Anthropocene Magazine

6 days ago | anthropocenemagazine.org | Emma Bryce

In what’s been heralded as a research breakthrough, scientists have discovered a gene variant that makes rice more resilient, enabling plants to produce almost 80% more grain under heat-stressed conditions, compared to more heat-sensitive counterparts. The discovery could be transformative for Asian rice farms, where most rice is grown and where farmers already battle with the effects of excess heat on crops.

1 week ago | anthropocenemagazine.org | Sarah DeWeerdt |Emma Bryce

Poor cows. They get smeared with blame for causing an unseemly amount of climate-warming methane emissions. The waste they create is a growing pollution problem too. Farms produce more manure than they can use as fertilizer, and the biological matter often ends up contaminating groundwater. Researchers have now come up with a technique to turn cow manure into industrial-grade cellulose fibers, which are woven today to produce paper, textiles, and food packaging.

1 week ago | anthropocenemagazine.org | Warren Cornwall

Scientists use all kinds of clues to piece together where endangered species once dwelled. They trace the origins of museum specimens, scrutinize old maps and scientists’ dusty notes, pick through DNA and . To map the historic home of the Yangtze finless porpoise, a group of researchers in China turned to a different sort of record: More than a thousand years of poetry. The creature’s Instagram-ready cuteness and aquatic acrobatics don’t just appeal to modern nature lovers, it turns out.

1 week ago | anthropocenemagazine.org | Sarah DeWeerdt

Tens of thousands of oil wells are scattered across the peatlands of western Canada. When these wells eventually run dry, simple techniques could enable the restoration of natural peatland ecosystems there, a new study suggests. Peatlands are vital to storing water and making it available across the broader landscape. They also sequester carbon and provide habitat for caribou and other wildlife species. In the past, trees or grasses have generally been planted on decommissioned well sites.

1 week ago | anthropocenemagazine.org | Lela Nargi

Let the best of Anthropocene come to you. Water is cascading in wide, noisy plumes down the masonry spillway of the Conowingo, a 94-foot hydropower dam spread across the lower Susquehanna River in Maryland. Through the river spray you can make out the fish lift. This is a giant metal tub that every spring rises and falls inside a crisscross of metal scaffolding, delivering upstream-migrating shad and river herring to their spawning grounds above the dam.