Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The May 2025 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, ...

Update on May 27, 2025: This springtime Landsat image shows snow-covered tundra streaked with wind-blown sediment near Utqiaġvik, Alaska, the northernmost city in the United States. Congratulations to ...

Update on May 27, 2025: This springtime Landsat image shows snow-covered tundra streaked with wind-blown sediment near Utqiaġvik, Alaska, the northernmost city in the United States. Congratulations to ...

Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking at, and why it is interesting.

In response to Map of the Ancient Mississippi a few of you left comments to the effect of “no one should live in floodplains.” It’s an appealing notion, but I think it’s unrealistic. Anne Jefferson of ...

When the Minute 319 “pulse flow” began in March 2014, it was not clear whether the effort would be enough to reconnect the Colorado River with the Sea of Cortez. Some hydrologists thought there might ...

Based on email and social media comments we receive, climate models are one of the least understood and most maligned tools used by Earth scientists. One of the first general circulation models was ...

It is no secret that many diesel cars and trucks emit more pollution under real-world driving conditions than during laboratory certification testing. Many lab tests, for instance, are run with ...

Sticking to the flood theme, here’s a recent map from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers showing the predicted travel time for water in the Morganza Floodway. It’s a reasonably good map, with one big ...

Spruce trees in the boreal forest are evergreen and have green needles all year long. The boreal forest is Earth’s northernmost forest. It circles the Earth at high latitudes, covering large parts of ...

We are now well on our way back home again, with our GPS stations dutifully recording ice motion in our absence. Several of the stations will be visited again this summer, and all will have a visit ...