Archive
Explore Anthropocene’s story archive by clicking on the topics below or entering your own search terms.
To fight wildfires and climate change, scientists say: Don’t burn debris, bury it.
A new study finds that burying logging debris, instead of burning it, could store far more carbon and generate billions in revenue for forest-thinning projects.
Urban heat’s overlooked fix: Greening the land upwind of cities
A study published in Nature Cities suggests that forests placed strategically outside urban cores can lower temperatures across much of a city.
Recycling food waste has a huge climate upside and a surprising downside.
A study of American composting and biogas schemes finds a climate win is shadowed by a microplastics problem. The clue is what food is wrapped in.
Trashed solar panels will be a treasure worth up to $1 trillion
A huge new study charted 1,708 recycling scenarios across 32 regions and found a way to turn a looming waste crisis into a circular-economy windfall.
Ancient buffalo DNA lays out a roadmap to rehabilitating healthy herds
Genetic analysis of bison dating back 20,000 years shows how the 19th-century slaughter reshaped the species—and how today’s herds could recover.
The cognitive bias behind bad climate math
A new study finds two persistent mental shortcuts—not ignorance—are why people keep overrating recycling and underrating flying less.
Scientists make a seaweed coating that beats the fridge for cutting food waste
Canadian researchers found a cheaper, lower-carbon way to keep strawberries fresh, cutting into a $58 billion waste problem.
Scientists found the sweet spot for dumping iron into the ocean
A new model shows fertilizing the Southern Ocean instead of the equator could pull carbon from the air without wrecking the food chain.
As the world warms, butterflies are relocating at an astonishing scale
A sweeping new study of 1,758 butterfly species across 105 countries found many tropical species are expanding their ranges, while temperate ones are contracting—with climate change a major driver.
When should you scrap your gasoline car? The answer is almost certainly now.
Researchers calculated the carbon footprint of vehicle trade-ins across a wide variety of scenarios, and EVs emerged as the clear winner
