Latest research

A fatty molecule once thought to be unique to flowering plants has turned up in bacteria skimmed from the Adriatic Sea and may provide biotech insights.

First year of data from SMAP satellite provides new insights for weather, agriculture, and climate.

China has introduced an unprecedented policy platform for stewarding its fisheries and other marine resources.

Reports co-authored by Stanford Earth scientist show concentrations of methane approaching an internationally recognized worst-case scenario and highlight opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and fossil fuel use.

Using remote sensing tools to uncover the environmental impacts of war, researchers introduce novel approaches for hard-to-reach areas.

New maps of the geologic forces contributing to earthquakes in Texas and Oklahoma could help reduce the likelihood of manmade temblors associated with wastewater injection.

The first large-scale map of rainfall declines revealed by signatures in ancient soil could help researchers better understand profound regional and global climate transformation.

Stanford Earth professor Jon Payne puts modern extinction in context by comparing them with Earth's five previous mass extinctions.

A new 3-D printing technique developed at Stanford will help pave the way for studying delicate or hard-to-collect rock samples from afar, whether they be from a volcano on Earth or the surface of Mars.

Jenny Suckale shows us how the behavior of a melting glacier in the Antarctic doesn’t act like a melting ice cube, and why that matters.

Gaps in social science knowledge of climate change constrain the policy impact of natural science research, a Stanford team argues.

Bubbles – yes, bubbles – could help protect coral reefs, oyster farms, and other coastal ecosystems from increasing ocean acidification, according to new Stanford research.

 Analysis of ancient seabed rocks from disparate locations reveal that life did not rebound until anoxia had fully ebbed.

A new method developed by Stanford Earth researchers uses training images to refine models of uncertainty about subsurface processes and structures.

Recent research by Stanford Earth scientists uses new techniques to shed light on the contentious history of California's iconic mountain range.

A new algorithm designed to find matching seismic signals in large earthquake databases could find previously missed microquakes.

Research by Tiziana Vanorio finds that fiber-reinforced rocks beneath Italy’s dormant Campi Flegrei supervolcano are similar to a wonder-material used by the ancients to construct enduring structures such as the Pantheon, and may lead to improved building materials.

New Stanford research shows that animals tend to evolve toward larger body sizes over time. Over the past 542 million years, the mean size of marine animals has increased 150-fold.

The best way to learn science is to actually do it. Students in Stanford Earth's Wrigley Field Program in Hawaii spend the quarter measuring vegetation, coral reefs and volcanoes to understand the dynamics of one of the planet's most interesting ecosystems.

Kate Maher and Page Chamberlain have modeled how the topography and rock composition of a landscape affects the process by which carbon dioxide is transferred to oceans and eventually buried in Earth’s interior.