Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

Staff at the National Science Foundation (NSF) were notified on 25 June that the agency’s office space, located in Alexandria, Va., will be taken over by Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) staff, raising the question of where more than 1,800 NSF employees will work. 

One NSF employee told E&E News that they had “literally zero idea” the news was coming until word spread among staff the previous evening. Many NSF employees had relocated to Northern Virginia on short notice when return-to-work orders were issued in January. NSF only moved into the newly constructed building in 2017 from its prior location in Arlington, Va.

In front of a banner reading “The New Golden Age of HUD” at a 25 June press conference, HUD Secretary Scott Turner announced that a “staggered and thoughtful” relocation process would take place. The relocation will move forward “as quickly as possible,” Michael Peters, commissioner of the Public Buildings Service for the U.S. General Services Administration, said at the press conference.

On 24 June, Jesus Soriano, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AGFE) Local 3403, a union representing NSF staff, sent an alert to union members informing them that “HUD will take over the NSF building” and that NSF had not been involved in the decision, according to E&E News.

Speakers at the press conference did not provide details about HUD’s plans for the space. In a statement, AGFE Local 3403 indicated that the union was told that plans would include an executive suite for Turner, the construction of a new executive dining room, exclusive use of one elevator for Turner, and a gym for Turner and his family.

“While Secretary Turner and his staff are busy enjoying private dining and a custom gym, NSF employees are being displaced with no plan, no communication, and no respect,” AGFE Local 3403 wrote in the statement.

Turner rebuked the idea that the move was about personal perks. “This is not about Scott Turner. I didn’t come to government to get nice things,” Turner said. “This is about the HUD employees.”

Turner added that unsafe working conditions at the current HUD office space in Washington, D.C. were the reason for the move. “I would hope that no leader in government or otherwise would expect staff to work in an atmosphere where the air quality is questionable, leaks are nearly unstoppable, and the HVAC is almost unworkable. It’s time for a change.”

Addressing the coming transition for NSF, Peters said, “We are going to continue to support the National Science Foundation as we support every agency across the federal government to identify space that allows them to continue to fulfill their mission.” 

In its statement, AGFE Local 3403 pointedly questioned the merit of the relocation plan: “At a time when they claim to be cutting government waste, it is unbelievable that government funding is being redirected to build a palace-like office for the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. The hypocrisy is truly dumbfounding.”

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

On 11 June, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a proposal to repeal federal limits on power plant carbon emissions, including a Biden-era rule requiring power plants to control 90% of their carbon pollution and a 2015 standard limiting carbon dioxide emissions from new fossil fuel-fired power plants.

If made final, the plans mean that coal, oil, and gas-powered plants in the United States will no longer need to comply with federal limits on carbon dioxide emissions. 

In the announcement, the agency argued that carbon emissions “are global in nature,” so any of their potential public health harms are not able to be accurately attributed to emissions from the United States. However, the U.S. power sector ranks among the world’s largest sources of carbon pollution, and emissions from the U.S. power sector already contribute to billions of dollars in global health damages, according to a report from the Institute for Policy Integrity.

The carbon pollution standards that the EPA aims to erase “have been criticized as being designed to regulate coal, oil and gas out of existence,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement. “According to many, the primary purpose of these Biden-Harris administration regulations was to destroy industries that didn’t align with their narrow-minded climate change zealotry.”

The Associated Press estimates that the Biden-era carbon pollution limits could prevent up to 30,000 premature deaths each year. 

“By giving a green light to more pollution, [Zeldin’s] legacy will forever be someone who does the bidding of the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our health,” Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator, told the New York Times. 

The announcement comes a day after Jarrod Agen, an energy advisor to President Trump and executive director of the White House’s National Energy Dominance Council, reaffirmed the administration’s intention to re-focus U.S. energy production on coal and natural gas.

“The president’s priorities are around turning around fossil fuels,” Agen said, adding that President Trump “is not focused on wind and solar.”

The EPA is also “hopeful” it will be able to reverse a 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations, according to POLITICO. The agency has already exempted at least 66 coal-fired power plants from federal limits on air pollution.

In the same announcement, the EPA also proposed the removal of a rule known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which tightened emissions of mercury and other toxic metals from power plants. Documents outlining Zeldin’s plans for the mercury rule, reviewed by the New York Times, said the Biden administration “improperly targeted coal-fired power plants” when it created the original rule. 

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

On 27 May, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear arguments from a group of Apache leaders challenging a copper mine that would damage land that tribe members consider sacred, according to the Los Angeles Times. 

The mine is planned to be built beneath Oak Flat, a 4,600-acre area in southeastern Arizona. The site sits within the state’s “Copper Triangle,” an area home to one of the largest clusters of copper deposits in the world. Magma intrusions and subsequent subsurface movement of high-pressure, metal-rich fluids about 65 million years ago created high-grade copper deposits.

According to mining company Resolution Copper, a joint venture of two other mining companies, Rio Tinto and BHP, the deposit at Oak Flat is particularly high grade, at 1.5% copper, making the site attractive for industrial activity.

Members of Apache Stronghold, a tribal advocacy group, traveled on a two month pilgrimage last year to Washington, D.C., to present an appeal to the Supreme Court, asking them to review a decision on their case, Apache Stronghold v. United States of America, by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that had ruled narrowly in favor of moving the mine project forward.

In the case, Apache Stronghold argued that the development of the copper mine would violate the First Amendment rights of Indigenous community members who consider Oak Flat an important religious site. 

The Supreme Court’s decision not to hear arguments from Apache Stronghold means the U.S. Forest Service is now allowed to move forward with plans to create a final environmental impact report and solicit a final round of public comments before deciding whether to transfer the land to Resolution Copper. 

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented from the denial of the appeal. Gorsuch wrote that the decision not to hear the arguments was a “grievous mistake—one with consequences that threaten to reverberate for generations.”

“Faced with the government’s plan to destroy an ancient site of tribal worship, we owe the Apaches no less,” Gorsuch wrote. “They may live far from Washington, D.C., and their history and religious practices may be unfamiliar to many. But that should make no difference.”

“We are pleased that the Ninth Circuit’s decision will stand,” said Vicky Peacey, Resolution Copper’s general manager, in a statement. “The Resolution Copper mine is vital to securing America’s energy future, infrastructure needs, and national defense.”

“We will never stop fighting—nothing will deter us from protecting Oak Flat from destruction,” said Wendsler Nosie Sr., leader of Apache Stronghold, in a statement.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

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Pine Hollow Arboretum’s founder, John W. Abbuhl, began planting trees around his Albany, N.Y., home in the 1960s. He planted species native to surrounding ecosystems but also made ambitious choices—bald cypresses, magnolias, pawpaws, sweetgums—that were more climatically suited to the southeastern United States.

Now, those very trees are thriving, said Dave Plummer, a horticulturalist at Pine Hollow. 

Other Pine Hollow trees, such as balsam firs native to New York, have struggled with this century’s warming winters. “We’re noticing they’re not doing as well as they were maybe 5 to 10 years ago,” Plummer said. “These are trees that are just meant to be in more northern climates where the winters are harsher, and we just don’t have those winters [anymore].”

Pine Hollow Arboretum is one of many botanical gardens rethinking their planting strategies as the climate warms. These strategies range from testing out new, warmth-loving plants to putting more resources toward pest and invasive species management. 

Planting Zones Shift North

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recognizes 13 plant hardiness zones based on a region’s coldest annual temperatures, averaged over a period of 30 years. These zones guide gardeners’ planting decisions by advising which species of plants, especially perennials, are most likely to thrive in a specific zone.

A new report from Climate Central, a climate change research and communication nonprofit, lays out stark changes to these zones.

Scientists compared 30-year coldest temperature averages from the past (1951–1980) and present (1995–2024) at 247 locations across the United States using NOAA’s Applied Climate Information System dataset. They found that 67% of locations have shifted to warmer zones since the 1951–1980 period.

They also used the most recently released phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) to simulate how planting zones might shift by mid-century. In the CMIP6 scenario they used, carbon emissions decline but do not stay under Paris Agreement limits, a framework consistent with the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 2-4.5 “middle of the road” scenario.

The models predict that the mid-century average annual coldest temperatures during the 2036–2065 time period will warm in 100% of the country by an average of 3.1°C (5.6°F). Coldest annual temperatures in the Upper Midwest, Alaska, the Northern Rockies and Plains, and the Northeast and Ohio Valley were projected to warm the most. 

Longer Seasons, Looming Threats

The results match what staff at Pine Hollow and Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., have seen. At the cemetery (which is also a botanical garden), staff have begun to test whether plants that traditionally couldn’t survive cold Massachusetts winters can now thrive. For example, staff there have begun testing crepe myrtles and paperbush, two flowering shrubs that have survived recent winters.

In Minnesota, plant hardiness zones have shifted by about half a zone since 1951–1980.

Laura Irish-Hanson, an educator and horticulturist at the University of Minnesota, tells students and local gardeners to pay attention to the hardiness map when shopping for perennials and to consider planting species more adapted to warmer climates. “Don’t just look at things that, 200-300 years ago, were native to Minnesota,” she said. “Try things that, historically, maybe are native to Iowa, or Illinois, or parts of Wisconsin that are warmer.”

Mount Auburn is also taking the long view. “The effects of a changing climate on plants and plant communities will be significant and, unfortunately, without precedent,” said Ronnit Bendavid-Val, vice president of horticulture and landscape at Mount Auburn Cemetery, in an email. “We can make informed guesses about a certain plant’s resiliency and toughness based on what is known about its adaptability to extremes in the habitats where its species evolved over millennia. However, horticulturally speaking, ‘plant hardiness’ and fitness can be a vexing subject.”

Anchorage, Alaska, is among the cities that have experienced the largest increase in average annual coldest temperatures, according to the Climate Central report, jumping from −29.8°C (−21.6°F) during 1951–1980 to −24.8°C (−12.6°F) during 1995–2024. 

At the Alaska Botanical Garden in Anchorage, hardiness zone changes aren’t the sole climate consequence affecting plants. Will Criner has been gardening there for 12 years as the garden and facilities manager. In that time, he’s noticed the growing season lengthen and, in turn, the time between the first and last frosts dwindle. “We’re definitely seeing a season extension,” he said. 

While warming temperatures could expand growing ranges for some specialty, high-value crops like oranges, almonds, and kiwis, they could also expand the ranges of pests. In Alaska, for instance, warmer winters have made it easier for the spruce beetle, a native insect capable of decimating entire tree stands, to thrive, Criner said. And Plummer expects that the spotted lanternfly, an invasive species that threatens fruit and hardwood trees in particular, will become a problem in Albany as its range expands northward. 

Warmer temperatures may also make it easier for invasive plant species to establish themselves because they would be able to spread their seeds earlier in the year. Non-native species planted intentionally in gardens may more easily grow out of control, too.

Such non-native species could outcompete other garden plants for water, sunlight, and nutrients, forcing gardeners to change their planting strategies. “I could imagine, as we get longer seasons, that some of these [non-native] plants would have to be removed from our database and deaccessioned” for other plants to thrive, Criner said.

Planting for Precipitation

As the climate warms, gardeners and horticulturists across the country have begun to think about how to better protect their plots. 

In the Midwest, gardeners increasingly face oscillating weather conditions—extreme drought and extreme flooding—that can damage and drown plants. That makes gardening even more of a challenge, Irish-Hanson said. For areas facing intensifying rainstorms, water-loving plants can help mitigate damage to a garden, she said, but they must be planted in low-lying spots to receive adequate water.

Plummer, who grew up in Albany, said he’s seen less snow and more ice and wind storms than when he was a child. Those storms can damage plants—a March 2024 ice and wind storm at Pine Hollow Arboretum felled multiple trees, which harmed other specimens. Moving forward, the facility may begin planting species more suited to a warmer climate.

Irish-Hanson recommends gardeners adapt their mindset along with their planting decisions. “Even if we do everything perfectly right and choose the right plant for our environment, it can still die,” she said. “We can be so frustrated, but then [we should] think of it as an opportunity to try something else, to do something new with that space, and not try to fight with the environment.”

Criner has similar advice: “[We should] try to be mindful of the plant choices we make and how plants interact with the surrounding environment, not just if they look pretty or not.”

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2025), As climate changes, so do gardens across the United States, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250203. Published on 28 May 2025.

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The upcoming Atlantic hurricane season will likely have above-normal activity, according to the annual outlook produced by NOAA.

NOAA issues an Atlantic hurricane season outlook each May, using computer models that consider current climate and ocean conditions.

The agency estimates that this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from 1 June to 30 November, will have up to 19 named storms and up to 10 hurricanes. Three to five of those hurricanes are projected to reach major hurricane strength (categories 3, 4, and 5).

Between 1991 and 2020, the Atlantic hurricane season featured seven hurricanes on average.

The report predicts a 60% chance of an above-normal season, a 30% chance of a near-normal season, and a 10% chance of a below-normal season.

“Everything is in place for an above-average season,” said Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service, at a press conference held in Jefferson Parish, La. NOAA selected Jefferson Parish as the location for the announcement to commemorate the 20-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

The above-average activity forecasted by NOAA will be fueled by above-average temperatures in the Atlantic and Caribbean Sea, forecasts for weak wind conditions, and the potential for higher activity of this year’s West African Monsoon.

The NOAA predictions align with predictions from other institutions, including Colorado State University’s (CSU) Tropical Weather and Climate Research Group. CSU’s forecast predicted 9 hurricanes and 17 named storms for the 2025 season, with 4 of those storms predicted to reach major hurricane strength.

Scientists expect the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a climate phenomenon that affects how heat is stored in the oceans, to remain in a neutral condition or transition to La Niña conditions this summer. Such conditions lead to decreased wind shear, which slightly favors hurricane formation.

In 2024, El Niño conditions, along with human-caused climate change, fueled a spike in ocean temperatures that caused a destructive Atlantic hurricane season. Warming oceans fuel stronger hurricanes that bring more heavy rainfall and higher storm surge when they make landfall.

The odds of El Niño developing this year as the hurricane season peaks are low—less than 15%, according to the latest NOAA prediction. While El Niño conditions tend to increase ocean temperatures, El Niño also creates wind shear that breaks up weather patterns, hindering hurricane intensification. If El Niño conditions do return by the fall, the likelihood of hurricane formation could drop. CSU plans to release an updated forecast on 11 June.

At the press conference, NOAA officials asked those in hurricane-prone areas to prepare for the busy season. “A community that is more informed and prepared will have a greater opportunity to rebound quickly from weather and climate related events,” said Cynthia Lee Sheng, president of Jefferson Parish.

“It takes only one storm near you to make this an active season for you,” said Michael Bell, a meteorologist at CSU and author of the CSU outlook, in a statement.

The above-average season coincides with unprecedented staffing shortages due to layoffs and staff buyouts at NOAA and its National Weather Service (NWS), which issues hurricane and flood warnings and provides critical emergency information during storms. In a 2 May open letter, five former NWS directors said the agency “will have an impossible task” trying to continue its current level of services amid staff and funding cuts.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2025), Busy hurricane season expected in 2025, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250200. Published on 22 May 2025.

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Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) plans to abolish dozens of divisions across all eight of its directorates and reduce the number of programs within those divisions, according to Science.

A spokesperson for NSF told Science that the reason behind the decision was to “reduce the number of SES [senior executive service] positions in the agency and create new non-executive positions to better align with the needs of the agency.”

Directorates at NSF and the divisions within them oversee grantmaking related to a particular field of science. Current directors and deputy directors will lose their titles and may be reassigned. Division directors play a large role in grantmaking decisions and are usually responsible for giving final approval for NSF awards. 

NSF lists the following directorates and divisions:

• Directorate for Biological Sciences
  • Biological Infrastructure
  • Environmental Biology
  • Emerging Frontiers
  • Integrative Organismal Systems
  • Molecular and Cellular Biosciences
• Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering
  • Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure
  • Computing and Communication Foundations
  • Computer and Network Systems
  • Information and Intelligent Systems
• Directorate for Engineering 
  • Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems
  • Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation
  • Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems
  • Engineering Education and Centers
  • Emerging Frontiers and Multidisciplinary Activities
• Directorate for Geosciences
  • Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences
  • Earth Sciences
  • Ocean Sciences
  • Research, Innovation, Synergies and Education
  • Office of Polar Programs
• Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences
  • Astronomical Sciences
  • Chemistry
  • Materials Research
  • Mathematical Sciences
  • Physics
  • Office of Strategic Initiatives
• Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
  • Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences
  • National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics
  • Social and Economic Sciences
  • Multidisciplinary Activities
• Directorate for STEM Education
  • Equity for Excellence in STEM
  • Graduate Education
  • Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings
  • Undergraduate Education
• Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships
  • Regional Innovation and Economic Growth
  • Accelerating Technology Translation and Development
  • Preparing the U.S. Workforce

“The end of NSF and American science expertise as we know it is here,” wrote Paul Bierman, a geomorphologist at the University of Vermont, on Bluesky. 

The decision to abolish its divisions may be part of a larger restructuring of NSF grantmaking, according to Science.

NSF was already facing drastic changes to its operations from Trump administration directives, including an order to stop awarding new and existing grants until further notice and an order cancelling hundreds of grants related to diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as disinformation and misinformation. Last month, NSF shuttered most of its outside advisory committees that gave input to operations at seven of the eight directorates.

On 8 May, members of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology sent a letter to Brian Stone, the acting director of the NSF, expressing distress at the changes at NSF over the past few weeks. 

“So, who is in charge here? How far does DOGE’s influence reach?” members of the committee wrote in the letter. “We seek answers about actions NSF has taken that potentially break the law and certainly break the trust of the research community.”

Layoff notices are expected to be sent to NSF staff members today, as well.

9 May update: On Friday, NSF closed its Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM (EES) and removed the division from its website. EES was responsible for programs that advanced access to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. In its explanation for the closure, NSF noted that it is “mindful of its statutory program obligations and plans to take steps to ensure those continue.” Division grantees received notice from their program officers about the closure this morning.

An internal memo circulated Thursday and obtained by E&E News stated that NSF will begin a reduction in force (RIF) aimed at its Senior Executive Service. The RIF will also terminate roughly 300 temporary positions.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) may no longer actively maintain or update some of its snow and ice data products after losing support from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, according to a 6 May announcement.

Data products affected by the decision are used to monitor the impacts of climate change in the Arctic, and include the center’s Sea Ice Index, Gridded Monthly Sea Ice Extent and Concentration, 1850 Onward, and World Glacier Inventory. “All of these data products as well as others in the NOAA@NSIDC collection face uncertain futures without ongoing support,” NSIDC wrote in an email to users posted on Bluesky.

While the data products won’t disappear, they will no longer be maintained at their current levels. 

“This change in support limits our ability to respond quickly to user inquiries, resolve issues, or maintain these products as thoroughly as before,” the NSIDC said in a statement to Inside Climate News. 

NSIDC, based at the University of Colorado, Boulder, is a prominent polar research institute. Its Sea Ice Index, in particular, has been a crucial source of data for scientists tracking the decline of sea ice cover in the Arctic. The threatened data sets are also used by Alaskan communities for weather prediction, inform fisheries and ecosystem management, and support “countless other Arctic geopolitical and security decision-making needs,” Zack Labe, a climate scientist and former NOAA staff member, told Inside Climate News.

The decision to end support of the NSIDC products is the latest in ongoing efforts from the Trump administration to take important environmental data offline, though some nonprofits, scientists, and advocacy groups are working to recreate some of the lost data tools. 

A NOAA webpage lists data products that have been decommissioned since President Trump took office, including data from marine monitoring buoys, coastal ecosystem maps, seafloor data, and satellite data tracking hurricanes. In a 21 April announcement, the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System, a group that coordinates U.S. ocean research, suggested that those interested in salvaging data products planned for decommissioning in 2025 should nominate those datasets for backup by the Data Rescue Project, a volunteer archiving effort.

NSIDC is asking scientists and educators who rely on these data products and would like to demonstrate the importance of these data sets to share their stories at nsidc@nsidc.org.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

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Land subsidence is typically considered a coastal problem: The dual threats of sinking land and rising seas intensify flooding, particularly in places like New York City and Louisiana. But even inland, major cities face infrastructure problems and flooding damage from sinking land beneath. 

A study published in Nature Cities has found that all 28 of the most populous cities in the United States are sinking. Though some of this subsidence is due to long-term geologic processes, much of it is spurred by human activity, including groundwater pumping and the building of new infrastructure. Better groundwater management and stricter building codes could mitigate risks.

“Land subsidence does not stop at coastal boundaries,” said Leonard Ohenhen, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University and the first author of the new study. 

From Coast to Coast, and in Between

Rates of sinking or uplifting land, also known as vertical land motion, can be measured from satellites via synthetic aperture radar (SAR), a technology that sends radar pulses to Earth and records how those pulses are reflected back. Ohenhen and the research team used SAR measurements from 2015 to 2021 from the Sentinel-1 mission to create maps of ground deformation in the 28 most populous U.S. cities.

The team found that in every city, at least 20% of the land area was sinking, and in 25 of the 28 cities, at least 65% of the land area was sinking. Estimates from the study show that about 33.8 million people live on sinking land in these 28 cities. 

The study shows a “really good assessment of what the whole local and regional picture of vertical land motion looks like,” said Patrick Barnard, a geologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz Center for Coastal Climate Resilience, who was not involved in the new study. “It gives us more and more confidence and a greater understanding of how [subsidence] is influencing urban areas and increasing the risk to the population.”

Some of the highest rates of subsidence (>4 millimeters per year) were observed in several cities in Texas: Houston, Fort Worth, and Dallas. The fastest-sinking city in the country was Houston, with more than 40% of its land subsiding at a rate greater than 5 millimeters per year.

Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Denver were among the cities with the most land area affected by subsidence.

Some of the rates described in the study were “alarming,” Barnard said, because typical background subsidence is below a couple of millimeters per year. Rates above 2 millimeters per year can damage infrastructure and buildings, he said.

Vertical land motion is especially problematic where land is sinking unevenly, or where a subsiding region is next to an area that’s rising.

Analyzing building densities and land deformation, the researchers found that San Antonio faces the greatest risk, with one in every 45 buildings at a high risk of damage.

What may seem like slow sinking can build up over time to cause problems, Ohenhen said. “Four millimeters per year becomes 40 millimeters over 10 years, and so on…that cumulative effect can add up.”

Getting Ahead of Ground Deformation

A now-absent ice sheet may be responsible for some of the land deformation. Tens of thousands of years ago, the Laurentide Ice Sheet covered much of North America, compressing the land beneath. Now that the ice sheet has melted, North America is readjusting. Land once underneath the ice sheet is generally rising slowly, while land not covered by the ice sheet is sinking. Ohenhen compared this process to relieving pressure on a mattress: Once pressure is released, some parts of the mattress rise while others sink back to their original height. 

Most of the subsidence described in the study, though, likely comes from groundwater pumping, which decreases pressure in the pore space of rock and sediment. The pore space slowly collapses and the ground sinks.

That can exacerbate flooding and infrastructure damage. Groundwater pumping and oil and gas extraction near Houston caused land subsidence that correlated with flood severity after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, for example.

As climate change continues to intensify drought conditions in some parts of the United States, land subsidence from groundwater pumping could become even more of a risk to infrastructure. An “increasing number of cities may face significant challenges in subsidence management,” the study authors wrote. 

“It’s really a major issue we have to consider, especially in these urban areas,” Barnard said. “We can’t just be pumping the ground without any regard to the potential long-term impacts.”

The risks posed by land subsidence are high enough to warrant policy changes to better manage groundwater pumping across the country, Barnard said. Better enforcement of building codes could also prevent damage, the paper’s authors wrote.

“People are often not attuned to some of these subtle hazards they may be exposed to,” Ohenhen said. “[We should] make people aware of the situation so that we do not wait until the very last moment to respond.”

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2025), 33.8 million people in the United States live on sinking land, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250178. Published on 8 May 2025.

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One Water, Many Solutions

On a summer morning, a storm dropped buckets of rain on the desert outside Tucson, Ariz. Water ran over the dry soil. Most of the water subsequently evaporated, but some parched plants drank their fill. What was left over sank into the ground, percolating into the aquifer below.

A few kilometers down the road, Tucson Water pumped groundwater from the same aquifer to a nearby reservoir, then through its treatment system. A Tucson ratepayer turned on her tap and used a few liters of water to give her dog a bath. The soiled water flowed into Tucson’s wastewater system and once again was treated. A portion of that recycled wastewater was released into the Santa Cruz River, where parkgoers enjoyed watching it flow through the city.

In Tucson, as in the rest of the world, every human interaction with water is connected to a broader water system.

But water practitioners haven’t always treated their work with the same interconnected approach. Instead, many cities and regions divide their water into three silos: drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater, each managed separately.

That approach is not meeting the needs of many communities. And a different approach, called One Water, is beginning to take its place.

One Water treats drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater as a single, interconnected entity and attempts to manage it holistically, bringing together water utilities, community members, business and industry leaders, researchers, politicians, engineers, and advocacy groups.

In a One Water approach, the Tucson ratepayer, water utility, and parkgoer are equal stakeholders, and water practitioners attempt to create a water system that works well for each of them.

“Partnerships and collaboration are at its core,” said Scott Berry, director of policy and government affairs at the US Water Alliance, a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to advancing a “One Water future for all.”

A holistic, inclusive approach is not without obstacles, though. Different stakeholders bring different priorities and practices and may have cultural, historical regulatory, and organizational barriers that keep them from collaborating effectively.

To navigate such challenges, water stakeholders from varied sectors across the United States come together at an annual conference (soon to be held every 18 months), the One Water Summit, hosted by the US Water Alliance. About 70% of attendees come as part of a delegation, a peer group, typically organized by region, whose members want to work together on U.S. water issues.

These delegations are the lifeblood of the summit and uniquely mirror the One Water approach: They’re meant to be highly collaborative, allowing stakeholders with very different priorities to come together and work toward a common cause. Though the framework is hindered by funding constraints and a lack of engagement from some sectors, delegations have provided a valuable opportunity for sharing knowledge and bringing One Water projects to fruition.

Siloed Systems

In the water sector, siloed systems are the norm. The inertia they engender can be hard to break when trying to build collaborative networks.

In some cases, siloed approaches contribute to unaligned regulations, which can limit a collaboration’s success, explained Caity Peterson, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California’s Water Policy Center.

For example, someone working on a wastewater problem must navigate both environmental and health regulations. A One Water program might involve potable reuse, or recycling wastewater into drinking water by purifying it, filtering it, and diverting it to groundwater or reservoir supplies. Such a project needs to ensure that the recycled water complies with environmental regulations that govern water quality for irrigation and other nonpotable uses. But once that water is destined for a drinking water supply, it must also comply with health regulations. “A little bit of streamlining” of those regulations can bolster collaboration, Peterson said.

Siloed jurisdictions can present another challenge for water practitioners. Though the flow of water respects no political or system boundary, water managers do work within such jurisdictions, said Sarin Pokhrel, a water resource engineer for the Environment and Protected Areas Ministry of Alberta, Canada. (Some local governments within Alberta, such as Edmonton, where Pokhrel is based, use a One Water approach.)

British Columbia, where Pokhrel previously worked, is home to an array of jurisdictions: Municipalities govern water via local bylaws, Indigenous communities manage their own water, and districts follow broader regional plans. Unifying plans under a single framework that all levels of water management can follow is very challenging, he said.

The US Water Alliance added the delegation structure to its annual conference in 2016 as a way for water practitioners to overcome these barriers and move toward One Water ideals. Berry, who leads delegation work at the US Water Alliance, said he thinks of the delegation system as an opportunity for stakeholders to “road test” collaborations.

“It’s this idea of getting a bunch of folks together who may not work together often, or who may even be at odds with one another,” he said. “It’s a way to test the waters of collaboration away from the normal sphere of influence.”

Organizers of the One Water Summit encourage delegations, which can be assembled by anyone with the interest, ability, and time to recruit fellow delegates, to attend. Delegation members can register at a discounted rate, and the summit provides opt-in programming specifically for delegates. Around one thousand people and 20–40 delegations attend each year. Membership in any one delegation has ranged from fewer than 10 to almost 50 people, Berry said.

The first half day of each summit is dedicated to “peer exchanges,” where delegations present their work to each other. These presentations range from showcasing a particular success to workshopping a problem that the delegation is facing, Berry said.

At the 2023 Tucson summit, for example, the Tap into Resilience delegation hosted a peer exchange to brainstorm how to scale up distributed water infrastructure, a type of ultralocal water system meant to be more affordable than conventional water systems. The Climate Action delegation shared strategies for utilities to use capital investments to make progress on their climate plans. And the New Jersey delegates hosted a discussion about how delegations can build relationships with state governments to advance One Water.

At an end-of-summit plenary, delegations are invited to announce “commitments to action” for the coming year.

“The entire plenary, you’re surrounded by all this amazing work that’s going to be happening in all these different places,” Berry said. “You get a sense that you’re not alone and that there are opportunities for collaboration.”

Commitments to action range from informal directives to full proposals. Delegations at the 2023 summit committed to developing new One Water plans for their cities, improving community engagement around water issues, sharing what they’d learned with local leaders and policymakers, and constructing new green stormwater and water treatment facilities. Delegations that return to the subsequent summit are encouraged to share how they’ve progressed on their commitments.

One Water, Many Networks

Water practitioners report a strengthening of the depth and breadth of their collaborations as a result of participating in a delegation.

“I felt like I really got to know people in a different way, not just as colleagues but as friends,” said Rebekah Jones, communications director for the Iowa Soybean Association’s Iowa Agriculture Water Alliance, who attended the 2023 One Water Summit as part of the delegation from Iowa. Jones deepened her relationships with colleagues at the city of Cedar Rapids and Des Moines Water Works and especially enjoyed meeting members of a delegation from Hawaii, who shared how critical water is to Hawaiian culture and livelihoods.

Jennifer Walker of the Texas delegation, director of the Texas Coast and Water Program at the National Wildlife Federation, said she feels the same after attending multiple summits. When a delegation convenes away from their home community, “everybody has a little bit more time to focus on the content, spend some time together, and build relationships,” she said.

Because Texas is such a large state, the delegation venue is crucial for getting Texas stakeholders, including nonprofits, utilities, engineers, consultants, elected officials, and community members in the same room.

The delegations are building relationships among people who don’t work together day-to-day, said Michelle Stockness, executive director of the Freshwater Society, a nonprofit based in Saint Paul, Minn. Stockness attended the 2023 summit as a member of the Minnesota delegation. “We’re building those relationships so that we can talk about hard things a little more easily.”

“We can come together in ways that would be almost impossible at home,” said Candice Rupprecht, a water conservation program manager for the city of Tucson and a member of the Tucson delegation, in a 2019 presentation.

Strengthened relationships have sparked meaningful progress on One Water projects across the country.

At the 2023 conference, the Iowa delegation held an educational session for other summit attendees about urban and rural collaboration via an exercise about a fictional town called Farmersville and its picturesque Crystal River. Attendees attempted to fix a water quality problem in Farmersville—a suddenly odorous and murky Crystal River—while playing a role that was different from their real-life job. For example, a water researcher could act as mayor, and a utility staff member could role-play a farmer.

In the scenario, the urban community blamed rural farmers for soil erosion and nutrient pollution, whereas farmers accused the city of industrial pollution and ineffective waste management. Workshop attendees had to navigate these concerns as they developed a plan to improve water quality.

“It got people thinking out of the box about what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes,” Jones said.

In New Jersey, water practitioners had already formed a coalition of community members, nonprofit organizations, government entities, and utilities when the delegation from the state began attending the summit in 2016. Participating as a delegation supplemented the group’s holistic effort, said Paula Figueroa, director of the Jersey Water Works Collaborative and a former New Jersey delegate. For the New Jersey delegation, the summit is an important source of energy to balance the sometimes draining, difficult work of advancing a One Water approach, she said.

After the 2022 summit, Figueroa noticed that two leaders, one a New Jersey utility staff member and the other an employee of the Jersey Water Works Collaborative, began to collaborate, inviting each other to more events and sharing the other’s work. The new relationship increased the visibility of a shared, primary project: replacing lead service lines across the state.

The summit offers delegations opportunities for interstate cooperation as well. Following conversations between the Pittsburgh and Milwaukee delegations at the 2022 and 2023 summits, delegates from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin held a dedicated learning exchange in Milwaukee the following year.

Some water issues in Pittsburgh would have taken 2 or 3 years each to solve, but as a result of knowledge gained in the Wisconsin exchange, “we were able to complete five or six problems in 2 or 3 years,” said Jamil Bey, founder of the UrbanKind Institute and a longtime member of the Pittsburgh delegation. “That learning exchange model is really powerful.”

The event in Milwaukee helped inform a new approach to addressing stormwater reclamation in Pittsburgh, for instance, said Kelly Henderson, who was part of the Pittsburgh cohort that attended the learning exchange.

One of the locations the group visited was Green Tech Station, a former brownfield site that the Northwest Side Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit in Milwaukee, had transformed into a stormwater reclamation facility. Green Tech Station can capture more than 380,000 liters of stormwater each time it rains—water that is then used to irrigate trees on the site. The facility also includes a prairie ecosystem with native plants, a pavilion to host educational programming, and a collection of artwork.

Henderson, executive director of Grounded Strategies, a nonprofit focused on community-driven vacant lot reclamation, found Green Tech Station so inspiring that she decided to create something similar in Pittsburgh. Grounded Strategies, along with partners from the Department of City Planning in Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority and elsewhere, recently received a $55,000 grant to start the project. As they plan the site, they’ll be in close contact with the group that constructed Green Tech Station, Henderson said.

Delegations can also facilitate cooperation between stakeholders with different immediate interests.

In 2017, for instance, the Tucson delegation committed to a lofty goal: returning perennial water flow to the Santa Cruz River. At the time, the stretch of the river in downtown Tucson flowed only during rainstorms.

Rupprecht, the Tucson Water conservation manager and four-time Tucson delegation member, said delegation members were key to advocating for Arizona’s Drought Contingency Plan, a change in state law that increased recycled water recharge credits. Under the Drought Contingency Plan, Tucson Water can receive credits for 95% of the water released into the Santa Cruz River, then use those credits in the future to secure additional water supply.

Within a year, Tucson Water’s Santa Cruz River Heritage Project had released enough recycled water to the river that it flowed anew for the first time in almost 80 years. The new stretch of perennial river restored plants, revitalized a ciénaga (wetland) ecosystem, and provided new habitat for wildlife such as herons, native toads, coyotes, and dragonflies.

Inclusivity Obstacles

Though many delegations have made tangible progress toward One Water goals, barriers still exist to achieving full cross-sector engagement.

“With something like One Water…if you don’t do a good job of building those relationships and building those ties between sectors, then there’s a risk it could be just some pleasant marketing but not really delivering the outcomes that it’s supposed to deliver,” Peterson said.

One major barrier is money. Attending the summit comes at a financial cost that can be too high for underfunded organizations.“It’s all about money,” said Pokhrel, the Alberta engineer. “Do we have enough budget? Do we have enough resources to fulfill this?”

“Most of the most vulnerable people who are having water issues, they don’t have the resources to participate,” Bey said. “There’s a minimum threshold for organizational capacity that you have to have to connect you to these types of conversations.”

The US Water Alliance tries to help delegates from underfunded organizations attend the summit with a tiered registration fee system. “If you’re a small nonprofit, you’re going to pay less than a private company or a large urban utility,” Berry said. “The people who are more resourced, who can afford to pay more, do pay more, and that helps us subsidize the cost for the folks who are less well resourced.”

A little funding can go a long way to help include historically marginalized voices. With help from a grant from the US Water Alliance, for instance, in 2023 the Minnesota delegation was able to invite representatives from the Indigenous-led nonprofit Honor the Earth, as well as community members from the Environmental Justice Coordinating Council (EJCC). Members of EJCC had previously attended the 2022 One Water Summit in Milwaukee, where they had committed to working on issues of environmental health in Minnesota, particularly the impact of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) on drinking water.

“Providing funding for community and tribal members was really important to get the people we wanted to be there and have that diverse representation of multiple perspectives,” Stockness said.

Delegates from Honor the Earth and EJCC could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

Berry and some past delegates said they feel that the agriculture industry is underrepresented at the summits, too. Agriculture is a huge element of the water system, responsible for about 70% of freshwater use worldwide. The proportion of agriculture practitioners at the summit is “still not as big as it could be, or should be,” said Sean McMahon, a sustainable agriculture consultant who has been involved in coordinating the Iowa delegation for five summits.

City utilities make up the majority of membership in the US Water Alliance, and urban organizations dominate the summit—a dynamic that may make the rural agriculture community feel ostracized, Peterson said. If members of the agriculture community are not engaging in a collaboration, that might mean the benefit of participating is not clear to them.

As in the fictional Farmersville, agriculture communities and urban water suppliers may not always see eye to eye. Farmers may be frustrated with what they see as overly restrictive regulations in an already difficult economic environment, whereas urban utilities prioritize delivering clean drinking water to their ratepayers.

The agriculture sector often gets cast as a villain and may feel that it must defend itself against other water practitioners who aren’t familiar with the hardships of farm operations, Peterson said. Making clear to farmers the mutual benefits of a One Water approach could improve collaboration. For instance, many sustainable agriculture practices both benefit farm finances and improve downstream water quality.

McMahon recommended that delegation leaders reach out to agriculture associations to find champions of improving water quality and water use efficiency. “If you’re framing your proposal like, ‘Come help us talk about these complicated issues from your perspective,’ it’s like a wide-open door to have really powerful conversations,” said Jones.

Clare Lindahl, chief executive officer of the Soil and Water Conservation Society, a member of the Soil and Water Conservation delegation, and a board member of the US Water Alliance, said her delegation has had success building relationships across the urban and rural divide by emphasizing the value of water to all stakeholders. “The water is the bridge,” she said.

When a highly diverse group of stakeholders makes it to the summit, collaboration can lead to what Figueroa called a “healthy push and pull”: Everyone sitting around the table may have different expectations, goals, and work practices. Delegations have found that defining common goals and outlining clear responsibilities are the best way around that.

For example, the New Jersey group has centered its conversations around four shared goals: having effective and financially sustainable water systems; empowering stakeholders and ensuring that they are well-informed; building successful, beneficial green infrastructure; and creating smart combined sewer overflow control systems.

“That’s our North Star, and that has helped us,” Figueroa said.

“It’s hard to break down silos if your objectives aren’t clear,” Peterson said. Being “really candid and clear about who’s involved, what the roles are, and what the responsibilities are for the beginning, middle, and end of the project” can help, she said.

Berry said he has high hopes for the future of delegations. He imagines an eventual Colorado River delegation that would include stakeholders from throughout the Colorado River Basin. Other dreams include a Great Lakes delegation and a Mississippi River delegation. “There’s so much ground to cover,” he said.

“It’s both a resources and money question, and it’s a relationship question,” Berry said.

—Grace van Deelen (@GVD__), Staff Writer

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2025), Delegations drive One Water dialogues, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250155. Published on 24 April 2025.

Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Earth’s oceans are full of plastic. Though the state-sized garbage patches formed by ocean currents are the most visible, just an estimated 1% of ocean plastic lurks on the surface. The other 99% hides elsewhere in the ocean and may be found in the deep sea, mixed in with seafloor sediment. These particles are often in the form of microplastics: fragments of plastic goods degraded to less than 1 millimeter in length.

Scientists know these deep-sea plastics don’t get there by simply sinking from the surface since their distribution doesn’t match the locations of surface garbage patches. Results of laboratory experiments and seafloor sampling campaigns led scientists to suspect these plastic particles instead reach the deep ocean via turbidity currents, gravity-driven cascades of sediment-rich water that flows from rivers over the continental shelf and down to the seafloor. But no one had observed the process until now.

A new study published in Environmental Science and Technology presents the first direct evidence of an underwater microplastics “avalanche,” a turbidity current that transported plastic pollution to the bottom of a deep ocean canyon. The findings raise concerns about how microplastics may be affecting marine organisms because the same turbidity currents foster biodiversity hot spots in the same locations.

“Turbidity currents are an important process that transports sediments and nutrients to the deep sea. The question was: Do they also transport plastics?” said Florian Pohl, a sedimentologist at the University of Bayreuth in Germany who was not involved in the research. Pohl was the lead author on a 2020 study that predicted the existence of these microplastics “avalanches” using laboratory experiments.

“The fact that we captured this in action proves the theory, but it also highlights the threats that microplastics pose,” said Ian Kane, a coauthor of the new study and a sedimentologist at the University of Manchester. “This study is further evidence of the impact that we’re having on the oceans.”

Measuring Microplastics

To observe turbidity currents in action, the research team headed to Whittard Canyon, an undersea canyon in the Celtic Sea nearly 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) deep. They installed sensors in the canyon that could measure turbidity current velocity and detect sediment concentration.

The team also installed a sediment trap just above the seafloor to collect material transported by the turbidity current and drilled cores of seafloor and subseafloor sediment at seven sites at varying depths in the canyon.

Between June 2019 and August 2020, the sensors detected six turbidity currents, the first of which filled the sediment trap. An analysis of flow velocity and sediment grain size showed that the turbidity flow even carried large plastic litter, including segments of plastic fishing line. All sediment trap samples and seafloor sediment cores contained microplastic particles.

Samples of sediment from the cores revealed that the relative proportion of microplastic fragments (tiny plastic “chunks”) to microplastic fibers (from synthetic textiles) increased deeper into the canyon, indicating that fragments and fibers travel differently in turbidity currents. Pohl said he’d like to take a closer look at the fragment and fiber properties (such as the type of plastic they’re made of) to determine why.

Kane was struck by the high concentrations of microplastics found in the sediment, especially because Whittard Canyon is so far from shore—300 kilometers (186 miles). “It’s quite alarming that this material is making its way so far out into ocean basins,” he said.

The microplastics “avalanches” observed in Whittard Canyon likely also happen elsewhere in Earth’s oceans. More than 5,000 similar canyons worldwide could be important conveyors of pollution to the deep sea, the authors wrote. Some of these canyons are fed directly by rivers on land. Seasonal flash floods in Sicily, for instance, have carried large amounts of plastic litter to submarine canyons.

If Whittard Canyon is receiving a lot of plastic, it’s likely that other canyons, especially those more closely linked to rivers on land, are receiving even more, Kane said.

Plastic in the Ecosystem

The new study is a “great first step” in understanding how microplastics reach the deep ocean, Pohl said. “It’s a big piece of the puzzle to understand that these flows do indeed transport microplastics. But now there are follow-up questions, like how much [plastic] do they actually transport? And how does this relate to the overall budget of ocean floor plastics?”

The same turbidity currents that flush microplastics also bring oxygen and nutrients to the deep sea, forming biodiversity hot spots in the same locations where plastic pollution accumulates. That plastic pollution often contains toxic ingredients that are hazardous to marine organisms.

Filter feeders ingest toxic plastic particles, which accumulate up the marine food chain. “Magnification through the [food] web is a real danger,” Kane said.

Much of the plastic in the ocean enters via waste management systems. Better filtration at wastewater treatment plants could be one important way to reduce the flow of microplastic fibers into the ocean, Kane said, adding that fishing and shipping are also major sources of microplastics to target for mitigation. But microplastic pollution is ubiquitous in the environment, and reducing its presence in the ocean is “a big challenge,” Pohl said.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2025), Avalanches of microplastics carry pollution into the deep sea, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250153. Published on 23 April 2025.

Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Valentina Rossi first saw the 30,000-year-old griffon vulture as a master’s student in Rome in 2014. The fossil, which had been found by a local landowner near Rome in 1889, was remarkably well-preserved. She couldn’t look away as her future collaborator, Dawid Iurino, presented about the fossilized imprint of the bird’s head.

“I was mind-blown,” Rossi said. 

The presentation by Iurino, now an associate professor at Universita degli Studi di Milano Statale, ended with a discussion of the bird’s feathers. Rossi remembers him saying that determining what exactly the feather fossils were made of was a topic for future research because analyzing such well-preserved structures was outside of the expertise of the team of paleontologists at the time. 

Now, a new study by Rossi, Iurino, and others, published in Geology, has finally revealed the answer: The feather fossils are made of zeolites—minerals made of aluminum and silicon compounds. This study is the first time scientists have reported soft-tissue mineralization by zeolites.

“We finally did it,” said Rossi, lead author of the paper and a paleontologist at University College Cork in Ireland.

It’s extremely rare to find feathers preserved in three dimensions and even rarer to find mineralized feathers, Rossi said. The knowledge that the feathers were fossilized by zeolites, minerals that form naturally by reactions between volcanic rock and water, could guide paleontologists to target volcanic settings when searching for fossils.

“The more people look, the more people are going to find the preservation of materials that we previously thought was impossible,” said Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist and emeritus professor at North Carolina State University who was not involved in the new study. 

Matching Minerals

Rossi and the team of scientists used a powerful electron microscope to study the shape and texture of the preserved structures, confirming that the tissue was mineralized. Then, they analyzed the chemical structure of the fossil using multiple spectroscopy methods. “We recognized certain chemical bonds that are similar to those found in zeolites,” Rossi said. 

Certain soft tissues lend themselves to fossilization. Muscle tissues, for example, are commonly mineralized by the calcium phosphate mineral apatite. That’s because muscle tissue already contains calcium and phosphorus, which jump-start the mineralization process. 

Laboratory studies have shown that zeolites will form on biological materials in solutions of silicon and aluminum. But feathers do not contain these elements, making the zeolite fossil puzzling, Rossi said.

Schweitzer said that parts of certain molecules that make up decaying feather tissue may have an affinity for aluminum or silica but that more research would be needed to determine the exact chemistry behind the mineralization. Another explanation for the mineralization, Rossi suggested, may involve the pH of the soft tissue, especially as the tissue decays.

A Vulture’s Final Moments

The findings helped Rossi and her colleagues create a taphonomic model—a likely story line of how the bird went from a living animal to a hunk of rock. Previous studies of the whole fossil had not indicated that the bird was injured; Rossi suspects toxic gases from a nearby volcanic eruption may have killed it. 

Dead but intact, the bird lay in the path of a lava flow. Rossi thinks the vulture was probably quite far from the actual eruption and may have been covered by a cooler, slow-moving volcanic flow, as its tissues weren’t destroyed by heat or turbulence. 

The volcanic flow hardened and cooled with the griffon vulture beneath it. Eventually, rains soaked the rock, creating a fluid rich in minerals. The chemical composition of the bird’s feathers spurred a reaction with the silicon- and aluminum-rich fluids, and zeolites began to form and replace the tissue. The feathers turned to stone faster than they decayed.

Something similar may have happened to many more specimens over Earth’s history, which could mean that paleontologists are overlooking entire categories of rock in which highly preserved soft-tissue fossils may be found, the authors write. Volcanic settings are typically disregarded as likely spots to find fossils because volcanic flows are turbulent and hot and usually destroy soft biological material that might otherwise be fossilized. But the new paper’s results mean there are likely some exceptions.

The findings “open up another window for fossilization,” Schweitzer said.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

This news article is included in our ENGAGE resource for educators seeking science news for their classroom lessons. Browse all ENGAGE articles, and share with your fellow educators how you integrated the article into an activity in the comments section below.

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2025), A 30,000-year-old feather is a first-of-its-kind fossil, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250131. Published on 9 April 2024.

Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

President Donald Trump’s EPA is considering a rule that would weaken regulations that limit the use of chemicals harmful to human health in consumer goods, The Guardian reports. 

Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a group of chemicals added to consumer products, oftentimes for their water- and stain-resistant properties. Exposure to PFAS is known to raise the risk of certain cancers, kidney and liver disease, and complications surrounding reproductive health. The chemicals are omnipresent in everyday life and contaminate drinking water across the United States. 

The EPA places regulations on PFAS and other toxic chemicals in consumer goods based on the health risks they pose.

Under a set of rules enacted by the Biden administration, if any specific use of a chemical in any consumer goods presented an “unreasonable risk” to human health, the chemical itself could be considered a risk. This regulatory framework was especially helpful to states, which can regulate chemicals categorized as an “unreasonable risk.”

The new rule submitted by the Trump administration would direct the EPA to separately evaluate the risk posed by each use of a chemical, as opposed to the chemical itself. Most individual uses of chemicals such as PFAS would not be considered a “unreasonable risks” because the chemicals are present in small amounts in most consumer goods, The Guardian reports. 

“They are going to exclude a huge number of consumer products from being considered for risk management,” an EPA employee told The Guardian. 

The new rule could weaken state chemical regulations, including California’s Proposition 65, a highly effective law that has limited consumer exposure to harmful chemicals, including PFAS, in drinking water. 

The proposed rule would take time to go into effect, however, as the EPA has limited staff to carry it out. Last month, the Trump administration announced plans to fire more than 1,000 EPA scientists and dissolve its Office of Research and Development, the arm of the agency that would traditionally be responsible for evaluating chemical limits.

The Trump administration has begun to roll back other PFAS protections, too. In January, the EPA withdrew a preexisting plan to limit manufacturers’ ability to release PFAS into wastewater.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

The Trump administration has announced plans to dismantle a program responsible for funding billions of dollars’ worth of projects meant to help communities prepare for disasters, according to reporting from Grist. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is responsible for supporting communities after hazards and disasters, including aiding in rebuilding infrastructure and providing financial assistance. 

FEMA also runs the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, or BRIC, an initiative established in 2018 that has made billions of dollars available to communities to prepare for disasters in advance. An internal FEMA memo obtained by Grist directed the agency not to allocate $750 million planned for this year’s BRIC grants and to stop funding BRIC projects that were previously funded but are still underway.

“BRIC was yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program,” a FEMA spokesperson told Grist.

Some of the disasters that BRIC grants help communities endure—especially hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires—have been made more frequent and more intense due to human-caused climate change. These disasters often disproportionately affect communities that are already disadvantaged. 

BRIC grants have funded projects such as power station upgrades, flooding protections for wastewater facilities, efforts to bury power lines, and updates to buildings to improve earthquake resiliency. The program has been extremely popular, report E&E News and Grist. In fiscal year 2023, the agency received more than 1,200 requests for funding from states, tribes, and territories but was able to provide less than 20% of all funds requested. 

“The administration now has one of FEMA’s most effective grant programs on the chopping block,” Shana Udvardy, a senior climate resilience policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Grist. 

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

After an onslaught of funding cuts, firings, and cancelled programs as a result of Trump administration actions, scientists in the United States are feeling targeted. That’s according to the results of a poll published by Nature. 

In the poll, 75.3% of 1,600 respondents, at least 1,200 of whom were scientists, said they were “considering leaving the country following the disruptions to science prompted by the Trump administration.” 

“This is my home—I really love my country. But a lot of my mentors have been telling me to get out, right now,” one U.S. graduate student who lost her stipend when the Trump administration canceled funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) told Nature. “I’ve been looking very diligently for opportunities in Europe, Australia, and Mexico.”

“The ‘brain drain’ is happening,” wrote Brian Romans, a geoscientist at Virginia Tech, on Bluesky.

The trend was especially strong among early-career scientists: 79.4% of postgraduate researchers who responded said they were considering leaving, as well as 75% of Ph.D. students. These groups are also feeling the brunt of funding changes that have affected undergraduate training programs and graduate admissions.

Losing scientists hinders the country’s ability to remain competitive in science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, fields on a global scale, according to a 2024 National Science Board report. The board pointed out that even before the Trump administration took office, the United States was at risk of struggling to retain talented scientists or attract researchers from abroad.

Universities in other countries are taking note: This month, a French university announced the Safe Place for Science, a three-year program meant to bring 15 American scientists to its campus.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.

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Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.

The Trump administration’s intentions toward addressing climate change are clear: Federal agencies purged mentions of the climate crisis from their websites and slashed funding for mitigation tools such as the Future Risk Index. Now, those intentions are extending to health research: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has begun to cancel funding for investigations into the health effects of climate change, and will not financially support new research on the subject, according to ProPublica and Nature.

NIH is the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world. Every year, the agency is responsible for awarding nearly $48 billion in grants for investigations into everything from cancer cures to avian flu, as well as climate change.

Documents sent to Nature on 25 March direct grants management staff at NIH to halt funding, including issuing future, already-awarded grant dollars, to any projects that are “no longer an NIH/HHS priority,” including research related to climate change. The documents also direct the NIH to halt grants for research related to COVID-19, “now that the pandemic is over.” The cuts to COVID-19 research—including cuts to projects meant to develop antiviral drugs—come as the administration also plans to end its funding for Gavi, an international program that purchases vaccines for children in developing countries. Gavi estimates that the loss of U.S. support may cause the deaths of more than 1 million children who will not receive routine vaccinations.

Climate change is a major threat to public health, according to international agencies such as the World Health Organization. A warming world increases risks of heat-related illness, disease, malnutrition, and injury, which often disproportionately affect already-vulnerable populations. Funding cuts to research on climate and health hinders scientists’ ability to understand these threats. 

COVID-19, environmental health, and climate change are linked—studies show that those living in air pollution hotspots face an increased likelihood of death from COVID-19, as do those living near fossil fuel production facilities. 

Halting funding for climate and health research “is an agenda item for the fossil fuel industry, and this administration is doing what the fossil fuel industry wants,” Lisa Patel, executive director of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health, told ProPublica.

A now-offline NIH report from 2024 detailed some of the NIH-funded climate projects that may now be under threat, such as research to understand the health impacts of the Maui wildfires, a project meant to expand the capacity of public health systems to respond to climate disasters in Appalachia, and an initiative to promote public health in Alaska Native communities facing climate health concerns.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

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