In the small-scale details of grain shape, researchers have found a new way to understand how sediment flows in a river, a process shaping Earth’s landscapes.
rivers
What Electrons Can Tell Us About the Speed of Sand
A new sediment tracer uses the interactions between radiation, charge, and the Sun to uncover the hidden transport histories of sand grains.
Streamflow Drought Intensification in the European Alps
A five-decade analysis of drought generation processes in the Alps shows their changing seasonality in high-elevation basins with increasingly frequent droughts caused by a lack of snowmelt water.
Scientists EEAGER-ly Track Beavers Across Western United States
Efficiently tracking nature’s engineers—beavers—at the scale of entire watersheds over time is now possible, thanks to a new artificial intelligence–trained model called EEAGER.
Why Do Fluvial Valleys Behave So Differently?
Source: AGU Advances Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. The shape of fluvial valleys results from the complex interaction between climate and the local environment. Our current knowledge suggests that river discharge and valley-wall lithology are the main controls on valley width. Yet, current models based on these observations fail […]
Disentangling River Water Turbidity and its Flow
A new study shows why fine sediments in rivers are not simply proportional to the water flow across the United States.
U.S. Streams Are Drying Up
A new study reports that streamflow drought is getting more intense in some parts of the United States, a phenomenon that is stressing the nation’s water policy and infrastructure.
High-Frequency Monitoring Reveals Riverine Nitrogen Removal
Years of daily readings provide an unprecedented view into how a submerged aquatic meadow kept nitrogen from reaching the St. Lawrence Estuary as well as insights on how climate change may alter it.
Ancient Nile Tributary May Have Aided Pyramid Construction
Pollen from sediment cores shows that a now dry channel cutting through Giza was once a flowing waterway that Egyptian pyramid builders could have used to transport supplies.
The Burning Tundra
As wildfires blaze through the Arctic, scientists examine the role of landscape characteristics on wildfire ecosystem responses in northern aquatic ecosystems.