B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

• Replacing a second car with a cargo e-bike can save a family thousands of dollars a year. While the initial purchase price and storage for apartment-dwellers can be a concern, buyers save on fuel, car repairs and insurance, reduce their carbon footprint and live a healthier lifestyle. (Momentum)
• Voters in one suburb voted Saturday to withdraw from Dallas Area Rapid Transit, but two others voted to stay in the system. (Texas Tribune)
• Sound Transit is moving forward with the West Seattle Link light rail project, but will need to make improvements to dangerous Fourth Avenue to shift bus traffic there from the SoDa bus corridor. (The Urbanist)
• Seattle reached a $9.25 million settlement with a cyclist who was severely injured in a crash in a protected bike lane and sued the city arguing that it was poorly designed. (Seattle Times)
• A driver drove onto an Oakland sidewalk and injured seven people, then abandoned the vehicle at the scene (SFGate). In Las Vegas, a driver who killed one person on a sidewalk along the Strip and injured dozens more in 2015 was sentenced to at least 18 years in prison after reached a plea agreement (8 News Now).
• A coalition of San Diego transportation, business and climate advocates jointed together to oppose proposed eliminating the city’s multimodal team. (Circulate)
• The Knoxville City Council approved a $22 Vision Zero project on Chapman Highway, one of its most dangerous roads. (WATE)
• Asheville needs a strong bus system as its economy continues to recover from Hurricane Helene. (Citizen Times)
• Albemarle County, Virginia, is boosting funding for Charlottesville transit by $700,000. (29 News)
• At a conference in Columbia — a major coal exporter that’s trying to diversity its economy — representatives from more than 50 countries gathered to discuss transitioning away from fossil fuels. (NPR)
• Former Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo and British architect Norman Foster participated in a discussion on the benefits and challenges of removing cars from public spaces. (CityLab)
• Montreal residents once used an abandoned railbed as an informal trail, and now the city has turned it into an official linear park. (Landscape Architecture)

Pooja Kishinani and Satakshi Gupta

An interview with visual artist Anuja Dasgupta, whose practice sits at the intersection of eco-art, ethnobotany and community. Using plant-based emulsions, cameraless photography, and repurposed wood, she creates art that refuses to represent the land, …

05-06 * 13:00 - AT Meeting (franco)

Thousands of Kentuckians across the state are saving money on their electric bills through rooftop solar installed by reputable local companies. But there are also companies operating here that are making big promises that don’t deliver, locking you into a costly solar installation that’s overpriced, improperly designed, unpermitted, or poorly installed.

So how do you tell the difference?

Here are some warning signs to look out for:

• “Get paid to install solar!” “No up-front cost with this special government program!” “Available only in your area!” “Limited time offer!” If an installer makes these types of promises, proceed with caution. In Kentucky, there are no state, federal, or utility programs that will pay you to install solar, or that offer financing with no up-front cost.

• Aggressive sales tactics and “instant rebates.” If someone wants you to sign up on the spot, or within a very limited window, that’s a red flag. A reputable installer won’t pressure you to make a big investment without time to fully think it over or to get quotes from another installer.

• They offer you a quote without looking at your electric bills or without first recommending or asking about past efficiency upgrades. Your installer should be familiar with your utility’s solar net metering rates and should design a system that maximizes the financial benefit to you.

• If you already have solar, watch out for “free” offers to “inspect” your array, even if they say they’re representing a company involved with your installation. They may be trying to get in the door to sell you on batteries or another costly service you don’t need. If you’re net-metered, a battery won’t save you much, if any, money on your electric bill.

Tips for Doing Your Due Diligence

A qualified, reputable solar installer will:

• Have North American Board of Certified Energy Professionals (NABCEP)-certified solar professionals on staff and/or be a NABCEP Accredited Residential PV Installation Company. This is the gold standard for solar installers. Look for installers at NABCEP.org. You can also find a list of Kentucky installers at KYSES.org.
• Provide you with staff or subcontractor qualifications. Don’t be afraid to ask for a copy of the KY Contractor License Number or Master License Number for the person pulling the electric permit.
• Do a site visit before finalizing a design and quote. While technology has made it easy to do initial solar assessments remotely, an installer should come to your home or business to do an in-person assessment before offering you a contract to sign.
• Handle permitting, inspections, utility interconnections and net metering applications. They should give you a copy of the net metering application submitted to the electric service provider if you ask for it.
• Fully explain how they calculate your estimated electric bill savings over the life of the installation. If they are incorporating electric rate increases by your utility, they should be reasonable – no more than 5% per year.
• Give you time to consider your options and get additional quotes. Although there are situations that might warrant higher or lower installation costs, for residential solar installations you should expect installed cost to be around $2,500 to $3,500 per installed kW. Larger commercial installation costs are typically $2,000-$2,400 per installed kW.
• Reputable battery installers will work with you to determine what you want to back up when the power goes out. Whole-home battery backup will be very expensive – make sure to compare it to the cost of a backup gas generator.

When in doubt, talk to an expert!

The Mountain Association provides unbiased, third party solar assessments and advice to local governments, small businesses, nonprofits and faith-based organizations in Eastern Kentucky.

Contact our Energy Team at energy@mtassociation.org or (859) 880-3904.

Download this information as a flyer: _Solar scam flyer 5.1.26 (1)Download

The post Solar Scams Back on the Rise appeared first on Mountain Association.

The city of Santa Monica will begin automated enforcement of vehicles parked illegally in bike lanes on May 1, marking a first-in-California effort to use camera technology mounted on parking enforcement vehicles to keep bike lanes clear.

The new Automated Bike Lane Enforcement program, operated in partnership with Hayden AI, builds on a pilot that identified nearly 1,700 violations in just six weeks—underscoring how frequently bike lanes are blocked and the risks that creates for cyclists.

Under ABLE, front-facing cameras installed on city vehicles will detect and record violations as they occur. For the first 60 days, vehicle owners will receive warning notices by mail, with $93 citations set to begin July 1. City officials say the goal is to change driver behavior and improve safety by preventing situations where cyclists are forced into traffic lanes.

“This initiative will bolster our growing network of bicycling infrastructure, enhance user comfort, and improve compliance with regulations intended to keep everyone safe on our roads,” said Santa Monica Senior Transportation Planner Trevor Thomas.

The effort expands on Santa Monica’s existing automated bus lane enforcement program, which has already reduced violations significantly. Officials report a 67% drop in bus lane violations and a 40% drop at bus stops since that program launched.

Hayden AI CEO Marty Beard emphasized the broader benefits: “Keeping bike lanes clear of illegally parked vehicles not only keeps cyclists safe, but it improves accessibility for people with disabilities who rely on powerchairs and motorized scooters. It also encourages more people to ride bikes – getting cars off the road as a result.”

In its “Take the Friendly Road” newsletter Santa Monica DOT stated that the program represents a major step toward safer, more reliable streets, reinforcing Santa Monica’s commitment to sustainable, multimodal transportation for residents and visitors alike.

Hayden AI and Santa Monica have already been partnering on the city’s Automated Bus Lane and Bus Stop Enforcement (ABLE) program, which uses camera systems mounted on Big Blue Bus vehicles to detect cars illegally blocking bus lanes and stops. Like the bike lane system, the technology automatically captures images of violations—such as vehicles parked in bus lanes or at bus stops—and generates evidence that is reviewed by city staff before citations are issued.

This system was rolled out following pilot programs that documented hundreds of violations, highlighting how frequently parked cars delay buses and create accessibility challenges for riders, especially seniors and people with disabilities.

For more on the ABLE program, see previous coverage at Santa Monica Next and for more on automated bus lane enforcement throughout the state, see earlier Streetsblog L.A. coverage. Beard was also a guest on the StreetSmart podcast.

Hayden AI is an advertiser with Streetsblog Los Angeles and Streetsblog California.

Several studies show that biochar can benefit soil. Now, new research shows one crucial way it appears to do that: by supporting ants which were found to build stronger, more complex colonies in the presence of this soil improver. But as the new study shows, there’s also a trade-off: too much biochar, and ants go into a decline. 

This is the first study to examine the effects of biochar on “large soil fauna” like these, looking beyond just microbes and agricultural yields, the researchers say. They went in with a hunch that the enriching substance would influence ant behaviour in some way, and to test it out they designed a series of experiments. 

First, starting with biochar made of pyrolized rice straw, they mixed varying amounts—2.5%. 5% and 10%—into samples of soil. These they compared with a soil sample that didn’t contain any biochar. To each of the four soil experiments, they added 30 worker ants from a common local species. Then, they watched and waited. 

Of particular interest was how the ants nested, socialized, and foraged in each of the soil experiments. The first thing the researchers recorded was a sharp difference in survival rates: over 83% of the ants survived when they were exposed to no biochar, or to limited amounts ranging from 2.5% to 5%. Meanwhile at 10%, their survival declined precipitously, to about 55%. 

 

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The ants were also more productive with biochar, but at lower doses. At levels of 2.5%, they developed larger and more complex nest sites, in fact almost threefold more complex than in experiments containing 10%. Ants also foraged with double the efficiency in samples with 5% biochar compared to higher dosing, travelling more quickly through the soil, showing the most success at securing food, and also finding it more quickly. As well as this, at more moderate doses of biochar ants displayed stronger social cohesion, yet were more aggressive towards invasive species and protective of their colonies, compared to ants in soils containing no biochar. 

The researchers think these interesting behavioural differences come down to biochar’s variable effects on soil chemistry. At low doses biochar slightly raises pH, which improves moisture retention in the soil and might make conditions more appealing to nest-building ants. However in larger quantities the pH can rise to levels that threaten ants’ internal balance and so become toxic to them. And because ants use elements of the soil to communicate, even small shifts in its chemistry and microbial makeup brought about by biochar can change the way they interact with one another, sharpening or dimming their communication. 

The reason any of this matters is because ants are major architects of quality soil. Socially-bonded and efficient foragers that make large, complex nests will improve soil structure and function, distribute nutrients through the terrain, and improve drainage, among other things. 

The authors’ main takeaway? Biochar may be more important to the wider health of the ecosystem than we realized—and that means thinking more carefully through precisely how it’s used. “Too much can disrupt the very biological systems we aim to restore,” the authors say.

Liu et. al. “Biochar application enhances ant (Formica japonica) ecological functions as indicated by their social behaviors.” Biochar. 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

From low-carbon farming to community energy and Amazon restoration, Brazil’s cooperative sector is mobilizing millions to act on climate at a local level. The model highlights how existing co-op networks could be scaled to support a more just and resilient transition.

Twenty years after a global proposal to limit oil extraction, Richard Heinberg revisits its relevance in this interview and argues that equitable rationing may be key to reducing conflict and managing resource decline.

Dr. Katharine Wilkinson is an author, strategist, and teacher, working to heal the planet we call home. She addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”

FIFA’s World Cup is coming up fast, and cities across America are making big plans to get soccer fans to the stadiums … and sometimes, making headlines for their astronomical transit prices. But is it a smart way for agencies to cash in on fútbol fever, a necessary evil to recoup the costs of mega-events, or simply price-gouging visitors who are doing cities a favor by choosing shared modes?

We appreciate the latest podcast from Transit Tangents, which breaks down four host cities’ approach to shared transportation during the biggest sporting event in the world, including the infrastructure they built (or didn’t) to accommodate it. And that includes one $35-million station platform extension that’s drawing a lot of scrutiny.

Ride the bus — and get your steps in.

Transit agencies don’t do enough to remind policy makers, and even their own customers, of the connection between good public transportation and good public health, argues a new report that asserts that better messaging can strengthen the agencies’ funding and impact.

There is obviously already a consensus around transit’s physical and mental health benefits, but report, prepared for the Transportation Research Board, calls for agencies to communicate it better.

“Transit agencies [should] acknowledge the health benefits and use it to help get resources,” said Andrew Dannenberg, an affiliate professor at the University of Washington. “It’d be great if they’re saying, ‘Take transit, it’s good for your health,’ when they’re talking to legislators trying to get funding to build, maintain, and expand transit.”

The authors identified seven healthy outcomes directly linked to public transit — such as basic physical activity, cleaner air, fewer crashes and expanding social networks — but Danneberg emphasized that transit officials shouldn’t merely recite the list, but create messaging.

For instance, he said, “A quarter of people reach their recommended daily physical activity just by walking to and from transit. That is not a trivial amount.”

Case studies demonstrate the success of good health messaging in transit funding. In Boston a decade ago, a health assessment that identified the negative consequences that service cuts would have on community health and economic well-being led to those cuts as well as fare hikes to be pared back.

“The [assessment] fed directly into the decision-makers’ process towards coming up with a solution for the budget gap,” the report said. “By presenting monetized impacts in a succinct report, it appears the results were able to gain traction, and broaden the discourse to include consideration of health impacts.”

Transit funding is so often on the chopping block to close year-over-year budgets, but policy makers must be compelled to see the long-term budgetary implications of good transit towards people’s health. A case study from rural New Mexico recalled how a bus service saved Dona Ana County more than $600,000 annually by reducing hypertension and connecting people to preventative care. And two studies in Portland found that people living near transit have lower health-care costs — not a small finding in a nation that spent $5.3 trillion, or roughly $16,000 per person, on health care in 2024.

Yet health-care savings created by transit aren’t often plowed back into transit.

“The cost that you might save in health by having people more physically active are good for society overall,” says Dannenberg. “But they don’t translate into, ‘Good, now we got extra money that we can put into the transit systems.’”

Thus, some recommendations: First, transit agencies need to know their impact on community health. As the report notes, health benefits are complex, making it challenging at times to quantify. However, the report identifies research partnerships as key to doing so. For example, Boston’s health impact assessment was conducted by its regional planning agency in collaboration with researchers from Harvard and Boston University.

Second, communicating transit’s health benefits is just as important. The dense nature of scientific research tends to limit its audience to specialists. But the Boston example demonstrates that making findings generalizable also helps transit’s case. Broadening their audience, as well as who benefits from transit (hint: everyone!), is a key pivot.

“Benefits can also be realized by people who do not use transit,” the report stresses. “This is an important distinction when communicating the value of public transportation to decision-makers and the public.”

It’s unfair to expect transit officials — who are often in a desperate struggle for funding and must spend almost all of their time simply running their systems — to create health messaging. Instead, groups like the American Public Transportation Association must reframe transit for everyone’s well being, Dannenberg said.

“If you look at what’s on [the APTA] website about why transit’s good for you, health is kind of buried in there,” Dannenberg said. “But why not make that one of the stronger messages?”

Fear and division have become defining forces in the lives of many immigrant communities — but they are not the whole story. Cristina Jiménez Moreta has spent her life working to transform that reality, drawing on her own experience growing up undocumented and her years of organizing to build collective power.

A co-founder of United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the country, she has helped lead some of the most influential campaigns for immigrant justice in recent history. In this keynote, she reflects on the role of community, courage, and organizing in shaping a more inclusive future.

This is an edited transcript from Bioneers 2026.

Cristina Jiménez Moreta:

I am proud to be here as someone who was formerly undocumented. My parents, Fausto and Ligia, immigrated from Ecuador, fleeing poverty and political turmoil — like so many others in our country’s history — in search of a better life for our family. We settled in Queens, New York, in 1998. 

I’m a community organizer, and right now I lead Shared Future, a new initiative building a movement in support of immigrants and a shared vision of what unites us as Americans.

Before this, and before becoming a mom, I was a young organizer working alongside high school and college students to build the immigrant youth movement. Together, we helped grow United We Dream into a catalyst for one of the most powerful and inspiring movements of the past 20 years.

But even before I could build a movement, lead an organization, or call myself a community organizer, I’ll tell you the truth: I was a young undocumented person growing up in Queens, in a small studio apartment, living with the constant fear that one day my parents, my brother, or I could be taken by deportation agents and disappear.

Today, that same fear, uncertainty, and division are gripping millions of people across this country. What once felt normal has been turned upside down. And all around us, it can feel overwhelming — like it’s too much, and like there’s not much we can do about it.

I don’t need to remind you what’s happening. We’ve seen it on our phones, on TV, in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Chicago, and communities across the country. We’re seeing aggressive immigration enforcement, families living in fear, and people afraid to go to work or send their kids to school. At the same time, everyday Americans are making courageous choices to stand up for their neighbors.

This is a new level of fear spreading around us. But I invite you to be clear-eyed about it, because without facing the truth of what’s happening, we won’t be able to find a way forward together.

And I want to remind you of this: despite all the pain and all the harm we’ve witnessed, history — and my own experience organizing in communities across the country — shows that the way through is by building community and collective power. 

I’ll share why I believe this, because I grew up knowing what home felt like. Home was in Ecuador, with my abuela, making noodle soup in Quito on chilly evenings in the Andes.

But when I was 13, my family had to flee political turmoil. I left behind not just a place, but a sense of belonging. My parents didn’t have much, but they had love and courage. Guided by that, they did something incredibly hard: They left everything behind and came to this country in 1998.

Growing up in New York City, in a place where I didn’t know the language or the culture, I quickly learned to feel ashamed — ashamed of not speaking English, ashamed of being an immigrant, ashamed of my skin, my Indigenous features, ashamed of who I was.

I was undocumented, living in fear, and still trying to fulfill my parents’ dream that I would be the first in our family to go to college. I did everything I was told to do: worked hard in school, did community service, checked all the boxes.

Then 9/11 happened. And in that painful moment for our country, everything changed for families like mine, and for Muslim and immigrant communities across the country. Policies shifted. Immigrants were treated as threats to national security. In many places, including New York, undocumented students lost the ability to access higher education. People like my dad, who worked in construction, lost the right to drive.

One day, my dad was traveling between New York and New Jersey for work, crossing the George Washington Bridge. He was given the wrong change at the toll booth and tried to go back to fix it — an ordinary, honest mistake. But when you’re an immigrant, even something small can make you a target. As he turned back, a police car pulled him over. The officer asked for his license. My dad told him it was expired. That was enough. He was asked to step out of the car and taken to a local police station.

I got a call from him. He said, “I’m allowed one phone call. Mija, ayúdame.” Help me.

I told him to stay calm, to remember his rights — to remain silent, to not sign anything. Then I asked to speak to the officer and told him we knew my dad’s rights and that a lawyer was on the way. Right after that, I texted a network of organizers: “My dad needs help. This is where he is.” Within minutes, people responded. A lawyer was already on the way.

I share this story because I don’t know what happened to that police officer. What I do know is that he released my dad with a $150 ticket for driving without a license. And the only reason that happened is because we had a community behind us — people who had my back, who taught me my rights, and who gave me the courage to speak up in that moment.

That’s the kind of courage I want to share with you today. Because courage is a choice.

Undocumented people like me take real risks when we speak out and share our stories. So imagine what’s possible for those who aren’t in that same vulnerable position. Across the country, young people found courage in each other — fighting deportations, supporting one another through school, and committing to build something bigger than ourselves.

That’s how we built United We Dream. And that’s how I learned that in isolation, we lose. Alone, any one of us can be targeted, silenced, or pushed aside. But in community, we show up for each other. In community, no one has to face it alone.

I want to share this: The way we won DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) was by building community. We reminded each other we weren’t alone. We helped each other find our voices. And we took action together to fight for what was right.

I never imagined we would build a movement. I never imagined that years later we would be sitting across from policymakers and people in the White House, winning protections for more than 600,000 people. But we kept organizing.

I know that right now can feel uncertain. It can feel like we don’t know what comes next, or whether change is even possible. But I’m here to tell you that it is.

We’ve seen what’s possible in places like Minneapolis, where people believed in solidarity and built power together. We’re seeing it in Los Angeles and in communities across the country responding to increased immigration enforcement.

And there is a role for everyone here. This is not just about undocumented people or immigrants. All of us have a role, especially those of us with protections that others don’t have.

What’s inspiring is that people are already showing what that looks like. In some places, people are putting their bodies on the line. In others, they’re supporting neighbors in quieter but just as meaningful ways — buying groceries for families who are afraid to leave their homes, driving children to and from school, stepping in wherever help is needed.

In cities like New York and Chicago, people are building community defense networks through group chats, text chains, and rapid response systems. There are so many ways to show up.

There is a role for all of us.

I want you to see that our organizing isn’t just building hope, it’s also shifting public opinion. It’s making ICE and deportation deeply unpopular. Together, we built a mass movement that says no to ICE.

And I want to be clear: This administration wants us to believe they’re targeting people who pose a threat to our communities. But they are the ones creating fear in our communities. And people know that.

Look at what people are actually worried about: the cost of living, paying their bills, taking care of their families. Not these manufactured fears about immigrants. More and more, people are recognizing that the chaos we’re seeing is part of a strategy.

It’s a strategy to divide us. To use immigration as a scapegoat so we don’t pay attention to the real sources of harm: corporations exploiting workers and the planet, and an administration using immigrants to advance a more authoritarian vision of this country.

But people are waking up. They’re seeing through the lies. We know that lack of healthcare, underfunded schools, and economic struggle are not caused by immigrants. And even some who once supported this administration are starting to question what they’ve been told.

I’ll share one brief story. I’ve spoken with evangelical communities across the country who have told me, “We were raised conservative. We even supported this administration. But now we see what’s happening.” In fact, this week, many of them are launching a fast for immigrants and justice.

Across the country, communities — including U.S. citizens — are recognizing that this is not the future we want. And they’ve shared this message:

We are people connected by family, community, and faith. We refuse to turn away from injustice. We show up for one another. We organize with courage and compassion. And we turn our pain into power to build a future where dignity is the norm.

We won’t be divided. We have an opportunity to build a shared future — a multiracial democracy that includes all of us.

Sí se puede. Yes, we can.

The post From Fear to Power: Building a Movement for Immigrant Justice appeared first on Bioneers.

A new device captures greenhouse gases and pollutants from the atmosphere and produces electricity. The battery-like device produces enough power for small sensors and Bluetooth Internet-of-Things gizmos.

“This work introduces a simple, scalable, self-powered platform that integrates gas capture with electricity generation,” write researchers from Korea in the journal Energy & Environmental Science. They call the device a Gas Capture and Electricity Generator.

The idea of carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is starting to slowly gain traction around the world, with dozens of commercial facilities already operating and many more being planned. However existing CCUS technologies face intrinsic challenges, the researchers say.

Conventional CCUS systems typically capture and then later release CO2 for storage or reuse under high temperatures and high pressures for reuse or long-term storage. The captured CO2 can be converted into carbon-based organic materials or synthetic fuels. But those conversion processes are also highly energy-intensive or require expensive noble-metal catalysts.

Plus, CCUS does not address any other greenhouse gases or toxic gases. So the team in Korea created a device that can capture both CO2 and nitrous oxide, the third-most potent greenhouse gas. Based on a fundamentally new mechanism, the device converts the energy generated when gas gets trapped on electrode surfaces into electrical energy.

 

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To make the generator, the researchers started with mulberry paper, a soft, strong and sustainable handmade paper made from the bark of the mulberry tree. They coated the paper with soot-like carbon black powder. Then they dip this carbon-coated paper to coat it with a hydrogel on one half, and with an amine solution on the other.

The hydrogel, which is made of a polymer called polyacrylamide, selectively adsorbs nitrous oxide while the amine grabs and CO2. Hydrogen bonds form between the nitrous oxide and the hydrogel triggers a redistribution and movement of electrons. Meanwhile, the CO2 and amine react to create bicarbonate ions. The creation and movement of these charges generates a potential difference across the paper electrode, resulting in an electric current.

While the amount of electricity the gas battery produces is small, this is a promising proof-of-concept demonstration, and it should be fairly straightforward to connect several devices and allow the generation of higher power outputs, the researchers say.

“By integrating gas capture and electricity generation within a single self-powered platform, this approach provides a scalable, low-energy pathway for mitigating multiple GHGs and offers a promising strategy toward carbon neutrality,” they write.

Source: Tae Gwang Yun et al. Electrical power generation from asymmetric greenhouse gas capture, Energy & Environmental Science, 2026.

Image credit: Energy & Environmental Science, 2026, 19, 2149–2160, Eureka.

Across cultures, practices that limit ego and hierarchy help sustain cooperation and trust. In an era of cascading crises, rediscovering these “social technologies” could strengthen community resilience and collective action.

In New Zealand, forest gardening is being reshaped to fit local climates, ecosystems and cultural contexts. Drawing on years of research and practice, this work shows how place-based adaptation can support more resilient, regenerative food systems.

For the past couple of decades, we at Post Carbon Institute have been pointing out that a transition to alternative energy sources will necessarily be slow and incomplete. Given that oil is a depleting, polluting, non-renewable resource, industrial society is due for a reckoning. We are all in an extended Wile E. Coyote moment.

When Mark Stoeckle went fishing in New York City’s East River, he caught a lot more than he was expecting.

The scientist from The Rockefeller University was focused on testing whether DNA floating in the water could shed light on which fish were living in the notoriously polluted stretch of water that separates Manhattan from Brooklyn and Queens.

But the buckets of water he hauled up from the eastern edge of Manhattan contained evidence of a lot more than just aquatic life. They also illuminated New Yorker’s eating habits and the abundance of classic urban wildlife such as rats and pigeons, according to a paper appearing today in PLOS One. In other words, each bucket of water was a little window into the Anthropocene.

“Environmental DNA doesn’t just tell us what lives in the water, it reveals insights into the entire ecosystem surrounding it, including the city itself,” says Stoeckle.

Beyond just being a curiosity (Who knew you could find DNA from tropical tilapia in the river?), the findings could help people track a plethora of interesting and important phenomena: changes in fish populations, the effectiveness of environmental restoration, trends in what people are eating, and whether New Yorker’s are making any headway in their war on rats.

“Urban biodiversity monitoring could expand dramatically and inexpensively using minimal equipment at relatively low cost,” said Stoeckle. “This ability to integrate environmental and human signals positions eDNA as a powerful tool for understanding the Anthropocene – the era defined by human influence on Earth’s systems.”

The primary focus of this research was to see if environmental DNA, or eDNA, testing could be used to gauge fish populations near a city. This DNA, shed by organisms into the environment, has been hailed as a potentially powerful tool that could alert people to the presence of particular species even if they never set eyes on the creature. Scientists have repurposed air quality monitors to detect dozens of species, counted species in zoos from sniffs of the air, and used air and water samples to assemble a surprisingly detailed picture of who and what were nearby.

But there have been obstacles to making good on the technology’s promise. It’s one thing to tell if a species is there. It’s another, more complicated thing to use DNA to estimate the size of a population. Then there’s the possibility that a flush of DNA in a crowded place like New York City might drown out the signals from fish, especially when rainstorms overwhelm the city’s sewer system, sending 18 billion gallons of raw sewage into nearby waterways each year.

 

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“After a heavy rain, the DNA of almost everything that makes the city tick—and squawk and squeak—ends up in the East River,” said coauthor Jesse Ausubel, who heads The Rockefeller University’s Program for the Human Environment.

“Genetically speaking, a rainstorm turns the river into something akin to Times Square on New Year’s Eve: crowded, noisy, and full of signals.”

To test what could be seen amid this chaos, each week between May 2024 and May 2025 the scientists collected two buckets of water from the same spot on the Manhattan side of the river and hauled it back to a lab. There, they ran the water through a filter much like a coffee filter. They took the residue left in the filter and put it through a series of treatments to see what DNA was there and compare it to a library of known DNA patterns.

When it comes to fish, the results revealed a number of fascinating patterns. The scientists didn’t claim to be able to produce counts of individual species populations. But they found that the amount of DNA from one species compared to another tracked closely with the comparative numbers that turned up in traditional net surveys. That means changes in DNA levels of different fish species over months or years probably reflects real rises and declines in their relative abundance.

That connection was buttressed by seasonal changes in the amount of fish DNA in the water. During the winter months, when fish numbers are lowest, so is their DNA. Their DNA surges tenfold during the warmer summer months, in line with population patterns.

The study also turned up evidence suggesting that efforts to rebuild reefs of oysters starting in 2015 are attracting fish. They turned up lots of DNA from skilletfish and feather blenny, which both are drawn to oyster reefs. A similar DNA survey in 2016 found little sign of those species. That matches results from nearby fish traps, where the species began appearing in 2020.

The more unexpected results were about what was happening on the surrounding land. The levels of DNA from different commonly eaten meats aligned with what New Yorkers are eating. Chicken came out on top, followed by beef and then pork. They also found traces of sheep, goat, turkey, salmon and tilapia.

They also found traces of city-dwelling wildlife. Top billing there, in terms of the concentration of their DNA in samples, went to Norway rats, followed by pigeons, Canada geese and ring-billed gulls. But it also turned up some less urban critters, including white-tailed deer and beavers.

The results show that a relatively simple, low-cost method could be used around the world to monitor the wild and not-so-wild pulse of cities, says Ausubel. A year’s worth of monitoring cost $15,000 and a slice of someone’s time, far less than traditional fishing surveys.

“Urban waterways worldwide could become distributed observatories of ecological change, reporting almost real-time what lives in and near them, not only fish but bats, beavers, and foxes,” Ausubel said. “With the right coordination, this approach could become the backbone of urban coastal monitoring.”

Stoeckle, et. al. “Biomonitoring in the Anthropocene: Urban estuary environmental DNA tracks marine fish, terrestrial wildlife, and human diet.” PLOS One. April 15, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine/AI-generated

If you every have the good fortune to taste honey from the remote Philippine island of Palaui, chances are you will be savoring the flavor of an endangered tree.

That’s what scientists working on Palaui learned when they studied wild honey collected by Indigenous Agta people there. That honey, prized for its supposed medicinal qualities, bore a chemical fingerprint suggesting it came almost exclusively from a single species of tree, the endangered Pterocarpus indicus, or narra.  

Think of it as the honey equivalent of what wine connoisseurs call terroir, the idea that the specifics of a place, such as soil chemistry, shape the flavor of a bottle. While this might just sound like airy food snobbery, it turns out the terroir of honey can tell you a lot about the surrounding landscape and the health of the forest. It can even underscore the importance of conserving endangered species.

“It demonstrates how important narra trees are for local biodiversity and for the Indigenous community that depends on harvesting this honey,” said Merlijn van Weerd, an ecologist at the University of Leiden and co-author of the recent study in Scientific Reports.

You don’t have to live in the Philippines for these lessons to apply. Honey from wild hives anywhere could offer a glimpse into the surrounding ecosystem. The story of the narra-loving bees shows how that might work.  

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that bees on Palaui were drawn to the narra, the national tree of the Philippines. When it blooms, the hardwood jungle tree is festooned with sprays of orange, nectar-rich blossoms.  But its dense wood also made it a staple of the furniture industry, driving logging that wiped it out in much of the island nation before cutting the tree became illegal. Remote Palaui is one of the few places where the trees escaped that fate.

Still, van Weerd and collaborators at the University of the Philippines say they were startled that the narra tree was such a dominant feature of the island honey.

 

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The discovery came as the scientists studied the chemical makeup of honey there to understand what it might say about the surrounding forests and to see what made this wild honey distinct. This “fingerprinting” of the honey could also enable scientists to distinguish wild, sustainably harvested honey from commercial knock-offs adulterated with cane or corn syrup, a common problem in honey marketed as being from the Philippines.

Their primary tool was a set of machines that separated the honey into its chemical constituents, then identified the individual molecules, a process known as liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. In 2021, they collected honey from various sites on the island, then put it through this treatment to see what it contained.

One standout was an abundance of the amino acid hypaphorine. Conversations with a local source in the Agta community led the researchers to zero in on the narra as a likely source. Analysis of pollen from the tree also revealed high levels of hypaphorine. The role of this species in the honey was confirmed by the discovery of narra pollen grains in the honey.

The sensitivity of honey to the surrounding plants was reaffirmed by the discovery of caffeine in some honey gathered at hives close to a coffee farm.

“The honey reveals which plant species occur in the area: a kind of chemical fingerprint of the local flora,” said van Weerd.

For van Weerd, the results are confirmation of the importance of conserving existing forests, clarifying the link between the trees, the bees and traditional Indigenous practices.

“We are involved in reforestation projects, in which planting narra trees plays a central role,” he said. “In addition, we assist in securing land rights for Indigenous communities, enabling them to become stewards of their land and better protect it.”

The knowledge of what goes into the honey there, and elsewhere, could help make the prospect of saving endangered trees and the surrounding forests that much sweeter.

Molino et. al. “Multi‑omics and palynology of selected Philippine forest honey.” Scientific Reports. Feb. 4, 2026.

Image: ©Anthropocene Magazine

As housing costs rise and populations age, underused space in existing homes offers an overlooked solution. In-home suites can provide affordable housing, support aging in place, and strengthen community ties while making better use of what we already have.

The global food system is both essential and unsustainable, locked into patterns that resist meaningful reform. Real change, the author argues, lies in rebuilding local, regenerative food systems that can gradually replace what no longer works.