Editors' Highlights Archives - Page 66 of 116

Diagram showing how thousands of years of evolution links three characteristics: the maximum lengths of tree roots, how close these roots are to a groundwater source, and whether or not trees use groundwater.

Evolution is More Important than Environment for Water Uptake

by Valeriy Ivanov 8 February 20223 May 2022

Despite conventional assumptions, a new study shows that evolutionary proximity of species defines root water uptake strategies, not their position in landscape or ambient environment.

Editors' Highlights

Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble: Ocean Vents Spew Rubble

by Rose Cory 7 February 202215 March 2022

Hydrothermal vents in the ocean emit 6000-year-old carbon. The likely source? Ocean crust.

Example of how, given the presence of aurora, an over-the-horizon radar based in Scotland might be used to track an aircraft at 10 km altitude in a region to the north.

Editors' Highlights

Can Aurora Enhance Radar Monitoring of Arctic Aviation?

by Michael A. Hapgood 2 February 202215 March 2022

Enhanced E-region ionization produced by the aurora can be used to reflect signals from over-the-horizon radars and thus enable those radars to better monitor aviation in Arctic regions.

Editors' Highlights

What Conditions Accompanied the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction?

by Susan Trumbore 20 January 202215 September 2025

The second-largest mass extinction in Earth’s history took place in a period of stresses from non-sulfidic anoxia in shelf areas, together with glacioeustatic sea-level change and climatic cooling.

Editors' Highlights

A Deep-Space Origin for Volatile-Rich Asteroids

by Francis Nimmo 19 January 202215 March 2022

Spectral data and modeling suggest that volatile-rich main-belt asteroids initially formed at much greater distances from the Sun (>10 AU).

Charts showing frequency distribution of the arsenic concentration for the respective nominal kit categories for the paired dataset.

Editors' Highlights

Field Kits Effectively Predict Arsenic Contamination

by Avner Vengosh 19 January 202228 February 2023

Field kits used in Bangladesh to test arsenic exposure from contaminated drinking water are effective in comparison to expensive laboratory arsenic tests.

Comparison of the performance of many different water resources management options based on four different objectives.

Editors' Highlights

Managing Strategic Water Resources in a Changing Climate

by Jim Hall 11 January 20221 June 2023

Another significant step has been taken in methods for managing water resources in the face of climatic changes and other future uncertainties. Dynamic adaptation is becoming a reality.

Editors' Highlights

Observation of Shear Wave Anisotropy in the Earth’s Inner Core

by Daoyuan Sun 5 January 20228 July 2024

Coda-correlation wavefields reveal direction-dependent inner-core shear-wave speed, ~5 s faster in directions oblique to the Earth’s rotation axis than directions parallel to the equatorial plane.