 11:10:07 EDT news676634834 A deeper look into carbon flux is now possible—thanks to a deep pool of scientific collaboration. And for once, the spotlight is on Asia. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-asia-global-carbon-conversation.html Earth Sciences Thu, 21 Aug 2025 04:00:01 EDT news674907842 Unless one is a trained fighter jet pilot, or a Formula 1 driver, humans tend not to do well at higher gravity, but tiny green moss plants seem to thrive under such conditions. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-hypergravity-boosts-food-production-moss.html Plants & Animals Mon, 11 Aug 2025 12:40:01 EDT news674133747 A lot of the climate-altering carbon pollution humans release into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels gets drawn into the Earth's oceans and landscapes through natural processes, mostly through photosynthesis, as plants turn atmospheric carbon dioxide into biomass. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-carbon-offsets-roadmap-nature-based.html Earth Sciences Wed, 30 Jul 2025 11:00:07 EDT news672987853 Glaciers provide a unique opportunity for researchers to measure levels of atmospheric carbon deposition. Unlike other terrestrial ecosystems, these slow-moving rivers of ice do not have other large reservoirs of soil or vegetation that might obscure how much carbon they receive from the atmosphere. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-glaciers-clues-path-fossil-fuel.html Earth Sciences Mon, 28 Apr 2025 14:24:03 EDT news665069041 Recent studies have shown that carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems are increasing, mitigating around 30% of the CO2 emissions linked to human activities. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-trees-carbon-sequestered-soil.html Earth Sciences Thu, 20 Mar 2025 16:34:48 EDT news661707285 A major global study using teabags as a measuring device shows warming temperatures may reduce the amount of carbon stored in wetlands. https://phys.org/news/2024-12-global-teabag-temperatures-wetland-carbon.html Earth Sciences Mon, 02 Dec 2024 09:52:05 EST news652355522 An international study led by the Institute of Natural Resources and Agrobiology of Seville (IRNAS-CSIC), of the Spanish National Research Council (CISC), has shown that as the number of global change factors increases, terrestrial ecosystems become more sensitive to the impacts of global change. https://phys.org/news/2024-08-ecosystems-higher-environmental-stress-resistance.html Earth Sciences Fri, 23 Aug 2024 12:10:05 EDT news643633801 Scientists at MIT, the University of Birmingham, and elsewhere say that astronomers' best chance of finding liquid water, and even life on other planets, is to look for the absence, rather than the presence, of a chemical feature in their atmospheres. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-carbon-lite-atmosphere-life-terrestrial-planets.html Astronomy Fri, 29 Dec 2023 04:34:38 EST news623046863 In a large-scale study with almost 400 partners, researchers worldwide have collected data on tree species, to which scientists from Bayreuth have contributed their knowledge about the Kilimanjaro region. The study, which has now been published in the journal Nature Plants, improves our understanding of the different leaf types of trees and thus enables us to draw conclusions about ecosystems and the CO2 cycle. https://phys.org/news/2023-10-importance-tree-carbon-dioxide-storage.html Ecology Tue, 24 Oct 2023 11:31:44 EDT news617365901 Reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere will take more than cutting emissions—we will also need to capture and store the excessive volumes of already-emitted carbon. In an opinion paper published in the journal Trends in Plant Science on September 21, a team of plant scientists argue that arid lands such as deserts could be one answer to the carbon-capture problem. https://phys.org/news/2023-09-sequester-co2-re-greening-arid-scientists.html Plants & Animals Thu, 21 Sep 2023 11:00:01 EDT news614509259 The world's forests, grasslands, and other terrestrial ecosystems have played a substantial role in offsetting human carbon emissions—a capability that UC Berkeley researchers say would be threatened by continued global change. https://phys.org/news/2023-07-terrestrial-ecosystems-significantly-offset-human.html Earth Sciences Thu, 27 Jul 2023 11:53:03 EDT news609677581 New Curtin University research has identified the most carbon-rich soils in Australia are in areas that are most threatened by human activities and climate change, including Eucalypt and mangrove forests, and woodland and grassland areas that cover large parts of the country's interior. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-soil-terrestrial-blue-carbon-highlights.html Earth Sciences Thu, 01 Jun 2023 11:10:53 EDT news604836649 Plants take in CO2 to grow. They extract it from the atmosphere and use it to build organic compounds by means of photosynthesis and water. Terrestrial ecosystems have absorbed an average of about 32 percent of CO2 emissions caused by human activity over the last six decades. Whether and to what extent terrestrial vegetation can continue to function as a carbon sink in a changing climate is a key question in climate science and is of vital political relevance. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-droughts-carbon-dioxide-uptake-tropics.html Earth Sciences Thu, 01 Jun 2023 10:21:25 EDT news604833674 In a new journal article, EPFL professor Tom Battin reviews our current understanding of carbon fluxes in the world's river networks. He demonstrates their central role in the global carbon cycle and argues for the creation of a global River Observation System. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-rivers-global-carbon.html Earth Sciences Thu, 19 Jan 2023 08:39:04 EST news593339941 The world's oceans, which have absorbed most of the excess heat caused by humanity's carbon pollution, continued to see record-breaking temperatures last year, according to research published Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-scientists-alarm-ocean-temperatures.html Earth Sciences Wed, 11 Jan 2023 07:37:38 EST news592645052 An international research team with participation of the UAB team has succeeded in quantifying the volume of continental organic carbon stored in delta sediments from 75 million years ago. The research, published in Nature Geoscience, demonstrates that deltas are large stores of the planet's carbon and, therefore, important climate regulators over geological time periods. https://phys.org/news/2022-10-efficiency-deltaic-sediments-carbon-hundreds.html Earth Sciences Tue, 25 Oct 2022 09:51:03 EDT news585910261 Some 250 million years ago—long before dinosaurs roamed the earth—global warming and acid oceans caused by the rapid volcanic emission of the Siberian Traps led to the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, which resulted in the elimination of over 95% of marine and 70% of terrestrial life. https://phys.org/news/2022-10-climate-earth-ability-replenish.html Earth Sciences Mon, 03 Oct 2022 16:00:33 EDT news584031627 A new study, "The Global Potential for Increased Storage of Carbon on Land," published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provides a series of geospatial maps that improve our understanding of the global gap between current and potential carbon storage on land, and offers a framework for action to realize the full potential of land-based carbon storage as a natural climate solution. The study is timely, coming on the heels of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Working Group III's latest report, which focuses on the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions in order to limit future warming, and highlights the significant mitigation potential of natural and managed ecosystems given the opportunity they offer to remove additional carbon from the atmosphere. https://phys.org/news/2022-05-global-opportunities-carbon-storage-mitigate.html Earth Sciences Mon, 30 May 2022 15:00:01 EDT news573124283 Soil respiration is fundamental in terrestrial ecosystems, where plants and microbes dominate the production of carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere. The scientific understanding of the processes underpinning soil respiration remains incomplete, limiting our ability to accurately predict how the global carbon cycle will respond to the changing climate. https://phys.org/news/2022-04-paired-gas-biogeochemical-tracer.html Earth Sciences Thu, 21 Apr 2022 09:56:10 EDT news569753766 "Streams to the river, river to the sea." If only it were that simple. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-reveals-inland-coastal-waterways-climate.html Environment Wed, 16 Mar 2022 12:00:02 EDT news566650370 Ecosystems on Earth's land surface support multiple functions and services that are critical for society, like biomass production, vegetation's efficiency of using sunlight and water, water retention and climate regulation, and ultimately food security. Climate and environmental changes, as well as anthropogenic impacts, are continuously threatening the provision of these functions. To understand how terrestrial ecosystems will respond to this threat, it is crucial to know which functions are essential to obtain a good representation of the ecosystems' overall well-being and functioning. This is particularly difficult since ecosystems are rather complex in terms of their structure and their responses to environmental changes.  https://phys.org/news/2021-09-functioning-terrestrial-ecosystems-main-factors.html Earth Sciences Wed, 22 Sep 2021 11:29:01 EDT news551528938 Terrestrial ecosystems help mitigate climate change by absorbing large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. A new study now confirms that changing climate conditions could reduce this effect because in warmer and wetter areas, carbon stored in the soil is released back into the atmosphere more quickly. https://phys.org/news/2021-02-warmer-wetter-climates-amplify-carbon.html Environment Wed, 24 Feb 2021 08:45:44 EST news533378741 The global spread of vast forest plantations and agricultural monocultures are turning once diverse landscapes into areas of land supporting single plant species, with profound implications for our terrestrial water cycle, according to new research. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-intensive-monoculture-peril.html Environment Tue, 22 Sep 2020 08:33:25 EDT news519982400 As the planet warms, plants are working to slow the effect of human-caused climate change—and research published today in Trends in Plant Science has assessed how plants are responding to increasing carbon dioxide (CO2). https://phys.org/news/2019-05-hard-planet.html Environment Thu, 16 May 2019 11:00:02 EDT news477203949 Researchers have found that global changes, including warming temperatures and increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, are causing a decrease in the availability of a key nutrient for terrestrial plants. This could affect the ability of forests to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce the amount of nutrients available for the creatures that eat them. https://phys.org/news/2018-10-availability-nitrogen-declining-climate.html Environment Mon, 22 Oct 2018 14:04:26 EDT news459435858 An international team of researchers, including scientists from the University of York, has discovered a set of enzymes found in fungi that are capable of breaking down one of the main components of wood. The enzymes could now potentially be used to sustainably convert wood biomass into valuable chemical commodities such as biofuels. https://phys.org/news/2018-02-fungal-enzymes-secret-renewable-energy.html Biochemistry Fri, 16 Feb 2018 09:23:30 EST news437995399