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It's that habitat recovery that makes the salmons' return and recovery possible — a stark contrast with the changes to the Endangered Species Act that remove habitat as a key protection for listed species. Read on at the gift link above!

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Floating through the river now, you almost wouldn't know that it had been a reservoir just a few years ago, said Toz Soto, a researcher with the Karuk Tribe. The valley, drowned by dams for decades, has reemerged. "The river is in really good shape," he said. "It's behaving like a normal river."

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And it's not only the salmon that are recovering. The river and its ecosystem are springing back too. Birds of prey soar overhead, looking for fish. Beavers scurry about, busy with their constructions. Insects flit above the waters. Green vegetation dots the riverbanks.

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Some, including the Yurok Tribes, are already feeling the bounty. “It feels really good,” said Keith Parker, a senior fisheries biologist with the tribe and tribal member. “When we have salmon in the river, we have our food security. Our smokehouses are full and our people are happy.”

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In 2024, dam demolition on the Klamath was completed, letting long-controlled stretches of the river flow free. Now, the first stats for how many salmon are returning are in. It's good news: Thousands migrated upriver in '24 and '25. But recovery is not guaranteed. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/c...

Salmon Are Thriving After Klamath Dam Removals, Study Finds (Gift Article)

The first fall runs of chinook salmon since the project in California and Oregon was completed have surpassed researchers’ expectations.

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Becca Dzombak @rdzombak.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Queen of beaver ecology @emilyfairfax.bsky.social was unsurprised and excited to hear that Greg Hood had documented tidal beavers. “We’ve always just assumed that beavers don’t like these extreme environments,” she said. But “there are really beavers in just about every single environment."

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Becca Dzombak @rdzombak.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Beavers in tidal marshes? For dam sure. One PNW researcher has been digging into an under-studied population of beavers: those thriving in tidally influenced river deltas, from British Columbia to Oregon. Read on in my piece for @sierramagazine.bsky.social :

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Becca Dzombak @rdzombak.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

A reader emailed me this weekend asking: They're pulling out millions. What happens with all those crabs? 🦀 🦀 🦀 They're mostly composted, and a few are frozen and sent to @whoi.edu for genetics research. There's not (yet) a market for selling them on the west coast. (Google "green crab whiskey.")

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Something else that didn't make it in: 2026 is a strong El Nino year. Because the crabs' larvae thrive in warmer waters, there's usually population bump the year after a strong El Nino. "It does have us a little on edge," Dr. Grason said. "We know that we're going to have to work harder."

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EGC genomes are difficult to sequence because they're "dumpster fire" genomes — a technical term — said WHOI's Carolyn Tepolt. She receives Washington's frozen crabs ("crabsicles") and is using them to study the population's genetic diversity. And maybe, one day, find a weakness in their armor.

Thanks to the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes, @waseagrant.bsky.social, WA fish & wildlife, and others who I spoke with for this story. Including @whoi.edu's work on green crab genomes, which sadly got left on the cutting room floor!

European green crabs are the thugs of the shoreline. They're aggressive, versatile and voracious. And they're making their way deeper into Puget Sound. Meet the teams trying to stop the invasion. Gift link to the @nytimes.com story: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/c...

Racing to Contain Invasive Green Crabs in Puget Sound (Gift Article)

Tribes and scientists are mounting an urgent trapping effort to keep European green crabs from devastating a corner of Puget Sound.

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Becca Dzombak @rdzombak.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

The island, still intact, has joined the shoreline once more, some 18 miles from where the boater first spotted it. This image, courtesy of the lake's dam operator, shows the island's scale and driftwood piled on the shore. Fun to imagine a chunk of it tearing away!

An aerial photograph of forested land on the left and a lake on the right. The floating island is in the middle, pushed up against the driftwood-covered shoreline.

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Let me know if you've seen big, forested floating islands like this one! Big driftwood researchers — let's get in touch. Thanks to @bresnick.bsky.social for the assignment & edit!

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Floating wetlands, though, are having a bit of a comeback, as they can improve water quality and provide habitat. Coastal reclamation projects build artificial floating wetlands or restore their natural occurrence. Only time will tell if forested floating islands have a comeback, too.

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So the island, to Helm and Anderson, isn't a mere novelty. It's an endangered landform. “This island feels more like an old ghost than a shocking new occurrence, something humans used to see much more regularly,” Helm said.

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Today, dams trap driftwood and humans remove it. That means there's less fodder for floating islands. And the biggest rafts would have needed big trees, many of which have been cut down, said river researcher Natalie Anderson.

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But once settlers arrived, the log jams — capable of creating habitat and retaining crucial coastal sediments — became an inconvenience. At great expense and effort, settlers removed them, even resorting to dynamite when the jams proved too cumbersome.

For millennia, log jams a mile wide were persistent features of the North American landscape and critical for some Indigenous communities. Some of those logs, rooted together as rafts, floated in lakes and even made their way to the open ocean.

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Floating islands are dotted all over the world, in lakes and rivers from the tropics to the Arctic. Many are essentially floating bogs, with some larches or shrubs. But few are both as big and heavily tree-d as the Williston Lake island. It wasn't always so.

Canada Has a New Forested Floating Island. Scientists Think It Used to Have Many More.

A floating forest on the waters of British Columbia's largest lake has captured the attention of boaters and scientists alike. It's a "phenomenal sighting," said @rebeccarhelm.bsky.social — one that's rare today, but used to be common. Read why: www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/...

nationalgeographic.com

Researchers explain how it’s possible for a forest to float.

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Algae toxins can go airborne, and some scientists around Lake Erie are studying the risks from bloom to breath.

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Mapping landslides is also a Sisyphean task. They happen all the time, spurred on by heavy rains. And as climate change shifts regional weather patterns and makes extreme precipitation events more likely, at-risk populations may grow. It's nearly impossible to keep up.

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Mapping landslides can highlight at-risk populations. But not everyone is happy about it. Across the country, some homeowners and real estate groups push back against mapping, concerned that it will hurt real estate values. (There's little evidence that happens, Mirus said.)

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And "flat" places aren't immune. "The Earth wants to be flat," USGS landslide scientist Ben Mirus said. "Anywhere there's a slope, it can fail." Hundreds of thousands of people in the Plains and Midwest live with landslide risk, especially those who live atop river bluffs.

It's not just the biggest mountain ranges that pose landslide risk. Although places like California and Washington can have landslides, the Appalachians have a combination of dense populations, steep slopes and heavy rainfall that makes them a hotspot of landslide risk.

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Knowing where landslides are not only likely to occur, but also where that risk intersects with homes, roads, workplaces and infrastructure, is essential for hazard mitigation. Without knowing where that risk is, decision makers can't act.

Landslides pose the largest risks to those who can least afford them

Most people who live with the threat of landslides can't afford to, a new study found. Appalachia is the epicenter. Meanwhile, wealthy urban homeowners can buy their way to safety by mitigating landslide risk or simply rebuilding. For @sciencenews.bsky.social: www.sciencenews.org/article/land...

sciencenews.org

Appalachia is a hotspot of landslides, but many there can’t afford to move away or mitigate the danger, a new study finds. Wealthy urban residents can.

Becca Dzombak @rdzombak.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

PS. Bidets are a whole separate life-cycle assessment and a big convo that we could not get into with this piece! Thanks @sciencenews.bsky.social and @carmendrahl.bsky.social for making this one happen!

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Becca Dzombak @rdzombak.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

These days, the TP aisle overwhelms me. I was looking for an environmentally friendly wipe, and bamboo-based TP intrigued me. But all our TP bamboo is grown overseas, and I wondered if growing it here would make for a greener wipe. Ecologists aren't so sure. www.sciencenews.org/article/bamb...

sciencenews.org

Bamboo toilet paper intrigued me. Reality turned out to be messy

What makes a greener wipe? Researchers have more to say about bamboo's ecological risks, given limited carbon footprint data.

Andrew Freedman @afreedma.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Reposted by Becca Dzombak

The Trump administration on Monday pulled federal support for the flagship Arctic Report Card, an annual science report on the state of the Arctic that has been published for 20 years (incl. last year, under Trump). www.cnn.com/2026/08/10/c...

cnn.com

Trump administration ends support for flagship Arctic climate reports | CNN

The Trump administration is ending federal support for Arctic Report Card.

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Becca Dzombak @rdzombak.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Super-puff planets almost shouldn't exist, seeming at first to defy the rules of gas giant formation. But like the unlikely planets themselves, "our explanations are actually holding together," one astrophysicist told me. Read on at @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/s...

Rare Pair of Improbably Light ‘Super-Puff’ Planets Is Discovered (Gift Article)

They’re less dense than cotton candy, and they will help astrophysicists better understand the most unusual ways giant planets can form.

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Finding the bigger molecule first was unexpected, but it only breaks our understanding of chemistry a little bit, @brettmcguire.bsky.social said. “This was weird. This was wild. This was unexpected. What does it mean?”

Scientists actually expected to find a simpler sugar first. Erythrulose has four carbon atoms; they'd been focused on finding a sugar with three. Erythrulose is "a huge molecule to be synthesized under the extreme conditions of the ISM!" Jiménez-Serra said.

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Lab experiments suggested that such a sugar could be found out in space, but the discovery didn't happen until now. "We have been waiting for an actual detection like this," said Yoshihiro Furukawa, an astrochemist who found sugar on the asteroid Bennu.

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It's the first true sugar found in interstellar space. Other sugars have been found on asteroids, and some sugar-adjacent molecules were detected out in space too. But only the real deal could possibly lead to RNA and DNA, and therefore carbon-based life.

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But the sugar, erythrulose, is found in raspberries and probably contributes some of the berries' sweetness.

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Sadly, we don't know. The lab-grade samples used for experiments are hundreds of dollars per gram. "You spend a huge amount on it. You don't want to lick it!" said Izaskun Jiménez-Serra, an astrochemist who led the new @natastron.nature.com study.

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Scientists have found sugar in the space between stars, providing tantalizing clues into how life may have arisen on Earth. The discovery eluded scientists for decades. So I asked what's obviously the most important question: What does it taste like? www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/s...

A Sweet Surprise: Scientists Find Sugar Deep in Our Galaxy (Gift Article)

It’s the first time a sugar molecule has been detected in interstellar space. The discovery provides tantalizing new clues into how life may have arisen on Earth.

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Becca Dzombak @rdzombak.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Friendly reminder: you can watch the live feed of seismometers that detect shaking at the stadium in Seattle where the US is playing Belgium! ⚽️📈 pnsn.org/experiment/2...

pnsn.org

USA vs Belgium - R16 Knockout - PNSN.org

Experiment event details for USA vs Belgium - R16 Knockout

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Becca Dzombak @rdzombak.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Compared to the 1980s, California condors are thriving, but their numbers are still struggling: Without human-reared additions, their population would be shrinking. Lead is largely to blame, despite California's ban on lead-based ammo, a new study found. www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

nationalgeographic.com

California’s endangered condors have a surprising new foe

Researchers couldn’t figure out why the birds were dying — then they turned up an unusual suspect.

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Rather than being shocking, though, researchers think the costs and damages from 2025's fire year are emblematic of the world's fire future. Read the story for more.

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Burned area, for example, is going down on average largely because of agricultural expansion in Africa, not because fire is magically disappearing. And fire intensity and frequency are rising in other places, and more are hitting the urban-wildland interface and urban areas, where many people live.

Checking in on each year's fire activity is important, but the findings need to be built into long-term records that can track how, and why, things are changing over time.

Those boreal forest fires, combined with emissions from 2023 and 2024, emitted more CO2 than all other North American boreal forest fires in the preceding 15 years, the study says. So it's not just the size of the fire that matters for damage. It's what it burns, too.