The IRS has opened a new Office of Conservation Easements to centralise policy, enforcement and case-resolution strategy on syndicated easement disputes, and is simultaneously changing how it settles the hundreds of cases already crowding the Tax Court docket.

The IRS has created a dedicated Office of Conservation Easements to work through roughly 1,000 pending syndicated easement cases one by one, replacing an earlier blanket settlement offer that drew limited uptake.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Sep 21, 2026

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Weather Report

Michael Peterson and Geoffrey Stano measured where the longest lightning flashes on Earth actually touch down, and found that the largest put ground strikes along eighty percent of their length, often into places where that flash was the only lightning in an hour

The largest lightning flashes on Earth put ground strikes along eighty percent of their length, often under quiet cloud that has produced no other lightning for an hour — well after the thirty-minute rule says it is safe to go back outside.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Sep 22, 2026

Early Earth

Classic Moon-formation simulations typically produced a ring of debris that assembled over months or years after a Mars-sized world struck early Earth. But simulations published in September 2026 that included temperature-dependent rock strength found that, under certain conditions, a coherent Moon-sized satellite could emerge in roughly five hours.

A September 2026 impact study found that strength retained by hot, partly solid rock can redirect Theia’s rebound and capture a coherent satellite within hours.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Sep 13, 2026

Political Economy

The figure quoted as $7.4 trillion in annual fossil fuel subsidies is mostly not money changing hands. About $6.7 trillion of it is damage the IMF says goes uncharged, three-quarters of that from air pollution and climate, on a definition other agencies reject.

Explicit fossil fuel subsidies came to $725 billion in 2024. The figure usually quoted is ten times larger because the IMF counts uncharged environmental damage as a subsidy as well, a definition the OECD and the IEA reject. The damage is not what is in dispute. The total attached to it rests on a contested accounting choice, and the mortality estimates underneath it differ by more than a factor of two.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Sep 12, 2026

Climate Science

Tom Rivett-Carnac describes stubborn optimism as grit in the face of an unavoidable challenge, not cheerfulness, and the research supports the distinction: Maria Ojala found hope based on denial predicted less pro-environmental behaviour among Swedish teenagers, while constructive hope predicted more

The phrase has a stricter meaning than everyday optimism, and the stricter meaning is the one the evidence supports. In a later two-country study worry predicted climate-friendly behaviour better than hope did, and hope contributed mainly where worry was already present.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Sep 10, 2026

Terra Daily

Every year Australia slides seven centimeters toward the north-northeast, almost twice the pace of a growing fingernail and quicker than any other continent. Southeast Asia is already in the way, and some models fold the plate into a new supercontinent inside 300 million years.

A continent racing across the planet at twice the speed of growing fingernails is remaking the map—and threatening the region directly in its path.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team · Sep 10, 2026

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Terra Daily

Earth science, climate impacts, ecosystems, agriculture, forests, and the broad environmental changes shaping life on a changing planet.

Flora and Fauna

Sea lamprey control has quietly become an integrated pest-management system: lampricides, physical barriers, pheromone-baited traps and sterile-male releases, refined over decades of adaptive trials against a parasite that filter-feeds for years as larvae before turning on native fish.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Terra Daily

Grid operators in the Netherlands can now slow or stop North Sea wind turbines for 4 hours when mass bird migration is forecast; on May 13, 2023, turbines at Borssele and a wind farm near Egmond aan Zee were shut down for four hours in an international first.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Terra Daily

In 1963, Britain proposed closing 5,000 route miles of railway; by the late 2010s, about 1,200 miles of the National Cycle Network used old railway track beds, while more than 1,000 cast-iron Millennium Mileposts installed in 2000 marked routes across the network.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Terra Daily

The Zeckendorf brothers bought the Mayflower Hotel for around $400 million in 2004 and cleared its rent-controlled tenants one by one with buyouts starting at $650,000, until a single 350-square-foot apartment held out and ultimately cost them $17 million to empty.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

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Shake and Blow

Earthquakes, volcanoes, severe weather, fire, tectonics, disaster response, and the natural hazards reshaping communities and landscapes.

Disaster Management

Zaporizhzhia accident would impact neighbouring countries: Ukraine

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Weather Report

Year so far the hottest in US history

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Disaster Management

'Worse than war': trauma of Libya flood haunts survivors

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Weather Report

World sees record August heat for second year running

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

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Water World

Oceans, rivers, polar ice, water systems, marine life, and the environmental changes affecting the planet's blue and frozen regions.

Water World

Nearly 11,000 acres along the Mimbres River in southwestern New Mexico became a new Wildlife Management Area this month, carrying pre-1907 water rights and critical habitat for the yellow-billed cuckoo and Chiricahua leopard frog after Trust for Public Land closed the ranch with the state.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Iron and Ice

Jupiter is so massive that its shared centre of gravity with the Sun lies just outside the Sun’s surface — making it the only planet whose individual barycentre with the Sun falls beyond the Sun itself, and the largest contributor to the star’s planetary wobble.

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Water World

On Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, after two dams came down on the Elwha River, average Chinook returns rose from 2,827 fish a year to 4,734 — and the share taken for hatchery breeding fell from 53 per cent to 31 per cent as more Chinook were left to spawn in the restored channel

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

Iron and Ice

Saturn's moon Titan is the only place beyond Earth where a person could stand outside without a pressure suit — its atmosphere is 50 per cent thicker than ours and blocks even the galactic cosmic rays that would make Mars lethal over time

By Terra Daily Editorial Team

About Terra Daily

News about planet Earth.

Terra Daily is an independent publication covering planet Earth, natural hazards, water systems, ecosystems, climate impacts, and the science behind life on a changing planet. The site pairs a deep archive with current reporting on the research, communities, policy shifts, and environmental events shaping Earth's living and physical systems. We employ modern AI technologies to support our editorial workflows. Every published piece is reviewed and approved by a member of our team before it goes live.

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