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Here, the authors conduct a metagenomic-based study of England’s rivers to show that biofilm bacteria are taxonomically and functionally diverse and are key to biogeochemical cycling, highlighting the importance of river biofilm bacteria in understanding and monitoring freshwater ecosystem health.

An operational satellite-based monitoring system using NASA/USGS and ESA imagery enables rapid tracking of global land change, with the area of conversion due to direct human action and fire equaling the size of California in 2023.

By combining satellite observations with ground-based data and expert validation, this analysis demonstrates considerable misestimation of grassland extent and thereby carbon stock estimates in previous global assessments based on remote sensing.

The magnitude of the increase in global river flow between 1980 and 2014 is 13.6% lower than Earth system models estimate and is expected to be 9.3% lower in the future, according to an analysis of emerging constraints on the components of the water cycle.

A population genomic analysis of 1,854 Listeria soil isolates collected across the contiguous United States identifies geographically prevalent phylogroups with increased pangenome openness and recombination, as a result of adaptation to variable environments.

Many ecological studies assume that space-for-time substitution approaches can be suitable proxies for unavailable time series. Here the authors show congruence between the two approaches in the direction but not the magnitude of grassland plant and arthropod community responses to land-use intensification.

Remote sensed information and population data for continental Africa are used to assess how migration acts as an adaptation response after drought event. The effect on mobility is amplified with drought frequency and poverty.

Analysis of the atmospheric H₂ variability over the past millennium suggests that the sensitivity of H₂ to climate change should be considered in estimates of the radiative consequences of rising anthropogenic H₂ emissions.

Tree cover gains in the moist tropics (1982–2015) were 56% naturally regenerated forests and 27% managed tree systems, with forest type influencing carbon recovery. Effective forest restoration requires robust tracking of forest types established by restoration efforts.

A national classification system of wetland hydrologic connectivity to streams, which could be applied globally, demonstrates and advances current understanding of how wetland connectivity affects surface water quality.

Zygnematophycean algae are the closest algal relatives of land plants. This study compares the osmatic stress response of two of these species, finding a core set of molecular protective components and providing insights into the toolkit needed for plant terrestrialization.

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.

Nonlinear climate and land-use interactions drive historical and future heatwave intensification across Africa, especially in Western South Africa, based on multivariate bias-correction and explainable AI applied to CMIP6 future projections.

It is unclear whether the harsh abiotic conditions of drylands hinder biological invasions. This global analysis shows that drylands are vulnerable to non-native plants and are likely to become more so as native plant diversity declines and grazing pressure intensifies.

This study finds that plastic mulch substantially increases crop yields but also contaminates soils and pollutes the environment. The authors propose biodegradable films, AI-driven farming, and policy reforms to address the productivity–sustainability trade-offs.

Human-induced pressure may alter the size structure of animal communities. Here, the authors investigate the impact of land use, non-native species and climatic variables on the body size structure of fish communities and fishery-associated ecosystem services in the Upper Paraná Floodplain.

Hornworts are the only land plants with a pyrenoid-based CO₂-concentrating mechanism. This study presents evidence that some of the key components in algal pyrenoid-based CO₂-concentrating mechanisms are conserved in hornworts and probably serve similar functions.

Nitrate sensing by NLP7 engages a MEKK–MAPK cascade to phosphorylate the circadian clock protein CCA1, establishing a positive-feedback loop that stimulates auxin signalling to drive root foraging for nitrate.

The combination of within-species variation in pathogen load, the shape of the relationship between pathogen load and infectiousness, and vector feeding preferences shape transmission of multi-host vector-borne pathogens. Here, the authors use experimental and wild bird infection data to characterize the role of 17 host bird species in avian malaria transmission in Hawaii.

From 2014–2017, marine heatwaves caused global mass coral bleaching, where the corals lose their symbiotic algae. The authors find, this event exceeded the severity of all prior global bleaching events in recorded history, with approximately half the world’s reefs bleaching and 15% experiencing substantial mortality.

Agricultural irrigation extracts large amounts of land surface runoff and groundwater to grow crops. A systematic modelling study now suggests that historical increases in irrigation have led to net losses of both surface and groundwater beyond those caused by climate change.

Burned structures in wildfires release air pollutants not included in emissions inventories. Structure burning in wildland-urban interface fires emit hazardous compounds at levels exceeding anthropogenic sources in some US states.

In this study, the biodiversity impacts of the global food system from land use and climate change are estimated using the EXIOBASE model. The findings show that emissions from a single year’s food production are associated with global biodiversity loss equivalent to 2% or more of a region’s total land-driven biodiversity loss.

Consensus exists on the urgent need for food systems to be more sustainable, but defining their environmentally safe operating space is challenging. This study proposes food system boundaries as a share of planetary boundaries, defining budgets across nine boundaries and revealing where boundary transgression is most critical.

Microflora Danica—an atlas of Danish environmental microbiomes—reveals that although human-disturbed habitats have high alpha diversity, species reoccur, revealing hidden homogeneity.

Almost half of land use and nearly three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced by adopting circularity principles and reducing the ratio of animal-sourced protein to plant-sourced protein from 60:40 to 40:60 in European diets.

Zhang et al. examine associations between wildfire-specific PM_2.5 and emergency department visits for mental disorders in children across 845 communities in Australia, Brazil and Canada over a 15-year period.

Genome assemblies of four filamentous Zygnematophyceae and co-expression network analyses shed light on the evolutionary roots of the mechanism for balancing environmental responses and multicellular growth.

Small-scale farmers in Southeast Asia are increasingly turning to monocultures of oil palm and rubber to maximize income. Clough and colleagues demonstrate that this land-use change in Indonesia comes at a cost to a wide array of ecosystem functions and biodiversity.

Projected impacts of climate change on malaria burden in Africa by 2050 highlight the urgent need for climate-resilient malaria control strategies and robust emergency response systems to safeguard progress towards malaria eradication.

Estimates from the Global Burden of Disease study reveal declines in chronic respiratory disease mortality between 1990 and 2023—especially during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the burdens on people affected remain substantial.

Using a global database of the radiocarbon content of rivers combining new and published measurements, isotopic mass balance suggests that about 60% of river CO₂ emissions are derived from millennial or older carbon sources.

Methane emission occurs in natural wetlands on a large scale, but the corresponding trace element emissions have not been studied. Here, the authors study selenium and arsenic emission in a pristine peatland and show that this causes large amounts of those trace elements to enter the biogeochemical cycle.

Although co-occurring species may differ widely in their response traits, coordinated functional trait shifts may emerge at the community level in response to environmental factors. Here, the authors use data from 150 grassland sites to identify a coordinated slow-fast strategy response to land-use intensification across above- and belowground taxa.

Global change drivers such as climate and land-use change can impact biodiverse regions and damage the ecosystem services they provide. This study assessed the impact of such global change drivers on tree species distributions across Southeast Asian forests.

Using 63 globally distributed grassland and shrubland sites from the International Drought Experiment, this study identified plant traits linked to drought resistance after 1 year of extreme drought across growth forms, lifespans and climate.

The consumption of animal-sourced foods increases food–feed competition for scarce cropland. A scenario analysis reveals how increased use of low-opportunity-cost feed products in animal feeding in China can reduce the impacts of livestock production on land, irrigation water, synthetic fertilizer use and greenhouse gas emissions.

This Analysis illustrates how nature-positive targets aimed at protecting biodiversity can be achieved at the scale of organizations. A canteen at one UK university college is used as a case study for the application of a four-step participatory approach comprising an estimation of food-related biodiversity impacts; definition of biodiversity targets; assessment of possible interventions; and exploration of different strategies.

Ancient drip water in a Borneo stalagmite reveals a strong land temperature rise across the last glacial termination in close correspondence with atmospheric CO2, and an intriguing decoupling between tropical temperature and hydroclimate.

Global riverine carbon export to the ocean may exceed previous estimates, underscoring the important role of riverine carbon to the carbon budget, according to a multi-model ensemble assessment constrained by a global dataset.

Efficient statistical emulation of melting land ice under various climate scenarios to 2100 indicates a contribution from melting land ice to sea level increase of at least 13 centimetres sea level equivalent.

What we eat, as well as where and how it is grown, impacts species extinction risks through agricultural land use. Using a new global biodiversity impact data product, this study estimates how many species extinctions may potentially be caused by the production and consumption of different food types on a country-by-country basis.

This study examines long-term changes in species richness across tropical forests in the Andes and Amazon. Hotter, drier and more seasonal forests in the eastern and southern Amazon are losing species, while Northern Andean forests are accumulating species, acting as a refuge for climate-displaced species.

Aquatic (blue) and terrestrial (green) food webs are part of the same landscape, but it remains unclear whether they respond similarly to shared environmental gradients. Using long-term monitoring data from Switzerland and a metaweb approach, this study reveals how inferred blue and green food webs exhibit different properties along an elevation gradient and among land-use types.