The same scientific quest for which Erika Edwards won recognition from President Obama on May 5 had two months earlier led her and 12 students up dusty mountainsides in the world’s driest desert.

The Institute at Brown for Environment and Society will host Earth, Itself: Atmospheres, a multidisciplinary exploration of environmental issues surrounding air.

If the world turns to intensive farming in the tropics to meet food demand, it will require vast amounts of phosphorus fertilizer produced from Earth’s finite, irreplaceable phosphate rock deposits, a new analysis shows.

Cropland recycles less water into the atmosphere than native vegetation in Brazil’s wooded savannas, which could lead to less rain in the region as agriculture expands.

Studies of how climate change might affect agriculture generally look only at crop yields. But climate change may also influence how much land people choose to farm and the number of crops they plant each growing season. A new study takes all of these variables into account, and suggests researchers may be underestimating the total effect of climate change on the world’s food supply.

Brown University botanist Erika Edwards has earned a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering. She’s invited to the White House this spring to accept the honor.

Brown University epidemiologist Joseph Braun has shown that prenatal exposure to PFAS chemicals is associated with greater adiposity in children. With a new $2-million grant from the National Institutes of Health, he will examine how the chemicals may have that effect and when exposure is most crucial.

Atmospheric models have suggested that a vast majority of nitrogen deposited in the open ocean is derived from human activities, but a new study suggests that’s not so.