Stay Current with GSS
The GSS google group receives “Stay Current” weekly emails with excerpts and links to articles. To join, email gssmail@berkeley.edu with subject line “Join GSS” and in the body your name, city, state, country, and school (if any).
“Stay Current” links are in the Contents table in each book. If a news source limits the number of articles one person can read for free, try “divide and conquer” with different students reading and reporting to the class on different articles.
See updates from 2024 -|- 2023 -|- 2022 -|- 2021
RECENT UPDATES (2025)
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2025-01-07. The Fleet-Winged Ghosts of Greenland. By Caroline Van Hemert, bioGraphic. Excerpt: …Peregrine falcons hold near-mythical appeal in our collective imagination, and for good reason. Topping out at speeds of more than 320 kilometers (200 miles) per hour, they’re the fastest species on Earth, plummeting from the sky like amber-eyed missiles. …Perhaps more cosmopolitan than any other wild bird species, peregrine falcons live on every continent except Antarctica, in habitats ranging from polar deserts to subtropical rainforests. They’re flexible in what they eat—from songbirds to seabirds, carrion to chickens—and in where they nest—on cliffs, in trees, on the ground, or on buildings. Some individuals barely budge throughout their lifetimes, whereas others, like the Greenlandic variety, embody the roots of their scientific name—Falco peregrinus, or “wandering falcon”—making migrations upwards of 25,000 kilometers per year. …Since birds like peregrines feed high on the food chain, contaminants accumulate in their bodies and cause severe eggshell thinning, among other health impacts …making the species an unfortunate poster child highlighting the hazards of DDT to living creatures. Rachel Carson’s influential “Silent Spring” unveiled the environmental crisis that postwar scientists had created: by attempting to improve agriculture through the production of pesticides, they had inadvertently poisoned the world. By the early 1970s, humans had decimated peregrine populations across much of their native range. …For Greenlandic peregrines, the impacts of warming are decidedly mixed. …extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall and large temperature swings, can be fatal for nesting birds. …Warmer summers have also given rise to new residents such as mosquitoes, which have moved into the Pituffik area within the past two decades. …mosquitoes can carry diseases such as avian malaria, which, though not yet detected in Greenland, has infected falcons elsewhere in their range and decimated other bird species on remote islands. Even insects themselves can be deadly. In northern Canada, for instance, peregrine nestlings have been killed by hordes of biting black flies, whose abundance has been linked to warming-induced weather events. …Despite such challenges, peregrines have again demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt. An increasing number of peregrines have nested at Pituffik over the past three decades, with birds venturing hundreds of kilometers north of their previously described range limits and possibly even edging out long-resident gyrfalcons. This trend is likely to continue…. As the ultimate shapeshifters of the avian world, such flexibility bodes well for their future…. Full article at https://www.biographic.com/the-fleet-winged-ghosts-of-greenland/. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 6.
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2025-01-TEMPLATE. . By . Excerpt: . Full article at URL. For GSS chapter .
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2025-01-09. Dietary breadth in kangaroos facilitated resilience to Quaternary climatic variations. By Samuel D. Arman et al, Science. Editor’s summary: Much can be said about what a species ate based on the form of their teeth. In Australia, it has been hypothesized that the extinction of many large marsupial species by about 40,000 years ago may have been due to a narrow diet in the face of a changing climate. Arman et al. looked at extant and extinct kangaroo species using a tooth microwear approach and concluded that most species were generalists, not specialist grazers or browsers, and thus were adapted to deal with climate-driven vegetation changes. Thus, their demise was likely not driven by climate change, leaving humans as the probable cause. —Sacha Vignieri. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq4340. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 1.
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2025-01-09. 2024 was the hottest year on record, breaching a critical climate goal and capping 10 years of unprecedented heat. By Laura Paddison, CNN. Excerpt: It’s official: 2024 was the hottest year on record, breaking the previous record set in 2023 and pushing the world over a critical climate threshold, according to new data from Europe’s climate monitoring agency Copernicus [https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2024-first-year-exceed-15degc-above-pre-industrial-level]. Last year was 1.6 degrees hotter than the period before humans began burning large amounts of fossil fuels, Copernicus found. It makes 2024 the first calendar year to breach the 1.5-degree limit countries agreed to avoid under the Paris climate agreement in 2015. Scientists are much more concerned about breaches over decades, rather than single years — as above that threshold humans and ecosystems may struggle to adapt — but 2024’s record “does mean we’re getting dangerously close,” said Joeri Rogelj, a climate professor at Imperial College London…. Full article at https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/climate/2024-hottest-year-record/index.html. See also https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2024/. For GSS Climate Change chapter 4.
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2025-01-08. New research shows a quarter of freshwater animals are threatened with extinction. By CHRISTINA LARSON, AP. Excerpt: Nearly a quarter of animals living in rivers, lakes and other freshwater sources are threatened with extinction, according to new research published Wednesday. “Huge rivers like the Amazon can appear mighty, but at the same time freshwater environments are very fragile,” said study co-author Patricia Charvet, a biologist at Brazil’s Federal University of Ceará. Freshwater habitats – including rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, bogs and wetlands – cover less than 1% of the planet’s surface, but support 10% of its animal species, said Catherine Sayer, a zoologist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature in England. The researchers examined around 23,500 species of dragonflies, fish, crabs and other animals that depend exclusively on freshwater ecosystems. They found that 24% were at risk of extinction – classified as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered – due to compounding threats from pollution, dams, water extraction, agriculture, invasive species, climate change and other disruptions. …The tally, published in the journal Nature, is the first that time researchers have analyzed the global risk to freshwater species…. Full article at https://apnews.com/article/freshwater-species-threatened-extinction-cec91afc657bb0922c1d2966adf031ee. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 1.
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2025-01-08. ‘Good boy!’ Truffle-sniffing dogs are helping uncover hidden underground ecosystems. By Christie Wilcox, Science. Excerpt: Mere moments after getting out of the car, Rye—a golden retriever with a nose for truffles—has already sniffed out something in this oak forest about an hour east of Portland. “What’d you find, Rye?” Heather Dawson asks. She puts what looks like a brown, lumpy pebble to her nose and inhales a somewhat garlicky odor. “Tuber candidum,” she says. “Good boy,” she tells Rye as she tosses a blue and orange tennis ball, his reward for finding a truffle. …Whereas most people train their dogs to find the region’s two tastiest treasures—Oregon white truffles (Tuber oregonense) and Oregon black truffles (Leucangium carthusianum)—Dawson has embraced, and benefited from, Rye’s ability to sniff out a wider range of fungi. …Because of their intimate ecological relationships with plants, truffles play critical roles in ecosystems. Yet their biology and diversity are poorly understood because of the inherent difficulty in studying species that live their whole lives up to a meter and a half underground. Mycologists suspect many may be vulnerable to extinction, the victims of habitat loss, human activities, and climate change. To gather data, researchers such as Dawson are turning to dogs…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/good-boy-truffle-sniffing-dogs-are-helping-uncover-hidden-underground-ecosystems. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 5.
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2025-01-06. Ancient Romans likely breathed lead pollution. By Taylor Mitchell Brown, Science. Excerpt: From 27 B.C.E. to 180 C.E., Rome enjoyed a period of relative peace and prosperity, the Pax Romana. It witnessed the beginning of the Roman Empire, the building of the Colosseum, and the expansion of the empire to encompass the entire Mediterranean and much of the British Isles. However, the industrial-scale silver smelting that accompanied such prosperity came with a dark side: lead pollution. In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists for the first time quantified atmospheric levels of this pollutant and found the toxic metal likely led to diminished IQs for many ancient Romans. …No matter its impact, ancient Rome produced the earliest “unambiguous” example of widespread human pollution of the environment, McConnell says. “I leave it to epidemiologists and historians to determine if, and by how much, it changed history.”… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-romans-likely-breathed-lead-pollution. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.
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2025-01-03. Antarctic Ice Melt May Fuel Eruptions of Hidden Volcanoes. By Madeline Reinsel, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A slow climate feedback loop may be bubbling beneath Antarctica’s vast ice sheet. The continent…includes volcanic giants such as Mount Erebus and its iconic lava lake. But at least 100 less conspicuous volcanoes dot Antarctica, with many clustered along its western coast. Some of those volcanoes peak above the surface, but others sit several kilometers beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Climate change is causing the ice sheet to melt, raising global sea levels. The melting is also removing the weight over the rocks below, with more local consequences. Ice sheet melt has been shown to increase volcanic activity in subglacial volcanoes elsewhere on the globe. Coonin et al. ran 4,000 computer simulations to study how ice sheet loss affects Antarctica’s buried volcanoes, and they found that gradual melt could increase the number and size of subglacial eruptions. The reason is that this unloading of ice sheets reduces pressure on magma chambers below the surface, causing the compressed magma to expand. This expansion increases pressure on magma chamber walls and can lead to eruptions…. Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/antarctic-ice-melt-may-fuel-eruptions-of-hidden-volcanoes. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 2.
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2025-01-03. A New Tornado Database Helps Researchers Worldwide. By Andrew J. Wight, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In the past 70 years, more than 75,000 tornadoes have been recorded in the United States. Recordkeeping of these phenomena outside this region has been largely fragmented, sitting isolated in books, government databases, and research archives. But a new effort to scour as many publicly accessible records as possible is highlighting the scale of this hazard around the world. In a new study, Malcolm Maas, an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a team of tornado researchers compiled a tornado database that they hope will boost tornado research globally. …The United States accounts for 21,548 of the recorded fatalities in the database published by Maas and his collaborators. But tornadoes in other countries wreak havoc as well: Bangladesh accounts for 8,325 fatalities in the database, India has seen 1,473, and the rest of the world combined accounts for 3,824…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/a-new-tornado-database-helps-researchers-worldwide. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-02. Disentangling the drivers of wildfires. By Jianbang Gan, Science. Excerpt: Wildfire occurrence and scale worldwide have risen over recent decades, with the most destructive wildfires in North America taking place in the past decade (1, 2). …On page 91 of this issue, Wang et al. (3) report the key drivers of burn severity…. …These studies led to the development of predictive models that are used to project wildfire effects under different scenarios over time in locations where no historical fires have been recorded. However, the drivers of wildfire effects are complex and involve multiple interlinked factors, such as climate, vegetation, topography, and human activity. …Among all the factors, fuel aridity, which reflects the abundance and moisture content of flammable vegetative fuels, was determined to be the primary driver for most Canadian forest fires between 1981 and 2020. …Wang et al. found a large increase in burn severity in northern Canada compared with other regions in Canada. …Whereas weather condition was the dominant driver of the effect of wildfires in northern Canada, fuel aridity and vegetation type were key drivers of wildfires in southern areas. …From an ecological perspective, the increase in fire activity in boreal forests, especially in the northern regions of the world, has raised grave concerns about the health and function of biomes that act as important carbon sinks (11). …Cooperation between the US, Canada, and Russia, which share 93% of the global boreal forest, is needed to effectively manage fire while preserving this valuable ecosystem of the northern hemisphere (12)…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu5463. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-01. The Panama Canal Has a Big Problem, but It’s Not China or Trump. By Dennis M. Hogan, Guest Essay for The New York Times. Excerpt: In 2023, …July, the middle of Panama’s rainy season. But the rains had been sparse, and water levels in the canal had sunk to troubling lows. Without freshwater from rain, our guide explained, the locks on the canal could not operate. …the true threat to U.S. commerce through Panama. If the goal is securing affordable access to the transit point over the long term, it is climate change, not Chinese influence, that U.S. policymakers should worry about. …Sending a single ship through the canal’s locks can use around 50 million gallons of water, mainly freshwater collected from Lake Gatún. Though the canal is, for the moment, operating at full capacity, a drier climate and greater demand for drinking water have in recent years reduced the volume of available water. That has forced the state-run Panama Canal Authority at times to limit the number of daily passages through the canal, at one point by as much as 40 percent. …With less rain, the reservoirs fill up more slowly, which means less water available to operate the locks, which means fewer ships can pass. Hence, the 2023-24 drought, among the worst on record, slowed transits and drove up transit prices, causing long delays, more expensive consumer goods and greater instability in shipping routes. …The limited number of passages has led to auctions for passage rights that further inflated the growing cost of shipping goods through the canal. (The canal authority increased tolls just before the 2023 drought began.) … Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/01/opinion/panama-canal-trump-china-drought.html. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-03. John Deutch recalls how Jimmy Carter left his mark on energy research. By Jeffrey Mervis, Science. Excerpt: John Deutch …joined President Jimmy Carter’s energy team shortly after the Georgia Democrat took office in January 1977. And for the next 3 years Deutch had a front-row seat to history as Carter, who died on 29 December 2024 at age 100, worked to make the country less dependent on imported oil and in the process reshaped the direction of federal energy research. …Within 6 months Deutch would become the founding director of the Office of Energy Research at the newly created Department of Energy (DOE), the successor to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the short-lived Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). …Meeting DOE’s mandate also meant launching programs outside the legacy energy sources, notably fossil fuels and nuclear power, that had been the mainstay of DOE research under its predecessor agencies. …Although the Carter administration tried hard to get people in the U.S. to conserve energy and to find alternatives to foreign oil, including putting solar panels on the White House, climate change was not a significant part of OER’s portfolio under Deutch. …“But there was really no competence in that area within the department at the time,” he says. “And its importance was not yet clearly recognized except among a very restricted set of environmentalists.”… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/john-deutch-recalls-how-jimmy-carter-left-his-mark-energy-research. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-01-03. E.V. Demand Leads Automakers to a Strong 2024 Finish. By Neal E. Boudette, The New York Times. Excerpt: General Motors was the biggest winner in U.S. sales in the final quarter, with a gain of 21 percent. It more than doubled its electric vehicle sales. …Ford Motor sold more than 530,000 vehicles in the quarter, a gain of nearly 9 percent. Ford’s E.V. sales climbed 16 percent, to more than 30,000 vehicles. …Analysts said the year-end jump in E.V. sales might also have been spurred somewhat by President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has suggested he will eliminate the $7,500 federal tax credit on electric vehicles priced under $80,000. The tax credit has helped manufacturers offer the attractive lease deals…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/business/ford-gm-vehicle-sales.html. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2025-01-03. Wind and solar power drive Germany’s renewable energy surge. By DW. Excerpt: Europe’s largest economy saw a rise in renewable energy generation in 2024. Germany made a notable shift toward renewable energy sources last year, according to a report from the Federal Network Agency released on Friday. Renewable energy accounted for 59% of the country’s total electricity generation, up from 56% in 2023. Wind energy was the leading source, contributing 31.9% to the nation’s energy mix, while solar energy contributed 14.7%. …Last year also marked Germany’s first full year without nuclear power, following the final shutdown of its nuclear plants in April 2023. The country aims to be climate-neutral by 2045…. Full article at https://www.dw.com/en/wind-and-solar-power-drive-germanys-renewable-energy-surge/a-71213890. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-01-03. California tribes celebrate historic dam removal: ‘More successful than we ever imagined’. By Gabrielle Canon, The Guardian. Excerpt: Explosions roared through the canyons lining the Klamath River earlier this year, signaling a new chapter for the region that hugs the Oregon-California border. In October, the removal of four hydroelectric dams built on the river was completed – the largest project of its kind in US history. …The work to restore the river, which winds 263 miles (423km) from the volcanic Cascade mountain range in Oregon to the Pacific coast in northern California, is now under way. Already it’s been among the most hopeful environmental stories of past years. “It has been more successful than we ever imagined,” said Ren Brownell, the spokesperson for the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a non-profit created to oversee and implement the removal, adding: “There’s an incredible amount of joy.” …In recent decades, the climate crisis has turned up the dial, deepening droughts and fueling a rise in catastrophic fire as the region grows ever hotter. The impacts only increased as more water was diverted to support the farming and ranching in the region, and more habitat was altered by mining and logging. Twenty-eight types of salmon and steelhead trout, seen as indicator species that represent the health of the ecosystems they live in, have been listed as threatened or endangered. …In late November, threatened coho salmon were seen in the upper Klamath River basin for the first time in more than 60 years, according to the California department of fish and wildlife. Other animals are benefiting, too, including north-western pond turtles, freshwater mussels, beavers and river otters. …The roughly 2,800 acres of land sacred to the Shasta Indian Nation that had been drowned and buried under a reservoir created by one of the dams has been returned to them…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/03/california-klamath-dam-removal. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.
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2025-01-02. Farmers are abandoning land worldwide. What should happen to it? By Dan Charles, Science. Excerpt: …“This is a worldwide phenomenon,” says Peter Verburg, a land use researcher at the Free University Amsterdam. Global trade in food has fueled the clearing of forests in Brazil and Bolivia for agriculture, but elsewhere it has sidelined small farms with rocky soil, steep hills, or scarce water. “People give up because they cannot compete,” Verburg says. …Farmers, or their children, are walking away from land in Eastern Europe, southern France, South Korea, Japan, and mountainous parts of India. It’s difficult to measure the exact extent of the trend. Land is often abandoned, then reclaimed and farmed again. But an estimated 120 million hectares have been left fallow in Europe alone since 1990. Globally, the figure since 1950 could be as high as 400 million hectares—half the area of Australia. “Abandonment will continue, I think there’s no doubt,” Verburg says. In fact, climate change is likely to accelerate it as droughts afflict more farming areas. The phenomenon raises thorny questions that ecologists and policymakers are now debating. What sort of nature will reclaim this land? Does it add up to environmental restoration or degradation? Should policymakers step in to steer the fate of the land or even stop it from being abandoned?…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/farmers-are-abandoning-land-worldwide-what-should-happen-it. For Ecosystem Change GSS chapter 6.
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