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1. Critical Minerals

   https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-040523-023316  

   Reich, Martin; Simon, Adam C (May 2025, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences)

   Critical minerals are essential for sustaining the supply chain necessary for the transition to a carbon-free energy source for society. Copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements are particularly in demand for batteries and high-performance magnets used in low-carbon technologies. Copper, predominantly sourced from porphyry deposits, is critical for electricity generation, storage, and distribution. Nickel, which comes from laterite and magmatic sulfide deposits, and cobalt, often a by-product of nickel or copper mining, are core components of batteries that power electric vehicles. Lithium, sourced from pegmatite deposits and continental brines, is another key battery component. Rare earth elements, primarily obtained from carbonatite- and regolith-hosted ion-adsorption deposits, have unique magnetic properties that are key for motor efficiency. Future demand for these elements is expected to increase significantly over the next decades, potentially outpacing expected mine production. Therefore, to ensure a successful energy transition, efforts must prioritize addressing substantial challenges in the supply of critical minerals, particularly the delays in exploring and mining new resources to meet growing demands.▪The energy transition relies on green technologies needing a secure, sustainable supply of critical minerals sourced from ore deposits worldwide.▪Copper, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and rare earth elements are geologically restricted in occurrence, posing challenges for extraction and availability.▪Future demand is expected to surge in the next decades, requiring unprecedented production rates to make the green energy transition viable. 

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2. Animating the critical zone: beavers as critical zone engineers

   https://doi.org/10.3389/frwa.2025.1547094  

   Adamchak, Clifford; Lininger, Katherine B; Hinckley, Eve-Lyn S (February 2025, Frontiers in Water)

   Beavers (Castor canadensis) have not been adequately included in critical zone research, yet they can affect multiple critical zone processes across the terrestrial-aquatic interface of river corridors. River corridors (RC) provide a disproportionate amount of ecosystem services. Over time, beaver activity, including submersion of woody vegetation, burrowing, dam building, and abandonment, can impact critical zone processes in the river corridor by influencing landscape evolution, biodiversity, geomorphology, hydrology, primary productivity, and biogeochemical cycling. In particular, they can effectively restore degraded riparian areas and improve water quality and quantity, causing implications for many important ecosystem services. Beaver-mediated river corridor processes in the context of a changing climate require investigation to determine how both river corridor function and critical zone processes will shift in the future. Recent calls to advance river corridor research by leveraging a critical zone perspective can be strengthened through the explicit incorporation of animals, such as beavers, into research projects over space and time. This article illustrates how beavers modify the critical zone across different spatiotemporal scales, presents research opportunities to elucidate the role of beavers in influencing Western U.S. ecosystems, and, more broadly, demonstrates the importance of integrating animals into critical zone science. 

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3. Growing new generations of critical zone scientists: MULTIGENERATIONAL CRITICAL ZONE SCIENCE

   https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.4196  

   Wymore, Adam S.; West, Nicole R.; Maher, Kate; Sullivan, Pamela L.; Harpold, Adrian; Karwan, Diana; Marshall, Jill A.; Perdrial, Julia; Rempe, Daniella M.; Ma, Lin (November 2017, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms)
4. Critical Review—Electrochemical Properties of 13 Vitamins: A Critical Review and Assessment

   https://doi.org/10.1149/2.1471714jes  

   Lovander, Matthew D.; Lyon, Jacob D.; Parr, Daniel L.; Wang, Junnan; Parke, Brenna; Leddy, Johna (January 2018, Journal of The Electrochemical Society)
5. Totally Nonnegative Critical Varieties

   https://doi.org/10.1093/imrn/rnad084  

   Galashin, Pavel (April 2023, International Mathematics Research Notices)

   Abstract We study totally nonnegative parts of critical varieties in the Grassmannian. We show that each totally nonnegative critical variety $$\operatorname{Crit}^{\geqslant 0}_f$$ is the image of an affine poset cyclohedron under a continuous map and use this map to define a boundary stratification of $$\operatorname{Crit}^{\geqslant 0}_f$$. For the case of the top-dimensional positroid cell, we show that the totally nonnegative critical variety $$\operatorname{Crit}^{\geqslant 0}_{k,n}$$ is homeomorphic to the second hypersimplex $$\Delta _{2,n}$$. 

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