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Climate change has led to a significant decrease in streamflow, particularly in the Negro River in the Andes, posing water scarcity risks and necessitating effective management strategies, according to streamflow reconstruction and tree-ring data analysis.

Glacier melt sustained water discharge from South America’s mountain basins during a recent severe drought, but summer runoff from glaciers could drop by 48% in future megadroughts, worsening water scarcity, according to analyses of past and projected events.

A previously unsampled deep lineage in central Argentina was discovered that had distinctive genetic drift by 8,500 bp and persisted as the main Native American ancestry component in the region up to the present day.

Analysis of data on 971 bird species in natural habitat and cattle pasture in Colombia finds that near-national-scale losses of bird diversity greatly exceed losses recorded at the local scale, suggesting that extrapolations from local studies will severely underestimate biodiversity losses.

An Atlantic meridional overturning circulation slowdown drives widespread shifts in tropical rainfall through the propagation of high-latitude cooling into the tropical North Atlantic.

Latin Americans trace their ancestry to the admixture of Native Americans, Europeans and Sub-Saharan Africans. Here, the authors develop a novel haplotype-based approach and analyse over 6,500 Latin Americans to infer the geographically-detailed genetic structure of this population.

Synthetic aperture radar interferometry reveals that 19 Gt of ice is lost per year from glaciers in South America — mostly from Patagonia — contributing 0.04 mm annually to global sea-level rise.

Analysis combining multiple global tree databases reveals that whether a location is invaded by non-native tree species depends on anthropogenic factors, but the severity of the invasion depends on the native species diversity.

How the abrupt warming events recorded in Greenland ice cores during the last glacial cycle have influenced the tropical climate is not well known. Here the authors present new lake sediment data from the Peruvian Andes that shows that these events resulted in rapid glacier retreat and large reductions in lake level.

Here, the authors present a timeline of human influence on the ecology of the Upano Valley (Ecuador) spanning the last 2770 years. They demonstrate how Pre- and Post- Columbian of maize cultivation and changing patterns of land use have produced a distinct forest composition today.

Selecting economically viable forest management strategies that deliver carbon storage and biodiversity benefits can be a difficult task. Now, research in the western Andes of Colombia shows that naturally regenerating forests can quickly accumulate carbon and support diverse ecological communities at minimal cost.

The controls on plant functional diversity are unclear. Analysis of spectral data from the tree canopy in the Amazonian lowlands implies that plant functional traits are influenced by nutrient supply, which in turn varies with topography.

Genome-wide analyses of ancient DNA from individuals from California and Mexico shed light on the spread of Mexican ancestry to California and how it correlates with linguistic flow.

The second Global Amphibian Assessment finds that the status of amphibians is continuing to deteriorate globally, driven predominantly by climate change, disease and habitat loss.

Genomic analyses of ancient and modern common beans reveal that most domesticated traits were selected 2,500 years ago or earlier, but genetic erosion occurred only in the past 600 years. This decoupling indicates a weak selection pressure imposed by early Andean farmers.

The authors assess the impact of Spanish colonization on forest dynamics across the tropics, finding variable responses according to regional land use strategies, as well as other cultural, social and biophysical factors.

An analysis of 24,202 critical cases of COVID-19 identifies potentially druggable targets in inflammatory signalling (JAK1), monocyte–macrophage activation and endothelial permeability (PDE4A), immunometabolism (SLC2A5 and AK5), and host factors required for viral entry and replication (TMPRSS2 and RAB2A).

Data from a variety of sources—including satellite, climate and soil data, as well as field-collected information on plant traits—are pooled and analysed to map the functional diversity of tropical forest canopies globally.

Using a global dataset of traded species, it is found that the highest levels of traded phylogenetic and functional diversity are from tropical regions, where high numbers of evolutionary distinct and globally endangered species occur.

Inventory data from more than 1 million trees across African, Amazonian and Southeast Asian tropical forests suggests that, despite their high diversity, just 1,053 species, representing a consistent ~2.2% of tropical tree species in each region, constitute half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees.

Assessing the effectiveness of protected areas requires sufficient monitoring data inside and outside of protected areas; such data are lacking in many tropical regions. Here the authors use robust citizen science data on bird occupancy to show that protected areas are effective in maintaining bird species diversity across eight tropical biodiversity hotspots.

Potatoes originated in the Andes and were introduced in Europe in the sixteenth century. Using historical genomes, the authors show that European potatoes were closely related to Andean landraces and find signatures of admixture with Chilean genotypes in Europe.

The authors use a mechanistic microclimate model to model the below-canopy conditions for 300,000 tropical forest locations across 30 years. They show that small temperature increases have already resulted in novel temperature regimes across most sites, and highlight areas that may act as refugia.

The last glacial period was marked by rapid reorganizations of oceanic and atmospheric circulation. Speleothem records from the Amazon Basin suggest that precipitation variability was linked to these events.

Machine-learning algorithms trained on 25,000 geolocated soil samples are used to create high-resolution global maps of mycorrhizal fungi, revealing that less than 10% of their biodiversity hotspots are in protected areas.

A complementary analysis of DESI DR2 distance measurements along with supernova and CMB data shows consistent, moderate evidence that dark energy changes over time rather than behaving as a simple cosmological constant.

A wooded flora thrived during the Late Miocene greenhouse climate in the currently hyperarid Peruvian desert, according to analysis of paleobotanical samples from the Pisco Formation, Peru.

Many mountain glaciers will disappear with warming. Here the authors assess how many glaciers will disappear per year under different warming scenarios, finding that a peak in glacier loss will happen during the mid-twenty-first century.

The potential of seasonal pumped hydropower storage (SPHS) plant to fulfil future energy storage requirements is vast in mountainous regions. Here the authors show that SPHS costs vary from 0.007 to 0.2 US$ m⁻³ of water stored, 1.8 to 50 US$ MWh⁻¹ of energy stored and 0.37 to 0.6 US$ GW⁻¹ of installed power generation capacity.

The CMS Collaboration reports the measurement of the spin, parity, and charge conjugation properties of all-charm tetraquarks, exotic fleeting particles formed in proton–proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider.

How mountain glaciers will react to temporarily overshooting 1.5 °C of warming is poorly understood. Here the authors show irreversible global glacier loss for centuries after overshoot, implying long-term reductions in glacial water resources with amplified impacts in regions where glaciers regrow.

The effectiveness of protected areas under climate change is debated. Here, the authors analyse the potential effectiveness of protected areas for conserving over 70% of extant amphibian and reptile species under present and future climate scenarios.

U-shaped glacial valleys dominate >10 ka since the last major glaciation and the transitions from glacier-dominated to fluvial regimes are poorly understood. Here, the authors use digital topographic data to show that glacial topography is rapidly replaced by fluvial topography where rock uplift rates are high.

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

An analysis of 140 floras from China reveals that high species diversity exists in granite and mixed landforms, while low species diversity is found in karst, Danxia, and desert landforms. Based on these findings, the authors provide new clues for understanding the assembly and differentiation of mountain floras, highlighting the role of bedrock and landform processes.

Common bean is an evolutionary model for studying adaptive diversity in legumes. Here, the authors present the common bean pangenome based on five high-quality genomes and whole-genome reads of 339 wild and domesticated genotypes, and reveal adaptive gene loss during expansion and domestication.

Wood density is a key control on tree biomass, and understanding its spatial variation improves estimates of forest carbon stock. Sullivan et al. measure >900 forest plots to quantify wood density and produce high resolution maps of its variation across South American tropical forests.

Analysing >1,700 inventory plots from the Amazon Tree Diversity Network, the authors show that the majority of Amazon tree species can occupy floodplains and that patterns of species turnover are closely linked to regional flood patterns.