Sounds emitted by plants under stress are airborne and informative.

Stressed plants show altered phenotypes, including changes in color, smell, and shape. Yet, airborne sounds emitted by stressed plants have not been investigated before. Here we show that stressed plants emit airborne sounds that can be recorded from a distance and classified. We recorded ultrasonic sounds emitted by tomato and tobacco plants inside an acoustic chamber, and in a greenhouse, while monitoring the plant's physiological parameters. We developed machine learning models that succeeded in identifying the condition of the plants, including dehydration level and injury, based solely on the emitted sounds. These informative sounds may also be detectable by other organisms. This work opens avenues for understanding plants and their interactions with the environment and may have significant impact on agriculture.

The effect of reef morphology on coral recruitment at multiple spatial scales.

Coral reefs are in decline worldwide, making it increasingly important to promote coral recruitment in new or degraded habitat. Coral reef morphology-the structural form of reef substrate-affects many aspects of reef function, yet the effect of reef morphology on coral recruitment is not well understood. We used structure-from-motion photogrammetry and airborne remote sensing to measure reef morphology (rugosity, curvature, slope, and fractal dimension) across a broad continuum of spatial scales and evaluated the effect of morphology on coral recruitment in three broadcast-spawning genera. We also measured the effect of other environmental and biotic factors such as fish density, adult coral cover, hydrodynamic larval import, and depth on coral recruitment. All variables combined explained 72% of coral recruitment in the study region. Coarse reef rugosity and curvature mapped at ≥2 m spatial resolution-such as large colonies, knolls, and boulders-were positively correlated with coral recruitment, explaining 22% of variation in recruitment. Morphology mapped at finer scales (≤32 cm resolution) was not significant. Hydrodynamic larval import was also positively related to coral recruitment in Porites and Montipora spp., and grazer fish density was linked to significantly lower recruitment in all genera. In addition, grazer density, reef morphology, and hydrodynamic import had differential effects on coral genera, reflecting genus-specific life history traits, and model performance was lower in gonochoric species. Overall, coral reef morphology is a key indicator of recruitment potential that can be detected by remote sensing, allowing potential larval sinks to be identified and factored into restoration actions.

AI-accelerated Nazca survey nearly doubles the number of known figurative geoglyphs and sheds light on their purpose.

It took nearly a century to discover a total of 430 figurative Nazca geoglyphs, which offer significant insights into the ancient cultures at the Nazca Pampa. Here, we report the deployment of an AI system to the entire Nazca region, a UNESCO World Heritage site, leading to the discovery of 303 new figurative geoglyphs within only 6 mo of field survey, nearly doubling the number of known figurative geoglyphs. Even with limited training examples, the developed AI approach is demonstrated to be effective in detecting the smaller relief-type geoglyphs, which unlike the giant line-type geoglyphs are very difficult to discern. The improved account of figurative geoglyphs enables us to analyze their motifs and distribution across the Nazca Pampa. We find that relief-type geoglyphs depict mainly human motifs or motifs of things modified by humans, such as domesticated animals and decapitated heads (81.6%). They are typically located within viewing distance (on average 43 m) of ancient trails that crisscross the Nazca Pampa and were most likely built and viewed at the individual or small-group level. On the other hand, the giant line-type figurative geoglyphs mainly depict wild animals (64%). They are found an average of 34 m from the elaborate linear/trapezoidal network of geoglyphs, which suggests that they were probably built and used on a community level for ritual activities.

Deep learning models map rapid plant species changes from citizen science and remote sensing data.

Anthropogenic habitat destruction and climate change are reshaping the geographic distribution of plants worldwide. However, we are still unable to map species shifts at high spatial, temporal, and taxonomic resolution. Here, we develop a deep learning model trained using remote sensing images from California paired with half a million citizen science observations that can map the distribution of over 2,000 plant species. Our model-Deepbiosphere-not only outperforms many common species distribution modeling approaches (AUC 0.95 vs. 0.88) but can map species at up to a few meters resolution and finely delineate plant communities with high accuracy, including the pristine and clear-cut forests of Redwood National Park. These fine-scale predictions can further be used to map the intensity of habitat fragmentation and sharp ecosystem transitions across human-altered landscapes. In addition, from frequent collections of remote sensing data, Deepbiosphere can detect the rapid effects of severe wildfire on plant community composition across a 2-y time period. These findings demonstrate that integrating public earth observations and citizen science with deep learning can pave the way toward automated systems for monitoring biodiversity change in real-time worldwide.

Quantifying NOx point sources with Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellite observations of NO2 plumes.

We show that the Landsat and Sentinel-2 satellites can detect NO2 plumes from large point sources at 10 to 60 m pixel resolution in their blue and ultrablue bands. We use the resulting NO2 plume imagery to quantify nitrogen oxides (NOx) emission rates for several power plants in Saudi Arabia and the United States, including a 13-y analysis of 132 Landsat plumes from Riyadh power plant 9 from 2009 through 2021. NO2 in the plumes initially increases with distance from the source, likely reflecting recovery from ozone titration. The fine pixel resolutions of Landsat and Sentinel-2 enable separation of individual point sources and stacks, including in urban background, and the long records enable examination of multidecadal emission trends. Our inferred NOx emission rates are consistent with previous estimates to within a precision of about 30%. Sources down to ~500 kg h-1 can be detected over bright, quasi-homogeneous surfaces. The 2009 to 2021 data for Riyadh power plant 9 show a strong summer peak in emissions, consistent with increased power demand for air conditioning, and a marginal slow decrease following the introduction of Saudi Arabia's Ambient Air Standard 2012.

How working from home reshapes cities.

In recent decades, economic activity has become increasingly concentrated in major global metropolises. Yet, the rise of working from home threatens this dominance of cities. Using multiple high-frequency datasets on spending, commuting, migration, and housing, we provide global evidence that remote work has dispersed economic activity away from city centers. We label this the "Donut Effect," which is much larger and more persistent in cities with high levels of remote work. Using detailed household microdata from the United States, we show that three-fifths of households that left city centers in big cities moved to the suburbs of the same city. This is likely explained by the rise of hybrid work, in which employees still commute to the office a few days a week. The enduring popularity of hybrid work into 2024 suggests that the Donut Effect will persist while also leaving broader metropolitan areas intact.

Increased methane emissions from oil and gas following the Soviet Union's collapse.

Global atmospheric methane concentrations rose by 10 to 15 ppb/y in the 1980s before abruptly slowing to 2 to 8 ppb/y in the early 1990s. This period in the 1990s is known as the "methane slowdown" and has been attributed in part to the collapse of the former Soviet Union (USSR) in December 1991, which may have decreased the methane emissions from oil and gas operations. Here, we develop a methane plume detection system based on probabilistic deep learning and human-labeled training data. We use this method to detect methane plumes from Landsat 5 satellite observations over Turkmenistan from 1986 to 2011. We focus on Turkmenistan because economic data suggest it could account for half of the decline in oil and gas emissions from the former USSR. We find an increase in both the frequency of methane plume detections and the magnitude of methane emissions following the collapse of the USSR. We estimate a national loss rate from oil and gas infrastructure in Turkmenistan of more than 10% at times, which suggests the socioeconomic turmoil led to a lack of oversight and widespread infrastructure failure in the oil and gas sector. Our finding of increased oil and gas methane emissions from Turkmenistan following the USSR's collapse casts doubt on the long-standing hypothesis regarding the methane slowdown, begging the question: "what drove the 1992 methane slowdown?"

In-person learning during the pandemic: Student take-up and school-level effects of remote and hybrid instruction on student outcomes.

While studies have examined the effects of schools offering in-person learning during the pandemic, this study provides analysis of student enrollment decisions (remote versus in-person) in response to schools providing in-person learning opportunities. In Connecticut during the 2020-21 school year, we find that student take-up of in-person learning opportunities was low with students on average enrolled in-person for only half of the days offered, and take-up was even lower in schools with larger shares of disadvantaged students. The provision of in-person learning opportunities has been previously shown to mitigate pandemic learning losses. By exploiting data on actual enrollment, we show that the protective benefits of in-person learning are twice as large as previously estimated once we account for the low rates of student take-up. Finally, we provide evidence suggesting that a key mechanism behind the benefits of in-person learning is alleviating the burden faced by schools and teachers in delivering remote education. First, we show that the benefits to individual students of their in-person learning are substantially smaller than the overall benefits a student receives from their school average level of in-person enrollment. Second, we show that a combination of remote and in-person learning (hybrid) with a full-time on-line presence of students when at home was worse than hybrid learning with students never or only partially online. This second finding is consistent with qualitative evidence showing that teachers found hybrid learning especially challenging when having to manage both in-person and remote students for the entire class period.

Unexpected increase of the deuterium to hydrogen ratio in the Venus mesosphere.

This study analyzes H2O and HDO vertical profiles in the Venus mesosphere using Venus Express/Solar Occultation in the InfraRed data. The findings show increasing H2O and HDO volume mixing ratios with altitude, with the D/H ratio rising significantly from 0.025 at ~70 km to 0.24 at ~108 km. This indicates an increase from 162 to 1,519 times the Earth's ratio within 40 km. The study explores two hypotheses for these results: isotopic fractionation from photolysis of H2O over HDO or from phase change processes. The latter, involving condensation and evaporation of sulfuric acid aerosols, as suggested by previous authors [X. Zhang et al., Nat. Geosci. 3, 834-837 (2010)], aligns more closely with the rapid changes observed. Vertical transport computations for H2O, HDO, and aerosols show water vapor downwelling and aerosols upwelling. We propose a mechanism where aerosols form in the lower mesosphere due to temperatures below the water condensation threshold, leading to deuterium-enriched aerosols. These aerosols ascend, evaporate at higher temperatures, and release more HDO than H2O, which are then transported downward. Moreover, this cycle may explain the SO2 increase in the upper mesosphere observed above 80 km. The study highlights two crucial implications. First, altitude variation is critical to determining the Venus deuterium and hydrogen reservoirs. Second, the altitude-dependent increase of the D/H ratio affects H and D escape rates. The photolysis of H2O and HDO at higher altitudes releases more D, influencing long-term D/H evolution. These findings suggest that evolutionary models should incorporate altitude-dependent processes for accurate D/H fractionation predictions.

Urban effects on local cloud patterns.

Urbanization extensively modifies surface roughness and properties, impacting regional climate and hydrological cycles. Urban effects on temperature and precipitation have drawn considerable attention. These associated physical processes are also closely linked to clouds' formation and dynamics. Cloud is one of the critical components in regulating urban hydrometeorological cycles but remains less understood in urban-atmospheric systems. We analyzed satellite-derived cloud patterns spanning two decades over 447 US cities and quantified the urban-influenced cloud patterns diurnally and seasonally. The systematic assessment suggests that most cities experience enhanced daytime cloud cover in both summer and winter; nocturnal cloud enhancement prevails in summer by 5.8%, while there is modest cloud suppression in winter nights. Statistically linking the cloud patterns with city properties, geographic locations, and climate backgrounds, we found that larger city size and stronger surface heating are primarily responsible for summer local cloud enhancement diurnally. Moisture and energy background control the urban cloud cover anomalies seasonally. Under strong mesoscale circulations induced by terrains and land-water contrasts, urban clouds exhibit considerable nighttime enhancement during warm seasons, which is relevant to strong urban surface heating interacting with these circulations, but other local and climate impacts remain complicated and inconclusive. Our research unveils extensive urban influences on local cloud patterns, but the effects are diverse depending on time, location, and city properties. The comprehensive observational study on urban-cloud interactions calls for more in-depth research on urban cloud life cycles and their radiative and hydrologic implications under the urban warming context.

Geostationary satellite observations of extreme and transient methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure.

We demonstrate geostationary satellite monitoring of large transient methane point sources with the US Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES). GOES provides continuous 5- to 10-min coverage of the Americas at 1 to 2 km nadir pixel resolution in two shortwave infrared spectral bands from which large methane plumes can be retrieved. We track the full evolution of an extreme methane release from the El Encino-La Laguna natural gas pipeline in Durango, Mexico on 12 May 2019. The release lasted 3 h at a variable rate of 260 to 550 metric tons of methane per hour and totaled 1,130 to 1,380 metric tons. We report several other detections of transient point sources from oil/gas infrastructure, from which we infer a detection limit of 10 to 100 t h-1. Our results show that extreme releases of methane can last less than an hour, as from deliberate venting, and would thus be difficult to identify and quantify with low-Earth orbit satellites.

Remote gate control of topological transitions in moiré superlattices via cavity vacuum fields.

Placed in cavity resonators with three-dimensionally confined electromagnetic wave, the interaction between quasiparticles in solids can be induced by exchanging virtual cavity photons, which can have a nonlocal characteristic. Here, we investigate the possibility of utilizing this nonlocality to realize the remote control of the topological transition in mesoscopic moiré superlattices at full filling (one electron/hole per supercell) embedded in a split-ring terahertz electromagnetic resonator. We show that gate tuning one moiré superlattice can remotely drive a topological band inversion in another moiré superlattice not in contact but embedded in the same cavity. Our study of remote on/off switching of a topological transition provides a paradigm for the control of material properties via cavity vacuum fields.

The weekly cycle of photosynthesis in Europe reveals the negative impact of particulate pollution on ecosystem productivity.

Aerosols can affect photosynthesis through radiative perturbations such as scattering and absorbing solar radiation. This biophysical impact has been widely studied using field measurements, but the sign and magnitude at continental scales remain uncertain. Solar-induced fluorescence (SIF), emitted by chlorophyll, strongly correlates with photosynthesis. With recent advancements in Earth observation satellites, we leverage SIF observations from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) with unprecedented spatial resolution and near-daily global coverage, to investigate the impact of aerosols on photosynthesis. Our analysis reveals that on weekends when there is more plant-available sunlight due to less particulate pollution, 64% of regions across Europe show increased SIF, indicating more photosynthesis. Moreover, we find a widespread negative relationship between SIF and aerosol loading across Europe. This suggests the possible reduction in photosynthesis as aerosol levels increase, particularly in ecosystems limited by light availability. By considering two plausible scenarios of improved air quality-reducing aerosol levels to the weekly minimum 3-d values and levels observed during the COVID-19 period-we estimate a potential of 41 to 50 Mt net additional annual CO2 uptake by terrestrial ecosystems in Europe. This work assesses human impacts on photosynthesis via aerosol pollution at continental scales using satellite observations. Our results highlight i) the use of spatiotemporal variations in satellite SIF to estimate the human impacts on photosynthesis and ii) the potential of reducing particulate pollution to enhance ecosystem productivity.

Melt rates in the kilometer-size grounding zone of Petermann Glacier, Greenland, before and during a retreat.

Warming of the ocean waters surrounding Greenland plays a major role in driving glacier retreat and the contribution of glaciers to sea level rise. The melt rate at the junction of the ocean with grounded ice-or grounding line-is, however, not well known. Here, we employ a time series of satellite radar interferometry data from the German TanDEM-X mission, the Italian COSMO-SkyMed constellation, and the Finnish ICEYE constellation to document the grounding line migration and basal melt rates of Petermann Glacier, a major marine-based glacier of Northwest Greenland. We find that the grounding line migrates at tidal frequencies over a kilometer-wide (2 to 6 km) grounding zone, which is one order of magnitude larger than expected for grounding lines on a rigid bed. The highest ice shelf melt rates are recorded within the grounding zone with values from 60 ± 13 to 80 ± 15 m/y along laterally confined channels. As the grounding line retreated by 3.8 km in 2016 to 2022, it carved a cavity about 204 m in height where melt rates increased from 40 ± 11 m/y in 2016 to 2019 to 60 ± 15 m/y in 2020 to 2021. In 2022, the cavity remained open during the entire tidal cycle. Such high melt rates concentrated in kilometer-wide grounding zones contrast with the traditional plume model of grounding line melt which predicts zero melt. High rates of simulated basal melting in grounded glacier ice in numerical models will increase the glacier sensitivity to ocean warming and potentially double projections of sea level rise.

Climate mitigation potentials of teleworking are sensitive to changes in lifestyle and workplace rather than ICT usage.

The growth in remote and hybrid work catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic could have significant environmental implications. We assess the greenhouse gas emissions of this transition, considering factors including information and communication technology, commuting, noncommute travel, and office and residential energy use. We find that, in the United States, switching from working onsite to working from home can reduce up to 58% of work's carbon footprint, and the impacts of IT usage are negligible, while office energy use and noncommute travel impacts are important. Our study also suggests that achieving the environmental benefits of remote work requires proper setup of people's lifestyle, including their vehicle choice, travel behavior, and the configuration of home and work environment.

PreHom-PCLM: protein remote homology detection by combing motifs and protein cubic language model.

Protein remote homology detection is essential for structure prediction, function prediction, disease mechanism understanding, etc. The remote homology relationship depends on multiple protein properties, such as structural information and local sequence patterns. Previous studies have shown the challenges for predicting remote homology relationship by protein features at sequence level (e.g. position-specific score matrix). Protein motifs have been used in structure and function analysis due to their unique sequence patterns and implied structural information. Therefore, designing a usable architecture to fuse multiple protein properties based on motifs is urgently needed to improve protein remote homology detection performance. To make full use of the characteristics of motifs, we employed the language model called the protein cubic language model (PCLM). It combines multiple properties by constructing a motif-based neural network. Based on the PCLM, we proposed a predictor called PreHom-PCLM by extracting and fusing multiple motif features for protein remote homology detection. PreHom-PCLM outperforms the other state-of-the-art methods on the test set and independent test set. Experimental results further prove the effectiveness of multiple features fused by PreHom-PCLM for remote homology detection. Furthermore, the protein features derived from the PreHom-PCLM show strong discriminative power for proteins from different structural classes in the high-dimensional space. Availability and Implementation: http://bliulab.net/PreHom-PCLM.

Increasing and widespread vulnerability of intact tropical rainforests to repeated droughts.

Intact tropical rainforests have been exposed to severe droughts in recent decades, which may threaten their integrity, their ability to sequester carbon, and their capacity to provide shelter for biodiversity. However, their response to droughts remains uncertain due to limited high-quality, long-term observations covering extensive areas. Here, we examined how the upper canopy of intact tropical rainforests has responded to drought events globally and during the past 3 decades. By developing a long pantropical time series (1992 to 2018) of monthly radar satellite observations, we show that repeated droughts caused a sustained decline in radar signal in 93%, 84%, and 88% of intact tropical rainforests in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, respectively. Sudden decreases in radar signal were detected around the 1997-1998, 2005, 2010, and 2015 droughts in tropical Americas; 1999-2000, 2004-2005, 2010-2011, and 2015 droughts in tropical Africa; and 1997-1998, 2006, and 2015 droughts in tropical Asia. Rainforests showed similar low resistance (the ability to maintain predrought condition when drought occurs) to severe droughts across continents, but American rainforests consistently showed the lowest resilience (the ability to return to predrought condition after the drought event). Moreover, while the resistance of intact tropical rainforests to drought is decreasing, albeit weakly in tropical Africa and Asia, forest resilience has not increased significantly. Our results therefore suggest the capacity of intact rainforests to withstand future droughts is limited. This has negative implications for climate change mitigation through forest-based climate solutions and the associated pledges made by countries under the Paris Agreement.

Landscape-scale concordance between local ecological knowledge for tropical wild species and remote sensing of land cover.

Monitoring the status of species is crucial for biodiversity conservation and sustainable resource management in tropical forests, but conventional in situ monitoring methods are impractical over large scales. Scientists have resorted to two potentially complementary approaches: local ecological knowledge (LEK) and remote sensing. To gauge the potential of combining LEK and remote sensing for assessing species status at landscape scales, a large-scale assessment of the reliability of both measures is critical but hampered by the lack of ground-level data. We conducted a landscape-scale assessment of LEK and remote sensing, using a survey of over 900 communities (a near census in our study area) and nearly 4,000 households in 235 randomly selected communities in the Peruvian Amazon-the largest LEK survey as yet undertaken in tropical forests. The survey collected LEK data on the presence of 20 indicator species from both community leaders/elders and randomly sampled households. We assessed LEK and remotely sensed land cover-forest cover and nonmain channel open water-as proxies for species habitat, across species (game, fish, and timber), over time (current and historical), and by indigeneity (Indigenous peoples and mestizos). Overall, LEK and remotely sensed land cover corroborate each other well. Concordance is highest for the current status of game species reported by sampled households, as is the concordance of historical LEK from Indigenous community leaders/elders. The results point to the promise of combining LEK and remote sensing in monitoring the status of species in data-poor tropical forests.

Prevalence and drivers of abrupt vegetation shifts in global drylands.

The constant provision of plant productivity is integral to supporting the liability of ecosystems and human wellbeing in global drylands. Drylands are paradigmatic examples of systems prone to experiencing abrupt changes in their functioning. Indeed, space-for-time substitution approaches suggest that abrupt changes in plant productivity are widespread, but this evidence is less clear using observational time series or experimental data at a large scale. Studying the prevalence and, most importantly, the unknown drivers of abrupt (rather than gradual) dynamical patterns in drylands may help to unveil hotspots of current and future dynamical instabilities in drylands. Using a 20-y global satellite-derived temporal assessment of dryland Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), we show that 50% of all dryland ecosystems exhibiting gains or losses of NDVI are characterized by abrupt positive/negative temporal dynamics. We further show that abrupt changes are more common among negative than positive NDVI trends and can be found in global regions suffering recent droughts, particularly around critical aridity thresholds. Positive abrupt dynamics are found most in ecosystems with low seasonal variability or high aridity. Our work unveils the high importance of climate variability on triggering abrupt shifts in vegetation and it provides missing evidence of increasing abruptness in systems intensively managed by humans, with low soil organic carbon contents, or around specific aridity thresholds. These results highlight that abrupt changes in dryland dynamics are very common, especially for productivity losses, pinpoint global hotspots of dryland vulnerability, and identify drivers that could be targeted for effective dryland management.

Boat encounter with the 2019 Java bioluminescent milky sea: Views from on-deck confirm satellite detection.

"Milky seas" are massive swaths of uniformly and steadily glowing ocean seen at night. The phenomenon is thought to be caused by luminous bacteria, but details of milky sea composition, structure, cause, and implications in nature remain largely uncertain. Between late July and early September 2019, specialized low-light satellite sensors detected a possible bioluminescent milky sea south of Java, Indonesia, spanning >100,000 km2. Upon learning of these findings, crew members of the yacht Ganesha reached out to confirm and share details of their personal encounter with this same event. Here, we document Ganesha's experience as recalled by the crew, compare their course to satellite data, and assess their photography of this milky sea.