As the planet warms, soils may release more nitrous oxide, a powerful greenhouse gas linked to agriculture, fertilizer use, and microbial nitrogen cycling. A new study published in Biochar shows that biochar, a carbon-rich material made by heating biomass with limited oxygen, can change how strongly soil nitrous oxide emissions respond to rising temperatures. But the effect is not one-size-fits-all.

Rice feeds more than half of the world’s population, but producing it often requires large amounts of water and nitrogen fertilizer. Conventional flooded rice fields can support stable yields, yet they also place heavy pressure on water resources and contribute to ammonia emissions from agriculture. A new two-year field study published in Biochar suggests that a combined strategy using alternate wetting and drying irrigation and nitrogen-loaded biochar may offer a practical path toward more sustainable rice production.

Researchers at Tulane University have found that the world’s mangrove forests are no longer in decline and have shifted to overall growth in recent years. Using four decades of satellite data, a new study shows that natural regeneration, expansion into newly formed coastal habitats and conservation efforts have largely offset decades of mangrove loss, offering a rare conservation success story and a hopeful sign for climate resilience.

A new study suggests that, for modern Japanese speakers, two traditional, patriarchal words for “husband” (“shujin,” literally meaning “master”) and “wife” (“kanai,” “inside-the-house”) may be losing their original meanings, though men in the study evaluated both traditional and neutral words for “husband” more positively than words for “wife.” Ri Nin and Kazuo Mori of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan, present these findings in the open access journal PLOS One on June 3, 2026.

A new study from Thailand demonstrates that the debris-heavy webs of orb-weaving spiders can serve as natural, non-destructive tools for collecting and culturing viable environmental fungi. Through the isolation of living organisms, this innovative approach has already uncovered potentially new, undocumented fungal diversity within tropical rice fields.