Paleogeographic changes have significantly shaped ocean circulation and climate dynamics throughout Earth’s history. This study integrates geological proxies with climate simulations to assess how ocean gateway evolution influenced ocean salinity near the end of the Mesozoic (~66 Ma). Our modeling results demonstrate that 1) Central American Seaway shoaling reorganizes ocean currents, and 2) Arctic marine gateway restrictions, confining Arctic–Global Ocean exchange exclusively to the Greenland–Norwegian Seaway, drive Arctic Ocean surface freshening and southward outflow of buoyant, low-salinity waters. However, only the combined effect of these two factors leads to both Arctic freshening and increased water mass stratification in the Greenland–Norwegian Seaway, proto-North Atlantic, and the Western Tethys. This scenario aligns with Maastrichtian palynological, micropaleontological, and geochemical records from high- and low-latitude sites. Our findings highlight the profound impact of these latest Cretaceous paleogeographic reconfigurations in altering global salinity patterns, underscoring their role as key drivers of global climate dynamics.

Organic and mineral growing media are commonly used in horticultural soilless systems for vegetable cropping in greenhouses and net-houses. However, extraction of these materials adversely affects environmental quality. The objective of this study was to assess the horticultural potential of biochar and compochar (a mix of biochar and compost) growing media—both produced from human (domestic) sewage sludge—as an alternative to tuff/tephra (light porous medium formed by consolidation of volcanic ash). The study was conducted in the Israeli drylands, where lettuce and cherry tomato were grown in a net-house under deficit nutrient management (50% of the recommended rate). The biochemical properties of the three substrates ((i) 100% biochar; (ii) compochar (50% biochar+50% compost); and (iii) 100% commercial tuff) and productivity of the two crops were assessed. For the two crops, the nutrient status of biochar and compochar were similar, and different from that of tuff. In the lettuce, mean values of substrate general quality index (SQIgen) and substrate quality index minimum dataset (SQIMDS) were similar for biochar and compochar (0.550 and 0.541, respectively, for SQIgen; 0.614 and 0.613, respectively, for SQIMDS), and significantly greater than that of tuff (0.337 for SQIgen; 0.310 for SQIMDS). In the cherry tomato, a similar trend was recorded, with significantly greater means for biochar and compochar (0.499 and 0.497, respectively, for SQIgen; 0.436 and 0.482, respectively, for SQIMDS) than those of tuff (0.320 for SQIgen; 0.192 for SQIMDS). In terms of crop yields, mean productivity of lettuce followed the trend of compochar>biochar>tuff, whilst cherry tomato yields followed the trend of biochar>compochar>tuff. Thus, biochar and compochar can be recommended as viable, sustainable alternatives in soilless horticulture systems. Further, insights of this study highlight the climatic change mitigation and adaptation capacities of biochar and compochar when used as horticultural growing media.

In tropical regions, seagrass meadows provide a unique habitat for benthic foraminifera, both serving as important ecosystem engineers and sensitive indicators of coastal marine ecosystems. However, their interactions remain poorly understood, particularly in the context of anthropogenic pressures and climate change. This study investigates benthic foraminiferal assemblages associated with the tropical seagrass Halophila stipulacea in the Gulf of Aqaba-Eilat (GoA) as a model system to monitor natural and anthropogenic changes. Sampling was conducted during 11 campaigns (January 2020–April 2021) at two sites: South Coast (SC), a pristine shoreline, and North Coast (NC), an urbanized area. At each site, samples were collected from three distinct environments: seagrass leaves (L), sediments within meadows (SIM), and sediments outside meadows (SOM).

Throughout all of the sampling period, we found higher abundance and diversity of benthic foraminifera in sediments within H. stipulacea meadows (SIM) compared with sediments outside meadows (SOM). These results demonstrate that H. stipulacea creates a favorable environment for benthic foraminifera compared to adjacent bare sediments. Notably, the occurrence of certain foraminiferal species in the GoA is directly linked to the presence of seagrass. The leaves also serve as nurseries for juvenile Amphistegina, a key cosmopolitan symbiont-bearing genus. Additionally, the seagrass meadows appear to mitigate anthropogenic impacts, maintaining “healthy” foraminiferal assemblages even in the urbanized northern region of the GoA (NC). These findings highlight the ecological importance of seagrass meadows for benthic foraminifera and emphasize their susceptibility to anthropogenic stressors.

Hydrazine, a highly toxic and reactive compound widely used as rocket fuel, poses significant environmental and health risks, particularly in long-term space missions. This study investigates the cometabolic capacity of Chlorella vulgaris and seven extremophilic Bacillus spp. strains—isolated from the arid Dead Sea region—to tolerate and degrade hydrazine at concentrations up to 25 ppm. The microalga C. vulgaris reduced hydrazine levels by 81% within 24 h at 20 ppm, while the Bacillus isolates achieved an average reduction of 45% over 120 h. Identified strains included B. licheniformis, B. cereus, and B. atrophaeus. Co-culture experiments demonstrated that C. vulgaris and B. cereus (isolate ISO-36) stably coexisted without antagonistic effects, suggesting a synergistic detoxification interaction. Flow cytometry revealed that most bacteria transitioned into spores under stress, highlighting a survival adaptation. Titanium, representing a biocompatible material common in aerospace hardware, did not inhibit microbial growth or hydrazine degradation. These findings underscore the potential of Dead Sea-derived microbial consortia for cometabolic hydrazine detoxification and support the feasibility of converting spacecraft components into functional photobioreactors. This approach offers dual-use benefits for space missions and industrial wastewater treatment. Future studies should investigate degradation pathways, stress resilience, and bioreactor scale-up.

The loess plains cover approximately 2000.00 km² of the northern Negev Desert, accounting for about 9% of Israel’s total land area. As elsewhere, the loess in the Negev Desert is composed of wind-transported dust and sand particles that have been deposited in sink sites. The loess deposits are characteristically covered by biocrusts, which constitute a substantial share of the region’s primary productivity. The biocrusts regulate the vascular vegetation communities, including herbaceous and woody plants, many of which are endemic and/or endangered plant species. Throughout history, the region’s main land-uses have been based on extensive livestock grazing and runoff-harvesting agriculture, which both still exist to some extent. These land-uses did not challenge the sustainability of the geo-ecosystems over centuries and millennia. At present, predominant land-uses include intensive rangelands (1016.81 km², encompassing 51% of the loess plains’ area), croplands (encompassing both rainfed and irrigated cropping systems: 930.92 km², 47% of the loess plains’ area), and afforestation lands (158.75 km²). These current land-uses impose substantial challenges to the functioning of the loess plains. Further, urban and rural settlements have expanded considerably in the last decades (158.45 km²), accompanied by mass construction of infrastructures. Altogether, these new land-uses have caused widespread soil erosion, soil structure deformation, depletion of soil organic carbon, environmental contamination, native vegetation removal, invasion of plant species, and habitat fragmentation. Recent climate change has intensified these stressors, exacerbating adverse impacts and forming feedback loops that intensify land degradation and desertification. The declining ecosystem functioning over recent decades emphasizes the urgent need for passive and active restoration schemes. While some of these efforts have proven to be successful, other have failed. Therefore, proactive policy making and environmental legislation are needed to plan and develop schemes aimed at halting land degradation, while simultaneously maximizing nature conservation and restoration of degraded lands across the loess plains. Such actions are expected to increase the regions’ capacity for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

In their natural habitats, seagrasses face multiple abiotic stressors, which can often occur simultaneously. However, most studies have only focused on growth and physiological responses to single stressors. Here, we examined transcriptome responses of the tropical seagrass Halophila stipulacea collected from a northern Gulf of Aqaba pristine site and an anthropogenically-impacted site, grown in a mesocosm, and exposed to ecologically-relevant, single and combined, thermal and excess nutrient stressors. Growth of plants from the impacted site was more tolerant to stress than plants from the pristine site. The combined thermal and nutrient stressor elicited greater transcriptome reprogramming than the single stressors in both populations and induced the expression of a combination-specific set of genes involved in stress responses. Furthermore, thermal stress exerted a dominant influence upon the transcriptome response to the combined stressor. Transcriptomes of plants from the impacted site displayed reduced responsiveness to stress, the presence of genes exhibiting a “stress-ready” mode of expression under all stressors, and increased resilience (recovery to control transcriptomes). We also identified core stress-response genes that could be leveraged as early indicators of stress in the field. Overall, our data suggest that environmental conditions in seagrass habitats can drive local molecular adaptation, and that the response of seagrasses to combined stressors associated with climate change and coastal anthropogenic stressors cannot be predicted from the response to single stressors.

Petroleum pollution has become a substantial challenge in soil ecology. The soil bacterial consortia play a major role in the biodegradation of petroleum hydrocarbons. The main objective of this study was to assess changes in bacterial composition and diversity in oil-contaminated dryland soils. The Illumina MiSeq high-throughput sequencing technique was used to study the bacterial diversity and structural change in hyper-arid oil-contaminated soil in the Arava Valley of Israel. The diversity and abundance of soil bacteria declined significantly following oil pollution. The dominant phyla in the petroleum-contaminated soils were Proteobacteria (~33% higher vs. control soil) and Patescibacteria (~2.5% higher vs. control soil), which are oil-associated and hydrocarbon-degrading bacteria. An opposite trend was found for the Actinobacteria (~8%), Chloroflexi (12%), Gemmatimonadetes (3%), and Planctomycetes (2%) phyla, with the lower abundances in contaminated soil vs. control soil. Investigation of long-term contaminated sites revealed significant genus-level taxonomic restructuring in soil bacterial communities. The most evident changes were observed in Mycobacterium, Alkanindiges, and uncultured bacterium-145, which showed marked abundance shifts between spill and control soils across decades. Particularly, hydrocarbon-degrading genera such as Pseudoxanthomonas demonstrated persistent dominance in contaminated sites. While some genera (e.g., Frigoribacterium, Leifsonia) declined over time, others—particularly Nocardioides and Streptomyces—exhibited substantial increases by 2014, suggesting potential ecological succession or adaptive selection. Minor but consistent changes were also detected in stress-tolerant genera like Blastococcus and Quadrisphaera. The effect of oil contamination on species diversity was greater at the 1975 site compared to the 2014 site. These patterns highlight the dynamic response of bacterial communities to chronic contamination, with implications for bioremediation and ecosystem recovery. The study results provide new insights into oil contamination-induced changes in soil bacterial community and may assist in designing appropriate biodegradation strategies to alleviate the impacts of oil contamination in drylands.

The Negev Highlands, located in Israel's arid zone, have been home to Bedouin tribes for centuries. Families and clans attributed the meaning of their place to this vast area. Within this region, they maintained a semi-nomadic lifestyle, moving seasonally in search of pasture and water, relocating and adapting to changing weather conditions. In the early 1980s, these families were forced to settle in parallel with the peace agreements with Egypt and the declaration of most of the Negev Highlands as military training zones or nature reserves. They established villages on the edges of their grazing lands, which were not recognized by the state and, therefore, were not entitled to essential services. Many traditional practices were irrelevant in their new location and quickly disappeared. Our research follows a group of residents from one of those unrecognized Bedouin villages who attempted to imagine a different and better future for their community while staying within their village but transforming it into a Bedouin Heritage Center. Eight in-depth interviews with the Bedouin group's leaders revealed several shifts in their sense of place, which later gave rise to a new spatial identity and spatial socio-political organization. The article follows first how the interviews revealed a local changing sense of place. It then adds a relational geography perspective, articulating the Bedouin changing sense of place with changes in Israel’s development policies and economy in the Negev during the early 2000s and with changing global environmental discourses and free market ideas, we claim these articulations gave rise to new regionalism, new regional spatial and political formations within the Negev highland Bedouin villages.

Duarte's 1999 review, “Seagrass ecology at the turn of the millennium” established a benchmark for seagrass research. Twenty-five years later, an analysis of 11,245 publications (published between 2000–2023) reveals substantial growth but persistent biases. While the volume of annual publications on seagrasses has increased over this period almost 4 folds, seagrass research remains significantly less extensive than studies on mangroves and coral reefs. Authors from only two countries (Australia and the USA) were still responsible for a huge proportion (35 %) of the world's seagrass publications. The seagrass community has remained disproportionately focused on only 4 key species which together account for 59 % of all seagrass publications. While scientific attention continues and even becomes stronger in the last 12 years for Zostera marina and Cymadocoae nodosa, there are some signs of change with recent growing attention to the tropical species Thalassia hemprichii and Halophila stipulacea. While previously dominated by basic descriptive ecology, seagrass research topics have become more quantitative and focused on responses to stressors, genetics and genomics, ecosystem services, and restoration and resilience building.

These findings demonstrate that the seagrass research community needs to shift towards a more holistic and inclusive approach. We must prioritize under-represented species and geographical regions, adopt integrated methodologies and foster strong interdisciplinary collaborations to secure the long-term health and sustainability of these vital coastal ecosystems. Only through such concerted efforts can we effectively address the multifaceted challenges facing seagrasses globally.

For desert species, human development may buffer against resource scarcity by providing reliable resources in an otherwise stark environment. We used high-throughput tracking technology to explore the movement patterns of a social desert passerine bird (the Arabian babbler—Argya quadriceps, Leiothrichidae) in a mosaic of human-modified and semi-natural habitats. From late summer to early winter, as natural food and water resources increase, we tracked 21 individuals representing 10 groups. Toward winter, groups spent less time within villages, had smaller home ranges, and were less territorial. In general, birds showed a preference for spending time in the vegetated semi-natural habitat. We further found that even a small section of uncultivated agricultural land (~2 km stretch of mostly bare dirt) can act as a movement barrier for babblers. Altogether, we highlight how the complex interaction between resource availability and anthropogenic changes to habitats, can shape animals’ responses to our changing planet.