Research Brief: Better land use and management could improve biodiversity, climate and economic development

University of Minnesota

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This paper helps provide information on where to locate crops and natural areas, such as forests, to achieve climate, biodiversity, and economic development goals. This photo shows a boundary where the Mau forest ends and becomes agricultural land near Bomet in Narok, Kenya.

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Credit: Kate Holt (WWF, UK).

National governments and multilateral institutions face difficult challenges reconciling environmental goals, such as biodiversity conservation and addressing climate change, with economic development goals. 

In a first-of-its-kind analysis done for 146 countries around the world, an interdisciplinary research team led by researchers at the University of Minnesota found large potential gains in biodiversity, climate and economic development from improved land use and land management. The findings were recently published in Science.

The researchers integrated spatial biophysical and economic data with optimization methods to develop sustainable landscape efficiency frontiers for each of 146 countries included in the analysis. The landscape efficiency frontier in each country shows the maximally feasible combinations of biodiversity conservation (including both species and ecosystem measures), land-based climate mitigation (net carbon sequestration and methane emissions reductions) and net economic value from agricultural crops, livestock and forestry production. For example, the landscape efficiency frontier shows the highest economic value from agriculture and forestry for a given score for biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation, or the maximum climate mitigation possible for a given biodiversity score and economic values from agriculture and forestry. In most countries, land use and land management generates outcomes well inside their landscape efficiency frontier showing that simultaneous gains in environment and economic development are possible.  

The analysis found:

• Summing results across all 146 countries included in the analysis shows potential to increase climate mitigation by over 200 billion metric tons CO2 equivalents (>20% increase) or net economic value by over $350 billion (>80% increase) without loss in other objectives important for carbon sequestration and biodiversity and expansion of agriculture and 

• These gains occur both from land reallocation, involving selective restoration of forestry areas in highly productive lands, and crop intensification, especially in lower-income countries with current low-yield agriculture. 

“We know we're facing both a climate crisis and a biodiversity crisis but, usually, the pushback against doing something about either is that it's going to cost too much,” said lead author Stephen Polasky, a Regents Professor and co-founder of NatCap TEEMs in the University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resources Sciences. “One of the main reasons for doing this study was to show, in fact, that there are ways where we can be more efficient and address climate and biodiversity without bankrupting people.” 

The research team discusses the analysis in greater detail here.

According to Polasky, this information is useful for organizations involved in supporting and financing development, such as international finance institutions, to help them better direct their resources and support for countries in a way that helps them meet their national goals but, at the same time, meet international commitments for biodiversity, conservation, climate change, and adaptation.

“One of the advantages we find from doing this analysis is that we show people what's possible, and that tends to open their minds to thinking about a wider set of alternatives, when they can see the gain that could be had by making some of these changes. Then making some of the changes is not so scary,” said Polasky.

"This research proves that the supposed tradeoff between protecting nature and growing economies is false,” said Becky Chaplin-Kramer, Global Biodiversity Lead Scientist at World Wildlife Fund-US. “By mapping what's truly possible country by country, we've given policymakers and investors a roadmap to pursue biodiversity gains, climate mitigation, and development goals together."  

NatCap TEEMs and its collaborators, including NatCap Insights, have started working with other partners to apply this work, including working with the World Bank to do country-specific analyses to answer their specific questions.

The research team added that there are also many ecosystem services and economic activities that are not yet included in this analysis, so there is much additional work that can be done to deepen that analysis.

Funding for the analysis was provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the University of Minnesota Fesler-Lampert Endowment, the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment, World Resources Institute, and the World Bank.

About NatCap TEEMs 
NatCap TEEMs (Natural Capital Alliance: The Earth-Economy Modelers) in the Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, aims to improve understanding of the integrated earth-economy system and to inform decision-making for sustainable development on a livable planet. NatCap TEEMs is a part of the Natural Capital Alliance, a global partnership whose mission is to pioneer science, technology, and partnerships that enable people and nature to thrive (formerly the Natural Capital Project). Learn more at natcapteems.umn.edu

About the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences 
The University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences strives to inspire minds, nourish people, and sustainably enhance the natural environment. CFANS has a legacy of innovation, bringing discoveries to life through science and educating the next generation of leaders. Every day, students, faculty, and researchers use science to address the grand challenges of the world today and in the future. CFANS offers an unparalleled expanse of experiential learning opportunities for students and the community, with 12 academic departments, 10 research and outreach centers across the state, the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, the Bell Museum, and dozens of interdisciplinary centers. Learn more at cfans.umn.edu

 

Sustainable landscape efficiency frontiers and current performance showing potential simultaneous gains for environmental and economic outcomes and tradeoffs for illustrative countries: (A) Haiti, (B) Iceland, (C) Gabon, and (D) Japan. The horizontal axis measures net economic value from agricultural crop production, livestock grazing, and forestry. The vertical axis is the geometric mean of climate mitigation and biodiversity scores. The optimization was performed in three dimensions (biodiversity, climate mitigation, net economic value) but represented in two dimensions, and hence the frontier is often thicker than a single line. Minimum and maximum scores in each country for each outcome are normalized to 0 and 1, with maximum environmental geometric scores often occurring at negative net economic value because of the incorporation of transition costs that outweigh positive net production value.

Credit

Stephen Polasky

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.aea9058 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Landscape efficiency frontiers for biodiversity, climate mitigation, and net economic value

Article Publication Date

4-Jun-2026

 

Transplant survival is improving, but organ shortages persist and limit access

While medical and technical advances are helping more people survive the wait for an organ and transplant surgery, organ shortages continue to limit access, a national analysis shows

American College of Surgeons

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Key takeaways

• More people are surviving the wait for an organ and organ transplantation surgery, but the gap between the number of patients who need transplants and those who receive them remains large.

• Kidney donations are in the highest demand, with the gap between supply and demand growing by nearly 400% in the past three decades.
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CHICAGO — More adults are surviving both the wait for an organ and transplant surgery, but the number of people who need transplants continues to exceed the number of organs available, especially for kidneys, according to a national analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS).

Researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, analyzed nearly 1.5 million listings of adults in the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) database from January 1987 to July 2024, marking one of the most comprehensive analyses of long-term trends in adult solid-organ transplantation to date. Their analysis focused on three key metrics:

• Unmet need: the gap between the number of patients waitlisted for an organ and how many receive transplants each year, capturing patients who never get treated, including those who die waiting for an organ.
• Intent-to-treat survival: the percentage of patients alive one year after being added to the list (listing) for a transplant, regardless of whether they received a transplant.
• Post-transplant survival: the percentage of patients alive one year after transplant surgery, only including patients who have had a transplant.

“These metrics are important because they provide a comprehensive snapshot of how well the system is keeping up with demand,” said first author Carter Burns, a second-year medical student at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. “A lot of research focuses on the perioperative period, but a patient’s experience with transplantation begins the moment they are waiting for an organ.”

About 13 people die every day waiting for a transplant, and more than 100,000 adults and children are waiting for an organ, according to the Health Resources & Services Administration. With growing demand, a record 49,064 transplants were performed in 2025.

 Study Results

• Survival has improved across all solid organs: One-year survival after listing (intent-to-treat survival) increased substantially in the study period. The largest gains in survival were seen for lung transplantation, rising from 38% to 84% across almost four decades. Other substantial gains were seen in heart transplantation (63% to 90%), liver (70% to 85%), kidney (82% to 95%), and pancreas (84% to 95%).
  
  One-year post-transplant survival also improved across all organs. In kidney transplants, post-transplant survival was consistently higher for living donor transplants compared to transplants from deceased donors.
   
• Unmet need is decreasing for most organs, but large gaps still persist: Despite survival gains, the number of patients needing transplants continues to outweigh supply, though the gap is narrowing for many organs. From the late 1990s to 2023, there was about a 40% reduction in the unmet need for liver transplants, roughly a 50% reduction in the unmet need for heart and pancreas transplants, and about an 80% reduction in the unmet need for lungs.
   
• Kidney donations are in highest demand: Kidney transplant had the highest and most persistent unmet need, increasing roughly 350–400% in the past three decades, from about 4,000 patients with unmet need in 1988 to about 18,500 in 2023. Demand has remained persistently high, even after a slight decline from peak levels in the early 2010s.

“Organ transplant patients are living longer both before and after surgery thanks to several clinical and technical innovations,” said senior author Abbas Rana, MD, FACS, professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine. “But there remains a significant need for organ donations, and that unmet need hampers any progress we have made in survival.”

Progress in Organ Transplantation Surgery

The improved survival rates likely reflect advances in anesthesia, critical care medicine, and infectious disease medicine, which have improved survival after organ transplantation and allowed people on the organ transplant waitlist to live longer, the authors noted. Better organ preservation strategies and expanded donation criteria have also played a critical role in increasing access, though these effects aren’t always consistent across all organ types.

Other emerging technologies, such as xenotransplantation, have shown some promise in limited clinical trials but are not yet widely available or sufficiently developed to meaningfully address the gap between organ supply and demand, the authors noted.

“Our field has made tremendous advancements, but those advancements can only be truly realized with increased donations,” Dr. Rana said. “This research was another way for us to highlight just how influential and significant the organ supply is to maintain progress.”

The study is limited by the UNOS database, which may not fully capture regional differences, proximity to transplant centers, or more detailed socioeconomic factors of patients. The analysis also did not account for changes in transplant eligibility criteria or donor and recipient risk factors, which may have influenced the findings, the authors noted.

Study co-authors are Pradyun V. Sangineni, BS; Spencer E. Myres, BS; James A. Widner, BS; Marco A. Campioli, BA, and John A. Goss, MD, FACS.

The authors have no disclosures to report.

The study is published as an article in press on the JACS website. 

Citation: Burns C, Sangineni P, Myres S, et al. Trends in Survival and Unmet Need Across Solid-Organ Transplantation. Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 2026. DOI: 10.1097/XCS.0000000000001852

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About the American College of Surgeons
The American College of Surgeons (ACS) is a scientific and educational organization of surgeons that was founded in 1913 to raise the standards of surgical practice and improve the quality of care for all surgical patients. The ACS is dedicated to the ethical and competent practice of surgery. Its achievements have significantly influenced the course of scientific surgery in America and have established it as an important advocate for all surgical patients. The ACS has more than 95,000 members and is the largest organization of surgeons in the world. “FACS” designates that a surgeon is a Fellow of the ACS.   

Follow the ACS on social media: X | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn | Facebook 

CONTACT:   

Sheila Lai | 312-202-5403 
Dan Hamilton | 312-202-5328
Email: pressinquiry@facs.org 

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Journal

Journal of the American College of Surgeons

DOI

10.1097/XCS.0000000000001852 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Trends in Survival and Unmet Need Across Solid-Organ Transplantation

 

CIMMYT and Uzbekistan join efforts to transform the country’s wheat sector

The agreement marks a decisive step toward a deeper partnership, paving the way for the full Advancing Wheat Innovation and Capacity in Uzbekistan (AWIC-UZ) program and reinforcing Uzbekistan’s leadership in Central Asian food security.

International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT)

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Sign of the Award Agreement for the bridge phase of Advancing Wheat Innovation and Capacity in Uzbekistan (AWIC-UZ)

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Credit: CIMMYT

Tashkent, Uzbekistan | June 3, 2026 — CIMMYT and the Government of the Republic of Uzbekistan today signed an award agreement for the bridge phase of Advancing Wheat Innovation and Capacity in Uzbekistan (AWIC-UZ), a landmark initiative to modernize the country’s wheat sector. The agreement begins the conversion of the letter of intent signed in March 2026 into operational reality and builds toward the larger, more ambitious, follow-on AWIC-UZ program.

Wheat underpins Uzbekistan’s food security and rural livelihoods. Yet the crop faces converging and urgent pressures: climate change is compressing cropping seasons, yellow rust looms as a major biotic threat, soil-borne pathogens are silently eroding yields across key production zones, and Fusarium head blight raises an emerging quality concern. This phase of the agreement is designed to seize a unique window of opportunity, converting political will into concrete action through targeted scientific exchanges, the introduction of elite germplasm, and systematic disease diagnostics.

This award agreement stems from a wheat cropping and productivity assessment conducted in the country in 2025 by CIMMYT scientists in collaboration with Uzbekistan’s Ministry of Agriculture.

A Bridge to Transformational Change

The bridge phase will deliver immediate technical results while creating a fact based road map for the full AWIC-UZ program. Over 18 months, the project will introduce selected CIMMYT germplasm, initiate joint phenotypic evaluation across multiple sites, advance speed-breeding capacity, and conduct systematic surveys for yellow rust, soil-borne pathogens, and Fusarium head blight. Uzbekistan will also be connected to the global wheat disease surveillance and advisory system, strengthening early-warning capacity for the region.

“This agreement is a clear demonstration of CIMMYT’s commitment to working hand-in-hand with governments across the region to strengthen resilience, build capacity, and improve national and regional food security. It is also a demonstration of Uzbekistan’s regional stewardship in forging a path toward a more food-secure future for Central Asia,” said Dr. Bram Govaerts, Director General of CIMMYT.

Building National Capacity and Connecting Institutions

A central pillar of this stage is strengthening Uzbek scientific capacity. The agreement supports postdoctoral and graduate student placements at CIMMYT’s headquarters in Mexico and at its Türkiye office, alongside targeted team training on breeding methodologies and root diseases. A national technical workshop in Uzbekistan will align methods, review progress, and build long-term institutional ownership.

In parallel, the bridge phase will strengthen and coordinate Uzbekistan’s wheat breeding capabilities into a national program equipped with advanced breeding methodologies and genomic selection tools. Roles and responsibilities across Uzbek partner institutions will be jointly defined to align efforts in breeding, pathology, phenotyping, training, field operations, and data management.

Reiterating the Republic of Uzbekistan’s strong commitment to the partnership, Deputy Minister of Agriculture Alisher Shukurov said at the signing of the award agreement, “This partnership with CIMMYT reinforces the importance of scientific collaboration to improving wheat production in Uzbekistan, strengthening national capacity for research, innovation, and leadership in food security. By bringing together scientific expertise, global institutional partnerships, and shared ambition, we aim to help address common challenges while accelerating sustainable agricultural development in Uzbekistan and across Central Asia"

A Partnership for the Region

Through the bridge phase and the full program that follows, Uzbekistan and CIMMYT will work together with farmers, private companies, local farmer cooperatives, NGOs, and other international partners to transform the country’s wheat value chain — from seed systems and breeding to disease management, agronomy, and market access.

For Uzbekistan, the implications extend beyond domestic food supply. By modernizing its breeding infrastructure and disease surveillance, the country is positioning itself as a leader in Central Asian wheat research, contributing to regional food and nutrition security at a critical moment for global agri-food systems

 

Online menopause information–seeking search patterns and commercial content over 2 decades

JAMA Network Open

About The Study: 

From 2005 to 2025, the proportion of menopause-related searches that were related to commercial products and services increased by 15 to 20 percentage points in the United Kingdom, Australia, and the United States with no difference in the rate of increase by country. Increases appeared earlier in the U.S., with subsequent convergence across countries over time. These results suggest that individuals may be increasingly seeking nonclinical approaches to managing menopause, not only for symptom relief but also for ongoing guidance, tracking, or support outside traditional clinical encounters.

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Francesca R. Farina, PhD, email ffarina@uchicago.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.16596)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

#  #  #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article 

  https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.16596?guestAccessKey=1b34668e-afe8-4888-aa3d-dd05b3b83eff&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=060426

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

 

New species of dinosaur, a cousin of Velociraptor, probably glided on four “wings” and hunted early birds

Field Museum

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The new microraptor dinosaur Jian changmaensis (left) attacks the early bird Gansus yumenensis (right) in what is now the Changma Basin of northwestern China approximately 120 million years ago. Credits: illustration by Lewis LaRosa, colorized by Jão Canola.

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Credit: Credits: illustration by Lewis LaRosa, colorized by Jão Canola.

A fossil bed in northwestern China is littered with the remains of hundreds of prehistoric birds—including some whose broken bones were crushed into pellets, similar to those coughed up by modern owls. For years, scientists guessed that a larger predatory animal must have hunted these ancient birds, but they never found direct fossil evidence of this predator. But in a new paper published in the Annals of Carnegie Museum, researchers announced the discovery of a new species of dinosaur from this fossil bed—a cousin of Velociraptor with long feathers on its front and back limbs. Based on the dinosaur’s distinctive arm and shoulder bones, scientists hypothesize that this animal is the missing predator.

“Scientists have found these weird, broken-up clusters of bird bones at this site, and we didn’t know what made them. This new microraptor dinosaur, Jian changmaensis, is our best guess,” says Jingmai O’Connor, the associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago and senior author of the paper describing the new species. “It’s the only dinosaur found at this site that wasn’t a bird, it was a carnivore, and it was much bigger than everything else that we’ve found there.”

Modern birds are the only group of dinosaurs that survived the after-effects of a meteorite hitting the Earth 66 million years ago. But birds and their fellow dinosaurs lived together for tens of millions of years in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. One group of dinosaurs, the dromaeosaurs, were close cousins of the bird-dinosaurs. Dromaeosaurs, like birds, were covered in feathers and tended to be relatively small and speedy. The Velociraptors made famous in Jurassic Park are probably the most famous dromaeosaurs (but they would have been smaller and more feathery than they're depicted in the movies).

The new species, Jian changmaensis, belongs to a clade within the dromaeosaur family called microraptors. Microraptors tended to be small; the most well-known species is about the size of a crow. “Jian is one of the biggest microraptor specimens that has ever been found,” says O’Connor. “The piece of its upper arm bone that we have is about 4 inches long, so the entire dinosaur probably had something like a four-foot wingspan, around the size of a barn owl.”

And while scientists only have Jian’s arm, they suspect that Jian, like its fellow microraptors, had long feathers on both its arms and its legs, giving it the appearance of having four “wings” that it used to glide. “Jian and the other microraptors probably weren’t capable of true, powered flight, but they could probably glide like a flying squirrel,” says O’Connor.

The new dinosaur’s name, Jian changmaensis, is a reference to its bird-like appearance and its place of origin. Jian is a winged creature in Chinese mythology, and the fossil was found in the Changma Basin in China’s Gansu province.

“Jian changmaensis reveals that non-avian dinosaurs lived in what is now the Changma Basin, an area famous for its fossil birds,” says Matt Lamanna, corresponding author of the study and  Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s Mary R. Dawson Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology and senior dinosaur researcher. “Our team has recovered more than a hundred bird fossils at Changma, but only this single non-avian dinosaur specimen. Jian provides critical new insight into the biological history of the Changma region and the ecological context of the ancestors of today’s birds.”

“You cannot understand life on the planet today without looking at its origins,” says O’Connor. “Birds are arguably the most successful group of land-dwelling vertebrate animals on Earth today. Learning about early birds and their close non-bird dinosaur relatives gives us a better understanding of what made the group of birds that survived so special.”

This study was contributed to by Ling-Qi Zhou (Gansu Geological Museum), Matthew Lamanna (Carnegie Museum of Natural History), Ashley Poust (University of Nebraska State Museum and University of California Museum of Paleontology), Da-Qing Li (Gansu Agricultural University), Hai-Lu You (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences), and Jingmai O’Connor (Field Museum).

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Figure 2 from Zhou et al paper, showing the arm bones of the new dinosaur Jian.

Credit

Zhou et al

Journal

Annals of Carnegie Museum

Article Title

FIRST NON-AVIAN THEROPOD (DROMAEOSAURIDAE, MICRORAPTORINAE) FROM THE BIRD-BEARING LOWER CRETACEOUS XIAGOU FORMATION OF THE CHANGMA BASIN, GANSU PROVINCE, NORTHWESTERN CHINA

Article Publication Date

4-Jun-2026

 

Rare wild goats in Northumberland, UK found to be genetically unique

Newcastle University

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Cheviot goats

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Credit: Sampurna Roychoudhury

New research shows Cheviot goats are one of the UK’s most genetically distinct goat populations.

Led by Newcastle University, this is the first genetic study to determine the ancestry and genetic health of a UK feral goat population. It provides a genetic assessment of the Cheviot goats in Northumberland’s College Valley, identifying them as a historically significant and genetically distinct population unlike of the other European goat breeds.

The Cheviot goat population centres on a group in the Cheviot Hills in Northumberland. They are believed to be descended from the original goats introduced by the first farmers of the Neolithic period.

Published in the Journal of Heredity, the results show that the Cheviot goats are a genetically distinct breed, compared to other European goat breeds. A comparison with a global dataset of goat breeds, reveals that the Cheviot goats are most closely related to Irish goat breeds.

The genetic analysis shows that, contrary to expectations, the Cheviot population is an isolated remnant of the British Primitive Goat breed, which has not crossbred with other goats at all. The scientists also found that the population has low genetic diversity and is highly inbred, because of its small population size due to past culling practices.

The findings highlight the potential importance of native and feral livestock breeds as animal genetic resources for future agriculture, particularly in improving disease resistance, strengthening genetic diversity and supporting adaptation to climate change.

Study lead author, Dale Decena, a Master’s student at Newcastle University’s School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, said: “Feral goats across the UK including the Cheviot goats are an often overlooked and unique aspect of UK biodiversity. They continue to represent an important link to the historical and cultural heritage of many local communities – yet we know little about them. Locally adapted breeds in small, isolated populations like the Cheviot goats are particularly prone to genomic erosion (the loss of genetic diversity) and so future work should consider incorporating genetic information to enable effective decision-making in future breed conservation strategies.”

Dr Richard Bevan, another of the study authors, added: “The origins of the Cheviot goats have been debated for many years, and it is so good to finally set the record straight. We now need to investigate the genetic makeup of other feral goat populations in the UK, and perhaps discover new mysteries.”

The authors indicate that the Cheviot goats’ resilience offers valuable and rare opportunity to investigate genetic signatures of natural selection. They call for further studies of other feral goat populations across the UK to guide conservation and long-term population management strategies.

Reference

Lorenz Dale Decena, Richard M Bevan, Jodie Brown, Vlatka Cubric-Curik, Aileen C Mill, Evelyn L Jensen, Old goats, new insights: Origins and genetic diversity of feral Cheviot goats, Journal of Heredity, 2026;, esag044, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhered/esag044

A Cheviot goat

Credit

Sampurna Roychoudhury

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Journal

Journal of Heredity

DOI

10.1093/jhered/esag044 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Article Title

Old goats, new insights: Origins and genetic diversity of feral Cheviot goats