Biochar is often described as a climate-smart soil amendment because it can improve soil quality while storing carbon for long periods. But once biochar is added to soil, it does not stay unchanged. Rain, drying, minerals, oxygen, and microorganisms gradually alter its surface, chemistry, and environmental functions. For saline soils, where salt stress already limits crop production across many agricultural regions, scientists have had limited information about how biochar changes over time.

Tea is one of the world’s most widely consumed beverages, but the soils that sustain tea plantations are under growing pressure. Long-term fertilizer use, monocropping, soil acidification, nutrient loss, heavy metal contamination, and climate stress are threatening both tea productivity and environmental safety. A new review published in Biochar examines how biochar, a carbon-rich material produced by heating biomass under limited oxygen, could become a practical tool for more sustainable tea cultivation.

Scientists have identified the two biggest reasons that once-pristine rivers across the Arctic are growing cloudy with toxic orange iron particles that smother insects and suffocate fish. 

SAN ANTONIO — June 1, 2026 — Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has upgraded its Ocean Simulation Laboratories with a new 30-inch diameter pressure vessel. This new vessel allows SwRI to test larger equipment at conditions that simulate full-ocean depth and features a novel SwRI-designed quick-acting closure.

A new study shows that hydrochar, a carbon-rich material made from wet biomass, can improve soil structure and help soils store more carbon more effectively than several common organic amendments.