August 2026 Science Summary

Hi all,

As always - If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://subscribe.sciencejon.com (no need to email me).

In addition to a handful of science papers below, check out this fascinating but scary article about a recently discovered contagious form of cancer in catfish (New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/science/contagious-cancer... Nature article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10828-6).

AI TAKE ON A PAPER ABOUT WILDLIFE RESPONSE TO PEOPLE, PART 2
My July 2026 summary asked 3 AI tools (native Claude, Copilot using ChatGPT, and Elicit) for key points of a paper I summarized which were not obvious in the abstract. This month I got access to one more science AI tool (LeapSpace). Here's what it had to say:
"Three non-obvious points from the full paper are: (1) the species-level effects were often interactive, with human presence influencing wildlife more strongly in less modified habitats; (2) the authors could separate individual behavioral plasticity from species composition effects by comparing the same animals across 2019 and 2020; and (3) the paper’s applicability is narrower than the headline result suggests because it relies on GPS-tracked mammals and birds plus human-mobility data that are not broadly accessible and are often too coarse for fine-scale behavior"
JF note: the first point above is clearly stated in the abstract (boo), the third point is true but was stated more clearly by elicit (which broke it into two separate points), but the second point is a good one that all three other tools missed (although I included it in my own summary).
Another JF note: I just started experimenting with a Copilot agent to read a science paper and produce "warning labels" where it identifies a potential problem meriting human review, including a conflict between the abstract / results / discussion (or between text, tables, and figures), what appears to be inappropriate generalization of the findings, and many more. If anyone is keen to collaborate on this email me and we can exchange ideas on the instructions and see if we can come up with something good enough to be useful.


GOOD NEWS ON MANGROVES:
Zhang et al. 2026 brings a bit of welcome good news: from 2010-2023 mangroves expanded on net! This means mangrove conversion and thinning / degradation have recently have been more than offset by regeneration and expanion into the sea. They found that relative to 1984, by 2010 2% of global mangroves had been lost, but that 1984-2023 showed a net loss of just 850 km2 (although with substantial uncertainty). On the other hand, replacing old mangroves with new can still result in the loss of carbon and biodiversity, and regional or local losses. So the net gain since 2010 is good news, but also hides 6,275 km2 of gross losses to mangroves since 2010. Note that 1984-2010 is twice as much time as 2010-2013, so to get loss and gain rates be sure to convert everything to change per year.


CLIMATE ADAPTATION:
Nippert et al. 2026 argues that grassland managers should stop using binary thinking and trying to fight all woody encroachment (which is not feasible anymore). Instead they recommend a shift to thinking about how to manage grasslands for biodiversity and productivity within what is realistic, ideally before woody encroachment becomes established. For a variety of reasons, fully reversing the encroachment of shrubs can be really hard or even impossible (especially for clonal species that resprout well and/or recolonize quickly). But shifting the composition and extent of encroachment is more feasible. They suggest using the RAD (resist, accept, direct) framework, and recognizing that a resist strategy may be too expensive in some cases (see Fig 3 for alternative options to consider). A focus on biodiversity, structural complexity, and feasibility of different management options (often using a mix of fire, grazing, and cutting, including herbicide in some cases) can help managers identify the best management options for their context. Thanks to Chris Helzer (one of the co-authors) for sending this my way, it sounds like it's spurred a lot of tough but important conversations.

de Castro Borba et al. 2026 looked at the vulnerability of the beautiful ipê trees (see above) to climate change, and found that:
1. The Pantanal is currently more suitable for purple ipê than yellow (Fig 2)
2. Under the most likely climate scenario (SSP2-4.5), the Pantanal will be much less suitable for purple ipê even by 2041-2060 (Fig 3, upper left panel, ignore the bottom 3 which won’t happen). As that happens, they predict that as it dies back and become spread out farther, it will be less connected and those lose access to relatively tolerant genes.
3. Yellow ipê will be roughly equally suitable (Fig 4, upper left panel) – some places a little better and some a little worse.
They didn’t look at corridors and seem pretty negative on the potential for purple ipê to adapt in the Pantanal.


FIRE MANAGEMENT:
Nunes et al. 2026 interviewed ranchers and traditional communities (mostly riverside fishers) spread all over the Pantanal about fire management during the 2019-2020 megafires. The finding that stuck out to me was that cattle ranchers are much more likely to report having handled fire management themselves (or w/ the help of neighbors) since they generally have more access to equipment and people w/ fire experience, while communities are more prone to report having asked for help from the government for fire management. Their multivariate model (table 2) didn't find significant differences from any variables other than social group (ranchers or traditional community members). But they ALSO note that based on observations during 2019-2020 fires, ranchers could be underreporting their reliance on government (wanting to emphasize their autonomy, and/or seeing government as negative despite potential support). Either way - collaboration and integrated fire management is likely to yield the best outcomes.


REFERENCES:
Curd, E. E., Hart, S. F. M., Lubkowitz, J., Tracy, K. M., Milazzo, L., Bodnar, M., Jones, T., Henderson, M. J., Emerson, P., & Dragon, J. A. (2026). Brown bullhead catfish melanoma represents a novel transmissible cancer. Nature, June 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10828-6

de Castro Borba, F., de Souza Bezerra, C., Souza Tomaz, J., Marques, M. J., Vieira Capucho, H. L., Freitas-de-Souza, S., Ferreyra-Ramos, S. L., Lopes, R., Salvino Gadelha de Meneses, C. H., & Gomes-Lopes, M. T. (2026). A modeling framework to assess climate vulnerability and future distributions of tropical tree species: a case study on Brazilian ipês. Bosque (Valdivia), 47, e4709. https://doi.org/10.4206/bosque.e4709

Nippert, J. B., Ahlering, M. A., Fuhlendorf, S. D., Helzer, C. J., McMillan, N. A., & Ratajczak, Z. (2026). Rethinking grassland management in the Great Plains during the era of woody plant encroachment. BioScience, 76(6), 554–562. https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biag033

Nunes, A. V., Chiaravalloti-Neto, F., Soresini, G., Lorenz, C., Semedo, T. B. F., Chiaravalloti, R. M., Libonati, R., Toma, T. S. P., Damasceno-Junior, G. A., Lucena, R. F. P., Tomas, W. M., Anderson, L. O., Magalhães, H. F., da Rosa Oliveira, M., Pereira, A. de M. M., Berlinck, C. N., Fernandes, G. W., & Roque, F. O. (2026). Institutional dependence and social inequalities as drivers of collaborative wildfire response networks in the Pantanal wetland. Journal of Pyrogeography, 100015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pyro.2026.100015

Zhang, Z., Murray, N. J., Song, X. P., Bunting, P., Worthington, T. A., Fatoyinbo, L., Mao, D., Jia, M., Arifanti, V. B., Aung, T., Htay, S. S., & Friess, D. A. (2026). Unexpected expansion and regrowth in Earth’s mangrove forests over the past four decades. Science, 392(6802), 1082–1087. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aec9773

Sincerely,

Jon

P.s. The picture above is of a purple ipê tree as described in the paper by de Castro Borba et al. 2026

July 2026 science summary

Hello,

I've only got one paper this week looking at how wildlife movement is affected by the presence of people. But as a bonus, as a way to probe at papers you don't have time to read (and that I haven't reviewed), here's a prompt you can try in your AI tool of choice to find interesting aspects beyond the abstract:
"What are 1-3 key points or aspects of this paper that are not included in the abstract, and might be important but not obvious to someone quickly reading the paper? This could include a key result, an implication of the results, a major limitation in how applicable the results are, etc."

Note that different tools pick different aspects, and the summaries I write are still a little different (I try to include more key results for example). I'm only using these AI tools as a check AFTER I finish reading a paper to see if I missed anything important but not bias my readthrough, but it's not bad for papers you won't otherwise read. 

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://subscribe.sciencejon.com (no need to email me). But Mailerlite just changed their billing structure so I will be periodically removing people who never open these to try and save $.

Here's the study, and the points three different tools picked up on.

WILDLIFE RESPONSE TO PEOPLE:
Oliver et al. 2026 is a nice study looking at how 37 species of large birds and mammals change where they move (measured via GPS collars) in response to human presence (measured via mobile device traffic in 2019 and 2020; typically unavailable but shared during COVID-19). 2/3 of species were affected by people, typically moving less (but with some showing the opposite effect like gray wolves). Most of those species had a stronger response to people in areas w/ less human modification (presumably they were less acclimated to people). So they conclude we need to consider both typical human presence and actual human presence in understanding how wildlife responds. They also note some changes might be beneficial, e.g., for species that eat food from people (like ravens and coyotes).

KEY POINTS FROM AI:
I dramatically shortened the response from each AI tool, keeping just the high level points so you can see the similarities and differences:

ELICIT:
1. The study was only possible b/c high-resolution cell phone data was shared w/ researchers during COVID-19
2. Animals too small to wear a GPS collar were excluded.
3. They couldn't say if animals were helped or harmed by the movement change

COPILOT USING CHATGPT:
1. Most animals moved in smaller areas but some expanded their range under the same pressures.
2. They couldn't say if animals were helped or harmed by the movement change
3. COVID-19 shifted human presence independent of land use, letting them disentangle the two effects.
It snuck in a bonus 4th point: Animals too small to wear a GPS collar were excluded, biasing findings towards bigger spp. tolerant of tagging.

CLAUDE OPUS 4.6:
1. Wilder places are more sensitive to transient human presence.
2. Human activity can produce opposite effects, e.g. coyote range contracted (to avoid being shot/trapped) but raven range expanded (to exploit new food sources).
3. COVID-19 shifted human presence independent of land use, letting them disentangle the two effects.

JF NOTE: The paper text is not clear on this point, but on Copilot's 1st point and Claude's 2nd, from Fig 2A they are referring to the effect of landscape modification, NOT actual human presence. That's an important difference that neither AI tool picked up on b/c the paper's text was ambiguous.

REFERENCES:
Oliver, R. Y., Yanco, S. W., Ellis-Soto, D., Jesmer, B. R., Cohen, J., Gao, S., Patchett, R., Avgar, T., Bildstein, K., Bakner, N. W., Barber, D., Barker, K., Barnes, J. G., Bastille-Rousseau, G., Belant, J. L., Benson, J. F., Bêty, J., Beyer, D. E., Bird, D., … Jetz, W. (2026). Interacting effects of human presence and landscape modification on birds and mammals. Science, 392(6800), 879–884. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adq3396

Sincerely,

Jon

P.s. This picture is from a panoramic coral reef exhibit at the Panometer in Dresden

June 2026 science summary

Eyyyy! I spent half of May on vacation visiting friends in Scotland and Germany so read less science than usual. But the three articles I have seem broadly interesting. To deepen my review, AFTER I finished my write up I asked Elicit (an AI tool) to look at each paper for 1-3 key points or findings or limitations not mentioned in the abstract that might be both important but non-obvious. It actually caught 1-2 things I decided to include in each summary: some I'd missed, most I'd noted and didn't see as important but on reflection decided they were worth including. If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://subscribe.sciencejon.com (no need to email me). CLIMATE CHANGE: Can’t wait for the next IPCC climate report? Van Vuuren et al. 2026 lists the scenarios they plan to model in that report (results likely in a year or so). These will replace the RCPs. See section 2.3 for the full list, and note the shift to plain language and emphasis on plausibility: “medium emission scenario” means current policies and trends continue (~3C increase by 2100), “high emissions” means as much rollbacks as is plausible (~3.5C increase by 2100 but rising past that). They also have scenarios where we start high or medium but later step up action to low. We’ll have to wait to see the final model runs, expected impacts (physical and socioeconomic including equity), and associated storylines of each scenario. They also note that they use a simple approach for estimation past 2100 (2150 and 2500) but reflect that over time we need to extend the horizon of more complex modeling. They also note that not all potential carbon dioxide removal approaches are included in most scenarios (see section 5). FOREST RESILIENCE: Wang et al. 2026 has a nice list of 10 ways to improve the climate resilience of forests. Nothing brand new or surprising - except maybe the phrase "cohesive polycentric governance frameworks" for a coordinated mix of autonomous and shared decision-making across Indigenous people, governments, carbon market managers, etc. The abstract and Fig 2 have the full list; in addition to governance they have: diversity, disturbance, protection, restoration, adaptive mgmt, sustainable forestry / logging, monitoring, learning, and collaboration. Table 1 lists some examples of climate stresses and related forest vulnerabilities and resilience strategies. Figure 1 is an interesting map attempting to split 'natural' and 'social-ecological' forests (based on Forest Landscape Integrity Index as per Grantham et al. 2020 which docks points for forest cover loss and other observed human pressures plus loss of connectivity). Of the 10 - they assert that diversity and decentralization of authority are the most essential, but recognize limitations in seed sources, trade-offs (e.g., prescribed fire affecting human health, or lower timber yields w/ higher diversity and longer rotations), and cost. OCEAN CONSERVATION: Worm et al. 2026 provides the status of 2030 global goals to both 1) protect 30% of the ocean and 2) sustainably manage 100% of it. They look at 445 fish stocks in the 19 FAO "major fishing areas" that cover the entire ocean and collectively produce 72% of global marine fish harvest (the other 28% is from minor untracked species - which are often less well managed). They find 10% of the ocean is protected (from 2-20% by fishing area) of which 3% is either highly or fully protected (from 0.1-19%) meaning the marine protected area (MPA) is implemented w/ a management plan and a ban on damaging forms of extraction. For other non-marine people like me, "highly protected" specifically means: only small scale infrequent anchoring, only low-impact small scale unfed aquaculture, and that fishing is infrequent using a few kinds of selective low-impact gear. Sadly the paper points out big MPAs are typically in remote places w/ little fishing, avoiding conflict but also reducing the likelihood of impact and potential for coordination. The fishery management bit is more confusing: they report that 62% of the stocks (~45% of global marine fish harvest) were 'sustainably managed' using the criteria of fishing at or below a single-species maximum sustained yield, but the paper ALSO argues that's the wrong target and we need to be keeping harvest at or below a "multi-species maximum sustained yield" (see Fig 3) which is very rare. They also note that different agencies typically manage MPAs (often w/ a biodiversity focus) and fisheries (often w/ an economic and production focus), sometimes leading to poor coordination and even conflict. REFERENCES: Grantham, H. S., Duncan, A., Evans, T. D., Jones, K. R., Beyer, H. L., Schuster, R., Walston, J., Ray, J. C., Robinson, J. G., Callow, M., Clements, T., Costa, H. M., DeGemmis, A., Elsen, P. R., Ervin, J., Franco, P., Goldman, E., Goetz, S., Hansen, A., … Watson, J. E. M. (2020). Anthropogenic modification of forests means only 40% of remaining forests have high ecosystem integrity. Nature Communications, 11(1), 5978. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19493-3 Van Vuuren, D. P., O’Neill, B. C., Tebaldi, C., Sanderson, B. M., Chini, L. P., Friedlingstein, P., Hasegawa, T., Riahi, K., Govindasamy, B., Bauer, N., Eyring, V., Fall, C. M. N., Frieler, K., Gidden, M. J., Gohar, L. K., Högner, A., Jones, A. D., Kikstra, J., King, A., … Ziehn, T. (2026). The Scenario Model Intercomparison Project for CMIP7 (ScenarioMIP-CMIP7). Geoscientific Model Development, 19(7), 2627–2656. https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-19-2627-2026 Wang, L., Tagesson, T., Wei, F., Dong, W., Tian, F., Duan, Z., Luan, H., & Svenning, J. (2026). Ten Strategies to Promote Climate Resilience and Sustainability of Global Forests. WIREs Climate Change, 17(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.70064 Worm, B., Clausius, E., Grorud-Colvert, K., Palardy, J. E., Pauly, D., Pike, E. P., Pikitch, E. K., Roberts, C. M., Roberts, G. E., Richmond, R. H., Schiller, L., Stuart-Smith, R. D., & Sumaila, U. R. (2026). Integrating global targets for protected areas and sustainable fisheries. Marine Policy, 191(October 2025), 107152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2026.107152 Sincerely, Jon P.s. The pic is of me bike sailing (aka "land yachting" for some reason) on a beach in St. Andrews, Scotland. It is a lot of fun!

May 2026 science summary

Hi,

I'm pretty behind on even screening new research - if you have a favorite paper from the past few months please feel free to pitch it to me along with why it's worth covering! This month I've got a paper on an interesting ecological engineering approach to wetland restoration, one on causes of fire in the Gran Chaco, and one on interest among ranchers in the Brazilian Pantanal in sustainable certification.

Subscribe instructions - If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://subscribe.sciencejon.com (no need to email me).

WETLAND RESTORATION:
Petrakis et al. 2026 uses satellite imagery to document the degradation and subsequent restoration of a spring-fed wetland in an arid part of New Mexico. It dried out after water diversion and use for irrigation in the 1940s, and from 2008-2015 a series of changes were made to increase water retention (the so-called "Zeedyk" approach named after the last author on the paper). This included plugging diversion ditches / channels, widening channels, and adding many small rock dams all of which allow for slower flow and more water retention and infiltration. They actually doubled the area of the original wetland via restoration. On the one hand, these structures would impede connectivity for aquatic organisms, but on the other so does the absence of water. I can see a case being made for these kinds of structures in ephemeral headwaters in particular.


FIRE / CHACO:
Baumann et al. 2026 look at 40 years of fire history in the Gran Chaco (2/3 of which burned in that time) to find key drivers. 70% of all fires originated from clearing habitat for agriculture (91% in Bolivia), followed by burning existing cropland or pastures (28%, 7% in Bolivia). Fire was most common when initially clearing land, followed by regular burning of pastures, whereas regular use of fire was uncommon for croplands. Drought led to fires burning almost 5% more land than in non-drought years, which was significant but much less than I expected. One reason is that as a dry ecosystem, fuel loads are low, especially after longer droughts or other fires. The authors note that "other fires" (not from clearing land or burning ag lands) still were often set by humans, and some fires classified as "other" still originated from pasture fires before extending into forests.

PANTANAL / CATTLE SUSTAINABILITY:
Nogueira et al. 2026 interviewed ranchers in the Pantanal about beliefs and interest in adopting a sustainable certification scheme. Interviewees felt a lot of pride and identity as Pantaneiros, their unique ability to ranch effectively, and their sustainability. This is fairly universal in similar research I’ve seen of ranchers across the Americas. The biggest driver of them being willing to try for sustainable certification is direct support (likely both technical and financial – they report sustainable practices are both difficult and expensive, despite ALSO believing they’re already sustainable). The second biggest driver is how open they say they are to new ideas of managing their property, followed by being familiar with FPS (the certification scheme in question). Recognition of Pantaneiro culture had the smallest impact on intention to adopt of the four factors that helped to some degree. Belief that the government does not currently support sustainable cattle ranching was the biggest predictor of opposition to adopting sustainable certification.


REFERENCES:
Baumann, M., Maillard, O., Gasparri, I., Burton, J., Gavier Pizarro, G., & Kuemmerle, T. (2026). Fire dynamics in the South American Chaco and their link to agriculture and drought. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-026-01793-z

Nogueira, D. G., de Olivera Roque, F., Borges, J. A. R., Tomas, W. M., Mills, M., Jagadish, A., Nunes, A. V., Leimgruber, P., Legh‐Smith, C., Marchini, S., & Morais Chiaravalloti, R. (2026). What Drives Conservation Adoption? Social Science Insights from Cattle Ranchers in the Pantanal Wetland, Brazil. Conservation Letters, 19(2), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/con4.70033

Petrakis, R. E., Norman, L. M., McGraw, M., Carson, S., Sponholtz, C., Weber, C., & Zeedyk, W. D. (2026). Regreening, restoring, and reconnecting a southwestern wetland ecosystem – the Zeedyk wetland. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment, 42(November 2025), 101964. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2026.101964


Sincerely,

Jon

P.s. The adorable chunky puppy in the photo is Thor - until very recently he was one of almost 100 puppies currently available for adoption via Homeward Trails in addition to many quality adult dogs (already potty trained and no surprises about their eventual personality). He has been snapped up but as I write this his similar brother Loki and sister Freyja are somehow still up for grabs! This pic was taken at a puppy party I volunteered at which both raises funds for the shelter and helps pups find homes.

April 2026 science summary

Hello there,

This month I've got two articles about moisture cycling and water security, and one on predicted climate change and wildfire intensity in the Pantanal.

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://subscribe.sciencejon.com (no need to email me unless the link breaks again).

GLOBAL WATER SECURITY:
Posada-Marín et al. 2024 is an interesting take on water security, arguing that since 40% of originates on land (upwind, potentially out of the hydrologic basin), accounting for that reveals more vulnerabilities (Fig 3) and risks to water security (Fig 5). Some of the results in Fig 5 don't look right to me, like the Paraná seems to have the same hazard for upstream vs. upwind approach, the vulnerability goes down from an upwind perspective (to middle), but Fig 5 says its risk is very high and unchanged. But despite that, the core idea is important: without accounting for where precipitation comes from, water security cannot be assured.


PANTANAL:
In a local example of what the paper above found, Bergier et al. 2018 shows that because much of the rain that falls in the Pantanal originates via trees transpiring moisture in the Amazon, continued Amazonian deforestation could lead to a 30% decrease in rain by 2100 (relative to 1961-1990, Table 2). Their estimate of reduced "precipitable water" of 25% was a hand-wave though: they arbitrarily picked a number that was more conservative than Boers et al. 2017 (which found losing 30-50% of the forest would decrease rain in the remaining forest by 40%). In better news, they found a 3C temperature increase would only drop rainfall by 1%.

Under the most likely SSP2-4.5 climate change scenario, Neto et al. 2026 predict that extreme heat days (where daily max temp >the 90th percentile) in the Pantanal will increase from an average of 36.5 days over the last 30 years to 85.8 from 2030-2060 (a 135% increase ). And days experiencing heatwaves (six or more consecutive days of extreme heat) will increase from the recent average of 8.8 to 50.7 under SSP2-4.5 (a rise from ~1 heatwave per year to ~5-6). This in turn is likely to drive increased wildfire intensity. Fig. 9 shows the spatial pattern of warming by season (a=summer, b=fall, c=winter, and d= spring when the biggest increase is seen).


REFERENCES:
Bergier, I., Assine, M. L., McGlue, M. M., Alho, C. J. R., Silva, A., Guerreiro, R. L., & Carvalho, J. C. (2018). Amazon rainforest modulation of water security in the Pantanal wetland. Science of The Total Environment, 619–620, 1116–1125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.11.163

Neto, J. B. F., Shen, S., de Cássia Ramos, R., & Pereira, G. (2026). Towards a new climate regime: heatwaves proliferate and reshape seasonality in the world’s largest tropical wetland. Bulletin of Atmospheric Science and Technology, 7(1), 5. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42865-026-00122-8

Posada-Marín, J., Salazar, J., Rulli, M. C., Wang-Erlandsson, L., & Jaramillo, F. (2024). Upwind moisture supply increases risk to water security. Nature Water. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-024-00291-w


Sincerely,

Jon

P.s. If you look closely at the image above, you can see a big alligator chilling on the riverbank behind me. She was unconcerned by our kayaks though.

March 2026 science summary

Greetings,

Apologies for the double email last month! Hopefully the new platform will work right from here on. I've got one interesting global paper on how much freshwater we're pumping out to sea, and three on fire in the Pantanal and Brazil.

If you know someone who wants to subscribe to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://subscribe.sciencejon.com (no need to email me).

FRESHWATER:
Chandanpurkar et al. 2025 found that all continents except Antarctica have undergone drying (decreasing water stored on land) from 2002-2024 (although Figs 1 and 5 makes that hard to see in some cases, especially tropical Africa). They expect that trend to continue. Wet areas have gotten wetter but shrunk, while dry areas have expanded (and are drying faster than wet areas are getting wetter). Groundwater depletion caused 68% of the decrease, with the remainder a mix of ice and permafrost melt in Canada, and droughts in Central America and Europe. Another scary finding: water loss from continents is causing 44% of global sea level rise, more than either Greenland (37%) or Antarctica (19%). The lower-right map in Fig 3A shows how much dryer 2019-2024 in particular have been. There's a great news article and map about this here: https://www.propublica.org/article/water-aquifers-groundwate...


FIRE IN THE PANTANAL:
Concone et al 2026 found that two years after the 2020 megafires in the Pantanal, mammal diversity had been cut in half in the park they studied (see figs 2b and c), and abundance was reduced for at least 6 spp including capybara and giant armadillos (fig 4a). They found a combo of camera traps and eDNA was important to count all species (see fig 2a). 9 spp which typically favor drier and more open habitats were only found post-fire; the authors expect that to be temporary but since extreme fires have reoccurred they may have stuck around.

Whitney et al. 2026 looks at fire history in the Pantanal split by habitat type, using a mix of charcoal and diatom composition in lake sediment cores going back 3500 years, and satellite data from the last 20. In recent years, climate moisture index is the best predictor of fire, with maximum river depth during seasonal floods being an important variable. Fig 4 shows how the long-term fire trend differs for 5 habitat types. They note that the last 400 years had been getting more rain; while they don't discuss it, cattle ranching (along with fire to clear land) was introduced about 300 years ago and the wet period may have helped to contain the fires until the drying trend from the last 2 decades or so. Upland savannas are expected to see the biggest increase in fire as drying continues (based on historic data), with seasonally-dry tropical forest the least susceptible to increased fire.

Guedes et al.2026 looked at exposure of fish in temporary wetlands to fire across Brazil. They found over 1/4 of all temporary wetlands burned, including 34% of the wetlands in protected areas. In the Pantanal all protected temporary wetlands burned and 68% of the unprotected ones burned. They note that in the dry season that fewer connections between wetlands exist for fish to escape to, and that eggs buried in soil can be killed when fires burn surrounding areas.


REFERENCES:
Chandanpurkar, H. A., Famiglietti, J. S., Gopalan, K., Wiese, D. N., Wada, Y., Kakinuma, K., Reager, J. T., & Zhang, F. (2025). Unprecedented continental drying, shrinking freshwater availability, and increasing land contributions to sea level rise. Science Advances, 11(30), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adx0298

Concone, H. V. B., Magioli, M., Hilário, H. O., Semedo, T. B. F., Moreno, W. H. A., Saranholi, B. H., Ferreira, M. D. R., Batista, E. K. L., Botelho, M. T. de A., Lima, L. H. A., & Berlinck, C. N. (2026). Smoke on the water: Pervasive effects of megafires on the mammal fauna of the world’s largest wetland. Journal of Applied Ecology, 63(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2664.70268

Guedes, G. H. S., & Araújo, F. G. (2026). Water and fire: Wildfires threaten fish habitats across Brazilian biomes, and protected areas offer insufficient safeguards. Biological Conservation, 315(November 2025), 111692. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2025.111692

Whitney, B. S., Neves, D. M., Loughlin, N. J. D., D’Apolito, C., Carla, C. T., Hocking, E. P., Mayle, F. E., Power, M. J., Silva Aguinaldo, & Assine, M. L. (2026). Millennial-scale fire and climate dynamics in the world’s largest tropical wetland show emerging fire threat to flooded ecosystems. Global and Planetary Change, 259(April), 105318. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2026.105318

Sincerely,

Jon

P.s. These are some baby bunnies rescued from a neighbor's window well

February 2026 science summary

Greetings,

A new paper I'm a co-author on just came out in Conservation Letters. It's about what counts as a "rapid evidence assessment" and how to do one well. Here's a 275 word blog about it: https://sciencejon.blogspot.com/2026/01/new-paper-rapid-evidence-assessments.html , the full paper (~3400 words) is here: https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/con4.70005 , and I've summarized it below.

For any other map nerds out there; Esri has a new web map to make it easy to see 40 years of USGS land cover data at https://links.esri.com/LCExplorer . There's a blog about it at https://www.esri.com/about/newsroom/arcnews/40-years-of-usgs-land-cover-data-in-arcgis-living-atlas

If you know someone who wants to sign up to receive these summaries, they can do so at http://subscribe.sciencejon.com (no need to email me).

FRESHWATER PROTECTION:
Until very recently, we didn't have a decent estimate of which rivers were protected across the United States! Comte et al. 2026 describes how the first such database (the National Protected Rivers Assessment) was compiled and launched in Feb 2025. Since freshwater-specific protection is rare it relies mostly on assumptions about how likely different kinds of terrestrial protection are to effectively conserve the 5 key ecological attributes (KEAs) of rivers (flow, water quality, connectivity, habitat, and fish/wildlife/plants/etc. - see Fig 1). They find 19% of river length (12% of CONUS river length) has "viable" protection, although only 0.9% is comprehensively protected. Note their bar for "viable" protection (good enough) is fairly low - a score of 1.25/5 on their index. The index combines length and KEAs, so a 1.25 could mean 25% of the river provides protection for each of the 5 KEAs (overlapping or distinct), or all the river has protection for 1 KEA, and 25% has protection for another, but the other 3 KEAs are unaddressed. Hypothetically a river w/ 100% protection on 4 KEAs would score as "comprehensive" protection but could lack any protection from water withdrawals that would make the river run dry. See Fig 4 for rivers in the best shape that are most important for drinking water. This is a super useful resource. Explore the data at https://map.myriver.americanrivers.org/


CARBON AND WATER FOOTPRINT OF AI:
Xiao et al. has granular state projections of demand for AI through 2030, plus the carbon and water footprint of AI in each state. They recommend trying to steer data center growth to four states (TX, MT, NE, SD) given relatively low water scarcity and abundance of renewable energy (and potential to expand wind and solar). With the middle case assumptions by 2030 AI's water footprint would only be ~0.2% of current US crop water footprint, and the energy consumption would be ~2% of current total electric power generation. AI can have important local impacts and is growing fast, but national impacts are still projected to be relatively small.


IMPACT EVALUATION:
Neugarten et al. 2025 is a good overview to how to evaluate if conservation worked or not. They define impact evaluation and key terms like counterfactuals (what would have happened w/o conservation), confounders (variables that make understanding impact harder), and cover different types of evaluation (randomized experimental, quasi-experimental, and qualitative methods). They also discuss why looking at trends alone can be misleading (wildlife population might be dropping, but would have dropped more w/o action). They conclude recommending impact evaluation for projects that are high stakes, expensive, over big areas, untested, and/or assume additionality.


RAPID EVIDENCE ASSESSMENTS:
Webb et al. 2026 (I'm a co-author) proposes a consensus definition of what should count as a "rapid evidence assessment" (or REA) in conservation. It can be hard to find the sweet spot when assessing evidence. Too quick and dirty and you can get wrong answers, but too rigorous and the results 1) may come too late to be useful and 2) take a lot of resources that could be spent on multiple smaller studies. The paper has our final definition, recommended steps for a REA, and Table 1 has a nice little guide to picking what level of rigor may be the best fit in different circumstances.


REFERENCES:
Comte, L., Olden, J. D., Littlefield, C., Dickson, B. G., Zablocki, J., & Moryc, D. (2026). National assessment of river protection in the United States. Nature Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01693-8

Neugarten, R., Rodewald, A., Eklund, J., & O’Garra, T. (2025). An introduction to impact evaluation for conservation. Conservation Science and Practice, 7(11), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.70169

Xiao, T., Nerini, F. F., Matthews, H. D., Tavoni, M., & You, F. (2025). Environmental impact and net-zero pathways for sustainable artificial intelligence servers in the USA. Nature Sustainability, 8(12), 1541–1553. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01681-y

Webb, J. A., Schofield, K. A., Cook, C. N., Fisher, J. R. B., Cheng, S. H., Christie, A., Cooke, S. J., Dubois, N. S., Frampton, G., Macura, B., Nichols, S. J., Richards, R., Aicher, R. J., Mason, S., Anderson, E., Betley, E., Borsuk, M., Busch, J., Carlson, S., … Ridley, C. E. (2026). A Standardized Definition of Rapid Evidence Assessment for Environmental Applications. Conservation Letters, 19(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1111/con4.70005


Sincerely,
 
Jon
 
p.s. This is a four pound turnip. I bought it at the farmer's market out of curiosity, and split it across two recipes and it was tasty!