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Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) plays an important role in decarbonization pathways to meet climate goals, but some methods are land-intensive. Multimodel analysis reveals conflicts between biodiversity and CDR that are distributed unevenly, and shows that synergies are crucial to meet climate and conservation goals.

At present, only 13.4% of the global land surface meets the World Meteorological Organization requirements for annual precipitation monitoring.

Large-scale analyses of bird species traits reveal that land-use change reduces resilience of key ecological functions more than previously thought.

High-latitude soils are future soil organic carbon loss hotspots, with losses dominated by particulate organic carbon (POC). The fraction of POC in total SOC (f_POC) is a key indicator, emphasizing the climate importance of preserving POC.

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.

Nationwide analysis of 30,086 confirmed Oropouche virus cases in Brazil between 2014 and 2025 shows that rural municipalities had over 11-fold-higher incidence than urban areas and identifies demographic, ecological and climatic factors influencing transmission, offering insights for targeted surveillance and control.

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.

Zoologist who pioneered comparative animal biomechanics.

This study applies a global food and land system modelling framework to quantify the impact of 23 food system measures on 15 outcome indicators related to public health, the environment, social inclusion and the economy—from today until 2050.

Land surface satellite data significantly improve global near-surface temperature forecasts, especially at medium lead times, indicating vegetation dynamics and land surface temperature observations as key sources of added subseasonal predictability, according to deep-learning models analysis.

This study examines the outcomes of dietary shifts across intrinsic and instrumental conservation perspectives, finding that most conservation benefits already come from a partial shift to healthier, more plant-based diets, whereas greater benefits depend on more targeted conservation action.

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.

An electrothermal fluorination methodology has been developed to transform granular activated carbon-sorbed aqueous film-forming foam waste into graphene and a fluorinating reagent, subsequently enabling lithium recovery from brine sources.

Wood used in construction stores carbon and reduces the emissions from steel and cement production. Transformation to timber cities while protecting forest and biodiversity is possible without significant increase in competition for land.

Delaying climate mitigation requires large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in the second half of this century, with possible adverse effects. Under scenarios with no dependence on CDR technologies, this study examines the short- and long-term implications of climate mitigation for land-use and food systems.

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.

Terrestrial carbon uptake as high inter-annual variability which can be used to help understand future responses to climate change. Here the authors’ modeling reveals a large portion of this variability is driven by human land use changes and management, and not captured by other models.

The direct effects of land-cover change on surface climate are increasingly well understood, but fewer studies have investigated the consequences of the trend towards more intensive land management practices. Now, research investigating the biophysical effects of temperate land-management changes reveals a net warming effect of similar magnitude to that driven by changing land cover.

In a world of deepening inequalities, climate polices might be feasible in high-income countries only. Here the authors find that overcoming global inequality through sustainable socio-economic development is critical for land-based mitigation in line with the Paris Agreement.

Lake fisheries are vulnerable to environmental changes. Here, Kao et al. develop a Bayesian networks model to analyze time-series data from 31 major fisheries lake across five continents, showing that fish catches can respond either positively or negatively to climate and land-use changes.

There is a mismatch between emission estimates from global land use calculated from IAMs and countries’ greenhouse gas inventories. This study presents a method for reconciling these estimates by reallocating part of the land-use sink, facilitating progress assessment towards climate goals.

Bioenergy has been widely viewed as an alternative for fossil fuels and an option for carbon dioxide removal, but there are doubts given the induced land-use changes. This study shows the importance of uniform regulation and comprehensive coverage of carbon-rich areas in reducing total emissions.

The Earth may become inhospitable to land mammals in about 250 Myr owing to climate warming and drying associated with the assembly of the next supercontinent, Pangaea-Ultima, according to combined tectonic, climate and mammal habitability modelling.

There lacks model comparison of global land use change projections. Here the authors explored how different long-term drivers determine land use and food availability projections and they showed that the key determinants population growth and improvements in agricultural efficiency.

Colonization of continents by plants some 430 Myr ago enhanced the complexity of weathering and sedimentary systems, and altered the composition of continental crust, according to statistical assessment of zircon compositions.

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.

Trends in global H₂ sources and sinks are analysed from 1990 to 2020, and a comprehensive budget for the decade 2010–2020 is presented.

A survey of tropical insect populations and thermal tolerance limits indicates that species from lowland areas have low capacity to survive increased temperatures, and that thermal tolerance is limited by fundamental properties of protein architecture.

Analyses of three high-quality genomes of Anthoceros hornworts place hornworts as a sister clade to the lineage including liverworts and mosses, and provide insights into the unique biological features of hornworts.

A significant challenge for policies aiming to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation is the avoidance of international carbon leakage. Research now shows, however, that even globally implemented forest conservation schemes could allow another type of carbon leakage through cropland expansion into non-forested areas.

Under current land-use regulation, carbon dioxide emissions from biofuel production exceed those from fossil diesel combustion. Therefore, international agreements need to ensure the effective and globally comprehensive protection of natural land before modern bioenergy can effectively contribute to achieving carbon neutrality.

Analysis of ground-sourced and satellite-derived models reveals a global forest carbon potential of 226 Gt outside agricultural and urban lands, with a difference of only 12% across these modelling approaches.

Meristems of the rooting axes of Asteroxylon mackiei preserved in 407-million-year-old Rhynie chert lack root caps, which demonstrates that the evolution of the root systems of modern vascular plants occurred in a stepwise fashion.

The Amazon faces worsening droughts, yet little is known about large-scale variation in the physiological limits of Amazon trees. Here, the authors reveal family-level conservatism in embolism resistance and estimate that Brazilian and Guiana shield forests are more resistant than Western Amazonia forests.

Direct and cascading land-use effects alter biomass and species richness of taxa across trophic levels ranging from microorganisms to birds in a multi-taxon research initiative in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Efforts to retain or increase land carbon pools are hampered by the risk of loss to natural or human disturbances. The proposed approach to tonne-year accounting could effectively quantify and track the climate value of both temporary and permanent carbon storage.

The transition to sustainable diets is challenging for countries that face malnutrition and limited resources. Now a study explores how various dietary transformations in China can improve public health, make food affordable and reduce environmental impacts, while evaluating the feasibility of the diet changes.

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.

The development of sustainable food systems requires an understanding of potential trade-off between various objectives. Here, Chaudhary et al. examine how different nations score on food system performance across several domains, including environment, nutrition, and sociocultural wellbeing.

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.

Identifying economic and ecological trade-offs of land-use transitions is important to ensure sustainability. Here, Grass et al. find biodiversity-profit trade-offs in tropical land-use transitions in Sumatra, and show that targeted landscape planning is needed to increase land-use efficiency while ensuring socio-ecological sustainability.

The model–inventory discrepancy in net land-use carbon emissions mainly results from conceptual differences in estimating anthropogenic forest sinks. A revised disaggregation of global land model results allows greater comparability with inventories.

Competition between agriculture and land conservation may hinder climate and biodiversity targets. Here, the authors use global models integrating multiple spatial scales to assess how ambitious land conservation action and associated land-use dynamics could drive changes in landscape heterogeneity, pollination supply and soil loss.

Neural mechanisms underlying high visual acuity are not fully understood. Here the authors show that high resolution visual information is transmitted from the retina to the brain by neurons in the parvocellular geniculate pathway in macaques, where signals are now shown to most often originate from single cone photoreceptors, establishing the neural mechanism that limits resolution acuity prior to cortical processing.

This work demonstrates how global abandoned cropland is an untapped land resource. If recultivated and reforested strategically, it can provide substantial carbon sequestration and food production potential to support our shared climate and food security goals.

Grounding-line motion of the Antarctic Ice Sheet is driven by climate variability, challenging the assumption that the bed slope at the grounding line alone controls their behaviour, according to a synthesis of glaciological and climate research.