Latest research

The land under our feet and the plant matter it contains could offset a significant amount of carbon emissions if managed properly.

A new study demonstrates a cost-effective strategy to combat climate change by paying farmers in Uganda to conserve and plant trees.

Iron-rich meltwater from Greenland’s glaciers are helping fuel a summer bloom of phytoplankton.

The competition will provide a level and controlled playing field for testing remote technologies to monitor methane leaks from the oil and gas industry.

A new web portal puts four years of California drought data into an interactive format, showing where regions met or missed water conservation goals. The idea is to motivate awareness and conservation.

A group led by geophysicist Rosemary Knight is one of six teams to be selected from an initial pool of 44 teams from 10 countries to compete in the final round.

A new analysis of regional drought and land-use changes in Syria suggests water conditions in downstream Jordan could get significantly worse.

A pioneering California program to sell carbon offsets has surprising environmental benefits – including providing habitat for endangered species – and provides lessons for initiatives under development in other states and countries.

Stanford environmental engineers have developed a planning tool called AquaCharge that helps urban water utilities develop efficient, cost-effective systems to replenish aquifers.

Stanford researchers show that lake sediments preserved within ancient supervolcanoes can host large deposits of lithium, which is critical for modern technology.

A Stanford team is now combining satellite data and political persuasion to track kilns and incentivize kiln owners to use cleaner technologies.

Neglecting the changing energy requirements of aging oilfields can lead to an underestimate of their true climate impacts.

New research shows manmade and naturally occurring earthquakes in the central U.S. share the same characteristics, information that will help scientists predict and mitigate damage from future earthquakes.

Excess nutrient pollution to U.S. waterways increases the likelihood of events that severely impair water quality. 

A flash of green laser followed by pulses of X-rays, and mere nanoseconds later an extraterrestrial form of ice has formed. The miniature crystal reveals how water solidifies under high pressures, like those expected in icy comets, moons and planets.

Stanford researchers are exploring how corals that re-colonized Bikini Atoll after nuclear bomb tests 70 years ago have adapted to persistent radiation. Their work is featured in a PBS series.

Stanford scientists have developed a way to wirelessly deliver electricity to moving objects, technology that could one day charge electric vehicles and personal devices like medical implants and cell phones.

Stanford Earth’s Rosemary Knight recently spearheaded a project to map underground freshwater resources and forecast the intrusion of saltwater into aquifers beneath the California coastal town of Marina.

Stanford Earth’s Dustin Schroeder researches new ways of observing, understanding, and predicting the configuration of ice sheets using ice-penetrating radar data.

Researchers find strong feedbacks between the atmosphere and vegetation that explain up to 30 percent of precipitation and surface radiation variance; study reveals large potential for improving seasonal weather predictions.

Shocking complex metal mixtures with high pressure could lead to desirable properties such as higher heat resistance and allow power plants and engines to run hotter and more efficiently.

Stanford scientists explain the risks of betting the world’s future on massive-scale deployment of carbon removal technologies.

A new analysis by Stanford researchers reveals that the ideal temperature for the spread of mosquito-born diseases like dengue, chikungunya and Zika is 29 degrees C. This finding helps predict disease outbreaks in a warming world.