Climate Change

Scientists get a clearer picture of phytoplankton sustaining ocean food webs

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 19:19:38 +0000

Scientists get a clearer picture of phytoplankton sustaining ocean food webs Rachel Sauer Fri, 09/18/2026 - 13:19

Kaio Kish

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researchers develop a tool that can model phytoplankton biomass extremes in the ocean in ways that conventional satellites often can’t

Phytoplankton, the tiny, single-celled organisms that live in oceans, are more important than some realize. They are the base of the marine food web and help countless other species in the oceans thrive and survive.

Satellite technology and its continuous advancements have given the world a better understanding of the oceans and the life within them, specifically phytoplankton. But gaps still remain in what satellites can show about the activity of phytoplankton.

Unfortunately, phytoplankton and the oceans they call home are suffering, says Nicole Lovenduski, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences (ATOC) and director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR). “You can think of (phytoplankton) as the grasses of the terrestrial biosphere,” she says. “They’re the things that build the foundation that everything else eats.”

In a recently published study conducted in partnership between ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Lovenduski and her research colleagues found that despite what can be seen through satellite imagery, a lot of phytoplankton is obscured—often by clouds or low sunlight.

A mixed phytoplankton community. (Image: Stephanie Anderson/University of Rhode Island/NASA)

The researchers set out to discover what the observational limitations were in detecting phytoplankton biomass extremes in the oceans, building a satellite emulator that mimics the same blind spots a real satellite would encounter: sea ice, clouds, low sun angles. This allowed them to compare what the model predicted to what the satellite actually saw, ultimately revealing the gaps between the two. By combining interdisciplinary expertise, they were able to find the holes in detecting these phytoplankton biomass extremes.

"Statistically, by definition, there have to be extremes in everything—you think about a normal distribution (referencing phytoplankton bloom events), the extremes are on the tail of that bell curve, so mathematically they must exist,” Lovenduski explains. “And I found maybe four papers on this, and that was it. Why isn’t anyone writing about this?... And then I had the a-ha moment: It's because no one can see them in the satellite data."

As Lovenduski explains, extremes are important for the ecosystem: “If there's a huge phytoplankton bloom, that's going to have ramifications for the whole ocean ecosystem in that region. Similarly, if blooms fail to occur, that's going to be devastating for the ecosystem.”

These high extremes refer to a higher-than-normal concentration of phytoplankton in one specific region or area. On the other hand, if a bloom is supposed to happen and it doesn’t—a low extreme—marine life in that region that rely on phytoplankton for their diet can be severely affected, which in turn causes a ripple effect across other species in the ocean.

Combining clouds, ocean and ice

To study these issues, Lovenduski worked with ATOC PhD graduates Genevieve Clow and Samuel Mogen, an INSTAAR postdoctoral scholar, as well as ATOC Professor Jennifer Kay and Michael Levy and Keith Lindsay of the NCAR Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory. The researchers aimed to find a better way to visualize these mysterious single-celled organisms that do so much for our marine ecosystem.

To solve the problem of limited visualization of phytoplankton, the team built what they call a satellite emulator within an Earth system model—a tool that allows them to “see” the modeled ocean the same way a satellite does.

"It is an approach that they've used in atmospheric science before to simulate satellite observations of clouds, and we apply that approach to a completely different thing, which is the pigment chlorophyll in the ocean,” Lovenduski says. “Our ability to detect that from space turns out to be a really important limit on our ability to detect extremes.”

Chlorophyll, a green pigment that phytoplankton and plants use to absorb sunlight, plays a similar role in phytoplankton as it does in plants. It is why large phytoplankton clusters and algae appear green. Chlorophyll helps phytoplankton turn sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into energy while releasing oxygen.

However, because of the limitations caused by cloud coverage blocking satellite imaging of chlorophyll, Kay emphasizes that using field samples as well as satellite imagery is vital to a model: “You can learn so much from the assets that we have in space, and sometimes those assets, while providing an incomplete picture of things, can also provide the space-time perspective that's super important for understanding this change in variability.”

Kay also mentions that a combination of field sampling and the use of satellites are critical to understanding what's going on in the oceans, noting how her group often partners with Boulder-based NCAR scientists to validate Earth system models with data.

As a key part of the research, Clow developed a tool that ran model simulations on a computer. Clow flew a virtual satellite inside the model, sampling the modeled ocean similar to how a real satellite would see the ocean.

Conventional atmospheric satellites wait for reflected light to bounce off the ocean and come back up but, Lovenduski notes, so “if there's a cloud in the way and if the sun angle is really low, there's not enough radiation to come back to the satellite, so we made sure that we included that effect in the model. And if there's sea ice growing on the surface of the ocean, (the satellite) can't see the chlorophyll underneath, but the model still predicts what the chlorophyll is.”

A phytoplankton bloom off the coast of Iceland. (Image: NASA)

By being able to account for these discrepancies in the model, Clow says that the main takeaway from this research is that “our observations of phytoplankton are limited, and that we need to combine observations and models in order to gain a complete picture of what's happening with phytoplankton in the ocean."

One of the most significant findings in this research included the fact that globally, satellites can only detect about 10% of daily low extremes and 19% of daily high extremes. Kay explains that clouds “obscure what you can view in the ocean. It's hard to penetrate into it, and from space you're not going to get that kind of information.”

Clow’s idea for an Earth system model study arose from that issue: “Satellites can only see the surface of the ocean, but in some regions, phytoplankton tend to grow much deeper, and so what satellites can see at the surface isn't representative of what's happening throughout the water column,” Clow explains, adding that this is the main issue with being able to visualize the amount of phytoplankton in a given area.

The stressed oceans

Despite the technical advances represented in the model, the researchers express concerns about the state and health of Earth’s oceans.

“There are so many environmental stressors that are hitting the ocean all at once, so it's getting warmer, and that is in turn is causing the ocean to lose oxygen with time,” Lovenduski says. “That also is making it more difficult for nutrients that are below the surface to get up to the surface and fuel this biological productivity that's so important for the marine food web.

“In addition, the ocean is taking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which is great for mitigating global warming but actually causing the ocean to become acidic. So, the ecosystems of the ocean are experiencing simultaneous difficult stressors all at once. It doesn't paint a very nice picture."

Phytoplankton observability matters as a sign of what’s happening in our climate, the researchers say. Kay points out that fisheries and other marine-based industries rely on knowledge of extreme events happening in the world. “If we have a heat wave in the atmosphere, we’re kind of miserable,” she says. “So, it can affect life in the ocean as well.”

Kay notes that though Colorado is far from the ocean, residents here still experience similar effects: “I think we can start to expect warmer days and more heat waves and more demand on water resources. I think we all felt that pretty acutely in Colorado this past winter, having 80-degree days in March when we're supposed to have the peak snowpack.”

“Make the model look like reality”

The recently published paper is an important step in continuing research. Clow is beginning a post-doctoral research position at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, where she’ll model the impact of fish on the carbon cycle.

Lovenduski’s group is applying the “make the model look like reality” idea to a fleet of ocean floats that “live forever, they don't ever run out of battery like the real world floats, but they also can do a profile every four hours instead of every 10 days.”

This, she says, will allow the team to, “improve the frequency of sampling, and then we can look at what an ideal float configuration in the real world looks like for the thing that you're interested in sampling.”

Kay is working with a newly launched satellite, called EarthCARE, to better understand the water cycle and how the energy budget and resources will be affected by measuring precipitation near the surface.

The researchers note that the experience of developing a tool to model the detectability of phytoplankton biomass extremes in the ocean, as especially the interdisciplinary approach to this work, is informing their further research.

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researchers develop a tool that can model phytoplankton biomass extremes in the ocean in ways that conventional satellites often can’t.

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Top image: A green phytoplankton bloom in the Gulf of Finland. (Photo: NASA)

Firefighter deaths afflict surviving colleagues, research finds

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 23:06:28 +0000

Firefighter deaths afflict surviving colleagues, research finds Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/08/2026 - 17:06

Researcher Robert Scott recommends expanded mental-health training, stronger support systems after fatalities and improved benefits for private-sector firefighters.

Clint Talbott

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� sociologist shines light on understudied area of wildfire research: how wildland firefighting fatalities affect the people on the front lines

Robert Scott started fighting wildfires so he could pay for college. While conducting graduate-level research in 2013, the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona overran and killed 19 firefighters in one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history.

At the time, Scott was researching how firefighters' perceptions of risk change over time. But in the wake of the Yarnell Hill tragedy, the topic felt much more personal.

“I had seen how that was affecting my crew members, how it was affecting me,” he says. Describing this as a pivotal event, Scott resolved to focus his PhD research on firefighters’ responses to their colleagues’ deaths.

Robert Scott an instructional associate in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Arts and Sciences Residential Academic Programs.

Another key experience happened a year earlier while working on an Idaho wildfire shortly after a firefighter had been killed by a falling tree.

“I got to see and experience what that’s like, being at a fatality fire several days after a death has occurred,” Scott says. “What happens in briefings, how firefighters are processing being out in the field at that time.”

His 2025 doctoral dissertation at the University of Colorado Boulder found that firefighter fatalities can inflict psychological wounds with long-lasting effects on crews, families and fire organizations.

Scott, a sociologist who is an instructional associate in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Arts and Sciences Residential Academic Programs, is originally from Ontario, Canada, and became a firefighter while attending college in the United States.

Based on in-depth interviews with 37 firefighters across the American West, Scott’s research documents trauma, grief, survivor guilt, anxiety, hypervigilance and, in some cases, suicidal thoughts among firefighters who experienced the deaths of colleagues.

Scott's dissertation, When Counterparts Die: Wildland Firefighters' Responses to Line of Duty Deaths, fills what he calls a significant gap in wildfire research.

“Focusing on firefighters' responses to peer fatalities in the line of duty is an area of research that's extraordinarily understudied,” Scott says.

The research comes as wildfires burn larger areas of the West. The number of wildfires has declined in recent years, but the size and intensity of them has increased.

Data from the National Interagency Fire Center and National Wildfire Coordinating Group reports 697 wildland firefighting fatalities in the United States between 1983 and 2023, an average of about 17 deaths per year. Medical emergencies accounted for about 27% of those deaths, followed by aviation accidents (20%), burnovers and entrapments (20%), vehicle accidents (19%), hazard trees (6%) and other causes (7%).

Four levels of involvement

Through interviews with firefighters ranging from rookies to veterans with decades of experience, Scott developed a framework describing four levels of involvement in firefighter fatalities.

“Some firefighters probably could have better addressed their conditions afterwards had they known a bit more about what was going on,” says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Robert Scott.

The most severe reactions were associated with primary involvement: personally knowing the deceased, witnessing death and dying or feeling implicated in a fatality.

Those firefighters often described consequences that extended years beyond the incident.

“What I found striking was just how much direct involvement in fatality incidents affected the daily lives of some firefighters who I talked to,” Scott says. “For some, there are ongoing chronic struggles, periods of suffering.”

Several firefighters reported persistent hypervigilance and anxiety on the fireline long after a fatality. Others described impacts on family life.

“The work was definitely affecting family life,” Scott says. “And it seemed also to be coming back into work life.”

One finding was that some firefighters continued working after traumatic incidents even when they were still struggling psychologically.

“Some would experience random bouts of anxiety in the field,” Scott says. “Some would be extremely hypervigilant for many years.”

'They knew something was changing'

Scott found that firefighters recognized changes in themselves after a fatality. “But they didn’t necessarily have a framework to fully understand what was happening to them.”

That happened, he argues, partly because firefighters historically received little training in grief, trauma and mental health.

Researcher Robert Scott recommends expanded mental-health training, stronger support systems after fatalities and improved benefits for private-sector firefighters.

One firefighter interviewed for the study experienced suicidal thoughts and feelings of worthlessness for a long duration. “He thought that it was normal until he opened up to a friend,” who assured him otherwise.

Another firefighter worked with military veterans struggling with suicidal thoughts before recognizing similar symptoms in himself.

“It took time for the full realization to come through,” Scott says. “Something’s going on here, and I need to get help.”

Scott believes that earlier education could have helped many firefighters recognize warning signs sooner.

“Some firefighters probably could have better addressed their conditions afterwards had they known a bit more about what was going on,” he says.

A culture of silence

The study suggests cultural factors have long discouraged firefighters from openly discussing emotional struggles.

“For a very long time, and still, the field has been primarily men,” Scott says. “There was the sort of soldier-on attitude and be mentally tough attitude that existed.” Additionally, there have been few research opportunities for firefighters.

As a result, many firefighters have kept their struggles private.

The interviews revealed that some firefighters grappled with severe trauma responses but disclosed them only to specific close family members, friends or helping professionals. That silence made conducting the interviews particularly meaningful.

“I’m so grateful that they opened up to me,” he says. Scott believes that being a firefighter himself, knowing the training and culture and being sensitive to the firefighters’ experiences helped them trust him. “They go through a lot, and they continue to.”

The people who remain

Much wildfire fatality research focuses on what went wrong during an incident, organizational responses and cause-of-death trends. Scott’s research focuses on the firefighters who continue working after various levels of involvement in fatality incidents, which is understudied.

“A big focus of the literature is about what went wrong, what happened and how can we mitigate that in the future,” he says.

But, “What about the people who are there and go back to work after? Maybe they take some time off, but they go back.”

That has implications not only for individual well-being but for the functioning of organizations.

“How organizations perform changes after these events,” Scott says. "People have been influenced by the events, and they continue to go to work.”

Recommendations for change

Scott’s dissertation recommends expanded mental-health training, stronger support systems after fatalities and improved benefits for private-sector firefighters.

Scott also argues that discussions about wildfire policy should factor in firefighter mental health alongside ecological and economic questions.

For decades, wildfire management debates have centered on suppression costs, forest health and fuel loads. “What's been left out is mental health,” he says.

Ultimately, Scott hopes his research might help firefighters better understand experiences that have often remained private.

“I didn't undertake the project to become known,” he says. “If I could have done it anonymously, I would have. It was about a very serious topic that I think matters and that I could contribute to in a valuable way for the fire community.”

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All photos courtesy Robert Scott

Climate crisis behind bars is heating up

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 20:13:23 +0000

Climate crisis behind bars is heating up Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/01/2026 - 14:13

Bradley Worrell

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� sociologist David Ciplet explains why climate change and incarceration are deeply connected

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As climate change intensifies, discussions about vulnerability often focus on coastal communities, agricultural regions or low-income neighborhoods. Much less attention is paid to the 1.2 million people incarcerated in U.S. prisons—many of whom face extreme heat, flooding, wildfire and other climate-related hazards with little ability to protect themselves.

For David Ciplet, a sociologist in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Environmental Studies whose research focuses on climate change and inequality, that oversight represents a significant gap in both climate research and public policy. His recent paper in Environmental Politics examines U.S. incarceration in a changing climate, focusing on prisons as places where environmental vulnerability and social marginalization overlap.

As Ciplet sees it, climate-related threats such as extreme heat, flooding, hurricanes and wildfires can be especially dangerous for incarcerated individuals because they have very little control over their environment. They cannot choose where they live, leave an overheated building or escape a facility threatened by natural disaster, he notes.

David Ciplet is a sociologist in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Environmental Studies whose research focuses on climate change and inequality.

At the same time, Ciplet says people who are incarcerated are increasingly being called upon to fight wildfires and respond to other climate-related disasters, but often they don’t receive training and protection comparable to professionals, or fair compensation for their work.

“How we treat those who are most vulnerable says something about our society and priorities,” he says.

From studying climate equity to prison conditions

Ciplet did not begin his career studying prisons.

His earlier research focused on making climate policy more equitable. That included work with the Just Transition Collaborative at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, which aimed to ensure that local governments’ climate policies not only prioritized addressing the environmental impacts of climate change but also didn’t contribute to rising costs or other adverse effects for low-income residents and other vulnerable communities.

As he explored questions about vulnerability and environmental justice, Ciplet says he began hearing about dangerous conditions inside Texas prisons during periods of extreme heat. Many of those facilities lack air conditioning despite increasingly extreme summers, which can result in incarcerated people enduring prolonged exposure to temperatures that can pose serious health risks, he adds.

That struck Ciplet as an obvious blind spot.

“My research has always focused on people who experience the greatest harms,” he explains. “Prisons are not the only place where that occurs, but they are one of the most severe.”

Because incarcerated individuals have no agency over where they live or control over the temperature in those facilities, Ciplet argues, it makes prisons impossible to ignore when considering who is most vulnerable to climate change.

A population largely hidden from public view

One reason the issue receives so little attention, Ciplet believes, is that most Americans never see prison conditions firsthand. Correctional facilities operate largely out of public view.

As a result, Ciplet says assumptions about prison life often differ significantly from what incarcerated individuals experience. That invisibility shapes public understanding—and ultimately public policy, he says.

Ciplet emphasizes that the American public should be concerned about climate conditions in prisons because incarcerated people are human beings deserving of basic dignity.

“I think it’s also important to point out that many (people in prisons) are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses and some were convicted under circumstances that are contested,” he says. “More broadly, there are all kinds of inequalities within our criminal legal system that disproportionately affect people who become incarcerated and how people are treated once they are in the system.

“Even if someone believes incarceration is appropriate in some cases, subjecting people to unbearable or dangerous conditions is not going to improve society, so it makes little sense.”

At the same time, Ciplet says there is the practical aspect of caring about prison conditions.

“Most people who go to prison will eventually return to their communities,” he says. “We should create dignified conditions that support successful reintegration, rather than exposing people to extreme physical and mental distress during confinement. Access to a healthy environment is a basic human right.”

Climate risks are growing

Climate-related threats to incarcerated individuals are not hypothetical, Ciplet says.

“Most people who go to prison will eventually return to their communities,” says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher David Ciplet. “We should create dignified conditions that support successful reintegration, rather than exposing people to extreme physical and mental distress during confinement. Access to a healthy environment is a basic human right.”

He points to rising temperatures in Colorado prisons as one example. He notes that the average temperature in Colorado has already risen by about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1980s and is projected to increase by an additional 2.5 to 5 degrees by 2050.

“A few degrees may not sound dramatic, but if someone is already confined to a cell that reaches 95 or 100 degrees, those additional degrees matter,” Ciplet says. “We’re also seeing more extreme heat days and heat waves lasting for longer periods of time. The experience of enduring a single hot day is very different from enduring a week of extreme temperatures.”

Heat is only one concern.

“Beyond heat, incarcerated people are vulnerable to floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters. Because incarcerated individuals cannot leave those dangerous conditions, climate impacts can be particularly severe for them,” Ciplet says.

He adds that climate change magnifies the vulnerabilities already built into the prison system.

The complicated role of prison labor

Ciplet sees a certain irony in that incarcerated people are often not only victims of climate-related conditions but are also part of the response, as many states rely on prison labor during emergencies.

Incarcerated workers may clear debris after storms, assist with disaster recovery or serve on fire crews battling destructive wildfires. While supporters of those efforts might point to benefits such as work experience and valuable job training, Ciplet argues it should also spur deeper questions about prison work conditions.

“In many states, incarcerated people play important roles in disaster responses, including firefighting. Yet they often are not given the same equipment and training as people who are not incarcerated and typically they are not fairly compensated for their work,” he says. “If incarcerated people are playing a major role in protecting us from natural hazards associated with climate change, we should be providing them with training and protective equipment and fair wages, as well as career pathways when they come out of prison.”

Typically, once individuals who are incarcerated complete their sentences, they face barriers that prevent them from pursuing careers in firefighting despite the valuable experience they gained while incarcerated, Ciplet says.

Meanwhile, Ciplet has reservations about correctional facilities making use of prison labor to manufacture solar panels, wind turbines or other carbon-reducing technologies. While tasking people in prisons with manufacturing “green” technologies sounds like a positive development, Ciplet says there is an underlying concern.

“Any system that becomes dependent upon prison labor can create incentives to maintain or expand incarceration,” he says. “I think we should be moving in the opposite direction.”

It’s that same concern, he says, that gives him pause when distressed communities sometimes seek to host a correctional facility as an economic development project.

“Rural communities—especially those that may have lost major industries, such as coal mining—absolutely need strong economic opportunities. The question is: What kind of development best serves those communities over the long term?” Ciplet asks. “I think we should be investing in forms of economic development that create healthy, sustainable opportunities without depending on or expanding prison populations.”

If more people knew how harmful some of the conditions in prisons are related to climate impacts, I do think people would care. I think most people believe basic human rights should be protected.”

Imagining something different

Although much of his research focuses on examining systemic problems, Ciplet also looks for examples that challenge assumptions about what prisons can become once they are shut down.

For example, he notes that some communities have proposed converting former prisons into affordable housing, community centers or facilities serving unhoused residents. Others have explored using former prisons for renewable energy projects. Ciplet points to proposals of transforming New York City’s Rikers Island correctional facility into a site for a renewable energy project.

Such projects remain uncommon, Ciplet acknowledges. Still, he says they suggest that communities are not limited to choosing between maintaining prisons and building new ones, as other possibilities exist if policymakers are willing to consider them.

For his part, Ciplet’s goals extend beyond publishing academic papers. Through the Climate and Incarceration Research Collective, which he directs, he and his colleagues are partnering with formerly incarcerated individuals in Colorado to better understand how extreme heat and cold affect health during incarceration and what policy changes could reduce those risks.

Ciplet says that work reflects a broader philosophy that research should not just describe inequality but help to address it. He says he believes climate policy can unintentionally reinforce existing injustices if decision-makers fail to consider who bears the costs. At the same time, thoughtful policy can improve environmental outcomes while advancing fairness, he says.

Asked if he is optimistic about whether society is moving toward a more equitable and sustainable future, Ciplet offers a mixed assessment.

“We are seeing policy rollbacks related to climate action, including expanded drilling and mining and reductions in support for clean-energy initiatives. At the same time, there has been a return in some areas to criminal legal priorities focused more on punishment than prevention and restorative justice,” he says.

Still, Ciplet says he remains positive.

“”I’m always hopeful,” he says. “National politics make large-scale change challenging in the near term, but there is considerable potential at state and local levels. Also, major shifts can happen unexpectedly, and public opinion can change rapidly. I am particularly encouraged by younger generations, who consistently demonstrate a strong commitment to addressing climate change.”

In the near term, Ciplet says he believes the lack of public awareness regarding extreme climate conditions incarcerated people face remains one of the biggest challenges in terms of addressing the issue.

“If more people knew how harmful some of the conditions in prisons are related to climate impacts, I do think people would care,” he says. “I think most people believe basic human rights should be protected.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� sociologist David Ciplet explains why climate change and incarceration are deeply connected.

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Top photo: Pexels

When leaving isn't a choice, staying becomes one

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 20:55:11 +0000

When leaving isn't a choice, staying becomes one Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/24/2026 - 14:55

Cody DeBos

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researchers ask who decides to stay behind when climate disaster strikes

“I don’t know when I floated to the river bank—but I survived. Remember, to live here, you have to be brave as crocodiles in water and tigers on land. But the peace of living here will not be found anywhere else.”

That’s how a grandmother in coastal Bangladesh once described surviving a flood to her 17-year-old granddaughter.

This type of survival knowledge, passed on from generation to generation, is one thread in a much larger tapestry of climate-driven migration. Lori Hunter, director of the University of Colorado Boulder Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS), has been working to better understand the phenomenon and how to support the people it affects.

Lori Hunter is a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of sociology and director of the Institute of Behavioral Science.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, women are most commonly the ones who stay behind when disaster strikes. Hunter says this partially comes down to socialization and the process of “learning” gender and what’s expected of us.

“Some of what we learn through this process relates to migration—what is seen as ‘acceptable’ in terms of men and women relocating,” she says.

Of course, the full picture is more nuanced.

Connecting the pieces

Hunter’s interest in people, places, and their connection to the environment goes back more than 30 years to her days in the Pacific Northwest.

“I lived in Seattle for many years, and my original curiosity was fueled by seeing the region’s demographic change as related to high levels of in-migration back in the 1980s,” she says.

Environmental amenities were clearly a draw to the area, leading to a boom in population growth that has significantly altered the region and its natural resources.

Yet, as Hunter puts it, “migration researchers just weren’t integrating broader environmental context into their investigations of human movement.”

That initial spark eventually led to a more focused interest in gender and specifically how it relates to human migration driven by climate change.

After co-authoring a paper on the subject that was published in 2011, Hunter was asked to create a white paper that would be included in World Bank’s Groundswell report.

“At the time there was virtually no research on the three-way intersection of displacement, climate change, and gender. We pulled together scholarship on 1) disasters and gender, 2) disasters and migration, 3) gender and risk perceptions and other related sub-topics to inform a discussion of potential connections,” she says.

More than a decade later, Hunter’s work has evolved into an examination of not only who leaves when climate disaster upends normal life, but equally those who choose not to or are forced to stay.

Forgetting about those who stay

The gap in both relocation by gender and the study of non-migration itself is at the heart of Hunter’s newest work with lead author Bishawjit Mallick, a IBS Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow. Published in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, the paper details a framework called Intergenerational Gendered Environmental Non-Migration, or IGEN.

Hunter explains that human populations change through three processes. Birth, death, and migration all have a part to play.

“Demographers have long studied migration as an outcome (just like births and deaths). Who moves? Why do they move? What are the implications of those moves?” Hunter says.

“Although some women aspire to leave, many lack the agency to make such mobility decisions,” says ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Lori Hunter. (Photo: Albert Gonzalez Farran/United Nations)

But despite all the research, there is a blind spot.

“The question of who doesn’t move just hasn’t been on the table. Perhaps because most people don’t move so it’s more interesting to consider who does,” she adds.

Yet, in locations facing repeated natural disasters, understanding who stays (and why) is anything but academic. Hunter’s IGEN framework suggests one reason for those decisions is the influence of gender roles that have been reinforced across generations.

“Living under a patriarchal social structure, in some cultural settings, women are often expected to move in with their in-laws after marriage. This can promote a situation where men become the primary decisionmaker, diminishing women’s agency,” Hunter explains.

“If women are more likely to remain at home as a result of cultural expectations but also have less access to income or other resources as a consequence of patriarchy, they become increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of disasters,” she continues.

As these factors compound, women living in high-risk areas may be pressed into staying somewhere they don’t really want to be regardless of their preference.

“Although some women aspire to leave, many lack the agency to make such mobility decisions,” Hunter says.

In her view, this is exactly why the research gap needs closing.

“The gap really does matter, and the example of climate-related disasters demonstrates why,” Hunter says. “It’s important to understand who is staying in risky areas—and why—in order to provide appropriate support within local communities and reduce vulnerabilities.”

Inherited ground

Of course, “staying” isn’t a decision defined by gender alone. Inheritance also plays a significant role in keeping someone rooted in place, despite logic and scientific evidence pointing them elsewhere.

“Some people choose to stay in a risky locale (voluntary non-migration), even if they understand the risk,” Hunter says.

During an earlier project’s fieldwork, one forty-three-year-old fisherman said “Our ancestors built this house for us. We want to stay here. It’s a very important part of our life. This village is our identity.”

This can help explain why, after devastating floods and cyclones, many families choose to rebuild on the exact same plot of land that was washed away.

Not everyone gets the choice, though.

“On the other hand, some stay in a risky locale because they’re unable to move (involuntary), such as perhaps lacking the funds to resettle elsewhere,” Hunter says.

This is often the case when changing environmental patterns have already lowered the value of a family’s home, or when affordability has put land elsewhere out of reach.

I think it’s important to consider the reasons why someone might be staying. We have a tendency to blame individuals if they remain in risky locales without considering why they remain."

Quoted from the paper, a seventy-one-year-old housewife from Bangladesh told the research team, “So many people are moving from here by buying land in other places, but we don’t have the ability to buy land.”

A 43-year-old housewife echoed the sentiment, saying, “If I had money, I would have bought land far away.”

For many in these communities, the reason for non-migration falls somewhere in the middle. The choice is often shaped as much by a lack of resources and agency as by attachment to a home.

Rethinking the motive

Hunter hopes that more research into non-migration amid the many challenges posed by environmental harm and gender norms will help reframe the conversation.

“I think it’s important to consider the reasons why someone might be staying. We have a tendency to blame individuals if they remain in risky locales without considering why they remain,” she says.

In the same vein, Hunter says much migration isn’t due to choice.

“Most people want to stay where they are. If climate-related pressures are combined with other economic and/or socio-cultural challenges, people might be forced to make a move they’d rather not,” she says.

Shifting the focus from blame to understanding is something for everyone to consider. Hunter also hopes this mindset is embraced by those with the power to enact change at the highest levels.

“I would love it if policymakers recognized that many people do not want to migrate but are forced to do so if climate pressures make their current lives untenable,” she says. “Supporting individuals and families to stay in their origin communities could reduce the tide of migration.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researchers ask who decides to stay behind when climate disaster strikes.

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What can one tiny scanner detect in Mammoth sunflowers?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 22:59:23 +0000

What can one tiny scanner detect in Mammoth sunflowers? Rachel Sauer Fri, 08/14/2026 - 16:59

Tiffany Plate

Researchers in ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology are taking a closer look at the drought-recovery efforts of these beloved blooms

Drive down even the driest road in Colorado at the height of summer, and you’re bound to see rows of bright sunflowers lining the shoulder. And even if at the end of a long hot day those long-stemmed blooms look a little wilted, there’s a good chance that by the next morning they’re standing tall again.

That observable bounceback has led researchers to believe that sunflowers are capable of a process called “refilling,” in which the plant’s water transport capability, which can fail during intense drought stress, returns to normal after it has been rewatered. Refilling flushes drought-induced air bubbles, called embolisms, out of the plant’s water transport tubes to deliver much-needed moisture throughout the plant.

Study authors (left to right) Jared Stewart, Stephanie Polutchko and Brendan Allen found that, contrary to popular belief, sunflowers were not capable of “refilling” themselves after experiencing drought and subsequent rewatering. (Photo: Stephanie Polutchko)

But according to a recent study by researchers in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, refilling is not the cause of sunflowers’ apparent bounceback.

“We didn't see a single convincing instance where even one of the tubes was repaired,” says Research Associate Jared Stewart. Stewart served as lead author on a recent article in the Journal of Experimental Botany documenting his team’s use of a micro-CT scanner to peek inside sunflowers at various stages of dehydration and rehydration.

The finding stands in stark contrast to the results of a study the same team performed on a weedy grass, which was published last year in the journal Proceedings from the National Academy of Sciences USA. In that instance, the grasses’ refilling capabilities were remarkable.

“There wasn't any real gray area with the two findings,” says Stewart. “This grass refilled 100% completely in every single plant, every single time. In the sunflowers, we saw zero refilling.”

So where does that leave the field of plant hydraulics? “In last year's paper we showed that this refilling process does happen,” says Stewart. “But these results suggest it’s probably not nearly as prevalent as people thought.”

Why sunflowers?

The study grew out of a conversation between Stewart and his then-postdoctoral advisor Sean Gleason, a plant physiologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, along with ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� colleagues Stephanie Polutchko, an assistant teaching professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and graduate student Brendan Allen. The four linked up with researchers at Colorado State University and mapped out a way they could leverage CSU’s micro-CT scanner to observe the drought processes in the plants.

Sunflower was an ideal candidate, Stewart says, because literature on plant hydraulics almost unanimously supported the idea that sunflowers were capable of refilling (in part because of the daily visual evidence of the flower wilting and then perking back up). In fact, for a long time most experts in plant hydraulics believed that refilling was a fairly universal phenomenon. The problem was that there was very little concrete evidence to back up that belief.

“Previously published evidence for this repair process has been scrutinized more and more intensely over the past decade,” says Stewart. The team thus opted for a simple experimental setup to ensure there was no confusion about the results.

A mouse-sized scanner to the rescue

An essential part of that simple design was using the micro-CT scanner that belongs to CSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. The small scanner is designed to scan small, live animals and was engineered to emit as little radiation as possible—so study subjects can be scanned repeatedly without exposure to high levels of radiation.

A sunflower plant experiencing drought and one week after being rewatered (top), and micro-CT images of its stem (bottom). The white arrows indicate where the stem was scanned, and the yellow areas in the micro-CT images show air bubbles, or embolisms, in yellow. (Image courtesy of study authors)

The setup was perfect for Stewart’s team, who scanned the 11 specimens of the “Mammoth” variety of sunflowers at three different times: while under drought stress, on the morning after re-watering and after one week of recovery under well-watered conditions. The plants were able to withstand the scanning with no visible damage.

That was not true in past studies on the topic, including research that dates back more than 40 years. “Conventional ways of studying this have involved basically cutting out portions of the plant,” says Stewart. “Then you do the same procedure on a different plant that’s been rewatered.”

That process of cutting the plant has been suspected to be problematic for more than 100 years, Stewart says, since it introduces air into the incision, making it difficult to measure the embolisms that existed in the tube prior to cutting. But that method has remained one of the most commonly used in the literature and may be a cause for confusion about the topic.

Now, Stewart believes they’ve come up with a gold standard method for studying this phenomenon. “Personally, I wouldn't trust any data generated with any other published methods at this moment,” he says.

A new line of questioning

Now that the team has validated their methodology with the two different studies, they see it as a first step in designing future experiments.

“There’s a ton of different directions we’d love to go with it,” says Stewart, adding that he hopes their results might be leveraged for agricultural efforts to improve food production and food security, especially as the planet potentially faces an increase in droughts.

“I think if we got to pick another crop to study and had unlimited time and money, it'd probably be corn or rice,” says Polutchko. “We know that a grass can do it, but it's one that’s an agricultural nuisance. So, can we have a grass that we like to eat that can also do this?”

Ideally, now that the method has been laid out, other researchers with access to similar micro-CT scanners can also conduct their own research, especially on crops with agricultural significance.

As for the sunflower’s drooping and reperking routine, Stewart, Polutchko and team are still stumped. “Maybe the plant doesn’t refill those embolisms, but it has a different strategy to work around that stress. Those are great questions, and we want to know the answers.”

“In true scientist fashion, you answer one question and 10 new ones pop up!” says Polutchko.

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Researchers in ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology are taking a closer look at the drought-recovery efforts of these beloved blooms.

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Why remembering the Big Thompson Flood of 1976 matters today

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:44:28 +0000

Why remembering the Big Thompson Flood of 1976 matters today Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/29/2026 - 09:44

A cabin lodged on a private bridge just below Drake, Colorado, following the Big Thompson Flood in 1976. (Photo: W.R. Hansen/U.S. Geological Survey)

Bradley Worrell

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Natural Hazards Center Director Lori Peek says there are still lessons to be learned from the devastating flash flood, 50 years later

Fifty years ago this week, a beautiful summer evening in Colorado ended in catastrophe.

On the night of July 31, 1976, a powerful thunderstorm stalled over the Big Thompson Canyon west of Loveland, unleashing a torrential rainfall in a matter of hours. The resulting flash flood killed 144 people and became the single deadliest disaster in the state’s history.

For Lori Peek, professor of sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, the flood’s most important legacy may be the lessons that emerged from it—and the realization that those lessons still require attention today.

Lori Peek is a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of sociology and director of the Natural Hazards Center.

“Anniversary events like this one are so important because they serve as moments for communities to come together and reflect upon what was lost, what we’ve learned and what we still need to do to become more resilient in the future,” she says.

A perfect storm of human, environmental and built factors

While the Big Thompson Flood is often remembered for its meteorological extremes, Peek says that disasters are never caused by nature alone.

“One of the things we say in this field of study is that there are natural hazards, but there’s no such thing as a natural disaster,” she says. “Every disaster has a human component.

“There are, of course, natural hazards—floods, fires and tornadoes—but what turns them into disasters is the collision between vulnerable built environments, vulnerable human systems and the natural environment. That’s what creates a disaster.”

In the case of the historic Colorado flood, Peek says several factors converged to maximize the damage. These included:

Storm stalled: Rather than moving through an area as storms tend to do, the storm that evening stalled over the canyon, dumping more than 12 inches of water in just over four hours. “It was almost like pouring water into a bowl,” Peek says.
Rapid water rise: The floodwaters rose with astonishing speed, leaving many people trapped in cabins, automobiles or low-lying areas before they understood the danger.
Geography: The canyon’s steep walls funneled water into a narrow corridor, placing people in homes, hotels, campgrounds and vehicles along the river in harm’s way. “The topography played a major role,” Peek acknowledges.
Nightfall: The storm struck after dark, when many people were sleeping. Also, of those who were awake, some could not see or sense the danger.
Cars: Many victims were in cars—either trying to flee the storm or parked near the river. “The people with the highest risk of dying were those who remained in their vehicles,” Peek says.
Timing: The storm struck during the final holiday weekend of the summer, when the canyon was crowded with campers and visiting tourists, as well as a mix of full-time and part-time residents. In total, it is estimated that about 2,500 people were in the canyon at the time.

“There’s also the human dimension—whether people understood the risk, knew what to do, could physically take action and could get to safety,” Peek says. “That complicated mix is what led to so many deaths.”

A cabin lodged on a private bridge just below Drake, Colorado, following the Big Thompson Flood in 1976. (Photo: W.R. Hansen/U.S. Geological Survey)

She adds that research conducted soon after the flood found that survival often depended upon a simple but critical decision: getting out and moving uphill.

“What the research on who survived and why—and who died and why—showed was that the key to survival was getting out … and literally climbing to safety,” she says.

She says that finding is one of the flood’s most enduring lessons.

A (new) sign of the times in 1977

Today, anyone who travels through Colorado canyons is likely familiar with the bright yellow signs depicting a person climbing uphill.

Peek says those signs endure because they communicate something essential: Survival depends upon taking immediate action.

Today, anyone who travels through Colorado canyons is likely familiar with the bright yellow signs depicting a person climbing uphill. (Photo: Brad Turner/KUNC)

“If you’re going to communicate risk effectively, the message has to be actionable,” she explains. “That’s why, even 50 years later, the signage remains so powerful. It tells people exactly what to do in the face of an imminent threat to life safety.”

Peek notes those climb-to-safety signs were the result of an August 1977 working paper by ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Eve C. Grunfest, who interviewed dozens of flood survivors, first responders, emergency management professionals and others to learn what worked and what needed to be improved following the Big Thompson Flood. Grunfest studied under Gilbert F. White, a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professor of geography who Peek says is widely considered the father of floodplain management and who founded the Natural Hazards Center in 1976.

The Natural Hazards Center was not established because of the Big Thompson Flood, as White was already in the process of founding the organization in 1975. However, Peek says the flood demonstrated why such an academic research center, dedicated to translating and sharing findings, was needed.

“The Natural Hazards Center was established because, at the time, a lot of research wasn’t making it into the hands of practitioners and policymakers,” says Peek, who was a graduate research assistant at the center from 1999 to 2005. She returned to ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� in 2017 to serve as the center’s director. “The Natural Hazards Center was established to nurture the hazards and disaster research community and share information with those concerned with reducing disaster risk. That’s the work that federal agencies like the National Science Foundation support us to do, because the evidence shows that actions we take before disaster can save lives and prevent unnecessary harm and suffering.”

Comparing the floods of 1976 and 2013

In many ways, Colorado today is better prepared for flooding than it was in 1976, Peek says.

At the time of the 1976 disaster, emergency managers lacked many of the tools that are the norm today. Then, there were no cellphone alerts, no modern emergency notification systems, no social media networks and few of the sophisticated weather forecasting capabilities available today.

Peek says that weather forecasting has become more precise, at-risk communities have installed warning sirens and emergency communication systems can distribute alerts through many channels and in many different languages to serve diverse groups.

In the Big Thompson Canyon, some vulnerable structures destroyed in the 1976 flood were never rebuilt in the same locations.

“Portions of the built environment have been moved out of the highest-risk floodways and floodplains,” Peek says. “Some of the streamside motels, cabins and other structures that were destroyed in the flood were not rebuilt in those same vulnerable locations.”

When the Big Thompson River flooded again in 2013, Peek says it demonstrated both the value of those improvements and the continuing reality of flooding danger. While the 2013 flood caused massive damage and resulted in at least eight deaths, Peek says she believes losses would have been even worse without decades of investment in warning systems and flood mitigation.

Why some lessons go unlearned

Despite the progress made since 1976, recent disasters show that communities do not always implement best-practice safety measures. Peek points to the 2025 Camp Mystic tragedy in Texas, where children were swept away in a flash flood.

“They didn’t have an emergency action plan. They didn’t have sirens. They didn’t have timely cell phone alerts. They hadn’t moved structures in the floodplain out of harm’s way,” Peek notes.

Why do these failures persist?

Peek offers several reasons. While disasters can create “policy windows” for lawmakers and regulators to act, those windows close more quickly today due to short public attention spans, and consensus is harder to build in today’s age of political polarization, she notes. Additionally, even when guidance exists, people may not know where to begin or may be overwhelmed, she adds.

Still, Peek sees some reasons for optimism. New guidance documents from the Association of State Floodplain Managers provide step-by-step instructions for camps and RV parks to create emergency action plans and offer model ordinance language for lawmakers.

“That’s a good example of how progress happens,” she says. “Such guidance can help spur action.”

A state that has changed—and largely forgotten the storm

Meanwhile, back in Colorado, Peek says one of the bigger challenges in commemorating the anniversary of the Big Thompson Flood is that most Colorado residents—and nearly all of its visitors—have no memory of it.

“Fifty years is a long time,” she notes. “Most visitors would have no reason to know anything about the Big Thompson Flood unless they are particularly interested in disaster history.”

The Big Thompson Flood remains the deadliest disaster in Colorado’s history. By learning what happened, how lives could have been saved then and how lives can still be saved today, we have an opportunity to build a more resilient state.”

Even among residents, Colorado today is a relatively young state demographically. Many people weren’t alive when the flood occurred, and many didn’t attend school here. As a result, public awareness of flood risk remains low, Peek says.

“People are often surprised to learn that Boulder is one of the state’s communities most at risk to flash flooding,” she says.

At the same time, Colorado itself has changed dramatically since 1976. The state’s population has swelled from 2.6 million then to more than 6 million today. More people are hiking, camping and driving through canyons than ever, oblivious to the dangers that flash floods pose. And while technology has improved, many of those areas are still without reliable cell service, Peek notes. She adds that floods can strike with little warning.

Could a disaster like the 1976 Big Thompson Flood could happen today?

Peek’s answer is an unequivocal yes. That’s why physical signage, emergency planning measures, public education and land-use planning all remain essential—especially in a warming climate, she says.

“Risk isn’t static,” she says. “As we experience more extreme rainfall events, places that once weren’t considered high risk, or weren’t mapped as flood hazards, may now be vulnerable.”

Peek says it’s also why remembering anniversaries like the 1976 Big Thompson Flood still matters today.

“It’s so important to know our history,” she says. “The Big Thompson Flood remains the deadliest disaster in Colorado’s history. By learning what happened, how lives could have been saved then and how lives can still be saved today, we have an opportunity to build a more resilient state.”

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��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Natural Hazards Center Director Lori Peek says there are still lessons to be learned from the devastating flash flood, 50 years later.

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Top photo: Damage caused by the 1976 Big Thompson Flood (Photo: Maurice L. Albertson/Maurice L. Albertson Papers at Colorado State University)

The only way to make beef and dairy more climate-friendly? Stop producing it

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 19:37:16 +0000

The only way to make beef and dairy more climate-friendly? Stop producing it Rachel Sauer Tue, 07/28/2026 - 13:37

Tiffany Plate

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researcher Cliff Bueno de Mesquita and colleagues are showing why microbial solutions to livestock methane emissions reductions won’t stop beef and dairy’s environmental and health problems

By nature, cows are gassy creatures. But it’s not just the stink of their manure or their belches that are troublesome. The methane gas released by ruminants like cows (or bison, sheep or goats) also causes a lot of trouble for the planet.

That’s because methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a dramatically higher global warming potential than carbon dioxide. And ruminants raised for food account for 14% of global methane emissions.

Over the last decade or so scientists have been hard at work figuring out how to infuse cows’ feedstock with additives that inhibit methane-producing microbes. The process could reduce those methane emissions and potentially produce a more “climate-friendly” beef.

Cliff Bueno de Mesquita, who studies microbial ecology of permafrost and ancient sediments in the lab of ecology and evolutionary biology Professor Noah Fierer and in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, teamed up with other microbiologists passionate about environmental issues for this perspective piece. (Photo: Cliff Bueno de Mesquita)

Sounds like a win-win, right? A new perspective piece by Cliff Bueno de Mesquita (PhDEBio'19), a research scientist in the lab of ecology and evolutionary biology Professor Noah Fierer and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), says otherwise.

“Even if you could decrease cows’ methane emissions by 100%, cows are still worse than plant-based agriculture for their land use, water use, pollution and impacts on human health,” says Bueno de Mesquita.

In their piece in the journal Sustainable Agriculture, Bueno de Mesquita and a team of microbiologist colleagues outline all the reasons that altering cows’ rumen microbes is a misdirected use of time, money and energy. “This is basically distracting from what we really need to be doing, which is reducing the ruminant population size,” he says.

This conclusion—that reducing the numbers of ruminants raised for food is the only solution to actually reducing livestock’s impact on the planet—has already been drawn by researchers around the world.

“There are a lot of great scientists working on this topic, with strong data sets that have been assembled with all of the evidence,” says Bueno de Mesquita.

Bueno de Mesquita and his colleagues cited 98 studies, to be exact, in their peer-reviewed opinion piece that re-emphasizes the personal and planetary benefits of a shift to a plant-based diet—and lays out exactly why rumen microbes are not the answer.

The problem with microbes

Some of the literature references cited in the piece are studies that have been done on the most common feed additives that have been studied for methane inhibition: seaweed and 3-nitrooxypropanol (or Bovaer). The research shows that the demonstrated efficacy of these microbes is extremely variable, with one review reporting a range of 10–63% reduction and another review reporting a range of a 4% increase to a 97% reduction.

Bueno de Mesquita and colleagues are also concerned that altering rumen microbes may lead to unpredictable health effects for the cattle, and may even decrease immunity to pathogens that could be detrimental to human health.

Another reason for concern? This method favors intensive beef production, where cattle are fed in feedlots rather than on grass (as is more likely to be the case in small-holder production). Not to mention that seaweed harvesting has its own inherent carbon emissions and environmental impact.

But Bueno de Mesquita’s team points out that even if none of these were issues, methane reduction does nothing to address potent nitrogen emissions or other emissions from the rest of the production life cycle (e.g., land use, water use, fertilizer, crop residues, manure).

Bueno de Mesquita and colleagues created this graphic to demonstrate how many ways livestock production can impact the environment and human health—and how only one of these impacts is reduced by trying to alter the microbes in the rumen with feed additives. (Graphic: Cliff Bueno de Mesquita and Ylenia Vimercati Molano)

Shifting people’s perspectives

The authors wrote the piece to be accessible to non-scientists in hopes of reaching as wide an audience as possible. “I want the public to be aware and to be skeptical of labels coming from the beef and dairy industry that are calling those products climate friendly,” says Bueno de Mesquita.

Of course, he also hopes that people will consider simply shifting to a plant-based diet in order to make their meals more climate friendly. But he knows that’s easier said than done.

“We're basically living in a ‘carnistic’ society where eating meat is perceived to be normal, natural and necessary,” says Bueno de Mesquita. “That's sort of people's default. So when they’re met with a proposal for a minor shift that challenges that, we know there's gonna be pushback.”

Two years ago Bueno de Mesquita and his co-authors published another paper documenting a push within ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department for more plant-based meals. “The PhD students were very hesitant to implement a dietary change, even though they know that it's going to be better for the environment.”

Even still, Bueno de Mesquita says the current perspective piece is getting a lot of traction. “I basically never get emails about my research papers,” he says. “But I've already gotten emails from multiple people saying that they agree.” He adds that even some leading microbiologists have posted it on social media.

That’s key to reaching the other audience Bueno de Mesquita and colleagues wanted to address: the microbiologists actually doing the research on rumen microbes in livestock feed, usually funded by the beef and dairy industries, he says.

“They're enabling the dairy industry to say, ‘Hey, we're doing this research. This is going to work’,” says Bueno de Mesquita. “Then the industry has an excuse to keep business as usual.”

Instead, he hopes that microbiologists and other scientists studying climate change will step up and speak with a unified voice about what needs to be done as a society. “It's very obvious,” says Bueno de Mesquita. “If you want to reduce methane from ruminants, you need to decrease the number of ruminants.”

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Can evolutionary rescue help even long-lived species from going extinct?

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:44:14 +0000

Can evolutionary rescue help even long-lived species from going extinct? Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/09/2026 - 11:44

Tiffany Plate

Two ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researchers are helping clarify how species’ populations with longer lives can still adapt to a changing climate

Our warming climate is leaving many plant and animal species with a choice: either adapt, find a new home or risk extinction. Fortunately, throughout the history of life on Earth, a concept called evolutionary rescue has stepped in to help species adapt to new environments and climates.

Evolutionary rescue is a biological process where natural selection favors the individuals of a species that carry genetics best suited to the new climate. These individuals are more likely to survive and reproduce and are therefore able to better propagate future generations to ensure survival of the species.

Scott Nordstrom (left) earned his PhD from ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� in 2023 under the advisorship of Brett Melbourne. (right), professor of ecology and evolutionary biology (Left photo from Scott Nordstrom; right photo from Brett Melbourne)

For example, a smaller bat may be better able to weather a hot summer with multiple heat waves. Or a monkeyflower that's better able to retain water in its leaves may have a better chance of surviving a megadrought. These genetic anomalies help move the population toward survival, instead of extinction.

In the face of anthropogenic climate change, however, conservationists are worried that species with the longest life spans—like giant pandas, elephants, or sequoia trees, for which new generations take years to decades—will be too slow to adapt and avoid extinction.

A mathematical model developed by Scott Nordstrom (PhDEBio’23) proved that that’s not always the case, however. As part of his doctoral dissertation, Nordstrom, in partnership with Brett Melbourne, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, set out to determine just how true it was that long-lived species were resigned to their fate. Their findings were published in The American Naturalist in May 2026.

Their model contributes to conversations about conservation, especially when it comes to extinction concerns. “A lot of the more endangered species or the populations that are at higher risk of extinction tend to be longer lived,” says Nordstrom. “So, it's especially relevant for thinking about conservation.”

Shifting focus: From flour beetles to tortoises

Before taking on this project, Nordstrom and Melbourne had been working with colleagues at Colorado State University to understand the evolutionary rescue patterns of flour beetles, which live for about a month before a new generation is birthed.

“We found that genetic diversity of the population is really critical for allowing rapid adaptation to occur,” says Melbourne. “And that got us thinking about how things could be really different for longer-lived species.”

Large tree species, like the Giant Sequoia, can live for thousands of years, but are now more endangered than ever due to increased wildfire activity in the American West. (Photo: Pexels)

The researchers set out to try to understand how relevant their findings were to species with longer lives.

Experimental work tracking the genetic variations in generations of long-lived species was not possible, however, so the pair created the next best thing: A flexible mathematical model and computer simulations that would allow them to map out potential evolutionary patterns of these species.

For each simulation, they input a sample population into the model, using “good” environmental factors (i.e., the climate that they were already adapted to). Then they switched those factors to “bad” (i.e., a climate with warmer temperatures or less water).

“Each individual’s survival depended on how well it was adapted to its environment, so when the environment shifted from good to bad, survival was low and the populations started shrinking,” says Nordstrom.

“But because there was genetic variation within the populations, some individuals were slightly better adapted to the bad environment, and those individuals were more likely to survive and pass on their genes, allowing the population to adapt,” he adds.

When nurture beats nature

Through their simulations, Nordstrom and Melbourne were also surprised to find that long-lived species can experience a complicated evolutionary dynamic in which a population’s traits seem to decouple from their genetics. In these cases, some random environmental event has affected an organism's trait in a way that turns out to be an advantage in the changed environment.

For example, an American alligator might be genetically predisposed to weigh 600 pounds but actually weighs 400 pounds because environmental factors impeded its growth in early development. Perhaps the alligator was born in a drought year, when typical prey like fish and turtles were scarce.

Ultimately, that smaller alligator may be able to survive heat extremes better in a hotter climate, thus slowing the rate of population decline. And because they are long-lived (up to 50 years), there is a good chance that there will be multiple small alligators in a population at once, thus changing the composition of that population in a way that slows the rate of population decline, allowing adaptation time to catch up and prevent extinction, the researchers speculate.

Researchers have long thought that species like the American alligator, which can live up to 50 years, are less likely to benefit from evolutionary rescue to help them adapt to changes in the climate of their habitats. (Photo: Unsplash)

Interestingly, those chances are much less likely to occur to short-lived species like flour beetles. Nordstrom says that’s because their short life spans don’t allow for their non-genetic phenotypic variation (like that seen in the undersized alligators) to remain in the population as time progresses; instead, only their genes are passed on to their offspring, and their offspring will thus not inherit their size advantage.

“The flour beetles just mate once and pass their genes forward,” says Nordstrom. “Next generation, repeat.”

That means that natural selection occurring within a generation can be important for evolutionary rescue in long-lived species. Previously, it was speculated that only evolution between generations determined whether populations could adapt to new conditions in time.

“This process of rescue is one part evolution and one part demography,” says Nordstrom. “In the race of evolution versus demography, this definitely helps the demography because it slows down population decline.”

He adds that this will be surprising to researchers who have up to this point only considered the evolutionary component here. “But we showed that the demography is actually super important, too.”

While Nordstrom and Melbourne can’t say that all long-lived species will benefit from their demography, Nordstrom says it’s important for future researchers and conservation managers to know that evolutionary rescue is not out of the question for endangered species like pandas and bison.

“Maybe it's a little bit more complicated than we thought,” says Nordstrom. “But this is the first major study finding that it’s not necessarily true that slower generational turnover guarantees that adaptation and evolution will be slower.”

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Two ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� researchers are helping clarify how species’ populations with longer lives can still adapt to a changing climate.

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Think all that plastic is being recycled? Think again

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 21:19:22 +0000

Think all that plastic is being recycled? Think again Rachel Sauer Thu, 06/04/2026 - 15:19

A man walking amid plastic waste on the Maldivian island of Thilafushi. (Photo: Dying Regime/Wikimedia Commons)

Ellen Considine

A lot of ‘recycled’ plastic is being burned overseas—and causing widespread pollution linked to health problems

Picture a pile of trash the size of Manhattan and taller than one and a half Empire State Buildings. That’s how much plastic waste the world is predicted to be generating every year by 2050 if nothing is done to change course.

It’s easy to think of recycling as the solution, but the vast majority of plastic waste now ends up in landfills, or worse.

A large amount of plastic waste gets shipped overseas. In a new study, my colleague and I analyzed what happens when plastic waste is shipped to lower- and middle-income countries, where open burning is a common way of dealing with excess waste. The result, we found, is pronounced increases in toxic air pollution.

Ellen Considine is a ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� assistant professor of geography and fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

Plastic waste burning and health impacts

Between 40% and 65% of total municipal solid waste is openly burned in low- and middle-income countries, largely as a result of 2 billion people around the world having no municipal solid waste collection.

Open burning occurs both intentionally and unintentionally, the latter when open dump sites containing organic waste spontaneously combust due to heat generated as the waste degrades.

When plastic burns, it releases particularly toxic air pollutants. Fine particles can penetrate deep into people’s bodies, along with gases that include carbon monoxide, styrene gas and hydrogen cyanide. It also releases persistent organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins. These particles and gases have been linked to health risks ranging from respiratory and cardiovascular disease to cancer and reproductive and neurological disorders.

The ash from open burning can also contaminate soil and groundwater with persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals and other toxicants, creating more chances for people to be exposed to them through food and water.

The global plastic waste trade

Large amounts of plastic waste are shipped around the world – some to be recycled and much to simply be disposed of in landfills or incinerated. In 2024, 9.34 million metric tons of plastic waste imports were reported, according to the United Nations.

Where this exported plastic waste ends up has been shifting.

In 2018, China stopped importing plastic waste, causing the total amount of plastic waste moving among countries – at least through official channels – to drop dramatically. Between 1992 and 2016, China’s plastic waste imports made up 45% of global imports.

In 2018, the flow moved to other countries, largely in Southeast Asia but also other locations, including Turkey. In 2018, Indonesia became a net importer of plastic waste. The majority of this waste came from Western Europe, Australia and North America.

What happened to Indonesia’s air quality

We harnessed data from multiple monitoring systems, including satellite observations and cargo ship tracking signals, to understand where these plastic waste imports went and how much air pollution was released by openly burning this waste.

As of 2020, the World Economic Forum and Indonesia’s government estimated that 48% of Indonesia’s plastic waste is openly burned.

We found that particulate matter air pollution – of great concern for health – increased an average of 3.3% at the locations of large open waste dump sites in Indonesia after China’s ban in 2018-19 relative to expected business as usual, based on data from 2012-17. We found increases up to 1.68 micrograms per cubic meter.

Based on risk estimates from a global study of mortality associated with long-term exposure to outdoor fine particulate matter, this corresponds to an approximate 1.5%, 1.9% and 3.5% increase in mortality risk from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and lower respiratory infections, respectively.

New constraints on the plastic waste trade

In 2021, Indonesia restricted the import of nonhazardous waste to 15 specific ports and in 2025 banned the import of plastic waste altogether.

A man walking amid plastic waste on the Maldivian island of Thilafushi. (Photo: Dying Regime/Wikimedia Commons)

In mid-2025, Malaysia followed suit, allowing plastic waste only from countries that have ratified the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal – a treaty that the U.S. has never ratified.

For these bans to be effective, these countries must also find ways to contend with illegal plastic waste shipments and paper imports contaminated by plastic waste.

Meanwhile, negotiations for an international, legally binding treaty on plastic waste, started in 2022, have stalled. In mid-2024 the European Union did pass a new regulation on waste shipments, prohibiting exporting plastic waste to countries outside the group of wealthy countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from November 2026 to at least May 2029.

The effectiveness of these and future policies at reducing air pollution – and other kinds of environmental degradation – can be evaluated using methods like ours.

Ways to reduce plastic waste

As of 2021, only 5% to 6% of U.S. domestic plastic waste was recycled, according to estimates from the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and Bennington College. It is now even harder to export plastic waste to other countries that could “recycle” it.

Part of the problem is lack of capacity: The Association of Plastic Recyclers estimates that current plastic reclamation facilities in the U.S. and Canada could at most increase their plastic recycling by 35% to 44%, depending on the type of plastic, leading to a total recycling rate of 7% to 9%.

Ultimately, both decreasing plastic use and increasing recycling will likely be needed to solve the problem. Beyond consumer choices, packaging reuse – creating packaging and return systems that put the same materials back to work – can reduce the need for new plastics.

Recycling experts call for harmonized design standards to help streamline processing and deliver higher-quality recycled plastics, as well as extended producer responsibility fees or taxes to raise the cost of producing products that aren’t recyclable. The fees can provide needed funding to scale up recycling and other programs to reduce generation of plastic waste.

Since 2021, seven states have enacted extended producer responsibility laws focused on packaging: Maine, Oregon, California, Colorado, Minnesota, Washington and Maryland. However, it will take time to see the effects. Colorado’s final implementation plan, authorized in 2022, was approved only in late 2025. The first payment of extended producer responsibility fees to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment are scheduled to begin in mid-2026.

Ultimately, reducing and better managing our nation’s plastic waste can help prevent global health harms.

Ellen Considine is an assistant professor in the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Department of Geography whose research lies at the intersection of environmental change, health and wellbeing and data science.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A lot of ‘recycled’ plastic is being burned overseas—and causing widespread pollution linked to health problems.

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Scholars apply economic analysis to ecological research

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:25:35 +0000

Scholars apply economic analysis to ecological research Rachel Sauer Wed, 05/20/2026 - 15:25

“If you’re studying a natural area, you could get a permit and go sample all over, but you can’t do that in a city. Even if you get a permit, you can’t just go into people’s backyards,” explains ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� scientist Asia Kaiser about the challenges of ecological research in urban areas. (Photo: Sandy Millar/Unsplash)

Rachel Sauer

In research published today, recent PhD graduate Asia Kaiser details how synthetic control methods estimated significant declines in bee observations when traditional analyses didn’t

Since it launched in 2008 as a UC Berkeley student’s master's project, the iNaturalist platform has been a source of both fascination and frustration for researchers.

The hundreds of millions of observations about the natural world logged by both professional and citizen scientists around the globe are a treasure trove of information about biodiversity. But is that data usable in research? The prevailing sentiment has veered toward doubt, skepticism or an outright “no.”

“I think the feeling has been, ‘Oh, because this data is just being collected opportunistically by nature enthusiasts and not in a standardized, rigorous way, it can’t be used in scientific research,’” says Asia Kaiser, who earlier this month earned her PhD in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “If you haven’t planned out data collection in advance, a lot of researchers hesitate to use it.”

Recent PhD graduate Asia Kaiser studied how synthetic control methods estimated significant declines in bee observations when traditional analyses didn’t.

There had to be a way, Kaiser thought, to tap into the vast cache of information logged into iNaturalist without sacrificing scientific rigor, especially data collected in urban environments. The answer, it turned out, lay in economics.

In research published today, Kaiser and co-authors Julian Resasco and Laura Dee, both associate professors of ecology and evolutionary biology, detail how combining iNaturalist records with synthetic control methods, originally used in economics, estimated a significant decline in bee observations in Philadelphia during the two years following Hurricane Ida in 2021, while conventional ecological analyses didn’t detect the decline.

“Basically, the inspiration for this project was thinking about causal inference in ecology,” Kaiser explains. “When we have observational data, can we actually use that to ask questions about drivers of biodiversity?”

‘You can’t just go into people’s backyards’

These questions dovetailed neatly with Kaiser’s research focus, which is bees—specifically, how human land use affects different insect groups and, consequently, the ecosystem services they provide in coupled human-natural systems. Among her research aims is understanding biodiversity in urban environments, improving the resilience of urban agroecosystems, increasing equitable access to fresh produce and promoting environmental justice in cities.

However, monitoring biodiversity and evaluating drivers of change in urban environments is confounded by several issues: “Cities are mosaics of land-use types, including parks, private properties, buildings, roads and industrial zones,” Kaiser writes in the paper. “As a result, sampling efforts can be complicated by permission and safety issues, and leaving unattended sampling equipment in the field brings a higher risk of theft, tampering and vandalism in cities.

“Given these challenges, measuring biodiversity in cities requires different tools and data streams than those used in natural ecosystems. Participatory science data is a promising solution for monitoring biodiversity in cities; cities are the land use type with some of the highest upload volumes of data to participatory science platforms, largely because upload frequency is strongly influenced by population density.”

Despite the abundance of participatory science data in platforms like iNaturalist, researchers have hesitated to draw from it, relying instead on randomized, controlled and replicable experiments to identify and estimate causal relationships. That kind of science, Kaiser says, becomes more difficult in urban environments due to sampling challenges and historical legacies that shape different neighborhoods, among other reasons.

“If you’re studying a natural area, you could get a permit and go sample all over, but you can’t do that in a city,” Kaiser says. “Even if you get a permit, you can’t just go into people’s backyards.”

The idea of how to bridge the gap between the abundance of iNaturalist data logged in urban areas and the rigor expected in scientific research came to Kaiser when she was assigned to watch a lecture given by a Nobel laureate in economics. The lecture topic was synthetic control methods, which originated in economics as a way to create a nonexistent control group that allows for comparisons between real-world groups before and after an event or intervention.

One of the most famous uses of synthetic control methods in economics was in estimating the impact of Germany’s reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall on the gross domestic product (GDP) of western Germany. Economists created a “synthetic” Germany from economic data to study GDP with and without reunification.

Though synthetic control methods hadn’t been widely used in ecology research, “I thought it could be adopted with iNaturalist data,” Kaiser explains. She was further interested in studying the effects of Hurricane Ida on her home city of Philadelphia, which included significant flooding.

“Even though it didn’t have a huge impact on people per se, the effects of the hurricane were really dramatic. Looking at the water levels, the stream gauges had their highest values ever in the 100 years that they’ve been measuring. My feeling was that would have a pretty big impact on bees, because if you look at bee biodiversity, bees are pretty sensitive to precipitation and water. The ones that nest in the ground are really affected by huge flooding events.”

Declines following a hurricane

To apply synthetic control methods to ecological research, Kaiser and her colleagues drew data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which collects research-grade iNaturalist data—that which includes, among other points, latitude and longitude, collection date and time and correct identification—as a proxy for bee abundance in Philadelphia.

They analyzed for bee population declines and, in addition to synthetic control methods, also performed the more traditional methods of interrupted time series regression, before-after control impact regression and before-after regression.

Kaiser and her colleagues found that synthetic control estimated a 15.5%—20.9% decline in bee observations in the two years following Hurricane Ida. In contrast, the three more common ecological analyses didn’t detect this decline.

“That was an amazing moment, seeing this decline in the data and better understanding how iNaturalist data may be able to help us look at the impact of unusual climate events—things that are happening more and more these days, like huge fires, huge floods, abnormally warm winters,” Kaiser says. “Unless you were already collecting data in a region before, you can’t really see the impact before the event, but synthetic control methods might be able to help us in those situations.”

Kaiser adds that this method also might be useful for looking at the effect of policy interventions. For example, the city of Boulder is establishing pollinator corridors, and Kaiser sees potential in using this method to draw from iNaturalist data in studying the outcomes of these corridors.

Scientists who reviewed the paper expressed excitement and skepticism about using synthetic control methods in ecological research, Kaiser says: “They asked questions about whether or not the decline I’m seeing is a true thing that’s happening or an artifact of the way data has been collected. iNaturalist is very sensitive to observers—wealthy neighborhoods have higher uploads, areas around research universities have higher uploads—but this statistical method can help control for those things.”

Thanks to the professional and citizen scientists gathering data and sharing it on iNaturalist, Kaiser says she sees potential to apply synthetic control methods to a range of ecological research. For example, “using the bee biodiversity that’s collected on iNaturalist, does that correlate with how well flowers are being pollinated? I think that’s something we’ll be able to study.”

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In research published today, recent PhD graduate Asia Kaiser details how synthetic control methods estimated significant declines in bee observations when traditional analyses didn’t.

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Top photo: Aaron Burden/Unsplash

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