Humanity is well into the Anthropocene 6, the proposed new geological epoch where human pressures have put the Earth system on a trajectory moving rapidly away from the stable Holocene state of the ...

In a new study published in Nature Sustainability an international team of scientists from the Earth Commission, convened by Future Earth, investigates how global biophysical boundaries need to be ...

Every June 30th, Asteroid Day marks the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska impact and turns global attention to the science of ...

In a white paper published by a multidisciplinary team of top scientists in China, Earth system is defined to encompass both internal and external geospheres from solid Earth system through surface ...

University of Nebraska–Lincoln's S. Kathleen Lyons is providing a new framework—Earth system engineering—for examining how organisms, including humans, have fundamentally altered ecosystems on a ...

When people think about the most important ingredient for life on other planets, they usually talk about water. But there’s another element that makes our existence possible. “We’re carbon-based life ...

Satellite laser altimetry measures accurate elevations of the Earth’s surface and precise changes with time, monitoring key climate variables. These observations have transformed understanding of the ...

Earth is a complex system, with myriad interactions and feedbacks among the atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, cryosphere, and biosphere, as well as the people, institutions, and technologies that ...

A new study updates the planetary boundary framework and shows human activities are increasingly impacting the planet and, thereby, increasing the risk of triggering dramatic changes in overall Earth ...

Tipping elements of the Earth system should be considered global commons, researchers argue. Global commons cannot -- as they currently do -- only include the parts of the planet outside of national ...

Spiral Galaxy from Kirkland et al. CREDIT Chris Kirkland and colleagues. A new study of zircon crystals from two of Earth’s oldest continents indicates that the formation of Earth’s continental crust ...

Earth may owe some of its properties to a nearby star that blew up just as the solar system was forming. This pattern, which saw a supernova bubble envelop the sun and shower it with cosmic rays, may ...