From 1992 to 2019, 600,000 square kilometers of natural floodplains were lost globally due to land conversion.
wetlands
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Better Bottom-Up Estimates of Wetland Methane Emissions
Limited monitoring of methane emissions from tropical wetlands could be obscuring these environments’ role in climate change.
Posted inOpinions
The Supreme Court Is Bypassing Science—We Can’t Ignore It
The court’s exclusion of scientists from the environmental rulemaking process comes full circle as the EPA strips federal protections for wetlands.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Mapping Beaver Dams with Machine Learning
A new model deploys a neural network to spot beavers’ engineering exploits in aerial and satellite imagery, an approach that should aid studies of ecosystem and landscape change.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
A Turning Point for Estuaries Worldwide
As estuarine barriers are built in response to sea level rise, flooding, and salinization, more research is needed to better understand their implications for human activities and ecosystems.
Posted inNews
Mapping Wetland Loss Across Three Centuries
Millions of square kilometers of wetlands have been drained or converted to make room for crops, pastures, or development. In some places, up to 80% are gone.
Posted inNews
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.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Measuring the Ins and Outflows of Estuaries
Scientists modeled monitoring schemes in three different estuaries to determine instrument layouts that could effectively and efficiently measure exchanges of salt water and freshwater.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
The Burning Tundra
As wildfires blaze through the Arctic, scientists examine the role of landscape characteristics on wildfire ecosystem responses in northern aquatic ecosystems.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
When Projecting Coastal Resilience, Sediment Compaction Is Key
The addition of new sediment helps build up lowland environments like deltas and marshes, but it also compacts materials beneath it—a vital, but often overlooked, factor in landscape evolution studies.