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People living in the American Southwest have experienced a dramatic increase in windblown dust storms in the last two decades, likely driven by large-scale changes in sea surface temperature in the Pacific Ocean drying the region’s soil, according to new NOAA-led research.

With the increase in dust storms, scientists have also documented a spike in Valley fever, an infectious disease caught by inhaling a soil-dwelling fungus found primarily in the Southwest.

The United Nations agricultural agency today unveiled guidelines to help Governments balance the needs of farming and climate change when making decisions, such as whether to refill a dried up lake or focus instead on sustainably using the forest on its shore.

A team of researchers from the United Kingdom has developed a novel method for assessing human/pathogen interactions in the natural environment, using citizen scientists wearing boot socks over their shoes during walks in the countryside. In the process, they found that slightly less than half of the socks were positive for the gastrointestinal pathogen, Campylobacter. The research is published in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the unusual galaxy IRAS 06076-2139, found in the constellation Lepus (The Hare). Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instruments observed the galaxy from a distance of 500 million light-years.

Ponds and lakes play a significant role in the global carbon cycle, and are often net emitters of carbon gases to the atmosphere.  However, the rate at which gases move across the air-water boundary is not well quantified, particularly for small ponds.