Explore the latest insights from top science journals in the Muser Press daily roundup (June 12, 2025), featuring impactful research on climate change challenges.
In brief:
Why common climate messaging often backfires – and how to fix it
Many Americans misjudge which personal behaviors have the biggest impact on carbon emissions, researchers have found. But efforts to improve climate literacy that focus too narrowly on individual actions may inadvertently dampen public support for collective solutions.
The findings, published in PNAS Nexus, indicate that people tended to overestimate the climate benefits of familiar actions like recycling and switching light bulbs, while underestimating the impact of avoiding one long flight a year or eating less beef.
“People are very misinformed around how their actions can translate into actual impact in terms of reducing carbon,” said senior study author Madalina Vlasceanu, an assistant professor of environmental social sciences in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “We think, ‘I have to recycle this and it will help the planet.’ It’s less likely you will hear that if you fly less, that’s the best you can possibly do, lifestyle-wise.”
The results are based on a study of nearly 4,000 people in the U.S. recruited to participate in an online survey. Participants in an “active learning” group were asked to rate the relative effectiveness of 21 different individual-level behaviors on a sliding scale and received immediate feedback. “We compared the actions to each other – not tons of carbon. That’s something nobody understands. It’s so abstract, you’ll forget it immediately,” Vlasceanu said.
A second group of participants passively received information about the relative mitigation potential of the same behaviors without the prediction step. In the control group, participants received no information. Participants in all groups rated their commitment to the 21 individual behaviors and five additional system-level behaviors, such as voting for pro-climate candidates, as well as the ease of adopting these behaviors.
Unintended consequences
After the interventions, people in both the active learning and passive groups expressed greater commitment to high-impact lifestyle changes like eating lower-carbon meats such as poultry. “Participants found this can be really easy to do, and has one of the highest impacts that has been actually documented,” Vlasceanu said. Those who began the exercise with the greatest misperceptions showed the largest shifts in commitments.
But the interventions also produced a worrying side effect. When the content focused solely on personal behaviors, participants became less likely to commit to climate-related collective actions like voting or joining public demonstrations.
“These interventions also decreased commitment to collective action, where you’re really trying to influence some sort of policy, and this is a problem,” Vlasceanu said.
Personal vs. public action
The findings point to a persistent tension in climate communication efforts: how to encourage effective individual behavior without undermining broader societal engagement. “Now we have to go back and understand how we would better design these interventions so we don’t have those negative spillovers,” she said.
Although collective actions are harder to quantify in terms of carbon impact, one 2021 analysis estimated that a single vote in a recent national election in Canada could be more than 20 times as effective as skipping a long flight – one of the most impactful lifestyle changes scientists have evaluated.
“If you extrapolate from that, you can conclude that all the collective actions are way more effective than all the lifestyle changes you can do, although this still remains to be empirically quantified,” Vlasceanu said.
The study also highlighted a difference in what motivates people to act in their personal lives versus in public. “People will engage in lifestyle changes when they think it’s easy to do. It’s less important to them if it’s effective,” she said. “For collective action, it is more important to people that the action they engage in will actually result in a meaningful change.”
Vlasceanu and co-authors including Danielle Goldwert of New York University collected data in early 2024, with participants averaging 40 years old. Roughly half identified as Democrats, 22% as Republicans, and 26% as independent or other. “Democrats were more sensitive to incorporating what they learned into their behaviors compared to Republicans,” Vlasceanu said.
Insights about the human mind
She emphasized that the goal of the research was not advocacy but discovery. “Our job as academics is not to be activists or fight for a particular cause,” she said. “These are research questions we scientifically care about that uncover essential processes about the human mind.”
The work is part of a broader research program investigating how scalable, low-cost interventions can affect behavior. “We pick the context in which we apply these investigations such that they are societally relevant,” Vlasceanu said.
Climate change offers a unique learning opportunity, she said, because it can only be solved through choices and changes involving large numbers of people working together. “If we understand how the mind works in this context, then we can document ways in which practitioners, policymakers – people whose job it is to address this crisis – can most effectively address it,” she said.
Future experiments may compare literacy-based strategies with emotional appeals or personal storytelling to determine which approaches most effectively boost both individual and collective engagement.
“In order to meaningfully address climate change, experts have agreed that we will need lifestyle change and collective action. Both of these have to work together,” Vlasceanu said. “This is a critical part of the pathway to net zero.”
Journal Reference:
Danielle Goldwert, Yash Patel, Kristian Steensen Nielsen, Matthew H Goldberg, Madalina Vlasceanu, ‘Climate action literacy interventions increase commitments to more effective mitigation behaviors’, PNAS Nexus pgaf191 (2025). DOI: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf191
Article Source:
Press Release/Material by Josie Garthwaite | Stanford University
Tool identifies ecologically equivalent areas to guide restoration projects
With successive records of high temperatures around the world and an increase in extreme weather events, the ecological restoration of degraded areas and the new markets associated with it, such as carbon and biodiversity, have gained prominence. In this context, Brazilian researchers have developed a tool to make environmental compensation schemes – a legal obligation to minimize or repair environmental damage caused by human action – more effective.
The new tool, called the Condition Assessment Framework, makes it possible to assess the ecological equivalence of an area to be restored or protected in relation to a degraded area. It considers three important attributes: biodiversity, landscape, and ecosystem services. Designed to meet the legal reserve requirements of the Law for the Protection of Native Vegetation (No. 12,651, enacted by the Brazilian government in 2012), the tool provides more precise compensation. Its study system was the Atlantic Rainforest, one of the most biodiverse and threatened biomes in the world.
It pointed out that combining protection and restoration is the best way to solve the so-called “native vegetation deficits,” guaranteeing environmental and socio-economic benefits. These deficits occur when the forest cover on a property is below the minimum required by law, and is insufficient to maintain functioning ecosystems with biodiversity and balanced water and carbon cycles.
Applying the Condition Assessment Framework revealed that protection followed by restoration solved 99.47% of the deficit in the Atlantic Rainforest biome in the state of São Paulo, with intermediate additionality and cost (USD 1.29 billion). It is worth explaining that, in the environmental context, additionality occurs when the positive results generated, such as reduced emissions, would not have occurred otherwise, i.e. without the specific project being carried out.
When analyzed individually, restoration is the most effective strategy with the highest additionality (98.99% resolution), though it is also the most expensive (USD 2.1 billion). The protection strategies were next, with much lower effectiveness (40.22%) and a much lower value (USD 14.3 million). Land regularization in Conservation Units was the least effective (0.15%) and had the lowest value (USD 104 thousand).
According to the scientists, the model is the first to integrate current equivalence assessment demands using a relatively simple method and spatially explicit data analyzed in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Its flexibility allows it to be adapted to other biomes and legislation, making it a promising innovation for use in compensation and conservation projects.
In the future, it could be adapted for biodiversity credits – a new market being formulated that seeks to finance conservation initiatives to protect or restore native species – and for analyzing ecological corridors.
The results of applying the methodology were published in an article in the journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review.
“We did the test in the Atlantic Rainforest, evaluating a region in the interior of the state of São Paulo and another on the coast. We found that the method really does detect environmental differences between areas. Inland, despite being more deforested, it’s possible to find more ecologically equivalent areas than near the coast, where there’s a lot of environmental heterogeneity,” says researcher Clarice Borges-Matos, first author of the article, who at the time was at the Institute of Biosciences of the University of São Paulo (IB-USP) and is currently at USP’s Engineering School (POLI).
Supported by FAPESP through the FAPESP Program for Research on the Characterization, Conservation, Restoration, and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity (BIOTA) and grants (17/26684-4 and 18/22881-2), the study is part of Borges-Matos’ doctoral research under the supervision of Professor Jean Paul Metzger.
Borges-Matos and Metzger also co-signed a previous article in the journal Environmental and Sustainability Indicators in which they describe the methodology.
“The thesis was focused on how to measure ecological equivalence and show the possibility of making a compensation using these criteria. By taking equivalence into account, the areas to be compensated will be similar to those originally devastated, both in terms of biodiversity and ecosystem services. For example, if a forest offered the service of pollination, it must continue to exist in the areas to be compensated. The equivalence must be both in terms of species composition and ecological function,” Metzger explained to Agência FAPESP.
The legislation
The Native Vegetation Protection Law, also known as the new Forest Code, establishes land use and environmental protection rules for private properties, also known as legal reserves. It requires that a portion of rural areas be maintained with native vegetation, without prejudice to the application of rules on Permanent Preservation Areas.
In the nine states that comprise the Legal Amazon, an area designated by the Brazilian government for socio-economic development purposes and covering the territory where the Amazon biome occurs, it is mandatory to maintain 80% vegetation cover on properties located in the forest, 35% in the Cerrado (the Brazilian savannah-like biome), and 20% in general fields – the same percentage as the rest of the country.
Deficits in the extent of the legal reserve must be compensated for by protecting or restoring existing vegetation on another property. The only environmental requirement is that the compensation take place within the same biome as the deficit.
In 2018, the Brazilian judiciary’s highest court, the Federal Supreme Court (STF), ruled on the ecological equivalence of specific species and ecosystems in legal reserve compensation negotiations. Five years later a new judgment established that equivalence should be extended to all forms of compensation under the law. However, this requirement was challenged based on the lack of a definition for measuring ecological equivalence and the levels of equivalence to be sought.
In 2024, the STF upheld the biome as the only compensation mechanism. Using this criterion as the only environmental requirement could lead to compensation being implemented in areas that are very different from those where vegetation has been lost since Brazil’s biomes are very heterogeneous. Furthermore, in some regions, such as São Paulo, it is possible that all or most of the compensated areas will be surplus legal reserves, i.e. existing vegetation with little restoration.
Ecological equivalence is important not only to ensure environments and resources for native animals and plants, but also to protect springs and watercourses, contain erosion, and maintain other ecosystem services, including natural pollination, which is essential for much of agriculture.
“Ecological restoration has been seen as a functional issue, not just an area issue. In the mitigation hierarchy [a scheme used to control the environmental impact of projects], if we can’t avoid the damage, we need to minimize it and compensate for it with a positive impact. In this sense, metrics like these are very useful and can be used in various ways,” adds Metzger, who has studied the subject for years and participated as a lead author of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).
Brazil recently reaffirmed its commitment to the Paris Agreement’s goal of restoring at least 12 million hectares of forest by 2030 – an area slightly smaller than Greece. In October 2024, Brazil launched the revision of the National Plan for the Recovery of Native Vegetation (PLANAVEG), which establishes guidelines for accelerating and scaling up restoration.
According to MapBiomas, a collaborative network of non-governmental organizations, universities, and technology startups that maps land cover and land use in Brazil, the country had between 11% and 25% of its native vegetation susceptible to degradation between 1986 and 2021. This corresponds to an area ranging from 60.3 million hectares to 135 million hectares. The Amazon, for example, experienced its greatest degradation in the last 15 years alone due to an increase in fires. Unlike deforestation, which involves the complete cutting down of vegetation, degradation involves a gradual loss due to fire, the removal of selected trees, and the effects of climate change.
In practice
When applying the method to the Atlantic Rainforest in São Paulo, the researchers concluded that the regions closest to the coast (in the south of the state) had more positive environmental attributes and greater spatial heterogeneity than inland areas (in the northwest), which exhibited the opposite pattern.
The ecological equivalence attributes were selected based on an analysis of data ranging from the variety of bird, amphibian, and tree species to forest cover and carbon stock. These attributes are entered individually, allowing for multiple analyses. The selected attributes are presented separately to ensure transparency and an understanding of what will be compensated.
Borges-Matos began her thesis by carrying out a literature review of the ecological equivalence metrics used in environmental offsets already developed and proposed up to 2023. The result was published in the journal Environmental Management.
The results of the research are even more important in the year that the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) is being held for the first time in the Amazon, as they can broaden the understanding that integrating ecological equivalence into negotiations brings social, economic, and environmental benefits. As well as conserving biodiversity and restoring lost ecosystem services, they contribute to mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change, providing benefits to local communities and rural producers, according to the scientists.
Journal Reference:
Clarice Borges-Matos, Francisco d’Albertas, Mariana Eiko Mendes, Rafael Loyola, Jean Paul Metzger, ‘Combining protection and restoration strategies enables cost-effective compensation with ecological equivalence in Brazil’, Environmental Impact Assessment Review 114, 107922 (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.eiar.2025.107922
Article Source:
Press Release/Material by Luciana Constantino | Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)
Rings of time: unearthing climate secrets from ancient trees
Deep in the swamps of the American Southeast stands a quiet giant: the bald cypress (Taxodium distichum). These majestic trees, with their knobby “knees” and towering trunks, are more than just swamp dwellers – they’re some of the oldest living organisms in Eastern North America. Some have been around for more than 2,500 years, quietly thriving in nutrient-poor, flooded forests where most other trees would wither.
But life isn’t easy for these ancient trees. They’re under siege from a variety of threats: rising seas, insect infestations, wildfires and increasingly erratic weather patterns. Unlike most animals, trees generally don’t die of old age – they succumb to the stresses around them.
A study by Florida Atlantic University, in collaboration with Lynn University; the University of Georgia; the Georgia Department of Natural Resources; and the Georgia Museum of Natural History, reveals how dramatic shifts in climate can have long-lasting effects on even the toughest, most iconic trees – and offers a glimpse into the powerful forces that shape our natural world.
Researchers studied bald cypress trees from a buried deposit, preserved in subfossil form at the mouth of the Altamaha River located in Southeastern Georgia. They used radiocarbon dating, counted tree rings, and measured the width of each ring in the subfossils to investigate how these trees grew in the past. These remains tell a striking story.
Results of the study, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that beginning around 500 A.D., the trees began to live shorter lives and grow at a faster pace. Before this period, bald cypress trees in the region commonly lived for more than 470 years. However, after 500 A.D., their average lifespan declined sharply to just 186 years.
This coincided with a major climate downturn in the sixth century known as the Vandal Minimum, a time of cooling temperatures and global upheaval likely caused by volcanic eruptions and possibly even a comet impact. After this period, the trees not only lived shorter lives – they also grew faster, which may have made them more vulnerable to stress and damage over time. The last of the post-500 A.D. long-lived trees died during the Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1200 to 1850 A.D., another chilly period with big environmental changes.
Despite these troubling trends in the past, hope still stands tall in the Southeast’s old-growth swamps. In some rare pockets of preserved forest, bald cypress trees between 800 and 2,600 years old are still alive today.
Interestingly, scientists found no signs of fire, logging or human interference in the death of these trees, which makes the exact cause a mystery. However, the pattern is clear: after 500 A.D., bald cypress trees at this location on the Georgia coast never again reached their former longevity.
“This shift wasn’t a brief disruption. Even centuries later, the trees never regained their former longevity. In fact, their lifespans continued to decline over time,” said Katharine G. Napora, Ph.D., senior author and an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology within FAU’s Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. “The last of the long-lived trees found in the deposit died during another major climatic event, the Little Ice Age. Our findings underscore how long-lasting the localized effects of major climate shifts can be, especially for coastal forests that are already vulnerable to wind damage, saltwater intrusion and rising seas.”
After 500 A.D., conditions along the coast may have become more unstable, with more storms, higher salinity and less consistent flooding, making it harder for trees to survive for long periods. Pests like mites, which thrive in dry conditions, may also have contributed to increased tree death during drier periods.
For the study, researchers studied 95 ancient bald cypress trees recovered from the Altamaha Wildlife Management Area on the Georgia coast. These trees, buried for centuries, were unearthed during routine maintenance and sampled over three years. Careful testing ruled out the possibility that these results were due to differences in preservation.
“These ancient giants not only inspire awe but also serve as natural archives, helping scientists understand how trees have weathered past climate events – and how they might fare in the face of modern climate change,” said Napora.
Although the climate shift the researchers studied wasn’t truly global or perfectly synchronized across regions, the bald cypress provides a powerful lens into how widespread and enduring environmental changes can be.
“The rings of the bald cypress are like nature’s journal entries, written year by year and season by season, showing how even slow changes can shape the course of life. In their quiet persistence, these trees offer both a warning and a lesson: that the world is more interconnected than we often realize, and that the story of the Earth isn’t only told through written history – it’s etched into wood, embedded in landscapes and carried forward by living organisms,” said Napora. “The past lives on in the trunks of these ancient trees, reminding us that environmental shifts – whether natural or human-caused – reverberate through time in ways we are only beginning to understand.”
Study co-authors are Alanna L. Lecher, Ph.D., an associate professor at Lynn University; Alexander Cherkinsky, Ph.D., senior research scientist at the Center for Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia; Robert Horan, a wildlife biologist; Craig Jacobs, a wildlife technician; and Blaine Tyler, a wildlife technician, all with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources; and Victor D. Thompson, Ph.D., a distinguished research professor at the University of Georgia and executive director of the Georgia Museum of Natural History.
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This research was supported, in part, in association with the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems LTER project National Science Foundation (NSF) grants OCE-0620959 and OCE-123714 as well as NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award Number 1834682, the University of Georgia Department of Anthropology, and the Center for Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia.
Journal Reference:
K.G. Napora, A.L. Lecher, A. Cherkinsky, R. Horan, C. Jacobs, B. Tyler & V.D. Thompson, ‘Subfossil bald cypress trees suggest localized, enduring effects of major climatic episodes on the Southeast Atlantic Coast of the United States’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U.S.A. 122 (24) e2421181122 (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2421181122
Article Source:
Press Release/Material by Gisele Galoustian | Florida Atlantic University (FAU)
Let’s all club together for better mental health
Sports clubs have the potential to provide a profound and positive impact on the mental health of their younger members, but the whole club must be engaged to make a real difference.
A new study by Flinders University shows that while coaches are often the focus of mental health efforts in sport, real and sustainable change relies on recognising the role of all club stakeholders including parents, committee members, trainers and volunteers.
“Our findings suggest that mental health initiatives in youth sporting clubs need to go beyond coaches to embrace a ‘whole-club’ approach,” says lead author, registered psychologist and PhD student, Kate Rasheed.
“Sporting clubs are made up of so many moving parts and if we want to truly support young people, we need to consider the club as a whole, and not just rely on coaches or one passionate individual.”
With growing recognition of sporting clubs as venues for mental health promotion, various programs and resources have been developed for these locations.
“Some programs have shown promise in improving mental health outcomes however it’s still not regarded as a priority,” says Ms Rasheed from the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work.
Drawing on interviews with 23 South Australian sporting club stakeholders including coaches, trainers, presidents, and parents, the study found strong recognition of the importance of community clubs supporting youth mental health.
However, this recognition is rarely translated into meaningful or ongoing engagement with club-based mental health initiatives.
“Many participants described one-off efforts or ‘token’ activities that lacked integration into club culture or routine,” she says.
“We really need to rethink how mental health strategies are framed and delivered.
“They should not only focus on individual well-being but also a broader perspective that includes support and education for players, coaches, and staff, as well as the club’s policies, culture, and structure.
“By addressing these, clubs can create a more supportive environment rather than just implementing isolated programs.
“It ensures mental health initiatives are embedded in the club’s identity, making them more effective and long-lasting.”
The study, published in Qualitative Research in Sport, also found that a greater emphasis needs to be placed on helping clubs create safe, inclusive environments, and integrate mental health support into existing practices and routines of sport.
Importantly, these efforts must also work to bridge the persistent gap between performance, physical health, and mental health by using sport-specific strategies that make mental wellbeing part of everyday training and play.
“Unlocking a club’s potential requires a collective, multilayered approach tailored to each individual club,” she says.
“We’re not saying clubs necessarily have to do more, but they do need to do things differently.
“Even small, well-aligned steps when embedded in club culture and routine can make a meaningful difference.”
Journal Reference:
Rasheed, K., Petersen, J. M., Elliott, S., Drummond, M., & Prichard, I., ‘Unlocking a sporting club’s potential: a whole club approach to youth mental health promotion from the perspectives of club stakeholders’, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health 1–17 (2025). DOI: 10.1080/2159676X.2025.2476151
Article Source:
Press Release/Material by Flinders University
Featured image credit: Gerd Altmann | Pixabay
