Extreme heat is the deadliest weather-related hazard in the United States, disproportionately impacting low-income communities, older adults, and people with chronic conditions. In rural and semirural areas along the I-95 corridor in North and South Carolina, congregations are often among the few consistent institutions providing care and connection. The Cooling Communities project engaged faith leaders across North and South Carolina to understand how church communities perceive and respond to extreme heat and explore their potential role in broader resilience efforts.

Over the past 80 years, biotechnology has advanced agriculture, healthcare, and economic development by harnessing biological processes from the organism inward (i.e., from the organ system to the molecular scale). Today’s global challenges, including biodiversity loss, climate change, and pollution, demand a complementary technological expansion inspired by processes operating from the organism outward (i.e., at the levels of populations, communities, ecosystems, and the biosphere).

Understanding how different intensities of timber harvesting affect species richness for plants and animals in North American forests will enable natural resource managers to better control the impacts of harvesting on flora and fauna communities. Previous syntheses have only examined thinning intensity as a categorical variable, comparing low and high intensity. This new meta-analysis examines how thinning intensity affects plant and animal species richness while examining the influence of other factors.

Understanding the effect of fishing activities on marine organism species richness is important for managing fisheries. Previous reviews and meta-analyses have focused on the relationship between bottom-fishing gears and invertebrate species richness, but there is a lack of understanding around other fishing gears (e.g., long lines and gillnets) and other taxa (e.g., ray-finned fishes).

Working forests serve an important role in providing timber products. At the same time, these forests are expected to contribute to mitigating climate change. With new studies being published, the authors performed an updated meta-analysis to synthesize the effects of forest thinning and clearcutting on three carbon pools—plants and roots, organic layer, and mineral soil—as well as examine how these effects interact with thinning intensity and time since harvest.

Rapid electricity demand growth from data centers and other large loads threatens grid reliability and affordability. Utilities typically build generation and grid capacity to serve all loads at all times, spreading costs across all customers. This approach is too slow and expensive to meet the pace of demand.

This study examines the effects of a technical intervention in Karachi, Pakistan—converting bare distribution wires to aerial bundled cables (ABCs)—that was intended to prevent illegal grid connections and improve utility cost recovery. Theft-resistant cables reduced losses. This occurred primarily through decreases in unbilled consumption, with the number of formal utility customers and their billed consumption both increasing. Load-shedding outages decreased. In areas with these cables installed, consumers have more appliances and higher electricity-related expenditures.

The success of many payments for ecosystem services (PES) programs is determined, in large part, by programs’ ability to successfully enroll participants. However, underenrollment remains a frequent challenge and little systematized knowledge about the determinants of participation is available. While case studies of PES programs abound, there is less work suggesting trends or lessons that can inform improvements in PES program design or operation to increase enrollment.

Damages resulting from coastal and riverine flooding in the United States exceed $32 billion annually and cause accelerating societal impacts, with disproportionate disruptions to the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable populations. Two approaches for flood risk mitigation include managed retreat from flood-prone areas, implemented in US buyout programs, and the construction of nature-based solutions (NBS).

This StoryMap displays recent LIHEAP data, illustrating typical allocations by state and providing an analysis on the extent to which state-level funding allocations are aligned with low-income home energy expenditure (LIHEE) burdens. The analysis summarizes trends in program funding and coverage, evaluates how state allocations compare to state LIHEE burdens, and analyzes the potential effects of a policy reform currently before Congress.