The morning of 23 July 2024 was like most summer mornings in Yellowstone National Park. Cars vied for parking spaces, bison lounged in meadows, and tourists strolled along boardwalks taking in sights of bubbling springs and spouting plumes of water and steam. All were unaware of the pressure that had built underneath Black Diamond Pool, a thermal spring in Wyoming’s Biscuit Basin about 3.5 kilometers northwest of famed Old Faithful Geyser.

Suddenly, just before 10:00 a.m., jets of muddy, rock-laden water and steam shot from the turbid depths of the pool, building into bursts as high as 400–600 feet (~120–180 meters) that showered the surrounding area and boardwalk with rocks and mud. Water from the pool surged toward the nearby Firehole River, carrying boulders and debris, and a steam plume was visible from kilometers away.

Fifty-five seconds after the explosion began, it was over. Left behind was a roughly 1-square-kilometer debris field, as well as many stunned onlookers, fresh from scrambling away from the unexpected outburst and wondering what had just happened.

Safety was the paramount concern in the immediate aftermath of the event. But scientists also mobilized quickly to monitor for additional activity and to collect timely observations that could help piece together why the explosion happened. On a longer timescale, federal, state, and academic organizations are working together to better understand the dynamics and triggers of hydrothermal explosions to recognize warning signs of future events before they occur.

What Are Hydrothermal Explosions?

Hydrothermal explosions, like the July 2024 event at Black Diamond Pool (Figure 1), occur in many volcanic-hydrothermal areas around the world. When a pressurized hot water reservoir instantaneously decompresses, superheated water violently flashes to steam that has enough energy to break surrounding rock [Muffler et al., 1971; Thiéry and Mercury, 2009; Browne and Lawless, 2001; Montanaro et al., 2022].

Such explosions exist on a continuum from large, destructive events to smaller geyser eruptions that routinely spew water and steam into the air. Geysers are caused by constrictions in hydrothermal plumbing systems that temporarily trap boiling water and steam until the pressure is high enough for the water to erupt. Hydrothermal explosions, on the other hand, occur less frequently. They are primed by the gradual pressure increase in a confined system, followed by rapid decompression caused either by rupturing of a hydrothermal seal or by an external event like a landslide or earthquake. Large geyser eruptions can destroy geysers’ plumbing systems and throw rock and mud like hydrothermal explosions, and small, spontaneously reoccurring hydrothermal explosions may arguably be more consistent with geyser activity.

In Yellowstone National Park, the occurrence of hydrothermal explosions has been recognized for decades. Since the end of the most recent glaciation roughly 14,000 years ago, at least 18 massive hydrothermal explosions have formed craters ranging from 300 to 2,500 meters across, the largest of which—formed about 13,800 years ago—is the biggest explosion crater on Earth [Muffler et al., 1971; Morgan et al., 2009; Christiansen et al., 2007].

More than 2 dozen hydrothermal explosions have been documented within Yellowstone National Park since its founding in 1872 [Christiansen et al., 2007]. One of the best-observed events prior to 2024 was the explosion of Porkchop Geyser in Norris Geyser Basin on 5 September 1989 [Fournier et al., 1991]. That event—witnessed by nine people, none of whom were injured—threw small rocks and debris 60 meters from the vent and left a crater more than 10 meters wide.

Smaller hydrothermal explosions occur more frequently than larger ones (maybe as often as annually), but they usually go unwitnessed because they occur in the backcountry, at night, or during winter months. Hydrothermally active areas around the world sometimes show signs of instability or increases in temperature prior to an explosion; however, there are no known universal precursory signals upon which forecasts can be based.

Keeping Watch over Yellowstone’s Activity

The lack of knowledge about hydrothermal explosion occurrence rates, precursory signals, and triggers motivated the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a consortium of nine federal, state, and academic organizations, to include hydrothermal processes and hazards in its recently developed hazards monitoring plan [Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, 2022]. The plan includes the installation of broadband seismic, infrasound, thermal, and deformation sensors within geyser basins to better detect anomalous hydrothermal activity and investigate the potential to forecast hazardous events.

A prototype hydrothermal monitoring station, installed in Norris Geyser Basin in 2023, immediately paid dividends. The station clearly detected infrasound signals from nearby geyser eruptions and a small hydrothermal explosion that occurred on 15 April 2024—the first hydrothermal explosion in Yellowstone National Park to be documented by instrumental monitoring [Poland et al., 2025].

However, no hydrothermal monitoring station was installed at Biscuit Basin in July 2024, and YVO’s volcano monitoring network barely detected the explosion, even though it was big enough to destroy a section of boardwalk adjacent to Black Diamond Pool. The destructive event—thankfully, no injuries resulted—emphasizes the importance of expanded monitoring in geyser basins of Yellowstone National Park. It also highlights the risk posed by even small explosions that occur when people are nearby.

Much remains unknown about the processes leading to hydrothermal explosions and how best to safeguard the more than 4 million visitors to Yellowstone National Park every year from this underappreciated hazard [e.g., Montanaro et al., 2022]. The goal of postexplosion scientific investigations is to develop understanding that will enable better monitoring, detection, and, potentially, forecasting of future dangerous hydrothermal events.

Black Diamond Pool’s Explosive Past and Present

Explosive activity has recurred sporadically at Black Diamond Pool over its roughly 120-year life. Broken, angular rocks from previous explosions that were cemented back together before being ejected on 23 July 2024 provide evidence of this repeated explosive activity.

According to early geologic maps and photographs, Black Diamond Pool did not exist before 1902. It likely formed dramatically from a hydrothermal explosion sometime between then and 1912. Documents preserved in the Yellowstone National Park archives reference a few short periods of explosive activity that enlarged the new pool and formed two additional springs.

The area was quiet after 1960 until a series of short explosive events of varying intensity (though none approaching the scale of the July 2024 event) reinitiated in 2006. The frequent activity ceased by early 2013, and only three isolated events were reported between then and July 2024.

The 23 July hydrothermal explosion—which occurred during the park’s busiest month—stunned tourists, National Park Service (NPS) officials, and the scientific community. Visitation numbers had peaked a few days earlier, and on the day of the explosion, cameras recorded 209 visitors to Biscuit Basin by 9:00 a.m. Within minutes of the approximately 10:00 a.m. event, law enforcement rangers arrived on the scene and quickly closed the basin to the public to prevent injuries should explosive activity continue.

YVO’s initial response primarily involved communicating to the public and emergency managers about the cause of the event and the potential for additional activity. Observatory scientists also fielded numerous media inquiries.

Coordination of the scientific response began in parallel with these communications activities. YVO scientists and experienced collaborators from other institutions deployed to the field within hours to days to install monitoring equipment and gather time-sensitive data using a variety of approaches.

Fanning Out in Biscuit Basin

Working near an unstable, potentially explosive pool in the immediate aftermath of the explosion was an exercise in situational awareness, but the extensive training and experience of the scientists involved helped to ensure their safety.

Field teams worked in pairs, with one person keeping an eye out for signs of an ensuing explosion while the other collected data. High-temperature areas surrounding the pool suggested the presence of boiling water or steam underneath a thin crust where the ground could easily collapse or another explosion could break out. Near the pool edge, slippery mud and overhangs that could crumble unexpectedly into the pool also posed particular hazards.

The field teams also knew that newly unsealed hydrothermal systems can emit higher-than-normal amounts of hazardous gases. Thankfully, blowing winds following the explosion diluted potentially dangerous concentrations as well as the strong perfume of acid, sulfur, and hydrocarbons, helping the teams get on with their work.

Geology and Mapping. Hydrothermal explosions leave behind debris fields that can be used to discern many properties of the explosions [Breard et al., 2014]. For example, the size and distribution of ballistic blocks around the vent provide clues about the energy of the explosion. This information also enables calculations of ballistic vulnerability—the probability of a human fatality at any given location around the vent in the event of another explosion of similar size. In addition, rocks excavated from the preexisting subsurface hydrothermal system are useful for understanding the pressure and temperature conditions before the explosion and how sealed the system was.

Field teams from Colorado State University, NPS, and the University of California, Berkeley documented the sizes, distribution, and lithology of ballistic blocks thrown by the explosion to begin piecing together what the underlying hydrothermal system looked like before and during the explosion. NPS also used an uncrewed aerial vehicle to collect thermal and structure-from-motion imagery of the deposits and the surrounding area. These images helped identify areas with elevated temperatures and quantify the volume of material ejected by the 23 July explosion.

Near-Surface Geophysics. Dense seismic networks, which can sense the vibrations of bubbles and the brecciation of rock, are powerful tools for resolving subsurface hydrothermal plumbing, detecting small explosions, and helping scientists assess hazards from ongoing activity.

To record seismic signals in the aftermath of the explosion at Black Diamond Pool, the University of Utah deployed a temporary array of 33 seismometers around the pool by 26 July, and the instruments recorded for about 2 months. Four infrasound microphones were also deployed roughly 300 meters northwest of the pool from 19 August to 18 October. These data will be processed to pinpoint and explore signals from geyser activity and subsequent small hydrothermal explosions in Biscuit Basin.

Several weeks after the explosion, field teams from the University of Wyoming and NPS collected nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electrical resistivity (ER), and transient electromagnetics (TEM) datasets. NMR data provide estimates of the volume and location of water stored in the subsurface, including in confining, low-permeability zones. ER, which measures resistivity encountered by electrical currents, is ideal for identifying water-saturated subsurface pathways, as hydrothermal waters contain dissolved salts and are electrically conductive. TEM uses pulses of electric current to induce electric and magnetic fields underground. How fast these fields decay is another indication of variations in subsurface resistivity.

Together these techniques paint 3D views of hydrothermal fluids and lithological contrasts in the subsurface—important information for understanding the conditions and characterizing hazard potential in the postexplosion Black Diamond Pool system.

Water and Gas Chemistry. Gas emissions and water chemistry data were collected after the 23 July explosion by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Montana Technological University, and the University of Wyoming to help probe underground processes.

Gridded measurements of carbon dioxide gas efflux, for example, provide information on spatial variations in diffuse gas fluxes at the surface that can be used to map subsurface gas pathways. Simultaneous measurements of isotopes of the short-lived radioactive gas radon in the same samples used for carbon dioxide measurements can help identify the sources of emissions and timescales of gas movement.

The chemical composition of the water in Black Diamond Pool is important because the solubility of different chemical species depends on the temperature at which water and rocks react. Critically, silica solubility decreases with decreasing temperature, and as hydrothermal waters cool, amorphous (noncrystalline) silica precipitates in subsurface flow paths [Fournier, 1985].

Past analyses of water chemistry at Black Diamond Pool have indicated that water and rocks there react at lower temperatures compared with systems farther south in Upper Geyser Basin, including at Old Faithful [Price et al., 2024]. These lower temperatures are more favorable for silica precipitation and may contribute to sealing flow paths and building pressure for hydrothermal explosions in Biscuit Basin.

Early Insights into the 2024 Explosion

The data collected following the explosion of Black Diamond Pool on 23 July 2024 are still being analyzed to provide a detailed account of the conditions preceding and following the event. However, some preliminary insights are available from the initial observations.

Many indicators point to the explosion being caused by self-sealing in the hydrothermal system, with the result that increases in subsurface pressure eventually overcame the strength of the sealing rocks—a common mechanism for hydrothermal explosions globally [Morgan et al., 2009; Montanaro et al., 2022]. The lack of a strong earthquake nearby, either before or during the explosion, indicates it was not seismically triggered.

Furthermore, some of the ejected debris—namely, minimally altered, high-porosity, and high-permeability conglomerates and sandstones—likely contained much of the liquid water that flashed to steam and powered the explosion (Figure 2). On the other hand, completely silicified and intensely altered low-permeability rocks also found in the debris field likely constituted the seal that contained the pent-up pressure before the explosion.

The initial analyses of the seismic and infrasound data, as well as observations from scientists and passing visitors, indicate that small explosions at Black Diamond Pool have continued since 23 July 2024 through to the present, posing an ongoing hazard. Some of these explosions have been accompanied by water surges flowing east into the nearby Firehole River and have been large enough to carry seismic instruments several meters downhill and partially bury others in fine sediment. Two witnessed events were observed to throw water, mud, and small rocks 20–30 feet (6–9 meters) into the air. A webcam installed in mid-May 2025 to better document activity at Black Diamond Pool captured a similar small eruption on 31 May 2025.

Better Science for Better Response

The scientific response to the 23 July 2024 hydrothermal explosion has focused on improving understanding of the event to inform strategies that can be used to detect, and potentially forecast, similar future explosions. New hazard maps and recent geophysical investigations will guide NPS’s response to ensure public safety within Biscuit Basin, helping to address specific questions such as when the basin can be reopened, whether walkways must be relocated, and what the short-term probability of another large explosive event at Black Diamond Pool is. Scientific investigation will also guide YVO’s efforts to deploy targeted monitoring to other hydrothermal areas in Yellowstone National Park.

Hydrothermal explosions in Yellowstone National Park are an underappreciated hazard, and a pressing need exists to better understand where, why, and how often they happen. Filling these knowledge gaps requires multidisciplinary studies that consortia like YVO and its collaborators are well suited to undertake. Ultimately, improved monitoring of hydrothermal hazards will aid risk assessment and mitigation and help park officials and visitors avoid dangerous situations in Biscuit Basin, elsewhere in Yellowstone National Park, and at hydrothermal systems worldwide.

Acknowledgments

We especially thank Jamie Farrell, who assisted with preparation of this article and led the deployment of temporary seismometers and infrasound arrays in Biscuit Basin after the July 2024 explosion. We also acknowledge the many people involved in event response, scientific investigation, and management and policy decisions associated with the 23 July 2024 explosion of Black Diamond Pool. Scientists and personnel from USGS, NPS, Colorado State University, the University of Utah, the University of Wyoming, and Montana Technological University who have contributed include Phillip Kondracki, Alex Hammerstrom, Kiernan Folz-Donahue, Elle Blom, Blaine McCleskey, Sara Peek, Shaul Hurwitz, Steven Rice, Carrie Guiles, Jaclyn Mcllwain, Hillary Robinson, Andy Parkinson, Lexi Peterson, Lisa Morgan, Pat Shanks, Greg Vaughan, Jen Lewicki, Alycia Cox, Michael Loya, Andrew Miller, Katie Copeland, Kallen Snow, and Adaeze Ugwu. We thank Shaul Hurwitz and Patrick Muffler for constructive reviews. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. government.

References

Breard, E. C. P., et al. (2014), Using the spatial distribution and lithology of ballistic blocks to interpret eruption sequence and dynamics: August 6 2012 Upper Te Maari eruption, New Zealand, J. Volcanol. Geotherm. Res., 286, 373–386, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2014.03.006.

Browne, P. R. L., and J. V. Lawless (2001), Characteristics of hydrothermal eruptions, with examples from New Zealand and elsewhere, Earth Sci. Rev., 52(4), 299–331, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0012-8252(00)00030-1.

Christiansen, R. L., et al. (2007), Preliminary assessment of volcanic and hydrothermal hazards in Yellowstone National Park and vicinity, U.S. Geol. Surv. Open File Rep., 2007-1071, 94 pp., https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2007/1071/.

Fournier, R. O. (1985), The behavior of silica in hydrothermal solutions, in Geology and Geochemistry of Epithermal Systems, Rev. Econ. Geol., vol. 2, edited by B. R. Berger, P. M. Bethke, and J. M. Robertson, pp. 45–61, Soc. of Econ. Geol., Littleton, Colo., https://doi.org/10.5382/Rev.02.03.

Fournier, R. O., et al. (1991), Conditions leading to a recent small hydrothermal explosion at Yellowstone National Park, Geol. Soc. Am. Bull., 103(8), 1,114–1,120, https://doi.org/10.1130/0016-7606(1991)103%3C1114:CLTARS%3E2.3.CO;2.

Montanaro, C., et al. (2022), Phreatic and hydrothermal eruptions: From overlooked to looking over, Bull. Volcanol., 84(6), 64, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-022-01571-7.

Morgan, L. A., W. C. P. Shanks III, and K. L. Pierce (2009), Hydrothermal processes above the Yellowstone magma chamber: Large hydrothermal systems and large hydrothermal explosions, Spec. Pap. Geol. Soc. Am., 459, https://doi.org/10.1130/2009.2459(01).

Muffler, L. J. P., D. E. White, and A. H. Truesdell (1971), Hydrothermal explosion craters in Yellowstone National Park, Geol. Soc. Am. Bull., 82(3), 723–740, https://doi.org/10.1130/0016-7606(1971)82[723:heciyn]2.0.co;2.

Poland, M. P., et al. (2025), The first instrumentally detected hydrothermal explosion in Yellowstone National Park, Geophys. Res. Lett., 52(11), e2025GL115850, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL115850.

Price, M. B., et al. (2024), Historic water chemistry data for thermal features, streams, and rivers in the Yellowstone National Park area, 1883–2021, data release, U.S. Geol. Surv., Reston, Va., https://doi.org/10.5066/P9KSEVI1.

Thiéry, R., and L. Mercury (2009), Explosive properties of water in volcanic and hydrothermal systems, J. Geophys. Res. Solid Earth, 114(B5), B05205, https://doi.org/10.1029/2008JB005742.

Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (2022), Volcano and earthquake monitoring plan for the Yellowstone Caldera system, 2022–2032, U.S. Geol. Surv. Sci. Invest. Rep., 2022-5032, 23 pp., https://doi.org/10.3133/sir20225032.

Author Information

Lauren Harrison (lauren.n.harrison@colostate.edu), Colorado State University, Fort Collins; Michael Poland, Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, U.S. Geological Survey, Vancouver, Wash.; Mara Reed, University of California, Berkeley; Ken Sims, University of Wyoming, Laramie; and Jefferson D. G. Hungerford, National Park Service, Mammoth, Wyo.

Citation: Harrison, L., M. Poland, M. Reed, K. Sims, and J. D. G. Hungerford (2025), Hydrothermal hazards on display in Yellowstone National Park, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250233. Published on 27 June 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.

Coastal waters worldwide are rapidly losing oxygen, causing declines in marine life and affecting communities who rely on the health of coastal waters.

Prominent examples of low-oxygen coastal waters are found in the Baltic Sea, for instance, where oxygen loss in recent decades has led to major ecosystem changes. Potentially toxic cyanobacterial blooms have become frequent and widespread, spawning grounds for cod have been greatly reduced, and fish kills have been observed in coastal waters [Conley et al., 2009]. Similar issues have afflicted the Gulf of Mexico, the Adriatic Sea, the East China Sea, and numerous other areas.

The main cause of declining coastal ocean oxygen is well-known: Since the 1950s, phosphorus and nitrogen from agricultural runoff and wastewater have flowed into coastal seas, where they stimulate phytoplankton blooms that, upon their decay, consume oxygen. This process, called eutrophication, is not the only cause of declining oxygen and so-called dead zones in coastal waters: Increasing global temperatures are contributing by reducing both the solubility of oxygen in seawater and vertical mixing of the ocean water column, thereby limiting the aeration of deeper waters [Breitburg et al., 2018].

Indeed, even coastal systems not experiencing eutrophication, such as the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, may be under threat of low oxygen because of changes in ocean circulation linked to climate change [Wallace et al., 2023].

Long-term reductions in nutrient inputs from land are widely acknowledged as essential to mitigate coastal eutrophication, but such reductions will take time to have an effect. Nutrients have been accumulating in many coastal systems for decades, and switching off inputs will not immediately lead to lower concentrations [Conley et al., 2009]. Moreover, reducing nutrient releases from agricultural lands in many regions is proving challenging. Attempts to curtail the global use of fossil fuels and cut greenhouse gas emissions substantially have also been less successful to date than what is required to affect ocean oxygen [Breitburg et al., 2018].

Amid the challenges of achieving global-scale solutions, various means of artificial reoxygenation have been suggested and studied as possible local to regional solutions to coastal oxygen loss [Stigebrandt et al., 2015]. Yet these approaches come with risks that must be assessed carefully before implementation [Conley et al., 2009].

Such assessments are becoming urgent with the emergence of potential new artificial reoxygenation technologies linked to green hydrogen production. This process of splitting water by electrolysis to generate hydrogen also generates oxygen [Wallace et al., 2023], which could be put to use in coastal waters, particularly where green hydrogen production facilities are located close to the sea.

Oxygen Supply Versus Demand

Coastal seas gain oxygen naturally through air-sea exchange, vertical and lateral mixing of seawater, and photosynthetic production by phytoplankton (Figure 1). They lose oxygen through respiration of organic matter in the water column and the underlying sediment. Surface waters typically remain oxygenated because of rapid air-sea exchange and primary productivity, but in deeper waters, oxygen removal may dominate, especially in systems with limited vertical mixing [Fennel and Testa, 2019].

The main goal of artificial reoxygenation is to increase the supply of oxygen to deeper waters enough that the water and sediment at the seafloor surface become or remain oxygenated. The oxygen supply needed to achieve this goal depends on the local oxygen demand, which itself depends on the input of organic matter from sinking phytoplankton biomass and the eutrophication history of the system. If organic matter inputs remain high or a lot of organic matter has accumulated on the seafloor, oxygen demand may remain high for a long time. This “legacy” effect can hinder the reoxygenation of a coastal system, as shown in the Baltic Sea [Hermans et al., 2019].

A secondary goal of reoxygenation is to limit recycling of phosphorus from sediments, which, in turn, may reduce the availability of phosphorus as a nutrient for phytoplankton in surface waters. Decreasing how much organic matter is produced and then sinks to the seafloor may lower the oxygen demand for respiration and hence increase oxygen concentrations in deeper waters [Conley et al., 2009].

Inspired by methods used to reoxygenate lakes with some success, two broad approaches have been proposed for artificially reoxygenating coastal systems (Figure 2): bubbling pure oxygen or air into the ocean [Koweek et al., 2020; Wallace et al., 2023] and pumping oxygenated surface water to greater water depths, a process called artificial downwelling [Stigebrandt et al., 2015; Lehtoranta et al., 2022].

Bubble diffusers have been used in lakes to oxygenate deep water directly [Koweek et al., 2020] and in shallow coastal systems to destratify and aerate the water column by inducing mixing [Harris et al., 2015]. Artificial downwelling has been tested for local applications in only a few small coastal systems [Stigebrandt et al., 2015; Lehtoranta et al., 2022].

The Imperfections of Artificial Reoxygenation

Studies to date show that artificial reoxygenation can be applied successfully in small estuaries and bays but that its effect lasts only as long as operations are maintained. This outcome was observed, for example, in two Swedish bays following their reoxygenation through pump-driven downwelling [Stigebrandt et al., 2015; Lehtoranta et al., 2022]. Similarly, when aerators were switched off in a shallow subestuary of the Chesapeake Bay after several decades of aeration, low-oxygen, or anoxic, levels returned within a day [Harris et al., 2015].

The rapid return of anoxia upon discontinuing artificial reoxygenation operations—also known from applications in lakes—illustrates that these approaches alone do not provide permanent solutions to deoxygenation because they do not address its root causes. Moreover, adding oxygen to the water column does not mitigate wider water quality problems. Nuisance algal blooms in many coastal areas will still occur if the availability of nutrients for phytoplankton remains high.

In the Baltic Sea, for example, natural decadal-scale reoxygenation of deeper waters linked to lateral inflow of oxygenated North Sea water does not lead to a removal of phosphorus in the sediment [Hermans et al., 2019]. This lack of an effect results from the highly reducing conditions in the seafloor sediment, which hinder formation of phosphorus-containing minerals. Consequently, reoxygenation of the water column in the Baltic does not necessarily decrease recycling of phosphorus [Hermans et al., 2019], which may continue to fuel cyanobacterial blooms [Conley et al., 2009].

Reoxygenation via artificial downwelling may also be unsuccessful if it causes warming of deeper waters, which is a risk, especially when surface water pumps are used to reoxygenate temperature- and density-stratified coastal waters. Transferring warm surface water to colder, denser depths near the seafloor may weaken stratification and enhance vertical mixing. Although this process may increase the downward transfer of oxygen, it can also boost upward mixing of nutrients, which may enhance biological productivity. This enhancement can ultimately increase the oxygen demand in deeper waters to such an extent that a net decrease in oxygen results [Conley et al., 2009; Lehtoranta et al., 2022].

Warming at depth can also lead to greater metabolic activity and increased respiration of organic matter, further decreasing oxygen concentrations instead of increasing them as intended.

Side Effects on Climate and Habitats

Artificial reoxygenation may have other undesirable effects as well. It can alter the dynamics of greenhouse gases in coastal waters, for example, because increased aerobic respiration increases carbon dioxide production.

Furthermore, bubbling air through shallow coastal waters can enhance upward transport of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in the water column and its emission to the atmosphere [Lapham et al., 2022]. In eutrophic coastal systems, reoxygenation does not necessarily suppress the release of methane from sediments [Żygadłowska et al., 2024], implying that upon bubbling, methane emissions from coastal waters may be greater than without reoxygenation.

Reoxygenation operations may also alter ocean habitats and have unintended consequences for marine life. Bubbling generates underwater noise, turbulence, and gradients in oxygen pressure that differ from naturally occurring conditions. Artificial downwelling not only changes water column temperatures but also alters vertical salinity distributions, with unknown consequences for marine organisms [Conley et al., 2009; Wallace et al., 2023]. In addition, the return of bottom-dwelling animals with reoxygenation may cause increased sediment mixing that remobilizes sediment contaminants [Conley et al., 2009].

Assessing Artificial Reoxygenation as a Solution

Taken together, the body of evidence from reoxygenation studies to date indicates that long-term improvements in the oxygen levels and quality of coastal waters require reductions in nutrient inputs and greenhouse gas emissions. Hence, artificial reoxygenation, when applied, should always be only one of various measures used to improve water quality.

In heavily managed coastal systems, reoxygenation may be a temporary solution, as illustrated by its successful application in a subestuary of the Chesapeake Bay [Harris et al., 2015]. Elsewhere, such as in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, reoxygenation might be harnessed to maintain the current oxygen state of the system [Wallace et al., 2023]. However, responses to reoxygenation in eutrophic systems with strong legacy effects, where sediments act as a source of nutrients and a sink for oxygen, are very difficult to predict [Conley et al., 2009; Hermans et al., 2019].

The dependence of reoxygenation effects, either from aeration or from pumping, on site-specific biological, chemical, and physical characteristics, which are often poorly known and differ greatly worldwide, also hinders predictions of responses. Yet accurately predicting the effects of artificial reoxygenation before implementing it is critical and consistent with the precautionary principle that in the absence of scientific certainty, we should act to avoid harm.

This principle can be interpreted to suggest that no measures should be taken in some cases and that in other cases, measures should not be postponed because delay could lead to even more harm. Thus, careful case-by-case assessments of the suitability of artificial reoxygenation at given sites are needed—as is careful monitoring when operations are implemented. Modeling studies are valuable for such assessments [e.g., Koweek et al., 2020] but must be paired and validated with field data.

The potential availability of substantial oxygen supplies to support artificial reoxygenation as a result of increasing green hydrogen production further raises the urgency of suitability assessments [Wallace et al., 2023]. If such supplies can be tapped near coastal areas, they may help make artificial aeration operations logistically more viable and sustainable.

Foundations for Responsible Reoxygenation

For areas found to be potentially well suited for artificial reoxygenation interventions, consensus best practices should be followed when initiating pilot studies or larger implementations. As informed by discussions during a recent meeting organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission’s (UNESCO-IOC) Global Ocean Oxygen Network, several elements are foundational to these best practices.

Relevant government bodies, such as national and local water management authorities; stakeholders, including representatives of local communities; and scientists should be involved from the outset to safeguard the interests of all parties. Field trials and implementations should consider perceived environmental benefits and risks of the intended intervention, as well as relevant ethical issues, taking into account the intrinsic value of nature.

Key biological, chemical, and physical parameters of the system where the intervention will occur (as well as of a reference site) should be monitored before, during, and afterward. This monitoring is important for understanding baseline conditions and assessing the effects of reoxygenation on water quality and ecology, including termination effects after an intervention ceases. Continued measurements over years to decades are also critical to determine longer-term effects.

Finally, the results of all field trials, including failures, should be reported completely, transparently, and publicly.

Artificial reoxygenation is unlikely to be a permanent solution to declining ocean oxygen, and it cannot replace essential measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient inputs to ocean waters. But with science-based suitability assessments and ethical, environmentally safe practices, reoxygenation interventions might prove beneficial in some places, allowing temporary mitigation of the detrimental consequences of coastal deoxygenation.

Acknowledgments

This feature article summarizes the discussion of a workshop on marine reoxygenation organized by the Global Ocean Oxygen Network (GO₂NE), a UNESCO-IOC working group, on 10–11 September 2024. We thank all participants for their contributions: D. Austin, L. Bach, L. Bopp, D. Breitburg, A. Canning, D. Conley, M. Dai, B. DeWitte, H. Enevoldsen, E. Ferrar, A. Galan, V. Garcon, M. Gregoire, B. Gustafsson,, D. Gutierrez, A. Hylén, K. Isensee, R. Lamond, M. Li, K. Limburg, I. Montes, J. Sterling, A. Tan Shau Hwai, J. Testa, D. Wallace, J. Waniek, and M. Yasuhara.

References

Breitburg, D., et al. (2018), Declining oxygen in the global ocean and coastal waters, Science, 359, 1–13, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aam7240.

Conley, D. J., et al. (2009), Tackling hypoxia in the Baltic Sea: Is engineering a solution?, Environ. Sci. Technol., 43, 3,407–3,411, https://doi.org/10.1021/es8027633.

Fennel, K., and J. M. Testa (2019), Biogeochemical controls on coastal hypoxia, Annu. Rev. Mar. Sci., 11, 105–130, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-010318-095138.

Grégoire, M., et al. (2023), Ocean Oxygen: The Role of the Ocean in the Oxygen We Breathe and the Threat of Deoxygenation, edited by A. Rodriguez Perez et al., Future Sci. Brief 10, Eur. Mar. Board, Ostend, Belgium, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7941157.

Harris, L. A., et al. (2015), Optimizing recovery of eutrophic estuaries: Impact of destratification and re-aeration on nutrient and dissolved oxygen dynamics, Ecol. Eng., 75, 470–483, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2014.11.028.

Hermans, M., et al. (2019), Impact of natural re-oxygenation on the sediment dynamics of manganese, iron and phosphorus in a euxinic Baltic Sea basin, Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, 246, 174–196, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gca.2018.11.033.

Koweek, D. A., et al. (2020), Evaluating hypoxia alleviation through induced downwelling, Sci. Total Environ., 719, 137334, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.137334.

Lapham L. L., et al. (2022), The effects of engineered aeration on atmospheric methane flux from a Chesapeake Bay tidal tributary, Front. Environ. Sci., 10, 866152, https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.866152.

Lehtoranta, J., et al. (2022), Different responses to artificial ventilation in two stratified coastal basins, Ecol. Eng., 179, 106611, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoleng.2022.106611.

Stigebrandt, A., et al. (2015), An experiment with forced oxygenation of the deepwater of the anoxic By Fjord, western Sweden, Ambio, 44(1), 42–54, https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-014-0524-9.

Wallace, D., et al. (2023), Can green hydrogen production be used to mitigate ocean deoxygenation? A scenario from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Mitigation Adapt. Strategies Global Change, 28, 56, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-023-10094-1.

Żygadłowska, O. M., et al. (2024), Eutrophication and deoxygenation drive high methane emissions from a brackish coastal system, Environ. Sci. Technol., 58, 10,582–10,590, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.4c00702.

Author Information

Caroline P. Slomp (caroline.slomp@ru.nl), Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands; also at Utrecht University, Netherlands; and Andreas Oschlies, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany

Citation: Slomp, C. P., and A. Oschlies (2025), Could bubbling oxygen revitalize dying coastal seas?, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250163. Published on 1 May 2025.

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

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.

This is an authorized translation of an Eos article. Esta es una traducción al español autorizada de un artículo de Eos.

Las ciudades del noroeste del Pacífico estadounidense y canadiense llevan mucho tiempo siendo incubadoras de políticas ambientales novedosas. Los gobiernos de Portland (Oregón), Seattle y Vancouver (Columbia Británica), por ejemplo, fueron de los primeros en promulgar límites de crecimiento urbano [Nelson y Moore, 1993; Hepinstall-Cymerman et al., 2011], planes de acción climática [Rutland y Aylett, 2008; Affolderbach y Schulz, 2017] y políticas de energía limpia.

Estas ciudades también comparten entornos geológicos similares — los volcanes activos de las Cascadas dominan sus horizontes orientales, mientras que al oeste, una zona de subducción oculta mar adentro amenaza con terremotos potencialmente catastróficos. Esta yuxtaposición de apertura a la innovación política y experiencia de vida junto a peligros tectónicos activos apunta a una forma no reconocida previamente en que las ciudades, en esta región y más allá, podrían aprender y aplicar importantes lecciones sobre resiliencia a otros riesgos — al aprender de los científicos de los observatorios volcánicos del mundo.

Los volcanes y los terremotos plantean riesgos particulares en el noroeste del Pacífico y en otros lugares, pero al igual que las zonas urbanizadas de todo el mundo, estas regiones ahora también se enfrentan a amenazas climáticas sin precedentes. Cada ciudad debe hacer frente a su propia combinación de peligros cada vez mayores derivados del calor extremo, los incendios forestales y el humo, el viento, el hielo, la subida del nivel del mar y las inundaciones. Las combinaciones de estos peligros, muchos de los cuales se producen a escalas y con frecuencias que van más allá que aquellas experimentadas por los miembros y líderes de las comunidades, están desbordando las capacidades de los gobiernos municipales para prepararse, responder y recuperarse.

Pocos gobiernos locales cuentan con personal especializado para adaptarse y responder adecuadamente en tiempo real a catástrofes que cambian y se agravan con rapidez [Fink y Ajibade, 2022]. Tampoco disponen de los recursos necesarios para educar al público sobre la creciente amplitud y gravedad de los riesgos exacerbados por el clima o para invertir en infraestructuras físicas y sociales suficientes para proteger a los residentes de los impactos catastróficos. Uno de los mayores desafíos -y oportunidades- para las ciudades que intentan aumentar su resiliencia es adaptar las lecciones aprendidas en otros lugares a sus situaciones geográficas, demográficas, políticas y económicas específicas.

Aquí es donde los enfoques de los vulcanólogos pueden ayudar.

Un modelo para cartografiar el riesgo local

Único entre los grupos que vigilan los riesgos naturales, el personal de los observatorios de volcanes y sus colaboradores – como lo ha sido uno de nosotros (J.F.) desde hace casi 50 años – deben comprender la gama de riesgos concentrados en un entorno geográfico determinado. Los equipos y centros que rastrean la sismicidad, los derrumbes, los flujos de escombros, los tsunamis, los huracanes, los tornados o las inundaciones típicamente trabajan en múltiples sitios a escala regional, nacional o mundial.

En cambio, la mayoría de los observatorios de volcanes, algunos de los cuales datan de mediados del siglo XIX, están situados a la vista de uno o varios volcanes específicos que son el centro de su atención. El personal de estos observatorios debe aplicar los conocimientos adquiridos de otros volcanes, y de la teoría general sobre los riesgos volcánicos, a las condiciones particulares de su sitio para evaluar y prever los riesgos locales.

Esta necesidad de adaptar los pronósticos se extiende hasta escalas metropolitanas e incluso a nivel de vecindarios. Por ejemplo, algunas zonas de Tacoma (Washington) están construidas sobre depósitos de flujos de lodo volcánico procedentes de erupciones anteriores del monte Rainier, mientras que los suburbios de Seattle, a menos de 30 kilómetros más al norte, se asientan sobre flujos piroclásticos consolidados procedentes de ese mismo volcán.

Nápoles, Italia, ofrece otro ejemplo: Los residentes de la parte oriental de la ciudad tienen que preocuparse por los productos explosivos que salen del Vesubio, mientras que los barrios occidentales cercanos a los Campos Flégreos se enfrentan a mayores amenazas por los gases volcánicos, el levantamiento del suelo y la contaminación de las aguas subterráneas. Las estrategias de alertas y evacuaciones, así como las necesidades de educación pública, pueden variar mucho de una comunidad local a otra.

Lo mismo ocurre con los riesgos climáticos urbanos, que pueden diferir drásticamente de una manzana a otra, en función de variables como la altitud, la cubierta arbórea, las prácticas de construcción, la zonificación y la proximidad al agua. Por ejemplo, la ciudad de Tacoma ha cartografiado la resiliencia ante el aumento del nivel del mar a nivel para cada manzana, mostrando las áreas que probablemente serán inundadas según diferentes escenarios climáticos.

Para ayudar a transmitir los riesgos de la actividad volcánica que varían geográficamente, los vulcanólogos de los observatorios elaboran mapas detallados de peligrosidad específicos de los volcanes en los que se centran. Estos mapas podrían servir de modelo para la nueva práctica de cartografiar los riesgos climáticos urbanos. Los mapas de peligrosidad de los volcanes podrían, por ejemplo, delimitar las zonas sujetas a flujos de lodo volcánico, eventos de colapso de domos o emisiones de gases, proporcionando a las comunidades información anticipada relevante a nivel local. Mapas similares de las zonas urbanas podrían indicar los peligros climáticos más probables o de mayor impacto a escala de vecindarios o incluso de manzana, o podrían resaltar en qué zonas de relieve múltiples peligros podrían provocar efectos compuestos.

De manera crucial, los observatorios volcánicos monitorean, mapean y comunican riesgos que no respetan límites municipales, estatales ni siquiera nacionales (por ejemplo, los flujos de lodo volcánico del Monte Baker en Washington pueden afectar los suburbios de Vancouver, Columbia Británica). Este enfoque indiferente a las fronteras ofrece un modelo valioso para prepararse y responder a las amenazas climáticas, las cuales se experimentan a través de distintas jurisdicciones, pero a menudo son abordadas de manera fragmentada por los gobiernos locales.

Llevar los peligros a casa

Otro paralelismo entre los observatorios de volcanes y las oficinas de resiliencia de las ciudades es que el personal de cada uno de ellos a veces debe alertar al público sobre eventos que están fuera del alcance de la experiencia vivida previamente por la comunidad. Por ejemplo, cuando los volcanes despiertan después de largos periodos de inactividad, como el Monte Santa Helena en 1980 o el Monte Pinatubo en 1991, típicamente muy pocos, si es que incluso alguno, de los residentes cercanos se han preocupado o preparado alguna vez para los peligros eruptivos.

De manera similar, los habitantes de las ciudades tienen dificultades para imaginar los peligros del cambio climático que nunca han enfrentado. Hace diez años, por ejemplo, los residentes de Portland — como nosotros — probablemente no habrían previsto temperaturas de 108°F, 112°F y 116°F en días sucesivos, como ocurrió en 2021. (Antes del evento de del domo de calor de ese año, la temperatura más alta registrada había sido de 107°F en 1981). De igual manera, probablemente no habríamos previsto períodos prolongados de aire cargado de humo que la EPA de EE. UU. designó como “insalubre para grupos sensibles” — antes de 2015, Portland nunca había experimentado tales condiciones — o incendios forestales que se acercaran a la zona metropolitana, como sucedió en 2017 y 2020. Tendencias similares de condiciones históricamente anómalas que ocurren con mayor frecuencia se están presentando en un número creciente de ciudades alrededor del mundo.

Los fallecidos cineastas Katia y Maurice Krafft, vulcanólogos famosos por su prolífica y cercana documentación de erupciones activas, reconocieron el problema de la falta de preparación de las comunidades ante los riesgos naturales tras la erupción del Nevado del Ruiz en Colombia en 1985. Aquel suceso acabó con la vida de 22, 000 personas, a pesar de que los geólogos habían advertido un mes antes sobre los mismos tipos de flujos de lodo que acabaron sepultando la ciudad de Armero [Voight, 1990]. Los Krafft dedicaron entonces sus vidas a hacer películas para ayudar a las poblaciones vulnerables a apreciar mejor los peligros desconocidos asociados a erupciones volcánicas poco frecuentes, pero potencialmente mortales.

Usando las herramientas de edición relativamente simples de las décadas de 1980 y 1990, los Krafft superpusieron imágenes de erupciones volcánicas violentas sobre paisajes distantes y panorámicas de ciudades familiares para las poblaciones locales en otros lugares, con el fin de captar su atención y provocar reacciones más viscerales que las que podrían generar las conferencias orales o los informes escritos.

Las oficinas de resiliencia urbana actuales deben hacer lo mismo con sus residentes amenazados por nuevos extremos climáticos. Para ello, pueden aprovechar potentes tecnologías como la realidad virtual (RV), la realidad aumentada (RA) y los teléfonos inteligentes equipados con LiDAR, así como populares plataformas de redes sociales como TikTok, que se están utilizando ahora para complementar las herramientas tradicionales de evaluación de los riesgos volcánicos. Por ejemplo, la RV y la RA se han utilizado para comunicar el riesgo volcánico a las poblaciones locales y a los turistas que visitan el Monte Vesubio y las ruinas de Pompeya [Solana et al., 2008]. Y la RV combinada con motores de software de juegos ha permitido analizar la cartografía basada en drones de zonas de otro modo inaccesibles de la isla griega de Santorini, donde el asentamiento de la civilización minoica fue destruido por erupciones volcánicas en torno al año 1600 a.C. [Tibaldi et al., 2020].

Colaboración, no colonialismo

Una tercera similitud entre el trabajo de los vulcanólogos de los observatorios y los programas de resiliencia climática urbana es la necesidad de trabajar de manera colaborativa con expertos locales y residentes, pero evitando el “colonialismo científico“. Muchos de los volcanes más peligrosos del mundo se encuentran en países de ingresos bajos y medios. Los funcionarios y científicos de esos países a menudo se benefician de la ayuda de colegas de observatorios en otros países para evaluar e interpretar los riesgos volcánicos locales. Sin embargo, esta asistencia a veces genera resentimiento cuando los investigadores extranjeros recopilan y publican datos críticos sin reconocer adecuadamente ni incluir a los observadores locales.

El resentimiento también puede surgir en los esfuerzos relacionados con la resiliencia urbana. Muchas de las comunidades más vulnerables a las amenazas climáticas se encuentran en países y ciudades que carecen de grandes establecimientos científicos o presupuestos para implementar medidas de resiliencia. En contraste, los enfoques más visibles y prevalentes de resiliencia climática han sido desarrollados por y para comunidades más acomodadas. La barrera del río Támesis, construida hace décadas para proteger a Londres de inundaciones severas, fue un ejemplo temprano de esto; la infraestructura de Copenhague para gestionar lluvias intensas es un ejemplo más reciente.

Las instituciones adineradas a veces ayudan a asegurar recursos para apoyar a los gestores y personal técnico en áreas de bajos ingresos, quienes luego pueden comprender y relacionarse mejor con sus poblaciones locales y generar respuestas culturalmente apropiadas. Como gerente de sostenibilidad en la Oficina de Planificación y Sostenibilidad de la ciudad de Portland, uno de nosotros (M.A.) fue frecuentemente llamado a asesorar a funcionarios municipales de otros países. De manera similar, el Banco Mundial comúnmente trae asesores de la Unión Europea o de América del Norte para ser consultores en proyectos en África y Asia. Sin embargo, al igual que con los vulcanólogos, el objetivo de estos asesores en resiliencia urbana debe ser ayudar a los funcionarios locales a lograr autosuficiencia científica, en lugar de dependencia.

Dado que la mayoría de las ciudades comparten una serie de responsabilidades comunes -incluida la seguridad pública, la gestión del agua, la respuesta a emergencias y el mantenimiento de infraestructuras-, también comparten retos comunes a la hora de hacer frente al cambio climático (aunque su combinación específica de riesgos varíe). Por ello, las iniciativas de aprendizaje entre iguales han intentado llenar pronunciados vacíos en el conocimiento del clima a escala de las ciudades. Organizaciones no gubernamentales como el Grupo de Liderazgo Climático de Ciudades C40, la Red MetroLab, ICLEI-Gobiernos Locales por la Sostenibilidad y la Red de Ciudades Resilientes (creada a partir de la iniciativa 100 Ciudades Resilientes de la Fundación Rockefeller) han contribuido a aumentar la concienciación sobre las crecientes amenazas a las que se enfrentan las ciudades, así como sobre las mejores prácticas para responder a ellas. Los organismos federales de Estados Unidos, como la Agencia Federal de Gestión de Emergencias, el Departamento de Vivienda y Desarrollo Urbano y la NOAA, también ofrecen directrices a los gobiernos locales.

Sin embargo, los funcionarios locales han criticado a veces los enfoques de estos programas y agencias de amplio alcance por ser demasiado prescriptivos o verticalistas. Incluso la idea de que existe un modelo único de «ciudad resiliente» al que deberían aspirar las «ciudades normales» ha recibido considerables críticas [Naef, 2022]. Lo que suele faltar es la aportación de expertos locales, incluidas voces indígenas, con los conocimientos y la amplia experiencia práctica necesarios para asesorar a sus ciudades sobre los retos a los que se enfrentan y sobre soluciones adecuadas, viables y adaptadas.

También en este caso, los vulcanólogos gubernamentales pueden ofrecer lecciones útiles. Agencias nacionales como el Servicio Geológico de Estados Unidos (con su Programa de Asistencia en Desastres Volcánicos), la Agencia Meteorológica de Japón, el Instituto Nacional de Geofísica y Vulcanología de Italia, el Instituto de Física del Globo de París de Francia y Ciencia GNS de Nueva Zelanda cuentan con equipos de vulcanólogos bien dotados que pueden desplegar en crisis emergentes. En lugar de actuar unilateralmente para recopilar datos o dirigir las respuestas, estos equipos ayudan a evaluar los peligros inmediatos al tiempo que apoyan a los científicos y funcionarios locales, con los que a menudo ya han establecido relaciones, para que se hagan cargo de los esfuerzos de respuesta tan pronto como sea práctico [Lowenstern et al., 2022].

Las organizaciones que se centran en la resiliencia climática urbana podrían seguir el modelo de estos programas para crear acuerdos similares que se asocien con los gobiernos de las ciudades y ofrezcan asistencia rápida durante las emergencias juntocon el desarrollo de recursos humanos a largo plazo. Estas asociaciones no tienen por qué ser prescriptivas ni considerarse puramente altruistas. Los países menos desarrollados pueden ofrecer lecciones clave a sus homólogos más ricos, que quizá estén empezando ahora a hacer frente al tipo de perturbaciones climáticas a gran escala que han afectado a las economías emergentes durante muchas décadas. Anguelovski et al. [2014], por ejemplo, señalaron las lecciones de resiliencia de Durban (Sudáfrica), Quito (Ecuador) y Surat (India) que son relevantes para las ciudades del Norte Global que se enfrentan a nuevos retos.

Además, al igual que los observatorios de volcanes y los programas de intercambio internacional son fundamentales para formar a las futuras generaciones de expertos en erupciones, los nuevos programas centrados en ayudar a las ciudades vulnerables a prepararse para los desastres climáticos podrían incluir de forma similar la educación y la formación de futuros expertos en resiliencia como parte de sus estatutos.

Compartir los conocimientos necesarios

La transferencia de las enseñanzas de la vulcanología al ámbito de la resiliencia urbana empieza por iniciar conversaciones entre los vulcanólogos, especialmente los de los observatorios, y los responsables de la resiliencia de las ciudades. Una de las principales motivaciones de este artículo es el reconocimiento de que estos grupos rara vez tienen la oportunidad de interactuar. (De hecho, no está claro dónde es más probable que un artículo como éste sea visto por ambos grupos). Desde 1998, la Asociación Internacional de Vulcanología y Química del Interior de la Tierra ha organizado 12 conferencias de Ciudades sobre Volcanes (CoV) en ciudades (como Portland) que se han visto o podrían verse afectadas por erupciones de volcanes cercanos. Sin embargo, en estas reuniones se han tratado casi exclusivamente los riesgos volcánicos; rara vez asisten representantes de ciudades no volcánicas y responsables de la resiliencia centrados en las amenazas climáticas.

El tipo de conversaciones que se necesitan podrían organizarse en el marco de una futura conferencia similar a la de CoV si se invitara a los responsables de resiliencia. La AGU podría patrocinar una conferencia de este tipo. Del mismo modo, el Banco Mundial (que promueve desde hace tiempo el intercambio mundial de información relacionada con la sostenibilidad urbana), la red MetroLab (una organización estadounidense que reúne a ciudades y universidades que estudian y aplican estrategias de resiliencia urbana) o fundaciones que apoyan la acción climática en las ciudades podrían actuar como anfitriones. Las Asociaciones para la Adaptación al Clima de la NOAA, que ofrecen investigación climática regional de alta calidad y están estableciendo relaciones duraderas con los responsables políticos locales, podrían ser un valioso colaborador en estos debates.

En este contexto, los vulcanólogos podrían explicar a los responsables de la resiliencia urbana cómo filtran y adaptan los conocimientos sobre un fenómeno mundial a las condiciones específicas de cada volcán, y cómo se comunican con las poblaciones locales para satisfacer sus necesidades concretas de seguridad. Estos debates podrían revelar ideas que preparen mejor a los gobiernos urbanos y a sus residentes para los peligros climáticos cada vez más peligrosos que se avecinan.

Referencias

Affolderbach, J., and C. Schulz (2017), Positioning Vancouver through urban sustainability strategies? The Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, J. Cleaner Prod., 164, 676–685, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.06.234.

Anguelovski, I., E. Chu, and J. Carmin (2014), Variations in approaches to urban climate adaptation: Experiences and experimentation from the Global South, Global Environ. Change, 27, 156–167, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.05.010.

Fink, J., and I. Ajibade (2022), Future impacts of climate-induced compound disasters on volcano hazard assessment, Bull. Volcanol., 84, 42, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-022-01542-y.

Hepinstall-Cymerman, J., S. Coe, and L. R. Hutyra (2011), Urban growth patterns and growth management boundaries in the central Puget Sound, Washington, 1986–2007, Urban Ecosyst., 16, 109–129, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-011-0206-3.

Lowenstern, J. B., J. W. Ewert, and A. B. Lockhart (2022), Strengthening local volcano observatories through global collaborations, Bull. Volcanol., 84, 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-021-01512-w.

Naef, P. (2022), “100 resilient cities”: Addressing urban violence and creating a world of ordinary resilient cities, Ann. Am. Assoc. Geogr., 112, 2,012–2,027, https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2022.2038069.

Nelson, A. C., and T. Moore (1993), Assessing urban growth management: The case of Portland, Oregon, the USA’s largest urban growth boundary, Land Use Policy, 10, 293–302, https://doi.org/10.1016/0264-8377(93)90039-D.

Rutland, T., and A. Aylett (2008), The work of policy: Actor networks, governmentality, and local action on climate change in Portland, Oregon, Environ. Plann. D Soc. Space, 26, 627–646, https://doi.org/10.1068/d6907.

Solana, M. C., C. R. J. Kilburn, and G. Rolandi (2008), Communicating eruption and hazard forecasts on Vesuvius, southern Italy, J. Volcanol. Geotherm. Res., 172, 308–314, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2007.12.027.

Tibaldi, A., et al. (2020), Real world–based immersive virtual reality for research, teaching and communication in volcanology, Bull. Volcanol., 82, 38, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-020-01376-6.

Voight, B. (1990), The 1985 Nevado del Ruiz volcano catastrophe: Anatomy and retrospection, J. Volcanol. Geotherm. Res., 44, 349–386, https://doi.org/10.1016/0377-0273(90)90027-D.

Datos del autor

Jonathan Fink (jon.fink@pdx.edu), Department of Geology, Portland State University, Ore.; also at Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; and Michael Armstrong, City Scale, Portland, Ore.

This translation by Saúl A. Villafañe-Barajas (@villafanne) was made possible by a partnership with Planeteando and Geolatinas. Esta traducción fue posible gracias a una asociación con Planeteando y Geolatinas.

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.

Strange things are afoot on Saturn’s largest moon.

Alone among solar system satellites, Titan has sand dunes, lakes, rivers, rain, clouds, rainbows, and a thick nitrogen atmosphere. It even possesses organic molecules and possibly an ocean of salt water. Yet all these familiar features are twisted into unfamiliar and unearthly shapes. Methane takes the place of water in the atmosphere, lakes are made of hydrocarbons, and the ocean lies beneath a thick crust of ice. Even the composition of Titanian sand is currently unknown.

Titan’s similarity to Earth and its unique features have spurred scientific curiosity for decades.

In April 2024, NASA approved Dragonfly, a mission consisting of a flying robotic drone with four pairs of rotors to carry it from place to place on the Titanian surface, landing to perform measurements before flying to the next site. NASA plans to launch the craft in 2028, with an anticipated arrival at Titan in 2034.

The drone will carry cameras, a drill to sample surface ice, and a suite of instruments to identify molecules in the atmosphere and on the ground. In addition, it will deploy seismometers, weather monitors, and a microphone to listen to the wind.

For many, including Dragonfly principal investigator Elizabeth “Zibi” Turtle of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), a drone was the obvious choice for Titanian exploration. (Other options included wheeled rovers like those used on Mars and a boat to explore one of Titan’s lakes.)

“Flying from place to place rather than driving across the surface gives us lower risk and much more flexibility in terms of being able to explore different environments,” Turtle said.

The Buzz on Titan

Titan’s atmospheric and surface characteristics lend themselves to flight-based exploration. The moon is larger than the planet Mercury but has less-dense rock and more ice (composed of water and other volatile materials such as methane), so its surface gravity is less than our Moon’s. In addition, Titan’s atmospheric pressure is 1.5 times that of Earth. These properties mean it is physically easier to fly on Titan than on Earth or Mars, Turtle said.

Building a drone to explore the surface is not only practical but desirable: Even with Dragonfly spending most of its time on the ground, flying between sites will enable it to take measurements in far more locations than a rover could.

The Dragonfly team has to take every advantage because Titan is not an easy place to visit. Power generation and temperature are major issues. Not only is it sufficiently far from the Sun that solar-powered missions would need huge panels to operate, but the thick, hazy atmosphere blocks most sunlight from reaching the surface. Those factors also mean Titan is cold: a near-constant 94 K (−179°C or −290°F) at the surface. And because the Saturn system is so far from Earth, Dragonfly must be able to stay warm, navigate, and collect samples almost entirely autonomously.

Nevertheless, the extreme conditions are part of what makes the moon so scientifically intriguing.

“There isn’t one specific thing about Titan that’s interesting,” said Sarah Hörst, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University. “All of these processes that happen every day on Earth are also happening every day on Titan,” she continued, referring to Earth’s water cycle, weather systems, and surface-shaping processes.

For Hörst, Titan’s intrigue comes from the juxtaposition of the familiar with the alien.

“Being able to study all of those things in context with each other is really powerful for trying to understand some of the biggest questions that we have in planetary science: about the origin of life, about the search for life elsewhere in the universe, but also some of the smaller-scale questions too,” Hörst said.

Although Dragonfly is not specifically an origins-of-life mission, Titan’s chemistry is similar enough to that of early Earth to be intriguing. The moon’s yellow-orange atmospheric haze—and possibly the sand on its surface—contains organic molecules and hydrocarbons. Along with water, these are the chemical necessities for life as we know it.

“Anywhere there’s liquid water on Earth, there is life,” Hörst said. Titan’s liquid water is beneath the surface—as is the case on Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede, Titan’s fellow Saturnian moon Enceladus, possibly Neptune’s moon Triton, and the dwarf planet Pluto. If life follows liquid water, it’s quite possible that icy worlds such as these are more common harbors of life than warm, green planets like our own.

Voyager, Boats, and Balloons

Methane was first identified in the Titanian atmosphere in 1944 by astronomer Gerard Kuiper. Although telescopes of the time weren’t able to determine the moon’s total atmospheric composition or thickness, the very presence of an atmosphere led scientists to propose Titan missions during the heady days of planetary exploration in the 1970s, many of which included balloons and other lighter-than-air craft. None of those early designs came to fruition, but they certainly inspired Dragonfly’s design concept.

Pioneer 11 was the first probe to fly past Titan, in 1979. Its findings spurred NASA researchers to divert the path of Voyager 1 to make its own flyby in 1980, providing the first real data on the density and composition of the moon’s atmosphere. (Voyager 2 also got a peek at Titan but could not survey it without sacrificing its chance to visit Uranus and Neptune.) Voyager 1’s flyby could not image the surface at all, leaving scientists’ imaginations free to operate.

In 2000, APL aerospace engineer Ralph Lorenz (now the mission architect for Dragonfly) remembers he “was trying to figure out how much power you would need to push an airship around on Titan [when] I got looking at aerospace vehicles in general and recognized that actually, a helicopter would be a great platform,” he said. “Airships and hot-air balloons are great for champagne breakfasts on your wedding anniversary if you know the weather is going to be good. But if you want to go any place and at a time of your choosing, on Earth you do that by helicopter.”

The technology for autonomous drones without something akin to GPS guidance, however, simply didn’t exist in 2000.

Meanwhile, the joint European Space Agency–NASA Cassini-Huygens mission arrived at Saturn in 2004, with the Huygens lander specifically designed to study Titan. Because some research suggested Titan’s entire surface could be covered in an ocean of liquid methane, ethane, or other hydrocarbons, mission scientists and engineers were unsure whether there was dry land for the Huygens probe to explore. That meant this “lander” was more of a “crasher.”

Huygens was instrumented primarily to study the atmosphere during its 2-hour descent. It had a parachute and was designed to float but had little cushioning and no retrothrusters.

Regardless, Huygens provided humanity’s only image from the moon’s surface in 2005: an orange-brown sandy plain strewn with rounded boulders. During its descent, the probe captured views of hydrocarbon-carved valleys and river deltas.

The Cassini orbiter provided maps of and details about Titan’s weather during multiple flybys between 2004 and 2017, as well as evidence for a possibly global water ocean beneath the surface.

Old Idea with New Technology

Cassini-Huygens was so successful that NASA included further Titan missions in its long-term list of priorities. Some of the older probe ideas got updates, whereas others were rejected. (As Lorenz noted dryly in a 2009 article, “A chemical-fueled hot air balloon was just never a good idea.”) New ideas included the Titan Mare Explorer (TiME), a floating lab dropped into the lake known as Ligeia Mare. TiME didn’t end up being accepted by NASA, to the chagrin of many researchers.

As NASA revisited ideas about missions to Titan, it also reconsidered the possibilities offered by uncrewed aerial vehicles. Autonomous drone technology had undergone revolutions in efficiency, control, and miniaturization since Lorenz and his colleagues proposed the concept more than a decade earlier. They realized the 2000 Titan helicopter idea could be modernized, leading to development of the Dragonfly probe. Meanwhile, the Ingenuity helicopter, part of NASA’s Perseverance mission to Mars, demonstrated multiple successful autonomous flights, helping convince skeptics of Dragonfly’s feasibility.

“Having had a decade plus of rovers executing science on Mars set the stage and got people thinking,” Lorenz said, noting that Titan is substantially more difficult to navigate than the Red Planet. “You need to figure out how to operate in a cryogenic environment [and] fly in a dimly lit environment with a hazy atmosphere. It just seems overwhelming, but then the engineers’ minds kick in, and they realize that each of these challenges is actually quite soluble.”

“We’re really fortunate in that most of the technologies exist in some form for exploring other planets, including autonomous flight,” Turtle said. She also listed cameras, instruments for measuring gamma ray spectra, seismometers, meteorology equipment, and other apparatuses as being well tested on Mars or elsewhere. “We have to make sure that [the equipment] can function in a Titan environment, but it exists.”

The Curiosity and Perseverance rovers also provided off-world success stories for the radioisotope generator Dragonfly will use. This device converts the radioactive decay of plutonium-238 into about 100 watts of electricity, which charges the lithium-ion battery that will power the probe’s flight and scientific instruments. Titan takes about 16 Earth days to orbit Saturn, and because it is tidally locked with the planet, for 8 days at a time Dragonfly will be on Titan’s farside—an ideal time to recharge because no data can be sent back to Earth. A full battery charge would enable the drone to fly a few kilometers before touching down again, so Dragonfly could conceivably fly from one site to another once per Titanian day.

A Titanic Undertaking on Earth

Ensuring scientific equipment can operate under Titan’s conditions is no small undertaking.

The moon’s low gravity is impossible to simulate on Earth, and parabolic airplane flights such as those used to train astronauts are not practical for testing the car-sized probe.

Many atmospheric conditions, however, can be simulated by replicating them exactly or adjusting pressure and temperature.

To that end, APL engineers built two special chambers to test Dragonfly’s instruments under a variety of conditions. The Titan Pressure Environment Chamber is the smaller of these, and though it can’t fit the whole probe inside, the chamber provides the proper −179°C temperature and 1.5 atmospheres of pressure to test its various instruments.

“We can actually test the drill that will do sampling on Titan under Titan conditions to make sure you can break up water ice and get enough material to measure with the mass spectrometer,” Turtle said.

The larger Titan Chamber is a cube roughly 4.5 meters on each side. It’s big enough to perform tests on Dragonfly itself or, because the whole probe isn’t built yet, a full-scale mockup of the probe. The chamber goes through an impressive 750 liters of nitrogen per hour, fed from a tank outside the building that’s bigger than some small-town water towers. The interior is wired with hundreds of sensors and cameras to track everything from temperature to pressure and airflow.

Much of the chamber’s role is to check heat transfer in and out of the probe. Titan’s thick air doesn’t move much: a few meters per second at most, which is comparable to a brisk jog. “If you’re designing to stay warm [with] a couple meter-per-second breeze and you have a day with no wind…you can get too hot,” Turtle said. “Amazingly enough, there are scenarios in which we could actually get too hot on the surface of Titan, which is kind of incomprehensible!”

Because wind results from the interaction of variables such as temperature, pressure, and gravity, to simulate Titan-like breezes under Earth’s gravity, the chamber is kept at Titan temperatures but at 55% of Earth’s atmospheric pressure.

Nearly every part of the probe needs to be covered to prevent all the internal heat from escaping, but to collect scientific data, the entire thing can’t be swaddled up. Titan Chamber tests enable the Dragonfly team to place insulating foam for optimum operation.

Haze, Rocks, and Alien Sand

All of this testing and preparation, of course, is to ensure Dragonfly can do science on Titan.

No matter what it finds, the probe will provide many firsts in planetary science: first mobile geological exploration of an icy moon, first up-close surface observations of a world that has a subsurface ocean, and first detailed chemical experiments on organics on another body.

In addition, Dragonfly’s landing site is adjacent to Selk Crater, which has many researchers excited. As with Jezero Crater on Mars (Perseverance’s landing site), Selk exposes multiple layers of material on Titan’s surface.

“Titan is special because it has surface processes operating that other moons do not,” said Adeene Denton, a planetary geologist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Though Denton is not part of the mission, their interest in craters across the solar system means they will be using results from the probe.

“I’m interested in how what’s going on on the surface connects with the Titan subsurface. If there’s liquid methane on the surface, then theoretically, there’s a ground methane system,” Denton explained, but “nobody really knows!”

Dragonfly will also be flying around outside Selk, in the dune fields that dominate much of Titan’s equatorial region. Turtle explained that these dunes appear to behave similarly to those on Earth—particularly dunes in the Namib Desert in southwestern Africa—but the sand itself is chemically very different: It contains yet-to-be-identified organic compounds.

Part of identifying Titan’s organic compounds is understanding how these molecules form and evolve. This is where chemist A’Laura Hines comes in. A Ph.D. student at George Mason University in Virginia, she jumped at the chance to join the Dragonfly project as part of the NASA Guest Investigator Program.

The type of very cold chemistry occurring on Titan is not widely studied, Hines said. “We don’t have the experimental backlog to be able to talk about how these organics we’re familiar with on Earth interact in these super cold environments at high pressure.”

Hörst’s lab group at Johns Hopkins is doing their part to simulate the Titanian atmosphere and its interactions with the surface. Among other research, the group’s experiments produce reddish-brown organic grains (like those seen in Titan’s atmospheric haze) in a small simulation chamber made in part from a converted beer-brewing tank.

“Titan is fundamentally different than most of the worlds that we have ever studied in detail because the atmosphere and the surface are incredibly closely tied together,” Hörst said, pointing out that even Earth’s hydrologic cycle involves far fewer chemical interactions than the exchange between air and ground on Titan.

For instance, the methane in the moon’s atmosphere gets broken down by sunlight, converting it into hydrogen that escapes into space and ethane that falls to the surface. Somehow, new methane must also be produced because even the tiny amount of sunlight reaching Titan would have destroyed what was present at the moon’s formation 4.5 billion years ago.

In other words, understanding the surface composition of Titan requires studying the atmosphere and subsurface processes. Learning about the ocean beneath the crust means drilling into icy rock and scooping up surface materials.

A Cosmic Laboratory

What planetary scientists know so far about Titan suggests that its air, seas, surface, and subsurface are as interconnected as their counterparts on Earth. Titan’s surface-atmosphere interactions, tidal-driven quakes, and methane “groundwater” springs demonstrate that every part of the moon is connected to the others in a way that makes Dragonfly an incredibly cross-disciplinary project. It’s also a project the team is especially devoted to: Hörst has a Dragonfly-themed license plate, and Hines named her car Titan.

There is so much potential for scientific discovery on Titan that even the probe’s biggest boosters know Dragonfly can’t do it all. For one, Hörst pointed out that Dragonfly isn’t designed as a life detection mission, though some of its onboard experiments might be able to detect life if it’s close enough to the terrestrial version.

However, each new world humanity has studied has revealed something new about our cosmos. Samples returned from asteroids Ryugu and Bennu contained the building blocks of life. Explorations of icy moons and dwarf planets showed that across the solar system, cryovolcanism reshapes and revitalizes cold worlds. The extreme combinations of chemistry, pressures, and temperatures inside the gas and ice giant planets create exotic chemistry unseen on Earth. Lessons learned from each of these words will provide much-needed context for understanding what we find in the unique cosmic laboratory that is Titan.

Even if Titan—the most Earth-like world in the solar system—is lifeless, it promises to teach us something about the chemistry that made life on Earth possible more than 4 billion years ago.

—Matthew R. Francis (@BowlerHatScience.org), Science Writer

Citation: Francis, M. R. (2025), A dragonfly for Titan, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250062. Published on 14 February 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.

Reflections from the Roof of the World

At the top of the world, there is a sea—the remains of one, at least. The summit rocks of Mount Everest, the highest elevation on Earth, contain fossils of trilobites, arthropods, and other denizens of the ancient Tethys Ocean, which once separated the landmasses that are now Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

Today these sea creatures are entombed 8,849 meters (29,032 feet) above sea level. At that elevation, Mount Everest scrapes the jet stream; winds of well over 160 kilometers (100 miles) per hour are common, and temperatures can regularly dip below −30°C (−22°F). Oxygen levels are just one third of what they are at sea level, putting Everest’s summit in the “death zone” where most organisms (including humans) cannot survive for more than a short time.

The fossilized marine organisms that crown Everest have been along for one of the most visibly dramatic geologic rides of the past 60 million years: a reshaping of Earth’s crust that produced the highest mountain range on the planet. The Himalayas include 10 of the world’s 14 “eight thousanders,” the peaks higher than 8,000 meters (26,247 feet), including Kangchenjunga, K2, and, rising above all of them, Everest (also known as Chomolungma or Sagarmatha).

How sediments that once sat under an ocean came to form the roof of the world is a question that has puzzled geologists for more than a century. Expeditions to the high Himalayas to retrieve rock samples and map visible faults, paired with analytical techniques such as seismic profiling and low-temperature thermochronology, have revealed Everest’s internal structure and hinted at how millions of years of tectonic movement have caused it to grow.

Today, scientists have a good picture of the forces that have worked both to push up and bring down Everest. But many questions remain, including when the mountain reached such great heights, whether the rocks that built it were warm and flowy rather than brittle, and how long the world’s highest peak will hold its crown.

Making a Mass of Mountains

Scientists trace the beginnings of Everest and the modern Himalayas to a fated collision that began between 50 million and 60 million years ago. For about 80 million years after breaking from the ancient supercontinent Pangaea, the Indian tectonic plate raced northward before ploughing into the southern edge of Central Asia.

Exactly when the collision started is still debated, but the earliest stratigraphic evidence for it is provided by 59-million-year-old nanofossils and reworked zircons from the Eurasian plate that show up in Indian plate sediments. Evidence from marine sediments puts the final closure of the Tethys Ocean much later, around 34 million years ago.

At that time, the Tibetan Plateau was already a land of mountains. Earlier convergence between the Eurasian plate and oceanic crust underlying the Tethys would have built mountains with a chain of volcanoes, though it’s not clear exactly how high and how far north that mountainous region extended. Today the 4,000- to 5,000-meter-high (13,100– to 16,400-foot-high) Tibetan Plateau covers 2.5 million square kilometers (965,000 square miles) north of the Himalayas.

Some studies using oxygen isotopes, which glean paleoaltimetry data from the composition of rainwater that once fell on the surface, indicate the region may have been 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) above sea level as far back as 60 million years ago.

Other oxygen isotopic evidence shows that the plateau likely rose later and that the Himalayas could have looked something like they do today 40 million years ago, said John Cottle, a geologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Some researchers go even further and argue that the plateau reached its modern elevation only within the past 15 million years.

Regardless of the exact timing, the elevated plateau set the stage for creating the roof of the world, but another colossal geological event was needed for the modern Himalayas to rise.

A continent-on-continent collision is akin to an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object—in this case, the force being the Indian plate and the object being Asia. The base of the Indian plate rammed underneath Asia while its upper sedimentary layers wrinkled and folded on top of themselves like snow piling against a moving shovel. The force of the collision compressed and shortened the Indian plate by as much as 900 kilometers (560 miles), pushing the landscape to towering heights.

The Himalayas today sit just south of the suture, the surface boundary between the still-colliding tectonic plates. Everest itself is near the middle of the range, straddling the border between Nepal and China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.

We still don’t know when Everest took shape as a mountain peak. The rocks from which it is assembled range from tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years old, and many have been metamorphosed by the high temperatures and pressures involved in the collision between the Indian and Asian plates. Some evidence as to when the mountain emerged comes from its tip: The limestone at its summit records evidence of light deformation around 40–45 million years ago, followed by a period of rapid cooling around 35 million years ago, an indication that it was shallowly buried and then pushed to the surface, said Kyle Larson, a structural geologist at the University of British Columbia. That pattern could place an upper limit on the peak’s age.

One study using oxygen isotope paleoaltimetry measurements indicates that Everest was already 5,000 meters (16,400 feet) high by the early Miocene, between 23 million and 16 million years ago. However, this estimate is speculative, as the technique may not be very accurate, said Matt Kohn, a metamorphic petrologist at Boise State University.

How Everest, and not another nearby Himalayan peak, got to be the highest mountain in the world is probably “just luck,” Larson said. “There’s nothing specifically special about Everest.”

Inside Everest

If we could peer inside the Himalayas, we would find a sequence of squished and buried rocks scraped off the Indian plate, separated by faults that slice through much of the crust. These faults all stem from the Main Himalayan Thrust (MHT), along which the Indian plate is still sliding beneath Asia. Each split off the MHT over millions of years as successive layers of material stacked up. The faults all generally dip just slightly to the north and intersect the surface south of Everest, giving geologists a tilted view of the layers that make up the mountain.

At the bottom, deep beneath Everest, are the highly metamorphosed gneisses and granitic rocks of the Indian shield, part of an Archean craton that underlies the subcontinent.

The MHT, which is nearly horizontal, separates these basement rocks from a stack of deformed layers above, each of which contains a different chapter in the tale of collision and mountain building. Older, structurally higher segments of the MHT are now inactive; the Main Frontal Thrust (MFT) is the currently active arm of the MHT. It emerges at the surface far south of Everest, where it thrusts sedimentary rocks of the Siwalik Group, which eroded from the Himalayas to the south into a basin beginning 15 million years ago, over young sediments forming today.

The Siwalik sediments are capped by the Main Boundary Thrust (MBT), which was active around 5 million years ago (though some estimates put this as early as 14 million years ago). Above the MBT are the lightly metamorphosed sediments of the Lesser Himalayan Sequence (LHS) exposed in the lowlands of India, Nepal, and Bhutan. These metamorphosed marine sediments were deposited on the edge of the Indian plate beginning almost 2 billion years ago and have been scraped off and folded by a series of stacked faults that lifted the layers above them.

The Main Central Thrust (MCT), which was active from around 25 million to 13 million years ago, separates the LHS from the Greater Himalayan Sequence (GHS) above. This tens-of-kilometers-thick sequence of highly metamorphosed rocks contains gneisses, as well as pockets of leucogranites formed by partial melting.

The GHS makes up the bulk of Everest and most major Himalayan peaks. Its features are indicative of the titanic forces that have uplifted the range.

Many of the GHS rocks began as sediments deposited in the Precambrian era, more than 540 million years ago, but most of the metamorphism began around 40 million years ago and continued to 15 million years ago. That intense period of metamorphism shows when compressive forces, and perhaps crustal thickening and uplift, were strongest, said Mike Searle, a structural geologist at the University of Oxford.

Above the GHS are more metamorphic rocks topped by the roughly 160-meter-thick (525-foot-thick) Yellow Band, a well-known layer of marble that signals to climbers the summit is near.

At the very top of Everest, beginning at around 8,600 meters, are limestones and other sedimentary and metasedimentary rocks of the Tethys Ocean. The Tethyan rocks are generally younger than rocks of the GHS, though younger leucogranites in the GHS are evidence that that layer was pushed in millions of years after the Tethyan rocks were emplaced. Debate about how and when this happened has yet to be resolved.

Strikingly visible on the mountain’s sheer southwest face, the South Tibetan Detachment System (STDS) separates the GHS from the Tethyan sediments that cap the mountain. Elsewhere in the Himalayas, the STDS is one main fault. However, in Everest it consists of two strands: the lower Lhotse Detachment and the upper Qomolangma Detachment. These faults were likely active at the same time as the MCT, indicating that all three faults are linked.

The STDS is a normal-sense fault that is oriented nearly horizontally, a distinct oddity in a landscape dominated by thrust faults. Along the STDS (and its strands), the rocks of the GHS moved to the south and upward. So-called detachment faults like this are typically found in places where the crust is being stretched and thinned, such as in the U.S. Basin and Range Province, Searle said.

“The structures in the Himalayas were the first time people realized that you could get low-angle normal faults in a compressional tectonic environment,” he said.

Did It Flow, or Did It Wedge?

How a type of fault known to facilitate crustal thinning came to be found at the top of the world’s highest mountain is a long-standing, unsolved problem. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, researchers began describing two distinct hypotheses to decipher it.

One model, known as channel flow, is based on evidence of deformation and metamorphism from the rocks of the GHS in Everest’s deep innards and the MCT and STDS faults that bound them. Leucogranites formed when parts of the Indian plate were partially melted after being pushed deep under Asia and heated, suggesting that the GHS was warm and capable of flowing. Pressed between hard Tethyan rocks above and hard LHS rocks below, the viscous rocks of the GHS flowed outward along the Himalayan range front beginning around 25 million years ago, helped along by strong erosional processes removing material as it was pushed to the surface.

“It’s like squeezing a tube of toothpaste and then taking a cap off the toothpaste,” Larson explained.

Another model, known as critical wedge, presents a different story. Its proponents suggest that within the LHS and GHS, thrust faults repeatedly pushed rocks on top of one another. The duplexing, or stacking of layers, seen in the LHS is consistent with this model, Kohn said, as is evidence that metamorphic rocks in the GHS get progressively younger and less metamorphosed deeper down.

“What you end up with is [the idea that] these rocks under[neath] were transported the least distance into the orogen and the rocks up on top came from the deepest parts of the orogen,” he said.

Both the channel flow and critical wedge models involve the rocks of the GHS being pushed up and to the south beneath the Tethyan sediments, which would necessitate the normal-sense STDS on top and a thrust fault (the MCT) on the bottom, as seen within Everest. Unlike along other normal faults, the rocks above the STDS did not slide down so much as the GHS moved up while Tethyan rocks sat passively above them.

Decisive evidence favoring one theory over the other has yet to emerge, in part because obtaining high-quality data from underneath the Himalayas is challenging. “We don’t really have a very clear idea of what are the fault orientations when they go in the subsurface,” said Malay Mukul, a geologist at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. “That’s a big knowledge gap.”

Many agree that each model likely explains different aspects of the Himalayas, though to what degree isn’t settled. More recent work has suggested a kind of synthesis of the channel flow and critical wedge models, implying they may have worked in concert to build the Himalayas.

Most scientists, regardless of which theory they support, agree that the STDS and MCT became inactive by about 13 million years ago, though a few estimates using different dating methods give younger ages. Meanwhile, the MFT is still pushing the mountain upward.

Everest, Present and Future

While the collision between the Indian plate and Asia was working to push the Himalayas skyward, Everest and other peaks were being carved by rivers and glaciers into the silhouettes we see today.

“With things like the Indian monsoon, Earth is trying to tear [the Himalayas] down as fast as they’re being built,” Larson said. “Because of the large-scale deformation that’s still ongoing, these [peaks] are able to still poke up and be anomalously high.”

Summer monsoons bring at least 300 centimeters (118 inches) of precipitation to parts of the south side of the Himalayan range crest each year. The northern Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau are relatively dry.

This contrast means Everest is two-faced, experiencing a rain shadow effect with far more erosion happening on the south side and much less on the north.

Everest today stands atop the current high point of the Himalayan crest, which divides the southern lowlands from the Tibetan Plateau and bears the brunt of the erosion. What that means for the mountain’s future is uncertain, with opposing forces of tectonic uplift and surface erosion vying to determine the mountain’s height.

GPS measurements show the Himalayas are currently rising by roughly 2 millimeters (0.08 inch) per year, which fits with other evidence showing that the subduction and thickening of the Indian plate are still occurring.

Even more recent events may have given the mountain a boost. A 2024 study claimed the nearby Arun River swelled in size around 90,000 years ago, increasing erosion and leading to isostatic uplift, a process in which the crust rebounds as weight is removed. That process could have added a millimeter (0.04 inch) per year to Everest’s growth, the study’s authors said, though some scientists disagree with their conclusions, which are based on modeling.

Still, scientists widely agree that Everest continues to rise, though how long that might continue and how tall the mountain will get aren’t clear. The mountain may already have reached its limit, Cottle said. “The thickness of the crust that you need to support that elevation is probably already somewhat at a maximum,” he said. Any taller and the crust underneath may move or change, causing the mountain to sink down once again.

Searle, on the other hand, thinks the mountain may have room to grow. As long as the continental collision continues, he said, the Himalayas will rise. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Everest continues growing up and up and up.”

Further in the future, on the order of millions of years, movement on the MFT could stop, because thrust motion could shift to another part of the Indian plate to the south. That new thrust could form nearby, meaning the Himalayas may simply move a few tens of kilometers south, or it could happen much farther away.

Should that happen, the upward motion of the Himalayas would cease, leaving the mountains to be slowly ground down by erosion. Everest is a monument to the gravity-defying power of tectonics. But it is no match for wind, water, and, most of all, time.

Author Information

Nathaniel Scharping

Citation: Scharping, N. (2025), How to build the world’s highest mountain, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250061. Published on 13 February 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.

Anthropogenic climate change is widely recognized by scientists as the preeminent environmental issue of the 21st century [Hansen et al., 2013]. The immense consequences of climate change across virtually every aspect of society have led many scientists to focus on K–12 climate education as part of their “broader impacts” missions. Engaging with K–12 teachers offers researchers extraordinary opportunities to communicate climate science to a wide audience, with far-reaching effects on future generations.

Schoolteachers can play an essential role in teaching scientific and climate literacy, promoting critical thinking, inspiring environmental stewardship, and preparing students to find climate solutions. These circumstances underscore a growing opportunity for scientists to work with K–12 educators hungry for knowledge, tools, and resources that allow them to overcome challenges of teaching about climate change and captivate their students with the complex scientific and policy questions surrounding the subject.

We describe a sustainable and flexible climate science education program that helps schoolteachers and informal educators in the U.S. Midwest address the challenges and opportunities of climate education. Our program, Educating for Environmental Change (EfEC), builds on the expertise of research scientists and provides educators with training, curricular materials, and professional development opportunities. EfEC’s success suggests that it can be a valuable, adaptable model for other parts of the nation and beyond.

Challenges of Climate Change Education

Despite growing interest in climate science education, the topic has proven especially difficult to teach in the United States [Plutzer et al., 2016]. In the Midwest, introducing climate change as a priority issue has been challenging, in part because we’re far from seacoasts battered by worsening hurricanes and storm surge, melting Arctic ice, and other more dramatic climate impacts. The current political climate, in which the reality of the changing climate and the validity of climate science are often questioned, has also contributed to this challenge. Teachers feel pressure from school boards, parents, and students themselves to avoid potentially politically charged topics.

Even here, however, effects of climate change are becoming unmistakable: prolonged heat waves, sharp changes in precipitation patterns, weakened winter freezes and earlier spring thaws, changes in bird migrations, and marked economic impacts on the agricultural economy [Widhalm and Dukes, 2020]. With these effects, perceptions of both policymakers and the public have rapidly changed in the past decade. Residents of Indiana, where we are based, now overwhelmingly support the idea of climate education [Marlon et al., 2022], and as of 2024—thanks to the advocacy of teachers and climate scientists—climate education has been enshrined in the state’s education standards.

Still, the interdisciplinary nature of climate science offers an additional challenge for secondary educators. Few teachers—most of whom were educated in traditional disciplinary silos—have been trained in climate science and feel comfortable teaching the topic to their students. Furthermore, climate science often falls through the cracks of disciplinary education as education standards and standardized tests emphasize core curricular materials. So it’s often unclear to teachers where climate science should be taught: in physics, biology, Earth science, or specialized (e.g., Advanced Placement environmental science) classes? And despite the broad scientific consensus about climate change, there remain insufficient resources on the topic for K–12 educators and limited opportunities for teacher professional development.

State-of-the-art climate science, with its relevance to vital societal issues, lends itself well to scientists’ efforts to engage the public about the broader impacts of research. Schools can be key points of contact with families, voters, policymakers, and tomorrow’s leaders, and they may represent the most effective places to focus our long-term efforts for climate change mitigation. From a pedagogical perspective, climate science has the potential to serve as a cross-disciplinary capstone topic in secondary education environments [Leichenko and O’Brien, 2020].

Teacher professional development programs, by their nature, can have impacts that extend beyond immediate participants to much larger audiences. A typical middle or high school science teacher engages 100–125 students in their classes each year. Thus, a professional development program that involves 20 teachers might directly or indirectly affect several thousand students.

An EfEC-tive Approach

EfEC originated in 2017 through a collaboration between Indiana University (IU) scientists and the university’s School of Education. Since then, EfEC has provided teachers with training, support, and tools—in the form of classroom materials, workshops, and other professional development—to bring climate education into classrooms across the Midwest.

To date, we have facilitated programming for more than 600 educators. (During the 2023–2024 academic year, approximately 50% of participating educators were high school teachers, 20% were middle school teachers, and 30% were elementary school teachers.) These teachers have gone on to reach an estimated 48,000 students (calculated by multiplying the number of participating teachers by their reported average class sizes and the number of years they have been teaching since participating in the program).

Several aspects of EfEC’s programming and resources, including curricular materials with a distinct place-based focus for participating K–12 teachers, set it apart from those of other groups—notably, those whose efforts are focused on a national scale such as the U.S. EPA, NASA, and the National Center for Science Education.

Our scientists and policy scholars work closely with a core group of experienced teachers to develop curricular materials. This instructional codesign process takes advantage of the broad experience of all those involved. It also helps EfEC tailor relevant and timely instructional content to K–12 school settings and ensures that lessons align with various state and national curricula and standards, support different learning styles, and promote student inclusion. The approach also provides deeper content knowledge and career connections for participating teachers. For researchers, it provides new strategies to communicate the broader impacts of their science to wider audiences. Here in Indiana, EfEC team members were directly involved in revising the state’s science standards to include a specific focus on climate science.

EfEC also offers a variety of paths of entry for scientists and teachers to participate. Scientists can engage at different levels of commitment, from a half hour contribution in a teacher training workshop to developing stand-alone curricular programs. For example, two of our faculty participants, working together with two experienced teachers, developed a series of workshops and curricular materials focusing on climate engineering [Goddard et al., 2024].

In recognition of the value of participating scientists’ time and work, we provide both assistance with curriculum module development and financial remuneration. This approach has succeeded in engaging 22 faculty and dozens of graduate students from multiple departments and schools across our university.

Paths of entry for K–12 teachers include a broad array of training and professional development opportunities. For example, intensive 4- to 5-day residential “Summer Science Institutes” for middle and high school science teachers (held when most teachers are on summer break) offer a broad introduction to climate change science and policy. Shorter 1- to 2-day summer workshops provide more fundamental introductions to climate science appropriate for elementary-level classrooms.

We also offer 1-day topical workshops on weekends during the academic year, which allows for deeper dives into topics introduced in our summer workshops, as well as monthly “First Tuesday” evening seminars that focus on timely, state-of-the-art research in climate science. And as a holdover from pandemic era adjustments, we continue to facilitate some of these programs online, allowing larger and more diverse groups of teachers to attend, including some from outside the United States.

To encourage participation and value the professional time of the participating teachers—many of whom find themselves overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, and facing increasing financial and institutional barriers to participation in professional development programs—EfEC offers honoraria for attending its programs. We also provide classroom-ready curricular modules and a broad range of materials, including field and classroom resources, that enable teachers to incorporate climate education directly into their classrooms.

The Ground We Cover

With so many topics to learn about and different approaches to instruction, climate education can be dizzying for learners at all levels. We thus structure EfEC programming to help teachers address three basic scientific questions; a fourth question focuses on pedagogy and affective student learning (i.e., learning through emotional engagement):

1. How do we know Earth’s climate is changing?
2. What are the impacts of climate change?
3. How do we mitigate the impacts of climate changes?
4. How can we teach climate change with optimism?

Each workshop introduces science content relevant to understanding these questions, ranging from technical introductions to global climate modeling or geoengineering to more site-specific aspects of the geologic and historic record relevant to understanding climate change in the Midwest. This content is presented through a combination of introductory lectures, interactive discussions, data and analysis tools, and working through classroom activities that promote curiosity and engagement with the science.

In the process, we strive to engender optimism about contributing to climate solutions. For each environmental challenge we explore—from local to global—we encourage students to imagine and create solutions to address the challenge and empower them to use their knowledge about climate change to advocate thoughtfully for policy changes.

In addition to addressing the four questions above, our workshops often cover other, more focused topics. Examples include policy-related programs on issues in environmental health (e.g., exploring local solutions to urban lead pollution or heat islands) and geoengineering (e.g., imagining and designing possible techniques for modifying global climate systems). Other workshops provide hands-on training with age- and discipline-appropriate climate modeling tools, engage with social science–focused issues such as environmental justice and media literacy, and cover how natural disasters are connected with climate change.

As a concrete product of our workshops, teachers are provided with curricular materials geared for direct implementation into K–12 classrooms. Lessons explicitly integrate material across science and social science disciplines and take advantage of “teachable moments” related to current climatic events in the news. One example is the “Hurricane Game,” a role-playing exercise that places students in the positions of residents and homeowners on the U.S. Gulf Coast facing an incoming hurricane and making life-or-death decisions using uncertain weather forecasts and mediated by a variety of socioeconomic conditions.

EfEC’s curricular materials, as well as examples of online teaching materials, are currently being collated and will be publicly available through our project website (a few lessons are already available). We are also in the process of producing a searchable database to further improve the accessibility of these materials, as well as exploring other options to share them on national and international education platforms.

Elements of Success

Assessment and evaluation are critical elements in all EfEC programming. Each workshop includes quantitative and qualitative evaluations whose results are integrated into the revision and planning of future workshops. These evaluations provide information about the participating teachers’ perceptions of the appropriateness, utility, and transferability of workshop instruction and activities into their teaching.

Postworkshop assessments of all of EfEC’s Summer Science Institutes, for example, have shown enthusiastic support among participants. One hundred percent of the 180 teachers who participated in nine Summer Science Institutes from 2017 to 2024 agreed or strongly agreed that they increased their understanding of how the climate is changing, 97% agreed that they increased their understanding of how humans are causing climate change, and 100% agreed that they expect to apply what they learned in their classroom.

For our Summer Science Institutes, we also conduct both pre- and postworkshop surveys to learn about participating teachers’ (and their students’) attitudes and beliefs about climate change and their self-efficacy for teaching environmental education. These assessments indicate that our programs have improved participating teachers’ confidence to teach about climate change, and the improvement is sustained 9 months after completion of the program, when we follow up with them again. Respondents have reported, for example, that the creation of professional networks, both among participating teachers and between the teachers and research scientists involved, is a key element of EfEC that has influenced their self-efficacy.

Among our plans for future assessment are long-term longitudinal studies of teachers’ incorporation of EfEC materials into their regular classroom programming, as well as direct assessments (including via student surveys, focus groups, and interviews) of how these materials affect student learning.

EfEC’s programming is tailored to the specific interests and needs of teachers in the Midwest. For example, in some workshops, we use state-based climate change assessments [Widhalm and Dukes, 2020] together with a newly developed tool, the Hoosier Resilience Index, which allows students to examine both physical and social-economic conditions that may mitigate or exacerbate challenges of anthropogenic climate change at county and even community levels. Another workshop makes use of EPA’s EJScreen tool to examine environmental justice issues in heavily industrialized regions in Indiana.

Despite its regional focus, EfEC’s approach can be adapted for programs in other geographic, climatic, and academic settings using similar tools relevant to the environmental or climate challenges in those settings.

From our experience, several critical elements are required for success. The first is the initial engagement of a core group of committed scientists interested in global and regional climate-related science and dedicated to communicating their science to broader audiences. In our case, IU’s well-connected School of Education has helped coordinate activities and helped EfEC connect to our state’s K–12 education community.

Another necessity is having a core group of engaged teachers who can help ensure that workshop and curricular materials are appropriately adapted to the target K–12 or informal education environment. These teachers also serve as the center of a radiating network of teachers and students, allowing the program to grow organically. And with some initial momentum, we have found that a sustainable, long-term funding model making use of both public and private foundation grants can be developed.

With these elements in place, we believe EfEC’s approach—demonstrated to succeed in the Midwest—offers an efficacious, sustainable, and engaging mechanism to bring climate science education and literacy to new generations of students elsewhere in the United States and beyond.

References

Goddard, P., et al. (2024), Incorporating climate engineering into secondary education: A new direction for Indiana’s science classrooms, Hoosier Sci. Teach., 47(1), 38–48, https://doi.org/10.14434/thst.v47i1.37892.

Hansen, J., et al. (2013), Assessing “dangerous climate change”: Required reduction of carbon emissions to protect young people, future generations and nature, PLoS One, 8(12), e81648, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0081648.

Leichenko, R., and K. O’Brien (2020), Teaching climate change in the Anthropocene: An integrative approach, Anthropocene, 30, 100241, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2020.100241.

Marlon, J. R., et al. (2022), Change in US state-level public opinion about climate change: 2008–2020, Environ. Res. Lett., 17(12), 124046, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aca702.

Plutzer, E., et al. (2016), Climate confusion among U.S. teachers, Science, 351(6274), 664–665, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab3907.

Widhalm, M., and J. S. Dukes (2020), Introduction to the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment: Overview of the process and context, Clim. Change, 163(4), 1,869–1,879, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-020-02928-7.

Author Information

Michael Hamburger (hamburg@indiana.edu), Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington; and J. Adam Scribner, School of Education, Indiana University, Bloomington

Citation: Hamburger, M., and J. A. Scribner (2025), Integrating K–12 teachers into climate education, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250044. Published on 5 February 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.

This is an authorized translation of an Eos article. Esta es una traducción al español autorizada de un artículo de Eos.

Por más de 60 años, las misiones de ciencias de la Tierra de la NASA, han hecho avanzar nuestra comprensión de los sistemas terrestres y nos han ayudado a monitorear y gestionar los impactos ambientales y del cambio climático, tales como sequías, deforestación, e inundaciones.

Durante ese tiempo, las misiones comúnmente se han diseñado, en primer lugar y ante todo, para atender a la necesidad de datos, de los investigadores que trabajan en responder preguntas científicas apremiantes. Las aplicaciones y usos creativos de estos datos, como los destinados a proporcionar soluciones prácticas o mejoras en la toma decisiones en función de las necesidades de la sociedad, frecuentemente se han tomado en cuenta en momentos más tardíos durante el proceso de desarrollo e implementación.

Pero la creciente urgencia de los desafíos ambientales modernos, exige un enfoque más inmediato en la aplicación de los conocimientos adquiridos en las misiones de observación de la Tierra, en beneficio de la humanidad. Por tanto, la NASA está cambiando su enfoque para priorizar las aplicaciones prácticas de sus datos desde el principio, en el diseño, selección y apoyo de nuevas misiones. Como parte de esta estrategia, la agencia está también, intencionalmente, desarrollando programas y herramientas, pensando en los usuarios finales; y potenciando los beneficios sociales de las misiones y actividades existentes.

Dos ejemplos que demuestran el enfoque actualizado de la NASA, son la misión de Biología y Geología de Superficie (SBG, por sus siglas en inglés), que actualmente está en desarrollo, y la misión en curso del Satélite-2 de Hielo, Nubes y Elevación del Terreno (ICESat-2, por sus siglas en inglés), el cual ha estado en órbita desde 2018.

Valoración de las aplicaciones en el diseño de misiones

La encuesta decenal del 2017, sobre las Ciencias de la Tierra y Aplicaciones desde el Espacio, articuló un consenso en la comunidad científica, sobre la importancia crítica de que los planeadores de las misiones, consideren las posteriores aplicaciones de los datos, sin dejar de abordar las preguntas científicas más apremiantes. Específicamente, la encuesta desafió a la comunidad de las ciencias de la Tierra a “perseguir objetivos cada vez más ambiciosos y soluciones innovadoras, que mejoren y aceleren el valor científico y de aplicación de las observaciones de la Tierra desde el espacio”. Para hacer frente a este desafío, es necesario transformar la forma en como las misiones actuales son implementadas, así como la forma en que las nuevas son diseñadas, para reflejar el énfasis en las aplicaciones de los datos como medida del valor de los mismos.

En respuesta, la NASA desarrolló su nueva estrategia de Ciencias de la Tierra a la acción, que se dio a conocer públicamente en la sesión abierta del 20 de marzo de 2024, del Comité de las Academias Nacionales de Ciencias de la Tierra y Aplicaciones desde el Espacio. Este plan estratégico de 2024-2034, aprovecha la posición única de la NASA, como agencia espacial y científica con capacidades integrales, desde el desarrollo y lanzamiento de tecnologías innovadoras, hasta la mejora del conocimiento científico y la creación de herramientas y modelos que apropian a los responsables de la toma de decisiones para afrontar los desafíos del mundo real.

Una primera iniciativa bajo esta nueva dirección, es el estudio SBG de la NASA, el cual fue el primero de varios objetivos científicos y de aplicación de estudios decenales que se desarrollarán. El estudio decenal subrayó las prioridades de una futura misión del satélite SBG, que incluyen la observación de la vegetación terrestre, los ecosistemas acuáticos, la nieve y el hielo, los cambios activos en la superficie de la Tierra, y los cambios en el uso del suelo, así como el establecimiento de enfoques para gestionar la agricultura, los hábitats naturales, el uso y calidad del agua, y el desarrollo urbano.

El plan del SBG integró estas necesidades de observación en un estudio de arquitecturas potenciales, que evaluó qué tipo de sensores y capacidades de medición son necesarios para adquirir las observaciones deseadas. Lee et al. [2022] describieron cómo en este estudio de arquitectura la NASA involucró a inversores de la comunidad de aplicaciones, incluidas las que gestionan la agricultura, los ecosistemas acuáticos costeros y continentales, y los ecosistemas de nieve y hielo. Este involucramiento proporcionó una base para el diseño ingenieril de la misión, ayudó a centrar las discusiones con los socios internacionales y reforzó los beneficios de definir claramente los productos de datos de la misión desde el principio, tanto para las aplicaciones como para los usuarios de datos científicos.

Un posterior estudio sobre las Necesidades de los usuarios y la Valoración del SBG, también recogió las aportaciones de un amplio conjunto de sectores interesados, incluidos la comunidad de atención de incendios, aquellos que gestionan los impactos del calor urbano en la salud, y los gestores de la conservación y la biodiversidad, entre otros. En este estudio, la NASA enumeró los conceptos de aplicaciones y los contextos de decisión que podrían afectar el diseño de las arquitecturas del SBG. Por ejemplo, la latencia de los datos, la frecuencia temporal de la revisión y la resolución espacial son factores críticos que a menudo determinan si las instituciones interesadas pueden utilizar productivamente un conjunto de datos observacionales.

La latencia de los datos es el tiempo total que transcurre entre el momento en que un sensor adquiere los datos y el momento en quedan disponibles al público, y la frecuencia temporal de revisión es la periodicidad con la cual un lugar de la Tierra es medido por el sensor. Si la latencia o el tiempo entre revisiones es demasiado largo, los datos podrían no ser útiles para la toma de decisiones, por ejemplo, poder avisar a tiempo a las comunidades de inundaciones durante una marea real o para actualizar las alertas de evacuación de “recomendada” a “obligatoria”. De la misma forma, si la resolución espacial de un conjunto de datos, por ejemplo, uno que caracteriza inundaciones u otra amenaza, es demasiado baja, es posible que el personal de emergencia no pueda localizar a las comunidades afectadas para garantizar su seguridad.

Sin embargo, existen compensaciones entre la latencia, la frecuencia temporal de revisión, la resolución espacial y el costo de la misión. Por ejemplo, los conjuntos de datos de alta resolución a menudo suelen adquirirse con menos frecuencia que aquellos con resolución espacial más baja y, por lo tanto, es menos probable que estén disponibles cuando se necesiten, en parte porque el aumento en la resolución espacial suele incrementar el costo de la misión y la latencia de los datos. En consecuencia, se asignó una latencia máxima admisible a cada aplicación identificada por la comunidad de usuarios del SBG, tales como el monitoreo y mapeo en tiempo real de incendios forestales, calor extremo en entornos urbanos, y amenazas geológicas (p.e., erupciones volcánicas).

La arquitectura seleccionada para la misión incluye dos plataformas con diferentes instrumentos, resoluciones espaciales, frecuencias de revisión, y latencias de datos. Una plataforma tendrá una resolución de 30 metros, un tiempo de revisión de 16 días, y una latencia de los datos de 72 horas [Thompson et al., 2022]. La otra tendrá una resolución de 60 metros y un tiempo de revisión de 3 días, y algunos productos de datos tendrán una latencia de 24 horas [Basilio et al., 2022]. Alineado con el plan estratégico 2024–2034 de la NASA, este diseño final maximiza tanto las prioridades científicas identificadas en el estudio decenal, como la utilidad de los datos de la misión para todas las potenciales aplicaciones.

Ampliando las inversiones en las misiones existentes

Una forma clave en que la NASA está poniendo en acción los datos de las misiones terrestres existentes, es financiando el desarrollo de nuevas aplicaciones innovadoras y actividades de investigación aplicada, por ejemplo, a través de sus programas abiertos Investigación y Análisis y La Tierra en acción (La Tierra en acción es un nuevo elemento en la División de Ciencias de la Tierra de la NASA e incluye la antigua cartera de Ciencias Aplicadas, así como otras actividades). Un vibrante ejemplo de los frutos de este esfuerzo es el programa de aplicaciones de la misión ICESat-2, el cual se centra en promover y socializar el uso de los datos de esta misión en curso.

ICESat-2 lleva un único instrumento: el Sistema de Altímetro de Láser Topográfico Avanzado o ATLAS (por sus siglas en inglés). ATLAS emite fotones láser y mide los tiempos de viaje de los fotones de retorno reflejados por la superficie terrestre, para calcular la distancia entre la nave espacial y la superficie. A partir de estas observaciones, el instrumento mapea la elevación de la superficie a lo largo de las trayectorias de las naves espaciales, con gran detalle y con una latencia de 45 días.

ATLAS sigue proporcionando un conjunto de datos único, con una estructura y densidad de muestreo distintas a las de los conjuntos de datos generados por otros sensores de observación de la Tierra. Y la NASA continúa financiando actividades de aplicaciones diseñadas para aumentar el uso de los datos de ATLAS, para apoyar la toma de decisiones relacionadas con el hielo marino del Ártico, el derretimiento del hielo terrestre y el estado de los reservorios de agua potable críticos, por ejemplo.

El programa de aplicaciones del ICESat-2, el cual ayuda a los usuarios a acceder y aplicar los datos de ATLAS, ha sido exitoso en aumentar la visibilidad de la misión y en consolidar su valor duradero. Los primeros voluntarios de la comunidad de usuarios, tales como el proveedor de datos geoespaciales marinos TCarta y la Fundación de Investigación y Administración de Sitios Culturales, han contribuido al desarrollo de productos y actividades de la misión. Y la participación de los usuarios potenciales a través reuniones, hackweeks, y publicaciones, ha llevado a una comprensión más amplia y clara de la utilidad de las observaciones de elevación precisas, desde el espacio y a partir del lanzamiento de la misión [Brown et al., 2022]. Con sus esfuerzos, el programa de aplicaciones está permitiendo una mejor integración de las aplicaciones en futuras misiones de altimetría.

Aplicaciones para el análisis de altimetría

ATLAS provee datos de elevación extremadamente precisos, pero acceder a ellos y comprenderlos, puede plantear desafíos, especialmente para los nuevos usuarios. Para facilitar el uso de los datos altimétricos y el desarrollo de nuevas aplicaciones se ha desarrollado un conjunto de herramientas y productos, entre los cuales se incluyen los siguientes ejemplos.

La librería del software icepyx ha sido construida por una comunidad de usuarios, desarrolladores y científicos de los datos de ICESat-2. Estas personas han colaborado en el desarrollo de una librería compartida de recursos existentes, códigos nuevos, tutoriales y casos de uso, para facilitar los descubrimientos científicos, simplificando el proceso de búsqueda, acceso y análisis de los conjuntos de datos de ICESat-2. La herramienta se está utilizando, por ejemplo, para fusionar los datos de altura oceánica de ATLAS, con observaciones de temperatura, salinidad y profundidad de boyas oceánicas, para acelerar la comprensión de los cambios en las corrientes oceánicas y la cobertura de hielo en regiones remotas [Bisson et al., 2023].

SlideRule es una infraestructura abierta de procesamiento de datos científicos bajo demanda y basado en la nube. El complemento SlideRule del ICESat-2 ofrece una herramienta personalizable para hacer uso del archivo de productos de datos de bajo nivel (mínimamente procesados) de la misión. El usuario define un área geográfica de interés y parámetros de procesamiento claves, como el período de agregación o producto, mediante una interfaz web interactiva o la interfaz de programación de aplicaciones (API), y SlideRule rebota productos de alto nivel, de nubes de puntos de la elevación de la superficie, en segundos o minutos. Esta funcionalidad permite el rápido desarrollo de algoritmos y la visualización e interpretación de los datos. SlideRule también facilita las aplicaciones que requieren un procesamiento personalizado de los datos altimétricos, tales como la medición de las variaciones interanuales en la profundidad de la nieve y la evaluación del posible impacto de estas variaciones en la disponibilidad de agua en las regiones montañosas de latitud media [Besso et al., 2024].

CryoCloud es un entorno en la nube dirigido por expertos de la comunidad que desarrolla herramientas de acceso libre, para investigación criósferica abierta y colaborativa. La plataforma ofrece talleres al estilo hackathon, así como apoyo a los científicos para que investiguen y enseñen en un entorno en línea gratuito y accesible, que es menos dependiente de los recursos informáticos locales. Por ejemplo, CryoCloud se está utilizando en aplicaciones para mejorar el entendimiento de cómo el aumento del nivel del mar, causado por el derretimiento de la capa de hielo de Groenlandia, afectará a las comunidades costeras.

OpenAltimetry es una herramienta de fácil acceso y basada en mapas, para visualizar datos de elevación del terreno, obtenidas por las misiones ICESat e ICESat-2. Los usuarios definen un área geográfica, un producto de datos, y una fecha de interés, por medio de una interfaz web interactiva o API y luego, pueden revisar y descargar los datos georreferenciados de forma rápida. Los investigadores han utilizado OpenAltimetry para validar las mediciones de la altura de los árboles, recopiladas por el programa de Aprendizaje y Observaciones Globales en Beneficio del Ambiente (GLOBE, por sus siglas en inglés) [Campbell, 2021], y para investigar el derretimiento del hielo superficial en Antártida, como indicador de calentamiento y pérdida de hielo [Geetha Priya et al., 2022].

Los productos QuickLook del ICESat-2 aceleran la entrega de un subconjunto de datos del ICESat-2, de los 30-45 días comúnmente requeridos para las observaciones de elevación de alta precisión, a menos de 72 horas. Aunque los datos QuickLook presentan una mayor incertidumbre en sus georreferenciaciones y alturas reportadas, en comparación con los productos de datos estándar de mayor latencia, su disponibilidad mucho más rápida ofrece valor para las aplicaciones que requieren información en tiempo real más cercana. Los datos QuickLook se utilizan en sistemas operacionales como GloLakes, el cual proporciona los niveles de los lagos como datos de entrada para monitorear casi en tiempo real, recursos de agua en más de 27,000 lagos alrededor del mundo [Hou et al., 2024]. (Los productos de datos estándar, una vez disponibles, reemplazan a los archivos de datos QuickLook, que son conservados por el Centro Nacional de Datos de Nieve y Hielo, para ofrecer la mayor resolución posible.)

El poder de las asociaciones

El SBG y el ICESat-2 son sólo dos ejemplos de cómo la NASA está cambiando su enfoque para seleccionar y diseñar nuevas misiones de ciencias de la Tierra, y para ampliar la utilidad de las misiones existentes. Otros ejemplos incluyen próximas misiones, como la del Radiómetro Geosincrónico de Monitoreo e Imagen de Litorales (GLIMR, por sus siglás en inglés) y Landsat Next, cuyo lanzamiento está programado para alrededor de 2027 y 2030, respectivamente.

El GLIMR es un sensor geoestacionario que estará localizado sobre el Golfo de México y la línea de costa del sureste de los Estados Unidos, para proporcionar información crítica sobre la proliferación de algas nocivas, derrames de petróleo, acumulaciones de Sargassum, y otras amenazas costeras. La misión fue diseñada con este enfoque único para proporcionar información crítica y así mejorar las respuestas, la contención y los avisos públicos necesarios en regiones densamente pobladas. Landsat Next, una constelación de tres observatorios idénticos, ha sido rediseñada para responder a las necesidades de la extensa base de usuarios de Landsat, proporcionado observaciones más frecuentes y una mayor resolución espacial, al tiempo que continúa el legado de Landsat a través de operaciones de misión sostenible.

Lo que no cambia en el enfoque de la NASA, es la importancia que le da al trabajo con los sectores interesados. La nueva estrategia de Ciencias de la Tierra a la Acción, resalta el valor de las asociaciones estratégicas para obtener beneficios sociales tangibles. Así, las colaboraciones con los socios internacionales, la academia, las organizaciones sin ánimo de lucro y otras agencias, seguirán siendo fundamentales en el esfuerzo por satisfacer la necesidad de observaciones de la Tierra, que sean accesibles, procesables y beneficiosas para ayudar a la humanidad a enfrentar los desafíos urgentes.

Referencias

Basilio, R. R., et al. (2022), Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) thermal infrared (TIR) free -flyer concept, in 2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference, pp. 1–9, Inst. of Electr. and Electron. Eng., Piscataway, N.J., https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO53065.2022.9843292.

Besso, H., D. Shean, and J. D. Lundquist (2024), Mountain snow depth retrievals from customized processing of ICESat-2 satellite laser altimetry, Remote Sens. Environ., 300, 113843, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2023.113843.

Bisson, K. M., et al. (2023), Software to enable ocean discoveries: A case study with ICESat-2 and Argo, ESS Open Archive, https://doi.org/10.22541/au.170258908.81399744/v1.

Brown, M. E., et al. (2022), Scientist-stakeholder relationships drive carbon data product transfer effectiveness within NASA program, Environ. Res. Lett., 17(9), 095004, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac87bf.

Campbell, B. A. (2021), ICESat-2 and the Trees Around the GLOBE student research campaign: Looking at Earth’s tree height, one tree at a time, Acta Astronaut., 182, 203–207, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.02.002.

Geetha Priya, M., et al. (2022), Estimation of surface melt induced melt pond depths over Amery Ice Shelf, East Antarctica using multispectral and ICESat-2 data, Disaster Adv., 15, 1–8, https://doi.org/10.25303/1508da01008.

Hou, J., et al. (2024), GloLakes: Water storage dynamics for 27 000 lakes globally from 1984 to present derived from satellite altimetry and optical imaging, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 16, 201–218, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-16-201-2024.

Lee, C. M., et al. (2022), Systematic integration of applications into the Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) Earth mission architecture study, J. Geophys. Res. Biogeosci., 127(4), e2021JG006720, https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JG006720.

Thompson, D. R., et al. (2022), Ongoing progress toward NASA’s Surface Biology and Geology mission, in IGARSS 2022: 2022 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, pp. 5,007–5,010, Inst. of Electr. and Electron. Eng., Piscataway, N.J., https://doi.org/10.1109/igarss46834.2022.9884123.

Datos de autores

Molly E. Brown (mbrown52@umd.edu), University of Maryland, College Park; Aimee Neeley, Science Systems and Applications, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; and Thomas Neumann, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

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.

This translation by Daniela Hernández Vargas (@DanielaH1696) was made possible by a partnership with Planeteando y Geolatinas. Esta traducción fue posible gracias a una asociación con Planeteando y Geolatinas.

The summer of 1969 was approaching, and Priscilla Nelson, a self-proclaimed “hippie chick,” had a muddy decision to make: attend Woodstock or go to geology field camp.

Now Ore Never

In the end, she chose rocks over rock ‘n’ roll. It was an exciting era for geology, with the theory of plate tectonics only starting to gain wide acceptance. The upcoming Apollo 11 mission promised to give the world a new perspective on the rock we call home, and Nelson loved being let loose on a plot of land to map geologic features—just her and the rocks.

Nelson went on to a career spanning engineering, academia, and government and is currently a professor of mining engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.

As her career rose, the reputation of the mining industry—particularly in the United States and Canada—sank. Nelson, who also was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1970s, suggested that this souring public attitude may have been related to a rise in concerns about the environment. The 1970s brought the National Environmental Policy Act, which required U.S. federal agencies to assess proposals’ environmental impacts, and the Clean Water Act, which regulated water quality and the release of pollutants.

“The ’70s were [when] we saw the blue marble of the Earth in the sky and realized the finiteness of everything,” Nelson said.

Mining, to many, seemed contrary to this spirit of treating Earth’s resources as precious. Declining public sentiment, stricter regulations, and reduced ore grades in the United States led mining companies to take much of their operations outside the country—especially to poorer nations where they could pay lower wages and face fewer environmental and health regulations, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo—and the United States to simply import minerals from countries such as China and Mexico.

Though the domestic mining industry says it has made strides to treat the environment with more care, it’s facing an increasingly urgent recruitment problem.

The number of mining engineering programs at U.S. colleges and universities has fallen from 25 in 1982 to 14 today. Mining graduations in the United States dropped by 39% between 2006 and 2023. In 2022, 71% of mining leaders reported in a McKinsey & Company survey that the shortage of workers was preventing them from meeting production targets and strategic objectives.

At a workshop hosted by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and supported by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 2024, Vlad Kecojevic, secretary general of the Society of Mining Professors, noted that only 162 students earned mining engineering degrees in the United States in 2023. That’s not enough to keep pace with an estimated employment demand of 400–600 graduates per year. A 2023 report by Deloitte found that nearly 50% of skilled engineers in the mining sector will reach retirement within a decade.

“For many years that went by, we kind of, as an industry, recycled all our old miners,” said Bill Bieber, executive director of the Mining and Petroleum Training Service at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “And one day we woke up and looked around and went, ‘We’re all old. Where’s the new generation?’”

Why Mine?

“You can’t have a modern standard of living without mining, and we mine more now than at any other point in human history,” said Simon Jowitt, an economic geologist at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Mined minerals are in our buildings, roads, vehicles, pipes, electronics, cosmetics, furniture, appliances, and more. Cell phones contain at least a dozen minerals.

It’s not only current technologies that need mineral resources, mining experts argue, but also those of the future: Renewable energy technology, including solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles, needs elements such as silicon, cobalt, lithium, manganese, copper, and rare earth elements such as neodymium and praseodymium.

A 2022 White House briefing noted that global demand for critical minerals is expected to rise 400%–600% over the next several decades. The United Nations Trade and Development Board projected in a 2024 report that to achieve net zero emissions by 2030, the world will need approximately 80 new copper mines, 70 new lithium and nickel mines each, and 30 new cobalt mines.

When experts—such as the nearly 150 who gathered at the 2024 National Academies workshop—discuss the workforce problem, they often mention ideas for how the federal government could support the mining industry, both financially and organizationally. But the effort isn’t limited to the government.

Across the country, U.S. educational institutions are working to remedy the mining workforce problem by addressing several barriers: a lack of awareness about the role of mining in modern life, perceived demands and inconveniences of a mining career, and negative public opinion of the industry.

Knowing Squat

Many people who work in or study mining or geology are emphatically aware of the role minerals play in everyday life. Sterling Ferguson, an economic geology undergraduate at the University of Nevada, Reno, grew up in an area of northeastern Nevada where mining is prevalent.

“I’ve been surrounded by mining my entire life,” he said. “I grew up, like, ‘Everybody works in a mine. The world needs mining.’”

Kwame Awuah-Offei, a professor of mining engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), said that when he was growing up in Ghana, people there were more aware of mining. As a major part of the country’s economy, mining is often in the news, he said.

But not everyone has the same awareness. In most of the United States, industries larger than mining, such as Google or Apple, tend to dominate headlines.

“Unless something bad happens,” Awuah-Offei said. “Then mining is in the news.”

In a survey of 344 random students at the University of Arizona, 67% said they had “little to no knowledge of mining at all.” The state was the top producer of nonfuel minerals in the United States in 2023, according to a USGS report.

“It’s just something that a lot of people just have no idea is out there,” said Lynnette Hutson, a Ph.D. student in mining and geological engineering at the University of Arizona who worked in the mining industry for a decade prior to starting her degree.

“When students know about mining, they start to think it’s cool,” said Isabel Barton, a mining and geological engineer and associate professor at the University of Arizona. “The problem is, they usually know squat about it.”

Mining’s proponents believe that raising public awareness about the industry’s role in modern life is key to fostering interest in related careers. Many say this effort needs to start earlier.

Nelson, the Colorado School of Mines professor, lamented that elementary and middle school curricula rarely include information about Earth resources.

High school isn’t much different, and Nelson acknowledged that changing graduation requirements is no simple task. For now, she suggested high schools could offer an Advanced Placement course that students could take remotely to earn certificates in Earth resources management and potentially high school or even college credit.

At the college level, some universities and individual faculty are working to educate students about the importance of mining.

Barton created a YouTube series called How Minerals Made Civilization, which examines the role mineral resources have played in defining the course of history. She teaches a course listed in both the mining and geological engineering and anthropology departments on the same topic.

The University of Arizona’s School of Mining and Mineral Resources offers classes, K–12 outreach, and research funding to prepare people in a range of disciplines—including environmental engineering, law, and hydrology—for the mineral resources workforce.

The Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration Foundation’s Minerals Education Coalition exists to educate the broader community and K–12 students about the role of mined materials in everyday life. For example, it created an infographic highlighting the estimated amount of minerals, metals, and fuels an American born in 2024 will use in their lifetime: 3.06 million pounds (1.4 million kilograms).

Visions of Shovels and Pickaxes

Even when people are aware of the role of mining in their everyday lives, they don’t always want to join the profession.

Working as a mining engineer often means working at a rural mine. Some engineers choose to live in the relatively small communities near mine sites, whereas other spend hours a day commuting from larger cities. A travel-heavy work schedule can make it difficult to start a family. Living in a rural community can compound issues employees of any sector might face, such as difficulty finding childcare, Hutson said. Limited employment opportunities for spouses can be another problem.

However, such perks as a 4-day workweek, which Hutson had at most of her industry jobs, help to offset inconveniences and make personal travel easier.

Though it’s not for everyone, she said she finds mining to be an interesting field with good pay. (As of May 2023, the median annual wage was $100,640 for mining and geological engineers according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

“If you’re kind of technically minded, there’s a lot of interesting, challenging roles that can be pretty rewarding,” Hutson said.

Jowitt, the economic geologist, suggested building on these perks by borrowing tactics from other industries. As a traveling nurse practitioner, Jowitt’s wife is often away from home, but she ultimately works fewer days than Jowitt does and makes about the same salary he does as a tenured professor. Benefits such as airline miles don’t hurt either.

“If the industry wants to attract and keep talented and skilled people, then I think we need to think about how best to help those people have a good work-life balance,” he said.

When it comes to attracting skilled workers, some programs are focused on making training more accessible.

The Mining and Petroleum Training Service teaches students hands-on skills at remote mining camps. The surface mine course is 2 weeks long, and the underground mine course lasts 6 weeks: 2 weeks in an underground classroom, 2 weeks off, and 2 weeks of hands-on experience in a mine. No prior experience is required, and state funding is available to Alaska residents.

Most of the students attending aren’t considering traditional secondary education, said Bieber, the program’s director. Many are underemployed and have families, and the short length of the program makes it possible for them to attend. Mining companies even pay a stipend to help some students cover bills while they’re in class.

In the underground mining program, students learn skills that range from operating jackleg drills and underground muckers to soft skills such as teamwork and cross-cultural communication.

“We drill and blast and muck, all of the things that these students are going to be doing on the job,” Bieber said. They’re grabbed up at graduation by employers, if not before.

He added that the program allows students to update their perception of mining, which, before the training camps, might include visions of sledgehammers, shovels, and pickaxes.

“You’re operating a million-dollar haul truck with a pressurized cab and air-conditioning and backup cameras,” he said. “It’s a very different mining world than it used to be.”

So far, the mining camps have trained more than 560 people, 40% of whom are Alaska Natives or members of other minoritized groups. Bieber estimated that about half are women. Two years after being hired, about 87% of people who completed the program are still with the company that hired them.

A Legacy of Harm

Perhaps the biggest factor affecting the mining workforce pipeline is the industry’s reputation. Many view it primarily as an entity that causes pollution, puts profit over people, and takes advantage of communities.

Such criticisms aren’t unfounded.

A 2011 report from the Government Accountability Office determined that of at least 161,000 abandoned hard rock mines in the 12 Western states and Alaska alone, at least 33,000 had degraded the environment. In 2019, the Associated Press analyzed records from 43 contaminated federal mining sites and reported that on average, more than 50 million gallons (189 million liters) of toxic wastewater flows into ponds and streams each day. Roughly 20 million gallons (76 million liters) of it is left untreated.

Lithium mining, which often occurs in the drought-stricken Southwest, requires billions of gallons of water. And catastrophic incidents such as tailings dam failures can not only wreak havoc on the environment but also cause deaths.

Mark Samolej, an undergraduate studying restoration ecology at Colorado State University (CSU), wrote in an email to Eos that he sees mining at the scale it is done currently as a “bane to the things I care most about.” Samolej is the vice president of the CSU chapter of the student-run Society for Ecological Restoration.

“My perception of careers in mining specifically are that they are historically high risk, physically demanding, and ecologically destructive,” he wrote. “I have never considered a career in mining because I am driven to restore degraded land, not play an active role in degrading it.”

Moreover, U.S. mining companies have historically developed sites on Indigenous lands or in poorer nations, often without the consent or input of communities. Many Indigenous groups and environmental advocates have resisted this development and pushed companies to adjust their practices. Some have even taken the federal government to court.

Today multiple groups are fighting construction of new operations such as the Resolution Copper Mine in central Arizona, which members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe say threatens to destroy sacred land.

Others argue that the industry has worked to improve its practices. Resolution Copper’s website claims that after hundreds of consultations with Native American tribes, the company changed the project scope to avoid areas with the greatest cultural significance.

Major companies such as Freeport-McMoRan and the Newmont Corporation release annual sustainability reports, highlighting efforts to financially support communities affected by mining operations, improve safety and efficiency, reduce carbon emissions, and recycle water.

Many academic institutions are conducting research into and offering education on the same areas. Examples include the University of Arizona’s Center for Environmentally Sustainable Mining, Montana Technological University’s Center for Environmental Remediation and Assessment, Missouri S&T’s graduate certificate in sustainability in mining, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s natural resources and sustainability Ph.D. program.

The Colorado School of Mines Payne Institute’s Native American Mining and Energy Sovereignty Initiative (NAMES) works to help Indigenous communities find financial success, energy security, and sovereignty in the energy transition. The initiative’s projects include creating a scholarship for Native American students studying at the school and developing a fund to support research into energy and minerals development as they relate to tribes, in collaboration with tribes and Tribal Colleges and Universities.

Rick Tallman, who is managing the undertaking, described NAMES as “not a pro-mining initiative, [but] a pro-knowledge initiative.” Understanding mining, he suggested, is key for tribal communities to make decisions about the practice on their lands—whether that means fighting mining efforts or exploring and taking ownership of mineral development opportunities. According to MSCI data, 68% of cobalt, 89% of copper, 79% of lithium, and 97% of nickel reserves are located within 35 miles (56 kilometers) of Native American reservations.

Daniel Cardenas, a Pit River Tribe member and the CEO, president, and chairman of the board of the American Indian Infrastructure Association and the National Tribal Energy Association, is a cofounder of the NAMES initiative.

Tribal sovereignty, he said, means that all tribes are free to make their own informed decisions, including those related to mining. “I’m a strong believer in not just jobs, but also wealth creation, where [tribal] communities should have the opportunity to create wealth like everybody else in America,” he said. “A lot of times, as we move forward, the way for them to do it is through critical minerals. It’s a fresh opportunity for tribes, for tribal communities, to sort of make their own way and have the money and the resources to actually benefit from resource extraction.”

“It seems very likely that Indigenous people all over the world will be the most impacted by extracting all the minerals we need for the energy transition,” Tallman said. “But the challenge is that if we don’t extract those minerals, and we’re not successful in the energy transition, those same people will be the [most greatly] impacted by climate change if we fail. And so it’s not an option to just not mine the minerals we need.”

George Luxbacher, a deputy associate director for mining at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and a former president of the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, said he’s seen the mining industry make enormous strides in environmental stewardship and technological efficiency over the course of his career. “Everyone’s committed to a different path today, yet the perception of the public is still, we do things the way we used to,” he said.

Mining for a Renewable Future?

Many agree that one of the greatest hopes for the mining and minerals industry is for it to show itself to be—and continue making itself—part of the solution to the climate crisis, rather than part of the problem. By studying, researching, or working in mineral resources, students who care about the environment could help improve the industry’s environmental and social stewardship from within, Jowitt suggested.

Alyssa Lindsey, a master’s student in economic geology at the University of Nevada, Reno who worked as a geologist for mining companies for several years, may be one such example. She “didn’t know anything about mining, especially mining in the U.S.” until she went to Nevada as an undergrad for summer field camp.

“Since I started working, I have seen the progress that has been made and how environmental protection is truly at the forefront,” she wrote in an email. “I learned that we will either be mining metals here or buying them from elsewhere around the world. To me, it seems like the better option is to be involved in the mining process here, where it is strictly regulated.”

Some are critical of this idea. Roger Featherstone, director of the Arizona Mining Reform Coalition, said he believes the idea that we can “mine our way out of the climate crisis” is flawed logic, noting that many studies showing the world needs more mining than ever are funded by mining companies.

Tallman emphasized that to attract talent, the mining industry needs to act in a way that makes young people want to get involved—“not just a spin or an angle, but it needs to be a genuine effort” to treat people and the planet responsibly.

Mining proponents say the industry’s role in the green energy transition goes beyond mining materials for renewable energy technologies. Repurposing mine waste, for instance, could turn something toxic into clean energy for generations to come. There’s also research on how accelerating the weathering of mine tailings could be a way to sequester carbon.

“If we could figure out how to do this,” Nelson said, “we would have mining and tailings become the savior of the atmosphere.”

Being a part of an industry that could help power the energy transition, to her, “is like reengaging something that was very fundamentally part of my values back in the late ’60s and early ’70s,” she said. “I’m right smack back into it. So, now, I’m an old hippie chick.”

—Emily Dieckman (@emfurd), Associate Editor

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: Dieckman, E. (2024), A major miner problem, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240584. Published on 19 December 2024.

Text © 2024. 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.

A translation of this article was made possible by a partnership with Planeteando. Una traducción de este artículo fue posible gracias a una asociación con Planeteando.

Connecting Over Climate

The cities of the U.S. and Canadian Pacific Northwest have long been incubators for novel environmental policy. Governments in Portland, Ore.; Seattle; and Vancouver, B.C., for example, were among the first to enact urban growth boundaries [Nelson and Moore, 1993; Hepinstall-Cymerman et al., 2011], climate action plans [Rutland and Aylett, 2008; Affolderbach and Schulz, 2017], and clean energy policies.

These cities also share similar geologic settings—active Cascade volcanoes dominate their eastern skylines, while to the west, a subduction zone hidden offshore threatens potentially catastrophic earthquakes. This juxtaposition of openness to policy innovation and experience living beside active tectonic hazards hints at a previously unrecognized way that cities, in this region and beyond, could learn and apply important lessons about resiliency to other risks—by learning from scientists at the world’s volcano observatories.

Volcanoes and earthquakes pose distinct risks in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere, but like urbanizing areas everywhere, these regions also now face unprecedented climate threats. Each city must deal with its own unique mix of intensifying dangers from extreme heat, wildfire and smoke, wind, ice, rising seas, and flooding. Combinations of these hazards, many of which are occurring at scales and frequencies beyond those experienced by community members and leaders, are overwhelming the capacities of municipal governments to prepare, respond, and recover.

Few local governments have the expertise on staff to adapt and respond adequately in real time to rapidly changing and compounding disasters [Fink and Ajibade, 2022]. Nor do they have the budgets needed to educate the public about the increasing breadth and severity of climate-exacerbated risks or to invest in sufficient physical and social infrastructure to protect residents from catastrophic impacts. Among the biggest challenges—and opportunities—for cities trying to increase their resilience is customizing lessons learned elsewhere to their specific geographic, demographic, political, and economic situations.

This is where the approaches of volcanologists can help.

A Model for Mapping Local Risk

Unique among groups that monitor natural hazards, volcano observatory staff and their collaborators—as one of us (J.F.) has been for nearly 50 years—must understand the range of risks concentrated in a particular geographic setting. Teams and centers that track seismicity, landslides, debris flows, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, or floods typically work in multiple sites across regional, national, or global scales.

In contrast, most volcano observatories, some of which date back to the mid-1800s, are positioned within sight of one or more specific volcanoes that are the focus of their attention. Staff at these observatories must apply knowledge learned from other volcanoes, and from general theory about volcanic hazards, to the particular conditions of their site to assess and forecast local risks.

This need to customize forecasts extends down to metropolitan and even neighborhood scales. For example, parts of Tacoma, Wash., are built on mudflow deposits from past eruptions of Mount Rainier, whereas suburbs of Seattle, less than 30 kilometers farther north, sit on consolidated pyroclastic flows from that same volcano.

Naples, Italy, offers another example: Residents in the eastern part of the city have to worry about explosive products coming out of Mount Vesuvius, whereas western neighborhoods near the Phlegraean Fields face bigger threats from volcanic gases, ground uplift, and groundwater contamination. Strategies for alerts and evacuations, as well as public education needs, can thus vary widely from one local community to another.

The same is true of urban climate risks, which can differ dramatically block by block, depending on such variables as elevation, tree cover, construction practices, zoning, and proximity to water. For instance, the city of Tacoma has mapped resilience to sea level rise on a block-by-block basis, showing areas likely to be inundated according to different climate scenarios.

To help convey geographically variable risks from volcanic activity, observatory volcanologists produce detailed hazard maps specific to the volcanoes they focus on. These maps could serve as models for the emerging practice of urban climate risk mapping. Volcano hazard maps may, for example, delineate areas subject to mudflows, dome collapse events, or gas emissions, providing communities with locally relevant advance information. Similar maps of urban areas could indicate the most likely or most impactful climate-related hazards on a neighborhood or even block scale, or they could highlight where multiple hazards could lead to compound effects.

Crucially, volcano observatories monitor, map, and communicate risks that do not respect municipal, state, or even national boundaries (e.g., mudflows from Mount Baker in Washington can affect the suburbs of Vancouver, B.C.). This border-agnostic approach offers a valuable model for preparing for and responding to climate threats, which are experienced across jurisdictions but are often treated piecemeal by local governments.

Bringing the Hazards Home

Another parallel between volcano observatories and city resilience offices is that staff of each must sometimes alert the public about events that are outside the scope of the community’s prior lived experience. For example, when volcanoes awaken after long hiatuses, like Mount St. Helens in 1980 or Mount Pinatubo in 1991, typically few if any nearby residents have ever worried about or prepared for eruptive dangers.

Similarly, city dwellers have difficulty imagining dangers from climate change that they have never confronted. Ten years ago, for example, residents of Portland—as we both are—likely would not have foreseen temperatures reaching 108°F, 112°F, and 116°F on successive days as they did in 2021. (Prior to the heat dome event that year, the previous recorded high was 107°F, in 1981.) Likewise, we probably would not have foreseen extended periods of smoke-filled air that the U.S. EPA designated as “unhealthy for sensitive groups”—before 2015, Portland had never seen such conditions—or wildfires encroaching on the metropolitan area, as they did in 2017 and 2020. Similar trends of historically anomalous conditions occurring more often are playing out in a growing number of cities around the world.

The late filmmakers Katia and Maurice Krafft, volcanologists famed for their prolific and up-close documentation of active eruptions, recognized this problem of communities’ unpreparedness for natural hazards after the 1985 eruption of Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz. That event killed 22,000 people, despite geologists having issued warnings a month earlier about the very kinds of mudflows that ultimately buried the town of Armero [Voight, 1990]. The Kraffts then dedicated their lives to making films to help vulnerable populations better appreciate the unfamiliar dangers associated with infrequent but potentially deadly volcanic eruptions.

Using the relatively unsophisticated editing tools of the 1980s and 1990s, the Kraffts superimposed footage from violent volcanic eruptions onto distant landscapes and cityscapes familiar to local populations elsewhere to grab their attention and elicit more visceral reactions than spoken lectures or written reports could.

Today’s urban resilience offices must do the same for their residents threatened by novel climate extremes. To achieve this, they can take advantage of powerful technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and lidar-equipped smartphones, as well as popular social media platforms like TikTok, all of which are now being used to supplement traditional assessment tools for volcanic hazards. For example, VR and AR have been used to communicate volcanic risk to local populations and tourists visiting Mount Vesuvius and the ruins of Pompeii [Solana et al., 2008]. And VR combined with gaming software engines has allowed analysis of drone-based mapping of otherwise inaccessible areas of the Greek island of Santorini, where the Minoan civilization settlement was destroyed by volcanic eruptions around 1600 BCE [Tibaldi et al., 2020].

Collaboration, Not Colonialism

A third similarity between the work of observatory volcanologists and city climate resilience programs is the need to work collaboratively with local experts and residents while avoiding “scientific colonialism.” Many of the world’s most dangerous volcanoes are found in low- and middle-income nations. Officials and scientists in those countries often benefit from having colleagues from observatories in other countries help them assess and interpret their local volcanic risks. However, this assistance sometimes leads to resentment when researchers from abroad collect and publish critical data without properly acknowledging or including local observers.

Resentment can also occur in efforts around urban resilience. Many of the communities most vulnerable to climate threats are in countries and cities that lack large scientific establishments or budgets to implement resilience measures. By contrast, the most visible and prevalent approaches to climate resilience have been developed by and for wealthier communities. The Thames Barrier, built decades ago to protect London from severe flooding, was an early example of this; Copenhagen’s infrastructure to manage intense rainfall is a more recent one.

Wealthy institutions sometimes help secure resources to support managers and technical staff in lower-income areas, who can then better understand and engage with their local populations and derive culturally appropriate responses. As the sustainability manager in the city of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, one of us (M.A.) was frequently called upon to advise city officials in other countries. Similarly, the World Bank commonly brings advisers from the European Union or North America to consult on projects in Africa and Asia. However, as with volcanologists, the goal of these urban resilience advisers must be to help local officials achieve scientific self-sufficiency, rather than dependence.

As most cities share a common set of responsibilities—including public safety, water management, emergency response, and maintenance of infrastructure—they also share common challenges in dealing with climate change (even if their specific mix of risks varies). Peer-to-peer learning efforts have thus tried to fill pronounced gaps in climate knowledge at the city scale. Nongovernmental organizations like the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, MetroLab Network, ICLEI–Local Governments for Sustainability, and the Resilient Cities Network (launched from the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities initiative) have all helped grow awareness of the increasing threats cities face, as well as best practices for responses. Federal agencies in the United States, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and NOAA, also offer guidelines to local governments.

But local officials have at times criticized the approaches of such broadly focused programs and agencies for being too prescriptive or top-down. Even the idea that there is a single model of a “resilient city” that “ordinary cities” should aspire to has received considerable pushback [Naef, 2022]. What is often missing is the input of local experts, including Indigenous voices, with the knowledge and breadth of practical experience needed to advise their cities about the challenges they face and about appropriate, feasible, and tailored solutions.

Here, too, government volcanologists can offer useful lessons. National agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey (with its Volcano Disaster Assistance Program), the Japan Meteorological Agency, Italy’s Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, France’s Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, and New Zealand’s GNS Science all have teams of well-resourced volcanologists that they can deploy to emerging crises. Rather than acting unilaterally to collect data or direct responses, these teams assist in assessing immediate dangers while supporting local scientists and officials, with whom they have often already established relationships, to take over response efforts as quickly as is practical [Lowenstern et al., 2022].

Organizations focusing on urban climate resilience could follow the model of these programs to create similar arrangements that partner with city governments and offer rapid assistance during emergencies coupled with long-term human resource development. Such partnerships need not be prescriptive or viewed as purely altruistic. Less developed countries can offer key lessons to their richer counterparts that may only now be starting to cope with the kinds of large-scale climate-driven disruptions that have affected emerging economies for many decades. Anguelovski et al. [2014], for example, noted resilience lessons from Durban (South Africa), Quito (Ecuador), and Surat (India) that are relevant for cities in the Global North facing new challenges.

Furthermore, as volcano observatories and international exchange programs are critical for training future generations of eruption experts, new programs focused on helping vulnerable cities prepare for climate disasters could similarly include education and training of future resilience experts as part of their charters.

Sharing Needed Knowledge

Transferring lessons from volcano science into the realm of urban resilience starts with initiating conversations between volcanologists, especially those from observatories, and city resilience officers. A primary motivation for this article is the recognition that these groups rarely have opportunities to interact. (Indeed, it is unclear where an article like this is most likely to be seen by both groups.) The International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior has organized 12 Cities on Volcanoes (CoV) conferences since 1998 in cities (like Portland) that either have been or potentially could be affected by eruptions from nearby volcanoes. Yet these meetings have almost exclusively covered volcanic hazards; representatives from nonvolcanic cities and resilience officers focused on climate threats rarely attend.

The kind of conversations that are needed could be organized as part of a future CoV-like conference if resilience officers were invited. AGU would make sense as a sponsor for such a conference. Likewise, the World Bank (which has long promoted global information exchange related to urban sustainability), the MetroLab Network (a U.S.-based organization pairing cities and universities that are studying and implementing urban resilience strategies), or foundations that support city climate action could serve as hosts. NOAA’s Climate Adaptation Partnerships, which provide high-quality regional climate research and are building durable relationships with local policymakers, could be a valuable collaborator in these discussions.

In such a setting, volcano scientists could share with urban resilience officials how they filter and focus knowledge of a global phenomenon to the distinct conditions of an individual volcano, as well as how they communicate with local populations to meet their specific needs for safety and security. These discussions could reveal insights that better prepare urban governments and their residents for the increasingly dangerous climate perils to come.

References

Affolderbach, J., and C. Schulz (2017), Positioning Vancouver through urban sustainability strategies? The Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, J. Cleaner Prod., 164, 676–685, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.06.234.

Anguelovski, I., E. Chu, and J. Carmin (2014), Variations in approaches to urban climate adaptation: Experiences and experimentation from the Global South, Global Environ. Change, 27, 156–167, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2014.05.010.

Fink, J., and I. Ajibade (2022), Future impacts of climate-induced compound disasters on volcano hazard assessment, Bull. Volcanol., 84, 42, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-022-01542-y.

Hepinstall-Cymerman, J., S. Coe, and L. R. Hutyra (2011), Urban growth patterns and growth management boundaries in the central Puget Sound, Washington, 1986–2007, Urban Ecosyst., 16, 109–129, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11252-011-0206-3.

Lowenstern, J. B., J. W. Ewert, and A. B. Lockhart (2022), Strengthening local volcano observatories through global collaborations, Bull. Volcanol., 84, 10, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-021-01512-w.

Naef, P. (2022), “100 resilient cities”: Addressing urban violence and creating a world of ordinary resilient cities, Ann. Am. Assoc. Geogr., 112, 2,012–2,027, https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2022.2038069.

Nelson, A. C., and T. Moore (1993), Assessing urban growth management: The case of Portland, Oregon, the USA’s largest urban growth boundary, Land Use Policy, 10, 293–302, https://doi.org/10.1016/0264-8377(93)90039-D.

Rutland, T., and A. Aylett (2008), The work of policy: Actor networks, governmentality, and local action on climate change in Portland, Oregon, Environ. Plann. D Soc. Space, 26, 627–646, https://doi.org/10.1068/d6907.

Solana, M. C., C. R. J. Kilburn, and G. Rolandi (2008), Communicating eruption and hazard forecasts on Vesuvius, southern Italy, J. Volcanol. Geotherm. Res., 172, 308–314, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvolgeores.2007.12.027.

Tibaldi, A., et al. (2020), Real world–based immersive virtual reality for research, teaching and communication in volcanology, Bull. Volcanol., 82, 38, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-020-01376-6.

Voight, B. (1990), The 1985 Nevado del Ruiz volcano catastrophe: Anatomy and retrospection, J. Volcanol. Geotherm. Res., 44, 349–386, https://doi.org/10.1016/0377-0273(90)90027-D.

Author Information

Jonathan Fink (jon.fink@pdx.edu), Department of Geology, Portland State University, Ore.; also at Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; and Michael Armstrong, City Scale, Portland, Ore.

Citation: Fink, J., and M. Armstrong (2024), How volcanologists can improve urban climate resilience, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240537. Published on [DAY MONTH] 2024.

Text © 2024. 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.

Today, Serreze sees “an Arctic that is losing its character, losing its soul, that soul being its snow and ice.”

In the past few decades, sea ice—the engine of the Arctic climate—has diminished dramatically, with the total area of ice cover down about 50% from the 1980s. Precipitation patterns now bring more rain and less snow to the Arctic. Thawing long-frozen ground allows for more severe erosion. And vegetation is growing faster and farther north in response to rising air temperatures.

The Arctic is “drastically different from what it was,” said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts.

Scientists use past climate data and estimates of future greenhouse gas emissions to simulate how these changes may continue in the future. But system complexity, natural variability, and limited data mean these forecasts can vary.

“All models are wrong,” the saying goes, “but some are useful.”

Combining simulations that have varying assumptions, initial climate conditions, and data into ensembles reduces—but doesn’t eliminate—uncertainty. Ensembles agree that as long as we produce greenhouse gases (and even after we stop), the Arctic will continue to warm, creating a cascade of changes. The details of those predicted changes, however, range widely.

The Arctic over the next century could look like a slightly warmer version of today’s Arctic. Or it could be unrecognizably altered. The farther into the century we forecast, the more uncertain its future becomes.

Just how much the Arctic changes depends on the steps humanity takes to halt or even reverse climate change, said Laura Landrum, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “It’d be good if we’d started yesterday,” she said.

2040

Without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the changes scientists currently see in the Arctic will greatly accelerate by 2040.

In just 15 years, permafrost thaw and increasing precipitation will mean some rivers in the Arctic will swell with water and erode their banks more quickly. The once-solid ground beneath some Arctic towns, especially those on the coast, may yield to the water.

Because of erosion and sea level rise, residents of places like Shishmaref, an Alaska Native community located on a highly vulnerable barrier island, may be forced to move. Indeed, officials in Shishmaref and in at least 12 other Native Alaskan villages are already exploring relocation plans.

Warmer ocean waters will also fuel ever more destructive storms. Events like Typhoon Merbok, which caused widespread flooding in coastal Alaska in 2022, will be more common.

By 2040, warming could thaw about 10%–40% of high-latitude permafrost, a process that emits greenhouse gases including methane and carbon dioxide (CO₂) as long-frozen remains of animals and plants are exposed to air and begin to decay. Scientists can’t narrow down in on exactly how much permafrost will thaw, or how the thaw will affect Arctic systems, Serreze said. That’s because they aren’t sure how much carbon dioxide and methane are present in Arctic permafrost or when and where it could escape.

Today the Arctic is warming anywhere from 2 to 4 times faster than the rest of the world in a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. Calculating the Arctic amplification ratio is simple, Serreze said: Just pick a time period or season, determine how temperatures in the Arctic and elsewhere have changed, and divide. That amplification ratio is expected to increase, but scientists aren’t sure by how much. That uncertainty can complicate climate projections, too.

Emergence

Some scientists think that a new Arctic climate will have emerged by 2040. No longer dominated by ice and snow, the Arctic will become something altogether different, warmer and wetter.

Landrum defined this emergence as a state when the Arctic climate no longer fits expected patterns based on the past 30 years of data, when “the idea of a climate normal doesn’t really work anymore,” she said.

This schematic illustrates emergence—the point at which current trends are so far outside the range of past climate data that they are no longer useful to project future climate.

In the top graph, minimum sea ice extent is far outside the range expected. This system has emerged. In the bottom graph, the number of rainy days is close to exceeding, but still within, the expected range. This system has not yet emerged. (Image credit: Modified from Simmi Sinha/UCAR)

The process of emergence diminishes scientists’ ability to use records of a system’s past to pinpoint specific changes to its future, such as the intensity of future heat waves or the number of future typhoons.

Instead, scientists modeling emerging systems rely more heavily on their understanding of the physics of those systems, for example, how heat transfer works between the ocean and the atmosphere.

If scientists had a complete understanding of Earth systems, emergence wouldn’t pose a problem. But they don’t, and they lack the resources and data to do so.

In a recent paper, Landrum and a colleague suggested that Arctic emergence has already begun. Minimum sea ice extents in the Arctic now lie well outside the ranges that modelers would expect when using data from the past 30 years. Landrum’s conversations with Arctic residents indicate to her that regional air temperatures and precipitation patterns could deviate from climate normals relatively soon, too, if they haven’t already.

2060

Thirty-five years from now, consistent summer sea ice will likely be a memory, much like reliable snow in the northeastern United States or summers without record-breaking heat waves. Some summer sea ice may still cling to the edges of Arctic shores, or the occasional summer will still have Arctic-wide sea ice. But most climate scientists agree: By mid-century, many Arctic summers will be virtually free of sea ice.

“Barring really dramatic carbon reductions that are probably not realistic,” summer sea ice loss is probably inevitable, according to Walter Meier, a sea ice scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

And that loss will have widespread consequences for the Arctic, some of which we’re already beginning to see.

Without sea ice, Arctic processes could break down.

Without ice as a barrier, more heat transfer occurs between the ocean and the atmosphere. As more moisture enters the air, it causes more precipitation and stronger storms, which scientists are already noticing, Francis said. Without sea ice to temper wave action, storms could fuel more powerful seas and more destructive coastal erosion. Coastal areas may also face worsening flood risk, and even more communities may be forced to move.

The temperature gradient between the once-cold Arctic and warmer, more southern latitudes will likely shrink. Though the science is still uncertain, that could create a less stable jet stream and more interaction between the polar atmosphere and the atmosphere at more southern latitudes. Warm air from the south could intrude more easily into the Arctic, exacerbating warming. A weakened jet stream could also lead to longer heat waves, rainy periods, droughts, and cold spells.

Variable Fates

Scientists’ confidence in sea ice projections comes from the wealth of data and studies already done, as well as from the relative simplicity of the system: Sea ice responds to temperature changes in the atmosphere and ocean, as well as to wind patterns, Serreze said. But the extent to which its disappearance will affect the Arctic and global atmospheric circulation and weather is still unsettled.

“It’s a complicated place, and there’s still a lot we don’t understand completely,” Francis said.

Uncertainties in Arctic projections exist for a couple reasons, Serreze said. First, small variations in emissions scenarios can compound into widely diverging projections. Second, various climate models simulate Arctic processes differently. Notably, some are more sensitive to fluctuations in atmospheric greenhouse gases.

In addition, climate models are limited by a lack of long-term historical data, as satellites have collected climate data for only about 40 years. Some climate data from the 19th and 20th centuries exist only in the form of observational records and scarce, scattered measurements of ocean temperatures. They are useful data with which to make projections, but scientists must interpolate between records to complete a picture of conditions. That interpolation introduces uncertainties, said Niklas Boers, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a professor at the Technische Universität München, in Germany.

Improvements in modeling can do only so much without a thorough understanding of how a climate system works. More sophisticated models produce results with less uncertainty, said Greg Breed, a quantitative ecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “But they’re still driven by a model that is ultimately an incomplete picture of the system we’re trying to represent with it.”

Breed described the changing Arctic climate as an experiment that’s never before been done. “The thing about experiments is that they often completely contradict your models, because you didn’t know some dynamic of the system. You just weren’t aware of it,” he said.

Scientists should expect to be surprised by how the Arctic will change, Breed said.

The extent of efforts to decarbonize remains an open question, of course—especially as receding sea ice provides more economic opportunities.

In a 2016 paper, Newton and his colleagues outlined the many economic arguments for allowing sea ice to recede, including an increase in commercial activities such as fishing, oil and natural gas production, mining, and shipping. It’s possible that those with an economic stake in an ice-free Arctic would prevent efforts to restore the ice.

If we have the means and the technology to reduce the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere, “the fate of the Arctic becomes a socioeconomic question,” Newton said.

2100 and Beyond

In the absence of drastic cuts in emissions, the Arctic will transform even further by the end of the century. By 2100, the Arctic will be about 30%–60% wetter, its landscape dominated by the effects of rain. Most state-of-the-art climate models suggest that by this time, temperatures in the Arctic could rise by about 13°C–15°C (23.4°F–27°F), compared with a global temperature rise of up to 5°C (9°F). Summer sea ice will be long gone, and winter sea ice may decline in quantity and thickness.

Eberle and her colleagues have shown that during the Eocene, Arctic flora and fauna resembled a contemporary cypress swamp. The global climate was warm and humid, allowing alligators, primates, tapirs, and animals similar to hippos and rhinos to live above the Arctic Circle. Average summer temperatures likely soared to 20°C–25°C (68°F–77°F), and winter temperatures probably hovered around freezing.

Projected temperatures in 2100 aren’t quite at Eocene levels. But some models indicate that 23°C (41.4°F) of change is possible—and one study suggests that parts of the globe could reach an Eocene-like climate by 2130.

It’s unlikely that Arctic temperatures will resemble the Eocene, Landrum said. But it’s not impossible, and that fact is “truly scary,” she said.

“We’re not necessarily saying that when it warms, we’re going to get a replay of the Eocene,” Eberle said. Rather, paleontological data show what living systems in the Arctic can handle, and that the Arctic ecosystem could deviate wildly from how it looks today.

“I don’t expect alligators in Hudson Bay,” Landrum said. “But I do expect a really different system.”

A huge source of uncertainty, according to Eberle and Breed, is the extent to which humans will alter the Arctic environment and ecosystems between now and 2100. Maybe we’ll start relocating species northward. Maybe we’ll plaster solar panels across Siberia. Maybe new Arctic cities will rapidly expand into Arctic species’ territory.

If sea ice does return, ice-dependent flora and fauna could, too. But hoping for a world where sea ice returns before ice-dependent species are wiped out is overly optimistic, Breed said. And if polar bears and seals go extinct, the emergence of similar species—for example, another white bear evolving from grizzlies—would take tens of thousands of years or longer.

In terms of wildlife, it is futile to look so far forward given the uncertainties that exist, he said.

In a sea of unknowns, one truth remains: A vastly altered Arctic cannot be avoided. Some of the possible changes could be reversed only if the political will to do so exists—and that’s looking frustratingly unlikely, Breed said.

“We’re going to have a different world, and we don’t know what that world’s going to be.”

—Grace van Deelen (@GVD__), Staff Writer

Citation: van Deelen, G. (2024), The Arctic’s uncertain future, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240519. Published on 15 November 2024.

Text © 2024. 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.

What’s Next for Science?

The geosciences have a steep language learning curve. Diving into a subfield requires learning jargon to describe a bevy of abstract concepts, niche meanings of otherwise familiar terms, and specialized laboratory and field equipment.

For Deaf geoscientists who primarily use American Sign Language (ASL), that learning curve is made even steeper by the fact that many scientific terms don’t have ASL counterparts.

When Caroline Solomon was working toward her doctorate more than 2 decades ago, she didn’t know any other deaf oceanographers.

In the classroom, in the lab, and out in the field researching biogeochemistry in Maryland’s estuaries, “I was making up signs ad hoc for my field, you know, phytoplankton, dinoflagellates, diatoms, and so forth,” Solomon signed. “I was just making them up as I went.”

Years later, she finally met another deaf aquatic scientist. As the two shared their research, Solomon realized that they had developed some of the same signs completely independent of each other.

“It was really fascinating, because the way we sign is dependent on the concept we’re expressing,” Solomon said. She realized that “we’re talking about these concepts, we’re conceiving of them, in similar ways. I think that was the first ‘Aha!’ moment for me.”

That encounter emphasized to her the need for Deaf geoscientists to share the ASL signs they had created for themselves and to standardize them so that other scientists, students, and interpreters could use them.

In the years since, “I’ve really seen the number of Deaf scientists increase, which is really wonderful to see,” said Solomon, now an estuary biogeochemist, biology professor, and dean of the faculty at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C.

In addition to their academic contributions, those scientists have worked hard to expand ASL dictionaries to include geoscience-related terms and standardize their use in classrooms and labs. Deaf scientists’ work to literally redefine the language of geoscience is helping remove barriers to education and make science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) more accessible to everyone.

“When we focus on developing signs that can convey the entire picture, it gives deaf scientists and future deaf scientists a language with which they can begin to navigate the science and STEM world,” signed Cooper Norris, a Deaf scientist and former environmental laboratory technician at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash. “And then it helps our hearing colleagues to be able to communicate better with us as well.”

Both a Word and an Idea

Signs don’t just represent a spoken word but also seek to describe the word’s meaning. For example, one ASL sign for “electron” involves the left hand making a fist in front of the chest while the right hand, signing the letter E, circles the left. The sign represents the movement of the electron (right hand) outside the nucleus (left hand).

Sign language’s capacity to convey a complex or abstract concept succinctly with a few gestures, called iconicity, makes it well suited for teaching scientific jargon, particularly in the geosciences, where many of the processes at play can be hard to conceptualize, explained Richard Ladner, an emeritus professor of computer science at the University of Washington in Seattle and a child of Deaf adults.

“This descriptive quality of sign language is unique and doesn’t exist for most languages, not completely,” Ladner said. “Certain sounds are descriptive. Onomatopoeia, we call it. In sign language, it’s much richer.”

Historically, though, ASL dictionaries have lacked more than a handful of STEM-related words, requiring Deaf students and researchers either to fingerspell field-specific jargon or to invent their own signs for personal use.

“When you don’t know the sign or if there is no sign, you have to fingerspell it,” signed Annemarie Ross, an associate professor of chemistry at Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in New York. Just like writing out a new word on a blackboard, “fingerspelling works if you’re trying to learn the word, but it doesn’t teach the concept, and it doesn’t necessarily represent the concept,” said Ross, who is Deaf.

In a classroom, fingerspelling every instance of a science word can be cumbersome and physically demanding.

“You can imagine you’re teaching a class and the word ‘chromatography’ or ‘spectroscopy’ comes up,” said Todd Pagano, a chemistry professor at NTID. “As you can imagine, spelling ‘spectroscopy’ or ‘chromatography’ 50 times in a single class period takes a lot of time.”

Pagano, who uses ASL in his classes, often works with his students to create signs for classroom use. Not only does the process streamline his teaching and his students’ learning, he said, “it helps students who may be native signers to teach something to their professor, take ownership of their learning, and at the same time show that they understand the concept.”

“Signs can convey the concept directly without going through a second language, such as English,” Michele Cooke, a Deaf structural geologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, wrote via email.

“For example, the sign for ‘strike-slip fault’ efficiently conveys the sense of movement of this kind of fault, takes a fraction of the time needed for spelling ‘strike-slip,’ and allows the recipient to directly connect the sign to the concept without the extra cognitive layer of using the English word ‘strike-slip,’” Cooke said.

What’s more, not all native signers speak the same language. ASL, mainly used in the United States and Canada, is just one of more than 300 sign languages in use around the world. When users create an ASL sign, it needs to follow ASL rules for grammar and the “five parameters”: handshape, palm orientation, movement, location, and facial expression/nonmanual signals. A sign must also gain acceptance by widespread usage in the Deaf community—if the community doesn’t like it, the sign can be lost as a common term.

Although English is often considered the international language of science, other English-speaking countries like the United Kingdom have their own sign languages, as do countries and cultures in which English is not the primary spoken language. Iconicity circumvents some of the variations between different sign languages and facilitates science communication within the international Deaf community.

Limited Usefulness of Ad Hoc Signs

Many newer ASL signs in the geosciences have come about organically as individual scientists realized that they needed them for their own research or classrooms, like Solomon did with “phytoplankton” and “dinoflagellates.”

On a field trip with deaf high school teachers and educators, Cooke recognized the need for a sign for “outcrop” to streamline communication. “We agreed that signing ‘out’ and ‘crop’ doesn’t convey the meaning and creates confusion,” she said. “So we came up with a sign that is the equivalent of ‘rock’ and ‘look at it’ for ‘outcrop.’”

Norris, who was a postbaccalaureate in a soil biogeochemistry lab at PNNL after studying at NTID, said that ASL’s science vocabulary can be even more limited in a laboratory setting. The nomenclature of specialized instruments and analysis techniques isn’t frequently taught in introductory geoscience classes, including those at NTID, Norris recalled. When he joined his new lab, “I realized all the experiences and the signs that I would need to learn. Developing those signs within the lab became a process, but it became a process that is rewarding,” he said.

For example, his research required him to use a Shimadzu carbon analyzer, which has a component that spins like a carousel. Kaizad Patel, an Earth scientist and Norris’s mentor at PNNL, said that after so many times fingerspelling “Shimadzu” or simply pointing to the device, the lab group decided to create a sign to represent that machine.

“You spell out a word so often that you’re like, ‘OK, enough of this. We just need something to express what we’re talking about,’” Patel said. Their sign includes a movement that mimics the carousel-like function of the machine. Using the sign increased the team’s efficiency and cut down on confusion.

Signs like “Shimadzu” are very niche, but even the more general geoscience-related signs might have limited effectiveness outside their originally intended setting. Like family nicknames or personal variations on signs, “home signs” or “lab signs” might be understood only by those who created them or use them.

“If your whole lab knows that sign,” Pagano said, “it’s OK to use that when you’re in that lab. But outside of that lab, the sign hasn’t necessarily been standardized or disseminated or known.” Other Deaf professionals and interpreters might not know that sign, or it might mean something else in another context.

The “Shimadzu” sign “might not work as well [in another lab] where you have other instruments that spin like a carousel,” Patel said.

That potential for miscommunication can create additional barriers when deaf scientists attend professional events, like conferences and workshops, designed by and for hearing people.

“When I tried using ASL interpreters at conferences, I found that missed too much of the science,” Cooke said. “Conference presenters speak quickly, and when the interpreters have to fingerspell (and guess the spelling of words they don’t know), they can’t keep up, so they skip things.” In other cases, an interpreter might hear a word that has multiple meanings (as much science jargon does) and use the wrong sign for that context, causing confusion or an unneeded delay in understanding.

“If I went to a conference in a different town using different interpreters, each time I had to teach them my signs that I had developed for my own career,” Solomon said. “If a hearing person goes to a conference, they can simply access the presentation.” Oftentimes, deaf scientists who present their research in ASL at a conference have to alter or slow down their natural signing style so that interpreters can keep up.

“I have spent hours preparing interpreters, teaching interpreters, the science and the content,” Solomon said. “That’s a lot of invisible labor involved.”

Standardizing and Increasing Access

The added burdens and extra work that go into navigating spaces designed for hearing people—classrooms, labs, field camps, conferences—underscore the need deaf geoscientists have for standardized and, most important, documented signs. For decades, scientist members of the Deaf community have worked to shore up the language gap by collating their science signs into STEM-specific ASL dictionaries. What started as printed pamphlets with sequences of hand gestures and arrows showing movements has evolved into massive online video dictionaries that help people find the signs they need.

“There are very few deaf geoscientists, but with better access to geoscience signs, maybe we can see geosciences become more diverse,” Cooke said.

ASL STEM, a community forum and video dictionary of more than 3,200 STEM signs hosted by the University of Washington, is one of the largest efforts to document and share science signs.

“It’s a public place where people can put signs up for science,” said Ladner, who cofounded ASL STEM.

ASL STEM has no entry for “geology” or “geoscience” (“geology” can be found elsewhere). Users have submitted signs for natural science, Earth and space sciences, and atmospheric sciences, but most of the entries are related to medicine, engineering, and technology.

ASL “is like any language,” Ladner said. “New terms come into languages all the time. It’s based on need; it’s based on efficiency.”

Anyone can submit a sign to ASL STEM for consideration, but there’s no guarantee that the sign has strong iconicity or that it follows ASL’s grammar. But because the project is community driven, users can submit signs they see a need for or regularly use, and entries include niche terms like “bacteriophage,” “fieldwork,” and even many of Solomon’s original marine biology signs.

ASLCORE, hosted by NTID, is another effort to document signs specific to professional fields. New signs are developed solely by Deaf users of ASL and go through a rigorous vetting process before being added to ASLCORE.

“It’s really important that it’s really led by the Deaf and hard-of-hearing community,” said Pagano. He explained that most of ASLCORE’s science entries are related to biology, chemistry, and physics for the simple reason that many of the scientists who have worked on the project, himself included, are biologists, chemists, or physicists.

“It’s built upon a team of experts,” said Pagano. “You have an expert in the discipline, for example, chemistry or geoscience, to make sure that the meaning of the sign is correct and make sure everyone understands the meaning. You have ASL linguistics experts. You have Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals who are working in the field who use the signs. For ASLCORE, we also have interpreters who specifically interpret in that field.”

Recently, ASLCORE developed a group of “sustainability” signs under a National Science Foundation grant. Ross, who was on the sustainability sign development team, explained that it was a difficult task because “sustainability” can mean different things to different groups of people. It could mean reducing fossil fuel usage or conserving natural resources or protecting Earth.

“Sustainability is one of the most complex ideas you can develop a sign for,” Ross said. After much discussion, the team agreed on a three-part sign that conveys the idea of preserving Earth’s natural resources by combining signs for environment, replacement of resources, and stability.

A three-gesture sign requires more practice to get right, Ross admitted, but the team felt that the complexity would help convey a fuller definition of the term. The group also developed simpler variations of “sustainability” for day-to-day use, as well as 59 other multipart signs for related terms like “air pollution,” “climate change,” “geospatial analysis,” and “water security.” These terms are arguably related to the geosciences even if they are not categorized as such.

“The lack of geoscience signs isn’t due to a lack of need,” Pagano said. Deaf geoscientists have existed for as long as people have studied geoscience. “It’s really just that the field needs more scientists to develop and disseminate the signs.”

Some, like Norris and Patel, have created subfield-specific dictionaries—in their case, environmental and applied biological sciences. They collaborated with members of the ASLCORE team to ensure that their signs for instruments, lab processes, and jargon met ASL’s grammar and iconicity standards.

“In the geosciences, there isn’t much out there,” Patel said, “so we’re trying to fill that niche.”

“There’s still a lack of access for our community,” Norris added, “and the number of deaf students and deaf scientists out there [is small] because of the lack of access. If we can create more resources like this, we will hopefully see more students coming into our field.”

Deaf-Led Progress

Some signed languages, like British Sign Language, already have robust science dictionaries. Indigenous Hand Talk, such as Plains Indian Sign Language and Inuit Sign Language, describes the natural world with vocabulary that predates both ASL and the colonization of North America. These languages could help braid Indigenous Knowledges and Western science together, also helping to decolonize the geosciences.

Other sign languages, like ASL, Mexican Sign Language, and Indian Sign Language, are still growing their science vocabulary. The increased awareness that ASL sometimes lacks the vocabulary for science has been both a boon and a cause for concern, Solomon said.

“There was this great excitement that everybody was coming up with these signs and developing them, but it got to the point where it felt like anyone was developing these,” Solomon said. She saw an increasing number of grants that included a promise to develop new signs in their broader impact statement, and it worried her.

“Where are the standards for this development?” she asked. “Where are the values that underlie this process? What are the ethical implications here? And where are the linguistic principles in these signs? Who gets to develop them? Who owns them?”

And when the grant money runs out, who will pay to keep the dictionaries going?

The efforts to create science signs for ASL must be led and owned by Deaf users of the language, Solomon said. Alongside the development of new signs must be a push for standardization of science signs, she said, and that push needs to be led by the Deaf community.

Many more ASL dictionaries with science signs, including some geoscience-specific ones, exist now than several decades ago. But not knowing which dictionary, if any, has the sign you need is yet another barrier to overcome. The next step, Norris said, should be centralization.

“In the future,” he said, “it would be nice to see more of them compiled into one place to help our community thrive.”

“It’s a learning process for everybody, including myself as a Deaf person,” Norris added. “Hearing people are also on that learning journey. We’re all trying to break down barriers.”

—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@AstroKimCartier), Staff Writer

Citation: Cartier, K. M. S. (2024), Crafting signs for geoscience’s future, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240516. Published on 15 November 2024.

Text © 2024. 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.

This is an authorized translation of an Eos article. Esta é uma tradução autorizada de um artigo da Eos.

Por toda a vasta bacia amazônica, porções espalhadas de terra preta e marrom-chocolate contrastam fortemente com os solos ácidos vermelhos ou amarelos, pobres em nutrientes, encontrados no restante da floresta tropical. Os solos escuros são extraordinariamente férteis, e as comunidades de plantas que crescem ali são diferentes das da floresta ao redor—com uma taxa de biomassa mais alta e uma proporção maior de espécies comestíveis como castanheiras e açaizeiros. Muito frequentemente, eles contêm artefatos como peças de cerâmica ou fragmentos de ferramentas feitas de pedra.

Estes solos são chamados de “terra preta”, solos escuros amazônicos (ADEs), ou simplesmente solos escuros, pois foram identificados na África, Austrália, Europa e em outras partes, além da Amazônia. Também são chamados de antrosolos, pois quase todos os pesquisadores concordam que foram criados pelo homem. Os solos escuros foram encontrados em centenas de sites arqueológicos em toda a bacia amazônica cobrindo cerca de 6.000 a 18.000 quilômetros quadrados. Um estudo usou a modelagem para estimar a possibilidade de que os solos de terra preta, na verdade, possam cobrir mais de 150.000 quilômetros quadrados, ou 3,2% de toda a floresta.

Antes de os europeus chegarem às Américas – trazendo conflitos, exploração, e doenças infecciosas que mataram mais de 90%  da população—a Amazônia fervilhava de vida humana. Os arqueólogos ainda estão discutindo quantas pessoas viviam lá antes da conquista europeia, mas várias estimativas sugerem que eram entre 6 e 10 milhões.

Os indígenas amazônicos construíram suas casas em penhascos com vista para os rios, onde pescavam, caçavam, coletavam e plantavam. Eles cultivavam várias plantas, incluindo a mandioca, a batata doce e o cacau. Realizavam extensas obras de terraplenagem, abriam estradas e modificavam pântanos. Faziam pequenas queimadas de baixa intensidade para administrar o local. E como todo ser humano em todos os lugares, eles produziam lixo: espinhas de peixe, conchas, cascas de mandioca, esterco, ervas daninhas e resíduos de colheitas, cerâmica e carvão.

Ao longo de gerações, eles transformaram esse lixo em tesouro, criando uma terra rica e fértil, boa para o cultivo de safras. Ao mesmo tempo, o processo retirou grandes quantidades de carbono no solo. Agora, cientistas de uma ampla gama de disciplinas estão escavando a terra preta em busca de respostas — não apenas pela nova história que ela conta sobre o passado da Amazônia, mas também pelas lições, possibilidades e avisos que ela pode conter para o futuro da Terra.

Ajudando as Plantas a “Crescerem Felizes”

No passado, explicações não humanas para a formação da terra preta sugeriram: sedimentação a partir de enchentes, acúmulo de matéria orgânica em lagos e pequenas lagoas e precipitação de cinzas de vulcões andinos.

Em 2021, inclusive, pesquisadores norte-americanos e brasileiros publicaram um artigo sugerindo que a alta fertilidade das terras pretas da Amazônia eram o resultado do depósito de nutrientes pelos rios. Os autores argumentam que povos pré-colombianos identificaram essas áreas de fertilidade aumentada e se estabeleceram ali. “Os povos indígenas aproveitaram os processos naturais de formação da paisagem”, eles escrevem, “mas não foram responsáveis ​​por sua gênese”.

No entanto, a maior parte dos arqueólogos, cientistas do solo, geógrafos e antropólogos que trabalham na Amazônia diz que há pouca dúvida de que as terras pretas tenham sido criadas por seres humanos. Os ventos predominantes sopram na direção errada o que exclui o envolvimento de vulcões. Solos enriquecidos são encontrados frequentemente no topo de penhascos — locais com pouca probabilidade de inundar ou coletar água, mas maravilhosos para se viver. As inundações não podem explicar a grande variedade de tipos de paisagens em que as terras pretas são encontradas, nem por que elas geralmente estão cheias de fragmentos de cerâmica, nem o fato de as escavações geralmente as descobrirem dentro ou ao redor de montes, fossos, caminhos e valas feitos pelo homem.

As origens precisas da terra preta permanecem obscuras, mas a vida dos povos indígenas contemporâneos na Amazônia de hoje nos dá uma ideia de como essas terras pretas podem ter sido criadas. O arqueólogo Morgan Schmidt, um afiliado de pesquisa no Instituto de Tecnologia de Massachusetts (MIT), passou anos pesquisando os solos em parceria com o povo Kuikuro do alto rio Xingu, no estado brasileiro do Mato Grosso, local onde seus ancestrais vivem há séculos.

Até hoje, os fazendeiros Kuikuro criam propositalmente terra preta para o cultivo de safras — eles a chamam de eegepe — e a composição do solo e seus padrões espaciais são semelhantes aos encontrados em torno de sítios arqueológicos. Os Kuikuro jogam comida e resíduos de fogueiras em montes de lixo ao redor de suas casas, disse Schmidt, e depois de alguns anos, plantam safras e árvores frutíferas em cima.

“Eles estão gerenciando constantemente essas plantas e essas plantações no quintal e melhorando o solo o tempo todo”, disse Schmidt. “Eles estão realmente orgulhosos de serem capazes de tornar esse solo fértil para que as plantas possam ‘crescer felizes’, como dizem”. Esses solos modificados acabam se tornando ricos em fósforo, nitrogênio, cálcio e carbono, com um pH muito mais alto do que outros solos amazônicos.

Um colega indígena, Kanu Kuikuro, descreveu a receita para Schmidt: “Nós varremos o carvão e as cinzas, juntamos e depois jogamos onde vamos plantar, para virar um belo eegepe. Lá podemos plantar batata-doce. Quando você planta onde não tem eegepe, o solo é fraco. É por isso que jogamos as cinzas, as cascas de mandioca e a polpa de mandioca ali”.

Os Kuikuro também viajam para sítios arqueológicos próximos para cultivar plantações nas terras pretas mais antigas de lá. Hoje em dia, eles vão de moto. Seus montes de lixo contemporâneos agora contêm uma bateria estranha e um pedaço de plástico. Mas, em geral, Schmidt acha que os fazendeiros Kuikuro estão criando terra preta da mesma forma que seus ancestrais pré-colombianos fizeram — os antigos fizeram isso em uma escala muito maior porque havia muito mais deles. Mas será que eles também estavam fazendo isso deliberadamente, para melhorar o solo?

“Não há como sabermos o que as pessoas pensavam no passado”, disse Schmidt. “É muito difícil encontrar evidências de intencionalidade. Mas o povo Kuikuro com quem trabalhamos demonstrou continuidade na área, e encontramos o mesmo padrão de enriquecimento do solo na vila moderna e nos sítios pré-históricos, então podemos ter quase certeza de que no passado, eles estavam fazendo as mesmas coisas”.

Solos Férteis, Florestas Propensas a Secas

Quando os habitantes de áreas tropicais úmidas se vão, a maioria dos sinais de ocupação humana se torna invisível após 500 anos. Casas de madeira e edifícios cerimoniais apodrecem. Estradas ficam cobertas de vegetação. Montes, valas e outras obras de terraplenagem ficam escondidas pela vegetação, tornando-se visíveis apenas quando a floresta é desmatada.

Mas abaixo da superfície, a terra preta coberta de cerâmica continua sendo um sinal tangível da ocupação humana. Descobrir quanto dela existe deverá esclarecer a extensão em que os humanos modificaram a floresta tropical, bem como a quantidade de carbono contida ali.

Não tem sido fácil mapear a extensão da terra preta, dado o tamanho da Amazônia, a distância em que partes dela estão e o espesso dossel. (Muitos sítios arqueológicos foram, na verdade, descobertos pelo acelerado desmatamento no Brasil.) Pesquisas recentes, no entanto, sugerem que a sombra das terras pretas pode ser vista do espaço.

A paleontóloga Crystal McMichael da Universidade de Amsterdam e seus coautores usaram imagens de satélite para identificar assinaturas espectrais — diferenças em como a luz é refletida em florestas que crescem em terra preta e aquelas em outros solos da Amazônia.

Eles provaram que o sensoriamento remoto pode capturar perturbações florestais antigas e identificar a terra preta, mas o que eles encontraram os surpreendeu. McMichael esperava que terras pretas férteis sustentassem árvores verdes e exuberantes, resistentes à seca. Os resultados mostraram o oposto: na verdade, florestas crescendo em solo antropogênico tinham menos dossel verde com menor teor de água em comparação a outros solos, e essas diferenças foram acentuadas após anos de estiagem, tornando as florestas de terra preta mais propensas a incêndios e suscetíveis à seca.

Há várias explicações possíveis para essa discrepância, disse McMichael. Outros estudos descobriram que as terras pretas tendem a dar suporte a diferentes tipos de árvores, incluindo uma proporção maior de espécies de palmeiras comestíveis, o que implica que os povos pré-colombianos mudaram a estrutura da floresta. Talvez essas áreas de floresta ainda estejam se recuperando de queimadas periódicas controladas e desmatamentos — afinal, 500 anos são apenas algumas gerações de árvores.

Ou talvez, esses solos ricos tenham continuado a atrair fazendeiros por séculos, disse McMichael. “O legado de usá-los continua até hoje, e acho que é parte do motivo pelo qual não há coisas gigantescas e exuberantes aqui, mas sim essas florestas ricas em palmeiras de menor porte lá”.

“Guardiões Desta Pegada Antiga”

É verdade que os agricultores tradicionais valorizam as terras pretas, disse o etnoecologista André Junqueira da Universidade de Wageningen, na Holanda, mas a relação não é tão simples quanto ele esperava quando começou sua pesquisa. Junqueira estudou como os caboclos — atuais povos amazônicos de ascendência mista — cultivam as paisagens ao longo do Rio Madeira, no Brasil. Os caboclos apreciam a alta fertilidade das terras pretas e plantam algumas de suas safras e variedades mais exigentes em nutrientes nela. Mas as ervas daninhas, assim como as safras cultivadas, crescem como fogo nessas terras, disse Junqueira, “então elas realmente exigem muito mais trabalho para serem mantidas”.

“Da perspectiva de um agricultor, o que mais ele gosta é de ter diferentes tipos de solo que possam sustentar múltiplos sistemas de cultivo e um portfólio mais amplo de culturas”, ele disse. Os caboclos foram atraídos para áreas da floresta onde há uma mistura de terra preta e solo comum—e a alta concentração de árvores e palmeiras úteis encontradas perto de sítios arqueológicos também foi um bônus.

Ao usar essas paisagens, eles “mantiveram e amplificaram o legado pré-colombiano”, disse Junqueira. “De certa forma, eles são como guardiões dessa pegada antiga e, por meio de suas práticas atuais, continuam adicionando complexidade e heterogeneidade à floresta”.

Mas Junqueira suspeitava que os fazendeiros caboclos não estavam necessariamente buscando o solo mais fértil. Em parte, as pessoas continuaram usando essas florestas antropogênicas pela mesma razão pela qual os humanos sempre escolheram suas casas: localização, localização, localização. “As pessoas hoje continuam usando o mesmo critério que usavam no passado para escolher uma área para viver: penhascos altos, bem na margem de rios, perto de uma fonte de água limpa”.

Esse padrão é exatamente o que Schmidt e o geólogo do MIT Samuel Goldberg e seus colegas encontraram em seu próprio esforço de sensoriamento remoto e aprendizado de máquina. Ao sobrepor várias faixas de imagens de satélite do território indígena do Xingu, eles puderam prever as áreas de terras pretas com uma precisão razoável. “Encontramos um padrão generalizado de depósitos de ADE localizados nas bordas de penhascos de rios nas terras altas adjacentes às planícies de inundação”, disse Goldberg em uma apresentação na Reunião de Outono da AGU em 2021.

No total, disse ele, previu-se que as terras pretas cobririam de 250–700 quilômetros quadrados, ou até 2,7% da região. A multiplicação dessa área pela densidade de carbono e profundidades do solo que já foram medidas em estudos de campo sugeriram que solos antropogênicos no território indígena do Xingu podem estar retirando de 3 a7 megatons de carbono extra, além da quantidade naturalmente armazenada no solo.

Aplicar essas densidades à Amazônia como um todo — algo que Goldberg admitiu ser “simplesmente especulação” neste estágio — significaria que as terras pretas da Amazônia poderiam estar prendendo tanto carbono quanto a quantidade emitida anualmente pelos Estados Unidos. Precisamos trabalhar mais para descobrir se esse é realmente o caso, disse Goldberg, “mas isso sugere que o ADE pode ser um reservatório substancial de carbono orgânico no solo”.

Belo Biochar

À medida que o dióxido de carbono (CO₂) se acumula perigosamente na atmosfera e as nações lutam para alimentar populações crescentes de forma sustentável, uma técnica que retira o carbono e melhora o solo para a agricultura parece ser uma bala de prata. E, de fato, estudos sobre a terra preta levaram a um esforço de pesquisas global sobre a possibilidade de mitigação climática de enriquecer os solos com carvão vegetal, criando um análogo moderno simplificado da terra preta, chamado biochar.

A terra preta “definitivamente foi uma inspiração” para o biochar, disse Johannes Lehmann, um pesquisador de biochar e biogeoquímico de solo na Universidade Cornell em Ithaca, N.Y., mas o ponto não é recriá-la perfeitamente. As terras pretas feitas por indígenas da Amazônia contêm resíduos de peixes, esterco e cerâmica, elementos geralmente ausentes do biochar. O biochar tem o objetivo focado de extrair dióxido de carbono da atmosfera ao mesmo tempo em que melhora os rendimentos agrícolas.

A principal técnica para criar o biochar, chamada pyrolysis, envolve carbonizar resíduos de vegetação a baixas temperaturas em um ambiente com pouco ou nenhum oxigênio. “Se você a privar de todo o oxigênio, não poderá oxidar um pedaço de madeira em CO₂ e água—e deixará muito carbono para trás,” disse Lehmann. O mesmo pedaço de madeira deixado para apodrecer ou queimado em condições normais (ricas em oxigênio) liberaria seu carbono na atmosfera de minutos a meses. Quando a vegetação é carbonizada, o carbono permanece aprisionado durante décadas ou até séculos. “Ele é muitíssimo mais persistente”.

Pesquisas recentes descobriram que o biochar melhora o solo em alguns contextos e tem o maior potencial de mitigação climática que qualquer esforço baseado na terra, incluindo a agrofloresta e o reflorestamento — embora Lehmann tenha salientado que nada é mais eficaz do que manter as florestas de pé. Mais de 300 empresas já estão produzindo produtos comerciais de biochar.

Ainda assim, é cedo para a indústria. Como tecnologia, o biochar está onde a energia fotovoltaica estava na década de 70, disse Lehmann. “Na década de 70, todos nós dizíamos que a energia fotovoltaica salvaria o dia, mas levou 40 anos até que algo acontecesse”. Aplicar carvão vegetal ao solo pode parecer relativamente simples — e, de fato, é uma das poucas medidas de mitigação que podem ser iniciadas agora — porém, são necessárias mais pesquisas e experimentações práticas para determinar onde e como ele pode ter o maior efeito, disse ele.

E o mais importante, os próprios agricultores precisam ver um benefício no biochar, disse Lehmann. “Não acho que podemos esperar que um produtor de abacate seja um agricultor de carbono. Se colocar biochar nas árvores de abacate não melhora os abacates, então, francamente, não me importo se ele retira carbono. Um usuário da terra fará isso se descobrir que isso é bom para seu solo”.

Aumentar a escala levará tempo, então. “Esse é o calcanhar de Aquiles de um sistema distribuído, certo? É mais difícil de escalar do que uma usina de energia a carvão ou uma injeção de CO2 em um grande buraco. Mas também tem beleza. É mais robusto quando está lá, e provavelmente é mais sustentável à medida que se desenvolve”, disse Lehmann. “A pior coisa que pode acontecer é termos alguns milhões de agricultores felizes, mas não ter salvado o clima. Eu chamo isso de estratégia sem arrependimentos”.

Alguns pesquisadores, no entanto, estão preocupados que a comercialização de biochar possa levar ao desmatamento ilegal, já que as empresas de biochar buscam as matérias-primas mais baratas para pirolisar. Além disso, eles argumentam que o biochar deve sua existência aos conhecimentos indígenas das comunidades amazônicas. Se houver lucros a serem obtidos, os povos indígenas serão beneficiados?

Transformar terra preta em uma mercadoria também pode ter implicações para locais antigos da Amazônia. Os arqueólogos permanecem deliberadamente vagos sobre as localizações precisas da terra preta para proteger esses locais, disse McMichael. Em algumas partes do Brasil, sítios de terra preta já estão sendo minerados para solo de envasamento ou escavados para construir cidades modernas. “Há centenas de sítios arqueológicos com terra preta sendo destruídos enquanto falamos”, disse Schmidt. “Eles são protegidos por lei, mas não há fiscalização”.

E eles são insubstituíveis. Destruir esses pedaços de terras preciosas implica uma perda de história, de cultura, de terras férteis para cultivo e de biodiversidade, disse Schmidt. “Além disso, qualquer carbono armazenado nesses solos será emitido para a atmosfera”. A resposta, no entanto, não é trancá-los. A melhor maneira de preservá-los, ele suspeita, é que as comunidades tradicionais continuem vivendo neles, cultivando-os com ferramentas de baixo impacto que não perturbem excessivamente o solo e, por meio de suas ações, mantendo o legado milenar do passado humano da Amazônia.

Informação Sobre a Autora

Kate Evans (@kate_g_evans), Autora Científica

Text © 2024. 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.

This is an authorized translation of an Eos article. Esta es una traducción al español autorizada de un artículo de Eos.

Cuando el poeta William Blake escribió que veía un mundo en un grano de arena, proponiendo la idea de que incluso una partícula de roca podía contener pistas sobre el cosmos, quizá no prevía que los seres humanos sostendrían algún día en sus manos fragmentos de mundos lejanos en un sentido literal. Sin embargo, hoy en día, más de dos siglos después de que Blake escribiera «Augurios de inocencia», y más de cinco décadas desde que se trajeran por primera vez rocas de más allá de la Tierra, eso es una realidad.

Se han recuperado valiosas rocas de la Luna y de múltiples asteroides, se ha recolectado polvo de la cola de un cometa e incluso, hemos capturado “viento” del Sol. En la próxima década, la humanidad no sólo logrará el tan esperado regreso a la Luna, sino que se está planeando que las naves espaciales recojan rocas de Marte y de su luna Fobos.

Las primeras misiones para traer muestras estaban tripuladas por personas que recogían muestras manualmente de la Luna, pero más recientemente, los humanos han cedido el trabajo a naves espaciales y vehículos exploradores que llevan complejos mecanismos de muestreo. Estas misiones robóticas operadas a distancia pueden llegar audazmente donde los humanos no pueden. Proporcionan acceso directo a muestras que nos permiten responder a antiguas preguntas sobre la historia geológica y química de diversos cuerpos celestes, desde el Sol y la Luna hasta asteroides y planetas. Las muestras extraterrestres también ofrecen información sobre la habitabilidad de los cuerpos planetarios y nos ayudan a comprender cómo evolucionó la Tierra para ser el único cuerpo aparentemente capaz de albergar vida en nuestro sistema solar. Además, ayudan a predecir y mitigar posibles amenazas de cuerpos cósmicos como los objetos cercanos a la Tierra.

El detalle con el que pueden estudiarse las muestras devueltas utilizando una variedad de sofisticados instrumentos analíticos en los laboratorios de la Tierra simplemente no es posible en el espacio. Las limitaciones técnicas y restricciones de tamaño de las naves espaciales, así como los elevados costes de los viajes espaciales, hacen inviables tales esfuerzos. La necesidad crucial de seguir recogiendo, trayendo y preservando material de más allá de nuestro planeta es, por tanto, probable que continúe el legado de los anteriores esfuerzos de devolución de muestras en el futuro.

De los telescopios a la Luna

La fascinación por el cielo nocturno y los reinos más allá de la Tierra no es un interés reciente para la humanidad. Desde hace milenios, las primeras civilizaciones rastreaban y registraban los movimientos de los cielos para comprender nuestros orígenes y significado. Traer muestras extraterrestres a la Tierra es un esfuerzo comparativamente joven, con las primeras muestras traídas por la misión Apolo 11 de la NASA en 1969.

Así pues, es lógico que la mayor parte de lo que sabemos sobre nuestro sistema solar y el lugar que ocupamos en él proceda de observaciones remotas, realizadas primero a simple vista, luego con telescopios y, más tarde, con innumerables misiones espaciales. Sin embargo, la obtención de muestras de cuerpos distantes ha revolucionado nuestra comprensión del cosmos y del lugar que ocupamos en él.

Ningún cuerpo celeste es mejor ejemplo del poder revolucionario de la colecta de muestras que la Luna. Antes de los alunizajes, nuestro conocimiento del vecino más cercano de la Tierra se limitaba a lo que se podía deducir desde lejos. Aprendimos, por ejemplo, que el sistema Tierra-Luna tiene un elevado momento angular, que la Luna tiene una orientación del eje de rotación muy diferente a la de la Tierra y que la Luna no está en el plano de rotación de la Tierra.

Todas estas observaciones apuntaban a que algo fallaba en nuestras ideas sobre la relación Tierra-Luna, pero no sabíamos por qué, y no había consenso sobre cómo se formó la Luna. Antes del Apolo 11, las principales hipótesis para explicar el origen de la Luna eran que la Tierra y la Luna se formaron simultáneamente a partir de los primeros materiales del sistema solar, que la Tierra primitiva giraba tan rápido que desprendió una parte de sí misma que se convirtió en la Luna, o que la Luna se formó en otro lugar y finalmente fue capturada por la gravedad de la Tierra. Con la llegada de las primeras rocas lunares, los científicos obtuvieron rápidamente nuevos datos geoquímicos y geofísicos que revolucionaron nuestra comprensión de la Luna y desmintieron rápidamente cada una de esas hipótesis.

Los resultados de los primeros análisis de rocas lunares, en lugar de resultar desconcertantes, fueron increíblemente apasionantes. Los científicos se vieron obligados a repensar lo que creían saber sobre la Luna. Finalmente formularon la explicación ampliamente aceptada por la comunidad científica: la Hipótesis del Gran Impacto. Esta hipótesis postula que la Luna se formó a partir de los restos de un impacto entre una Tierra joven y otro cuerpo, conocido como Theia, que probablemente tenía el tamaño del actual Marte [Hartmann y Davis, 1975]. Esta hipótesis no sólo aclaró cómo se formó nuestra propia Luna, sino que también nos ayudó a comprender la caótica historia temprana de nuestro sistema solar y cómo evolucionan los cuerpos planetarios.

La moraleja de esta historia es que los resultados de los análisis detallados de muestras en laboratorio pueden contradecir las interpretaciones realizadas únicamente a partir de observaciones remotas. Esto se debe a que las observaciones a distancia, como las realizadas desde la órbita alrededor de un cuerpo planetario, proporcionan datos a escalas diferentes -que van desde centímetros a cientos de metros o más- en comparación con los datos de las muestras físicas, que pueden proporcionar información a escalas más finas, desde centímetros hasta la escala atómica. Estos diferentes rangos de escala sugieren que los dos enfoques pueden utilizarse de forma sinérgica, cada uno informando al otro, en lugar de que el análisis de muestras deba sustituir a las observaciones remotas.

Meteoritos frente a materiales más frágiles

Traer rocas que procedían indiscutiblemente de la Luna condujo a otro descubrimiento emocionante: Los meteoritos lunares habían estado presentes mucho tiempo en la superficie de la Tierra, ocultos a plena vista. Sencillamente, no sabíamos qué aspecto debía tener un meteorito lunar hasta que dispusimos de trozos de la Luna para comparar. Así pues, las muestras devueltas también proporcionan un contexto para estudiar y comprender los meteoritos.

Además de los meteoritos lunares, ya tenemos acceso a rocas procedentes de Marte, del cinturón de asteroides y, posiblemente, de otros mundos. Estos meteoritos han ofrecido valiosos, aunque apenas completos, destellos de los cuerpos de los que proceden.

Las naves espaciales pueden devolver de forma segura otras muestras extraterrestres que pueden ayudar a ampliar nuestro conocimiento de estos cuerpos, pero que no sobrevivirían a un viaje sin protección a través de la atmósfera terrestre. Las misiones Hayabusa2 de la Agencia Japonesa de Exploración Aeroespacial (JAXA) y OSIRIS-REx (orígenes, interpretación espectral, identificación de recursos y explorador-seguridad del regolito) de la NASA, por ejemplo, trajeron muestras de frágiles restos carbonosos de asteroides.

Si materiales similares llegaran a la Tierra en forma de meteoritos, es poco probable que sobrevivieran a la entrada atmosférica, e incluso si lo hicieran, se degradarían rápidamente en la superficie terrestre por la interacción con el agua del aire [Yokoyama et al., 2022]. Los asteroides muestreados por estas misiones son cápsulas del tiempo cósmicas que representan algunos de los primeros materiales del sistema solar, que han permanecido inalterados durante los últimos 4,500 millones de años y que no han sido alterados por su residencia en la Tierra. Esa continuidad con el pasado lejano es increíblemente importante en la búsqueda de pistas sobre el origen de la vida.

Del mismo modo, la naturaleza friable (quebradiza) de las rocas sedimentarias que componen gran parte de la superficie de Marte significa que es muy poco probable, si no imposible, que sobrevivan a la expulsión del planeta, al viaje por el espacio y a la entrada en la espesa atmósfera de la Tierra. De hecho, todos los meteoritos marcianos conocidos menos uno son ígneos -se originaron a partir de magmas- y décadas de investigaciones basadas en datos de naves espaciales en órbita y de vehículos exploradores han demostrado que estos meteoritos no representan ampliamente de la corteza marciana [Udry et al., 2020]. Más bien, los meteoritos marcianos representan sólo pequeñas porciones de la larga historia de Marte. Además, desconocemos los lugares específicos desde los que fueron expulsados los meteoritos marcianos (o cualquier meteorito, en realidad), ya que carecen de contexto geológico.

Para comprender mejor la historia y la evolución de Marte, debemos recoger muestras directamente de su superficie. El vehículo explorador Mars 2020 Perseverance ha hecho del cráter Jezero su hogar, el cual está ubicado en el hemisferio norte del planeta, desde 2021. Hasta ahora, Perseverance ha recogido 23 muestras, incluidas 12 de rocas sedimentarias y suelo que no sobrevivirían al viaje a la Tierra como meteoritos. Se espera que esas muestras lleguen a la Tierra en las próximas dos décadas gracias al programa Mars Sample Return (MSR), una iniciativa conjunta de la NASA, la Agencia Espacial Europea y otros socios. La misión china Tianwen-3, cuyo lanzamiento está previsto para 2030, también intentará recuperar muestras de Marte.

Al igual que el Gran Cañón en la Tierra, el cráter Jezero expone rocas que representan gran parte de la historia geológica de Marte, y las muestras almacenadas han sido cuidadosamente seleccionadas para abarcar una ventana más amplia de esa historia que los meteoritos disponibles. Estas muestras proporcionarán información muy valiosa sobre los procesos impulsados por el agua en el Planeta Rojo, y podrían revelar posibles biofirmas de vida pasada y ayudarnos a entender cómo Marte se convirtió en el planeta polvoriento y desolado que conocemos hoy en día [Beaty et al., 2019].

El valor perdurable de traer el Sistema Solar a casa

Las muestras devueltas desde el espacio y conservadas en su estado original son regalos que nunca se acaban. En el medio siglo transcurrido desde que las misiones Apolo de la NASA y Luna de la Unión Soviética cautivaron la imaginación de todo el mundo, las muestras de esos programas han seguido aportando conocimientos. Hoy en día, una generación de científicos (entre los que nos incluimos) que no había nacido en la época de aquellas misiones está aplicando tecnología punta a esas mismas muestras para abordar cuestiones que no se soñaban en la era Apolo: ¿Podemos colocar muestras Apolo en una estratigrafía de lava sin abrirlas? ¿Cuáles son los orígenes del agua lunar? ¿Podemos detectar hidrógeno y helio derivados del viento solar en los suelos lunares? [por ejemplo, Wilbur et al., 2023].

En el mismo periodo de tiempo, el ámbito de la exploración espacial se ha ampliado considerablemente, tanto en la variedad de cuerpos celestes explorados como en la diversidad de personas que trabajan en estos esfuerzos. Las misiones robóticas han traído muestras de partículas del viento solar (misión Génesis de la NASA), polvo cometario (misión Stardust de la NASA), muestras de asteroides (misiones Hayabusa y Hayabusa2 de la JAXA y OSIRIS-REx de la NASA), rocas lunares no muestreadas anteriormente (misión Chang’e-5 de China) y, más recientemente, las primeras muestras de suelo y rocas de la cara oculta de la Luna (misión Chang’e-6 de China). Como en el caso de las misiones a la Luna, los científicos seguirán estudiando estas muestras durante décadas.

En la próxima década, el programa Artemis de la NASA permitirá el regreso de seres humanos a la Luna para explorar y tomar muestras por primera vez desde que los astronautas del Apolo 17 abandonaron las tierras altas lunares de Taurus-Littrow en diciembre de 1972. La NASA también está explorando opciones para el retorno robótico de muestras desde la Luna, incluido el concepto de misión Endurance para un vehículo explorador que recogería muestras en el lado lejano y las entregaría a los astronautas de Artemis. Estas misiones son el trampolín para explorar y devolver muestras de Marte (MSR y la misión china Tianwen-3) y de una de sus lunas, Fobos (La misión MMX (Martian Moons Exploration) de JAXA) [Usui et al., 2020].

Más allá del corto plazo, se están desarrollando conceptos de misión para traer muestras de lugares más exóticos, incluidas las superficies heladas de un cometa y del planeta enano Ceres, esfuerzos que llevarán décadas y requerirán un desarrollo tecnológico sustancial. El objetivo de traer muestras heladas puede ser ambicioso, pero la recompensa podría cambiar el paradigma.

Los cometas contienen material del nacimiento del sistema solar que ha permanecido inalterado desde entonces, congelado en el tiempo, gracias a la gran distancia que los separa del Sol. El acceso a muestras de la superficie cometaria proporcionaría una visión sin precedentes de la naturaleza primordial de los elementos bioesenciales y el agua. En particular, tales muestras podrían arrojar luz sobre cómo las moléculas orgánicas evolucionaron hasta convertirse en vida y de dónde proceden los enormes volúmenes de agua de la Tierra.

De lo inconcebible a la inspiración

Las misiones para traer muestras están impulsadas por la investigación científica. Sin embargo, más allá de satisfacer la curiosidad intelectual sobre nuestro entorno celeste, estas misiones benefician a la sociedad de otras maneras. Su desarrollo técnico puede hacer avanzar tecnologías útiles para aplicaciones ajenas a la exploración espacial. Por ejemplo, los avances logrados durante el programa Apolo prepararon el camino para los modernos materiales a prueba de fuego, los sistemas de tratamiento del agua e incluso el calzado.

Además, las misiones de retorno de muestras contribuyen a los esfuerzos de defensa planetaria destinados a predecir y mitigar los impactos de asteroides y cometas potencialmente peligrosos. Saber de qué están hechos esos cuerpos y con qué fuerza o debilidad se consolidan nos da una mejor idea de cómo desviarlos o perturbarlos.

La dificultad inherente a estas misiones y el espíritu compartido de exploración que encarnan pueden captar la imaginación del público e inspirar a las generaciones más jóvenes a seguir carreras STEAM (ciencia, tecnología, ingeniería, artes y matemáticas). Como se benefician de la participación de equipos grandes y diversos que representan una infinidad de áreas de especialización -desde la ciencia y la ingeniería hasta el arte, los medios de comunicación y la educación- y diferentes culturas y países, también pueden fomentar la colaboración internacional y construir el diálogo y el respeto interculturales.

Antes era inconcebible que pudiéramos viajar a otro cuerpo celeste y traer piezas de vuelta. Incluso ahora, algunos lugares pueden parecer inalcanzables traer muestras: Venus, Europa, la luna de Júpiter, y Encélado, la luna de Saturno, por nombrar algunos. Pero teniendo en cuenta la incansable perseverancia de la humanidad, podemos esperar razonablemente que las generaciones futuras acaben disponiendo de fragmentos de estos mundos lejanos para admirarlos y estudiarlos. Tal es el sueño y el legado de traer muestras extraterrestres.

Referencias

Beaty, D. W., et al. (2019), The potential science and engineering value of samples delivered to Earth by Mars sample return, Meteoritics Planet. Sci., 54(S1), S3‒S152, https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.13242.

Hartmann, W. K., and D. R. Davis (1975), Satellite-sized planetesimals and lunar origin, Icarus, 24(4), 504–515, https://doi.org/10.1016/0019-1035(75)90070-6.

Udry, A., et al. (2020), What Martian meteorites reveal about the interior and surface of Mars, J. Geophys. Res. Planets, 125(12), e2020JE006523, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JE006523.

Usui, T., et al. (2020), The importance of Phobos sample return for understanding the Mars-Moon system, Space Sci. Rev., 216, 49, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-020-00668-9.

Wilbur, Z. E., et al. (2023), Volatiles, vesicles, and vugs: Unraveling the magmatic and eruptive histories of Steno crater basalts, Meteoritics Planet. Sci., 58(11), 1,600‒1,628, https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.14086. https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.14086.

Yokoyama, T., et al. (2022), Samples returned from the asteroid Ryugu are similar to Ivuna-type carbonaceous meteorites, Science, 379(6634), eabn7850, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abn7850.

Datos de autores

Jemma Davidson (jemma.davidson@nasa.gov), NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston; y Jessica Barnes, Universidad de Arizona, Tucson

This translation by Saúl A. Villafañe-Barajas (@villafanne) was made possible by a partnership with Planeteando y GeoLatinas. Esta traducción fue posible gracias a una asociación con Planeteando and GeoLatinas.

Text © 2024. 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.

In one of this year’s primary elections, a physicist and science educator took to the campaign trail.

Ramón Barthelemy, a physics and astronomy education researcher at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, was pursuing a seat in the Utah House of Representatives to represent District 24. He challenged 15-year incumbent and fellow Democrat Joel Briscoe for the opportunity to represent more than 43,000 residents of Salt Lake City.

More than 200 STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) professionals like Barthelemy are running for office at the state and municipal level this year, more than ever before. Though races at the top of the ticket rightly receive a lot of attention, the results of down-ballot races determine many of the policies that affect people’s daily lives, including how federal policies are implemented at the local or state level.

Barthelemy’s campaign targeted the value of science education and literacy in his district, and he believed his background as a scientist could help increase access to STEM education, improve local air quality, and encourage local students to pursue STEM careers at nearby tech companies.

“I think it is critical, now more than ever, that we have scientists engaged in the political process,” Barthelemy said. “The challenges we are faced with—not just as a state, not just as a country, but as a species—are technical and scientific, and we need technical expertise in order to solve them.”

Climate change, pollution, ethical technology development, energy independence, the space race, public health: Solving these problems requires a partnership between scientists, who have the expertise to understand these issues, and politicians, who have the resources and influence to enact solutions.

More and more, scientists are choosing to engage more deeply in the political process and run for office themselves.

Though science-based facts are not the be-all, end-all when crafting policy, this engagement brings scientific knowledge and problem-solving skills into legislative chambers at all levels of governance and gives science and its practitioners a greater voice in the political process.

“So many of the big issues that we face as a nation, communities, and world have science at their core.…For us to not be part of [solving these issues] is a huge mistake,” said Kristopher Larsen, who helps manage data collection for Mars missions at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and is a former mayor of Nederland, Colo.

Why Jump In?

Scientists run for office for reasons as varied and individual as the scientists themselves. Some have always felt called to public service and see governance as a way to give back to their communities. Some become concerned that officials have failed to act on climate change or other issues with science-based solutions.

“Whether you care about our nuclear policy, or climate change, or health care, or education, we benefit by having scientists as part of those discussions,” said Shaughnessy Naughton, founder and president of 314 Action, a political action fund that helps scientists run for office in the United States. “Any issue benefits by having scientists at the governing table,” she said.

Still others, including Barthelemy, have grown concerned with rising antiscience and antieducation sentiment in the United States and feel they are in a unique position to combat it. They chose to fight back on politicians’ turf.

“There are a lot of people who believe that science can help us live better lives and that science really does need to be front and center when we’re making public policy,” said Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist, science advocate, and former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. “We have to step up and say, ‘This is wrong. This is right. We have evidence and data to support that,’” Phoenix said. “There’s a whole group of people who really value science, and science needs champions.”

The perceived lack of action to address climate change was one of the issues that drove Naughton, a former chemist, to campaign to represent Pennsylvania’s 8th District in the U.S. House in 2014. Naughton had also grown alarmed by attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the failure to combat gun violence—or even collect data on it—after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

Evidence-based solutions exist to stop climate change, reduce gun violence, and secure health care, so she felt that the lack of progress on these issues “wasn’t a problem with the science. This was a problem with policymakers. And the only way to fix that was to run for Congress,” she said, and champion science-based solutions in the halls of governance.

The election of Donald Trump and his administration’s perceived efforts to undermine science were what prompted Phoenix to consider a run for office. “When Trump was elected,” she said, “it was a shock to the science ecosystem.” She was alarmed that the Trump administration was not just ignoring the best available science when it came to issues like climate change but also appearing to work counter to the best interests of both the public and the environment.

“That really motivated me to step up and say, ‘Why can’t scientists run for office?’” Phoenix remembered. She announced her candidacy for a seat in the U.S. House representing what is now California’s 27th district at the 2017 March for Science. Although her campaign was unsuccessful—today, the district is represented by Mike Garcia (R-Santa Clarita)—she has continued her science advocacy by becoming an ambassador for the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“People who represent us in government, especially at the federal level, are supposed to be drawn from a wide array of backgrounds,” Phoenix said, “but it’s mainly lawyers and career politicians, and you aren’t seeing janitors and nurses and scientists.”

Larsen, who served as Nederland’s mayor between 2016 and 2022 and is currently a town trustee, took an early interest in politics and got involved in his community while working as a postdoc. He started by joining an advisory board that helps preserve open space and trails, which spoke to his love for skiing, mountain biking, and hiking. “This was my way to get to know how the town works,” he said.

Nederland’s mayor and trustees oversee zoning issues, public works, community engagement, emergency service access, and sustainability efforts. In his small town (population: 1,500), “the politics we do doesn’t end up on the front page of the paper,” he said. Only occasionally do larger crises, like a wildfire or an attempted bombing in town, break the mold.

Facing a Divided Nation

From the new space race to climate change to COVID-19, science has become more politicized than ever. Some scientist-candidates say their research-based approach is a strength when addressing issues both inside and outside the sphere of science.

When Ben Dewell, a meteorologist and a director of the Stallion Springs Community Service District, first moved into California’s 20th District in 2015, “I didn’t make it known that I was a scientist.” The historically red district was represented by then-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield). Dewell strongly objected to what he felt was McCarthy putting his loyalty to former President Trump over the interests of his constituents.

Dewell initially ran for office in 2022 to unseat McCarthy, first as a Democrat and then again as a No Party candidate. With the encouragement of his neighbors, he organized a campaign on his own without the assistance of local organizing groups or political action committees. “I was less than grassroots, and to this day, it’s still less than grassroots,” he joked about his campaign. “It’s not even a seedling.”

Although his congressional campaign was unsuccessful, Dewell still feels that his scientific, data-driven way of looking at issues is an asset in his hyperpartisan district, today represented by Vince Fong (R-Bakersfield).

“A lot of people who have come up to me [have] said, ‘I didn’t know you were a scientist. What do you do?’” Dewell said. “And I’ve explained it to them, and they’ve smiled” encouragingly. Dewell also serves on the board of the Eastern Kern Air Pollution Control District that monitors the district’s air quality and is currently running for a seat on the Kern County Board of Supervisors in a November special election.

“It would have been inconsistent for me not to run in service to the same constituency still in need of a logical, rational, nonpartisan voice,” he said. “My ballot designation still includes ‘scientist.’”

Brianna Titone (D), a geochemist who flipped her Colorado district from red to blue in 2018, felt that her background as a scientist was a real asset to her campaign.

“My district has a lot of engineers and a lot of scientists,” she said. Colorado House of Representatives District 27 represents thousands of people who work at scientific institutions, including the Colorado School of Mines, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and a U.S. Geological Survey center.

But as a first-time candidate, a Democrat, and a trans woman running in a red district, Titone was at a disadvantage when pitted against the incumbent GOP candidate. Her experience as a consultant on groundwater flow for the mining industry and a geology software engineer provided a way for her to engage with constituents on familiar ground. “I really relied a lot on my scientific background to talk to my voters,” she said. However, she also acknowledged that public trust of science was greater when she was elected than it is now.

“There is a subset of the population that is distrustful,” Phoenix said. “But what we have found among swing voters is that there is a lot of trust of science, scientists, and expertise in general. And that really bodes well for our country’s future and for scientific candidates.” Although the number has declined since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, 73% of Americans still have confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interests.

“For a lot of voters, as crazy as it sounds, [being a scientist] is almost a value statement,” Phoenix explained. “Because people look at scientists as truth tellers, as honest brokers, and that’s really what they want from their elected leaders.”

The Scientific Consensus

The scientific community has expressed mixed reactions to scientists entering the political arena. Many scientist-candidates recall receiving relieved looks, at best, or negative pushback, at worst, from their fellow scientists.

The feelings of relief sometimes come from scientists who want to have a greater voice in government but are not in a position to run for office themselves, Phoenix explained. Running a campaign for federal office, for instance, requires a significant investment of time and money, and actually holding that office is a full-time career. Running for a local position is less expensive but can be just as time-consuming, and though these positions are often part-time, their lower pay often necessitates holding a second job.

As such, the responsibilities of running for and holding office can discourage scientists (and those in most professional communities) who are early in their career, are seeking tenure, are the primary earner in their household, have family caregiving responsibilities, or experience bias because of their identity.

“Admittedly, I was pretty naive about the process,” Naughton said. Although her congressional campaign was unsuccessful, it led her to found 314 Action, which has helped elect more than 400 scientists to public office at all levels of governance. She wanted to provide scientists with the tools, resources, and knowledge base that she lacked when she first ran for office.

When you want to run for office but lack the privilege, Phoenix said, seeing someone else step up can be a relief.

“When I tell other scientists I’m running for office,” Barthelemy said, “their eyes get wide, and they’re just like, ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re doing that. I could never do that. Good luck!’”

Naughton said she sees a generational divide in how scientists react to their colleagues running for office. “Especially among the younger generation, there’s a strong appetite for getting involved in politics,” she said. Among the older generation of scientists, the feeling seemed to be “science is above politics, and therefore, scientists shouldn’t be involved in politics.”

There is some historical basis for that opinion. The U.S. public has not always looked kindly on scientists who have become the face of a scientific issue, whether willingly or not. Consider J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb or Michael Mann and climate change or Anthony Fauci and COVID-19. Scientists have seen many examples where politicians and the public have turned on outspoken colleagues, and some advise students to “stay in their lane,” Naughton said.

“That model has failed us,” Naughton continued, because whereas scientists may be hesitant to enter the political arena, “politicians are unembarrassed and unafraid to meddle in science.”

“Yes, it would be great if we could just be in our bubble doing our work,” Phoenix added, “but unfortunately, that is not the case.”

Entering the Arena

Say you’re a scientist with an interest in politics and you care about a particular issue in your community. Is running for office necessarily the answer?

“I’m going to say, flatly, ‘no’ to all scientists,” Dewell said. “I would like to see more pure scientists in there.…I would say they should run if they feel like they can make a difference” while remaining objective.

Whether or not a scientist should run for office “would depend on whether I felt that scientist was going to do a good job in the political arena,” said Samuel Bell, a planetary geologist at the Planetary Science Institute and a Rhode Island state senator. What drove Bell (D) into politics was a desire to see the Democratic party fight harder for science funding and use science-based decisionmaking to craft laws.

Scientists are not a monolith. A scientific background is no guarantee that a person would make a good legislator or be a good advocate for their community or for science. Instead of seeking to become policymakers, many scientists apply their expertise in advisory positions, working in government agencies, or through science advocacy groups to serve their communities. Being elected to office is not the only way a scientist can effect change.

What’s more, politics, just like geoscience, is a specialized field that requires specialized training. Such training programs exist, as do organizations like 314 Action that help scientists overcome barriers to entering politics.

Naughton urged scientists not to be discouraged by the challenges of running for office. “We are trying to normalize the idea of public service with science,” she said.

“There are ways to serve your community that don’t require giving up your career or taking a pay cut,” she continued. “A lot of municipal and even state legislative positions are part-time and are meant to be served part-time while you continue with your career.”

Larsen, too, encouraged scientists to participate more directly in politics. “If you’re not involved, you don’t have a voice,” he said. “Then we’re just leaving it to people who don’t understand science at all to make the decisions for science.”

Still, Bell feels that there’s a lot of overlap in what it takes to be a scientist and what it takes to be a politician. “Politics is very high stakes, just like the sciences, and it’s very competitive, just like sciences,” he said. Neither career pays the most or has the most job security. “It’s important for you to have the [conviction] in what you’re fighting for, in what’s right, the same way as in science,” he said.

But just as a scientist shouldn’t jump blithely into a new research area without doing a literature review, they should do their research before entering politics, Titone advised.

“Don’t set foot in city hall or the state house for the first time after you win an election,” she said. “You should set foot in those places well before that so you have an understanding of what the process is like, how people speak to each other, what some of the topics are, and how they cover them.”

“Then,” she added, “if you have a specific expertise on a specific topic, think about what things that you bring to the table that you can do to help solve some of the problems that are facing your area.”

Science in the Governing Chambers

But how does being a scientist actually help with being a lawmaker? For most geoscientists, their specific research topic is rarely, if ever, relevant.

Bell, who researches planetary impacts, joked that “there have not been major [impactors] that have struck the state of Rhode Island. And I really hope that that will continue to be the case!”

However, he recalled using his scientific expertise to advocate for a constituent whose home had been damaged by roadwork-driven seismicity. “The unique geology of the neighborhood in which she lived led to a much greater risk of seismic damage than would normally be the case,” he said.

Instead, scientists have found that the generalized skills developed when earning a science degree—critical thinking, asking tough questions, independent learning, collaboration, and teaching others—have served them the most when in office.

Larsen recalled that during his time as Nederland’s mayor, he ran on and spent time in office pushing for wildfire and climate resilience. These were issues in which, as a Mars researcher, he did not have direct scientific expertise but were critically important to the town’s residents. Larsen’s attention to those issues gained him recognition from Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign. He served briefly as a climate adviser for the campaign.

Bell, too, said that his general scientific training really helped him to understand issues specific to his constituency. His skills allowed him “to punch through and question a lot of the industry propaganda,” for example, when it came to the physics involved in a proposed expansion of a natural gas pipeline in Rhode Island.

A lot of the information about the pipeline was “quite shockingly wrong,” Bell said. “And when it’s dressed up in fancy language from official reports, a lot of people won’t know the difference between totally garbage science and reasonable science.” His research skills helped him ask industry representatives piercing questions, though ultimately, the pipeline expansion was approved.

After several years in office, Titone found that her analytical approach to science-related legislation led her to “really earn the trust of my colleagues because they know that I know technology. I know the lingo. I understand some of the nuance and math,” she said. “Those skills have really helped me explain to people something that’s complex in a way that they can understand it.”

In fact, being a generalist is critical when it comes to making science- and data-driven decisions.

“As senators, we’re called on to legislate on everything under the Sun,” U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), wrote in a statement to Eos. “We cover so much, so quickly, it helps to have some prior knowledge you bring to the table to understand the topics a little deeper.” Hickenlooper, a former geologist with a master’s degree in Earth and environmental sciences, is the only Earth scientist currently serving in the U.S. Senate.

“A facts-first approach is also something every senator should be using,” Hickenlooper wrote. “More scientists in government would help defuse the tensions and partisanship on many issues.”

But gathering facts and following logic are only the first steps to solving problems. Despite dreaming of purely science-based lawmaking, many scientists-turned-politicians have found that they need to balance other factors such as equity and cost when crafting even technical policies. A science-based solution to a problem might be cut and dry (for example, cutting carbon emissions to stop climate change); implementing that solution is often far from straightforward. Incremental progress is often more feasible, if a bit less palatable to a novice politician.

Public office is about doing what’s best for your community, Larsen said, and that means collaboration and cooperation, two critical skills for a scientist. “In mainstream news, politics is laid out as a very adversarial thing. It’s always red versus blue, right versus left. Pick your dichotomy,” he said. “But when you actually are in it and trying to get things done, it’s finding the compromise and finding the ways to do something that’s going to work for as many people as possible and make progress.”

“Fighting is the first thing I had to unlearn,” he added.

Eos repeatedly reached out to several GOP politicians with STEM backgrounds for this article but did not receive any replies.

Science’s Champions

Though Barthelemy lost his 25 June primary challenge, he reflected that the process gave him a new stage to talk to people about STEM education, air quality in Salt Lake City, and the drying of the Great Salt Lake. Despite the election’s outcome, he found it to be a valuable experience.

“I think it’s critical to just even be part of the conversation so we can increase the discourse on the importance of science and also the importance of scientific literacy amongst the population,” Barthelemy said.

Regardless of your scientific background or political leanings, “when you get elected, you have to represent everyone, even the people who disagree with you,” Phoenix said. “And if you’re a scientist, that means people who think that what you work on is baloney.”

“Political parties are not mentioned anywhere in the U.S. Constitution,” Dewell noted. “Science is.”

—Kimberly M. S. Cartier (@AstroKimCartier), Staff Writer

Correction 3 October 2024: This article has been updated to reflect recent redistricting in California.

Citation: Cartier, K. M. S. (2024), Lab to legislature, Eos, 105, https://doi.org/10.1029/2024EO240437. Published on 3 October 2024.

Text © 2024. 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.