News & Comment

Social scientists and geoscientists must work together to critically evaluate and develop feasible visions for a sustainable future. Is a clean-energy economy more viable than a degrowth future?

An update to our policy on reporting requirements for geological and palaeontological materials aims to tackle ethical issues surrounding the collection, traceability and archiving of field samples.

Enabling public sharing of scientific data in China not only needs top-down mandates but also incentive mechanisms that boost confidence and willingness to engage in data-sharing practices among Chinese researchers.

Land-use-induced ecosystem reduction and degradation has profound impacts on the Earth system. Proceeding with currently unsustainable land use may jeopardize climate and ecosystem restoration targets.

Globally, land- and fire-management policies have counterproductively caused cascading ecosystem changes that exacerbate, rather than mitigate, wildfires. Given rapidly changing climate and land-use conditions that amplify wildfire risk, a policy shift to adaptive management of fire regimes is urgently needed.

Working spaces and cultures in the geosciences need to change in order to attract, safeguard and retain people with disabilities.

Warm intervals in the geological record potentially hold the key to understanding ongoing changes in Earth’s climate. Our ability to unlock this information depends on continued technical and conceptual progress.

Plate boundary faults in subduction zones can generate large earthquakes and tsunamis. Recent studies have revealed that these faults slip in various ways and may be influenced by many factors. Better understanding them should improve hazard assessments.

Geoscientists will play key roles in the grand challenges of the twenty-first century, but this requires our field to address its past when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Considering the bleak picture of racial diversity in the UK, we put forward steps institutions can take to break down barriers and make the geosciences equitable.

Interacting geological processes can cause complex hazard cascades that threaten life and property. Past events are instructive, but physical understanding must be paired with effective communication to minimize the risks posed by these events.

Wetlands provide a wealth of societal and climatic benefits. Balanced conservation strategies are needed to ensure their protection in the twenty-first century and beyond.

The world’s glaciers are shrinking, with knock-on impacts for local communities. We need a better grasp of the hazards they leave behind.

From January 2021, authors will now have the option to publish their research open access.

Thawing permafrost mobilizes concerning amounts of carbon into the wider environment. Piecing together carbon sources and sinks in this complex system is important to understanding its overall climate impact.

Geological and botanical archives can preserve evidence of exceptional floods going back centuries to millennia. Updated risk guidelines offer a new opportunity to apply lessons from paleoflood hydrology to judge the odds of future floods.

Low climate sensitivity has been ruled out, but the door remains open for alarmingly high estimates. Improved understanding of cloud feedbacks is vital for better constraining the upper limit of future warming.