Special Report

Our Sustainable Future

A hub dedicated to the latest on how global change affects life on Earth today and on what solutions scientists, including those at the Smithsonian, are researching to build a more sustainable planet

Hiroshi Watanabe/Getty Images

Dairy farms like this one run by the Barstow family in Hadley, Massachusetts, make smart use of a substance cows produce in abundance.

How Dairy Farmers Are Turning Manure Into Money

Cacao growing on a tree at Zorzal Cacao, the first farm certified by Smithsonian's new Bird Friendly cocoa program.

AT THE SMITHSONIAN

Why Buying ‘Bird Friendly Cocoa’ Is a Sweet Deal

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WATCH

What Does It Mean to Live on a Sustainable Planet?

Sustainability at the Smithsonian

Debris is heaped on the banks of a river.

Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery

After Hurricane Helene, Survivors Have Been in a Race Against Time to Protect Family Heirlooms, Photographs and Keepsakes

Nick Lehr, The Conversation

Two young people surrounded by greenery. One person has their hand outstretched towards a leafy bush in front of them.

Smithsonian American Women's History Museum

Environmental Justice Academy Educates and Inspires Youth for Innovative Change

Amber Mims

Candid photo of Elena Terry smiling holding a white dish full of colorful beans, peppers, and corn tilted away from her.

Smithsonian American Women's History Museum

How Chef Elena Terry Revisited Heritage Seeds to Cultivate Hope

Meredith Herndon

National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute

Ten Fascinating Facts About the Arapaima, the Largest Freshwater Fish in South America

A clear blue river winds through a reedy wetland, reflecting the clouds overhead. A wooden boardwalk with rails overlooks the river on the right.

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Hot, Fresh & Flooded: These Wetlands Spew Out the Most Methane

Kristen Goodhue

Imama

Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Between Pasture and Forest: The Crusade to Protect the Jaguar in Panama

Head and shoulders photo of Denise Breitburg, a woman with glasses and shoulder-length gray hair, with forested mountains in the background.

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Wait, the Ocean Is Losing Oxygen? Q&A With Denise Breitburg

Mona Patterson

Sustainability News From Smithsonian Magazine

Current experiments are focused on tomatoes, lettuce and other small-scale crops, with hopes to extend to high-calorie crops like grains and sweet potatoes in the future.

Can Electro-Agriculture Revolutionize the Way We Grow Food?

BlueGreen Water Technologies treats a harmful algal bloom in Doctors Lake in Clay County, Florida.

How Cleaning Up Harmful Algal Blooms Could Help Fight Climate Change

These four lightbulbs augured a future with nuclear power.

On This Day in 1951, Four Illuminated Lightbulbs in Idaho Were Evidence of the First Time a Nuclear Power Plant Generated Electricity

The plant-based egg substitutes available today are less than perfect. Food scientists are working hard to improve them — and, maybe, make them better tasting and more nutritious than the real thing.

Scientists Are Trying to Crack the Recipe for the Perfect Plant-Based Eggs

Bob Holmes, Knowable Magazine

In Ecuador, a glass frog from a new species identified in 2022, Hyalinobatrachium nouns, hangs from the underside of a leaf, seen from below.

The Andes’ Translucent Glass Frogs Need to Be Seen to Be Saved

Climate Change News

Ice calves off the Breidamerkurjokull, a glacier in Iceland. Some scientists suggest prehistoric glaciers hold the answers to how life evolved on Earth.

How Enormous Glaciers on the Frozen 'Snowball Earth' Might Have Bulldozed the Path to Complex Life on Our Planet

The Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles experiences slow-moving landslides that accelerated last fall, according to recent research.

Parts of California Are Sinking, and It Could Worsen the Effects of Sea-Level Rise, NASA Study Finds

The iceberg A23a, seen in the South Atlantic Ocean near South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in November 2024

The World's Largest Iceberg Runs Aground, Potentially Averting a Collision With Penguin and Seal Breeding Areas

An illustration of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, with branches connecting to other ocean currents

Earth's Strongest Ocean Current Could Slow 20 Percent by 2050 Because of Climate Change, Study Finds

Margherita Bassi

In October 2024, scientists created dozens of man-made nests and deposited 300,000 Chinook salmon eggs. Now, those eggs are hatching.

Chinook Salmon Are Swimming in This California River for the First Time in More Than 80 Years

Mother polar bears spend months inside snowy dens with their cubs. Then, the family emerges together in the spring.

Rare Footage Shows Baby Polar Bears Emerging From Their Den in the Arctic

Train Smoke, Edvard Munch, 1900

See the Breathtaking Landscape Paintings Inspired by the Boreal Forest, From Europe to North America