
July 15, 2025
Plants improve soil carbon storage, but they can disrupt it too
Plants can capture CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into building blocks they use to grow. Ultimately, they send a large portion belowground through their roots.

June 10, 2025
Alps could face a doubling in torrential summer rainfall frequency as temperatures rise by 2°C
Intense, short-lived summer downpours are expected to become both more frequent and more intense across Alpine regions as the climate warms.

June 10, 2025
Rethinking Past Ocean Circulation to Refine Future Climate Models
An international study led by the University of Lausanne reveals that deep ocean currents in the North Atlantic stayed active during two extremely cold and well-studied periods of the last ice age.

June 4, 2025
From commitment to collective action: Launch of the Culture for the Planet Alliance
A major step forward in the sustainability transition of the arts and cultural sector on a global scale is taking place.

May 26, 2025
Melting of Greenland’s ice sheet: how ice slabs regulate meltwater runoff into the sea
Scientists working at the universities of Fribourg and Lausanne have developed a model for the way Greenland’s meltwater drains into the sea.
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Reaching the Earth’s mantle: a dive into the depths of its continents
The continental crust makes up 41% of the Earth’s surface. Because of its thickness, its deepest areas remain unknown, although they play a fundamental role in the global cycles occurring between the Earth’s surface and…
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A shifting project of post-growth economics funded by an ERC Synergy in Spain and Switzerland
The European Research Council has awarded funding to an ambitious ERC Synergy research-action project on the management by North and South societies of economic, political and social transitions toward and within a post-growth era. This…
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High pressure experiments: laboratory tour with Prof. Lukas Baumgartner
Lukas Baumgartner shares with us a typical day. Alongside him, we wander from one laboratory to another. On today’s schedule: measurement launches punctuated by intense team discussions. In front of three screens, concentrated on the…
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Cascade hydrogeomorphic hazards and risks : complex processes under the survey of an Italian-Swiss collaboration
The Seminar Cascading hydrogeomorphic processes and compound hazards in mountain catchments under environmental change took place at the University of Padova from September 13 to 16, 2022. This event, organized in the framework of the privileged partnership…
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Climate: Past history deciphered for future projections
In collaboration with an international team, an Institute of Earth Sciences researcher reveals the complexity of temperature evolution over the past 12,000 years. To predict the future, we rely on climate models. But reducing the…
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Science and Sailing to collect environmental data in understudied Ocean Regions
Le Swiss Polar Institute (SPI) and scientific experts from ETHZ, UNIBERN and UNIL will collaborate with the Oliver Heer Ocean Racing offshore sailing team to collect environmental data during their Vendée Globe 2024 campaign. Following…
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How cold was it, 20,000 years ago?
During the Last Glacial Maximum, about 20,000 years ago, it was cold. But how cold? Estimates of surface air temperature vary between 1.8 and 8°C colder than today. This remains imprecise. Christoph Schmidt and Georgina…
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Solution travel in porous media: from microscopic flow to macroscopic transport
An important study published in Nature Communications describes through modeling the physical influence of microstructures in porous media on the global transport of particles entrained by fluids. This fundamental advance in the field of fluid dynamics is…
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Twice as much water in the magmas of subduction zones: the secrets of the plutonic rocks of Kohistan (Pakistan) – and the Alps?
Scientists from MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have published a article in the journal Nature Geosciences, in which it is shown that deep-seated magmas located in subduction zones contain up to twice as much water as previously…
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From space, the Alps turn green surprisingly fast
“From white to green…” an article published in Science on June 3, 2022, shows that the productivity of vegetation above the tree line has increased in almost 80% of the Alps in the last 40…
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Price of European Geosciences Union awarded to Mikhail Kanevski
The EGU Ian McHarg 2022 Medal was awarded to Mikhail Kanevski for his outstanding work in environmental data processing, integrating geostatistics, machine learning algorithms and other digital transformations. Mikhail Kanevski is Honorary Professor at IDYST in the Geosciences and Knowledge…
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The paleoenvironment of Chengjang Biota: a sedimentological study leads to an unexpected result
The Chengjang Biota is a fossil assemblage of high importance, particularly with regard to its faunal richness and the quality of conservation of the species it contains. Romain Vaucher, a post-doctoral fellow at ISTE, contributed to research led by Farid…






