PARIS, June 6 — The 2026 Fifa World Cup will inject billions of dollars into host economies, driven by a massive consumption surge that will benefit sectors as varied as tourism to retail and athletic wear, according to analysts.The iconic tournament, scheduled for June 11 to July 19 and set to be the largest soccer event ever, could power consumer spending at a time when broader demand remains fragile.The first three-nation World Cup (WC) — spanning the United
PARIS, June 6 — The 2026 Fifa World Cup will inject billions of dollars into host economies, driven by a massive consumption surge that will benefit sectors as varied as tourism to retail and athletic wear, according to analysts.
The iconic tournament, scheduled for June 11 to July 19 and set to be the largest soccer event ever, could power consumer spending at a time when broader demand remains fragile.
The first three-nation World Cup (WC) — spanning the United States, Canada and Mexico — is expected to boost global GDP by roughly US$41 billion, according to Fifa’s socioeconomic impact analysis, conducted with the World Trade Organization(WTO).
Here is a look at stocks and sectors that brokerages expect to benefit from the once-in-four-years event:
Hotel operators
B. Riley estimates a total of 13.1 million visitors to the World Cup, including ticketed and non-ticketed attendees, generating 21.3 million room nights booked in hotels across online travel platforms.
Analysts said US hotel operators Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt as well as online travel platforms Airbnb, Booking Holdings and Expedia are poised to benefit from the event.
Marriott sees the World Cup-driven momentum to continue in the third quarter. Airbnb expects hosts in the New York-New Jersey area, Boston and Los Angeles to earn the most during the tournament.
Airlines
Goldman Sachs believes the WC could be a ‘net positive’ for US airlines.
“June is typically a seasonally lower inbound leisure and corporate travel period, with a meaningful amount of peak July/August outbound travel season occurring after the WC is over,” Goldman said.
A sharp rise in jet fuel prices due to the war with Iran, however, has forced US airline operators to hike fares that are pushing budget-conscious Americans to delay or cancel summer trips.
Beer stocks
More than 1 billion pints of beer will likely be consumed globally during the season, giving a 0.3 per cent lift to the industry in terms of volumes, according to Jefferies. Improvements are expected in markets such as US, Mexico, Brazil and China.
“After five successive years of volatility, beer should be better in 2026,” Jefferies analysts said.
The tournament also sits at a favourable intersection of timing and geography. Roughly 75 per cent of matches will be played in the US while 84 per cent of the matches involving participating countries are in the beer-drinking-friendly time zones, the analysts added.
Bernstein, Goldman and Jefferies expect Corona beer-maker Anheuser-Busch InBev, the official beer sponsor for the WC, to be the key beneficiary. Heineken, the world’s second-largest brewer, is also expected to get a boost, helped by its exposure to Latin America and Europe.
US retail and sportswear
Goldman estimates a surge in merchandise demand from fans to push up sales at Dick’s Sporting Goods and Academy Sports.
Sportswear brands such as Adidas, Puma and Nike can benefit through increased brand visibility and marketing exposure during the World Cup, analysts said.
Goldman noted that Adidas, the official sponsor of the match ball, has kit sponsorship deals with several teams, positioning it to benefit from a global exposure during the event.
Food, restaurants and delivery
Citi said traditional grocers such as Albertsons and Kroger, along with bigger retailers including Walmart and Target, are likely to benefit from higher household spending during the WC.
Restaurant demand is also expected to rise, supported by tourism and group-viewings. This could lift McDonald’s, Domino’s Pizza, Wingstop and Chipotle, along with food distributors such as Performance Food Group, US Foods and Sysco.
Media and digital platforms
“We expect the 2026 men’s World Cup to generate the highest US advertising revenue in the event’s history,” Deutsche Bank analysts said.
Morgan Stanley said the tournament could generate about US$300-$400 million in advertising revenue for Fox, which holds the English-language broadcast rights. Deutsche Bank pointed to Comcast-owned Telemundo, which has the Spanish-language rights, as another beneficiary.
Internet companies such as Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta Platforms’ Instagram could get a lift from increased user activity, Citi said.
Betting operators
Deutsche Bank expects online sports-betting firms Flutter Entertainment and DraftKings to relatively outperform, as World Cup-driven betting is likely to boost overall wagering volumes.
Macquarie forecast global wagers exceeding US$50 billion — nearly $0.5 billion per match — for the tournament, compared to over US$35 billion for the previous edition in 2022. — Reuters
Since the beginning of the 20th century, global sea level has risen by about 20 centimeters (roughly 8 inches) [Fox-Kemper et al., 2021]. As a result, coastal and island communities around the world are experiencing more frequent high-tide flooding, worsening storm surges, and increasing damage to homes and infrastructure. In the United States, for example, human-caused sea level rise alone increased damages from 2012’s Hurricane Sandy by about $8 billion [Strauss et al., 2021].
The United S
Since the beginning of the 20th century, global sea level has risen by about 20 centimeters (roughly 8 inches) [Fox-Kemper et al., 2021]. As a result, coastal and island communities around the world are experiencing more frequent high-tide flooding, worsening storm surges, and increasing damage to homes and infrastructure. In the United States, for example, human-caused sea level rise alone increased damages from 2012’s Hurricane Sandy by about $8 billion [Strauss et al., 2021].
The United States has long been a key member of the global climate research community. However, that role is now threatened.
Scientific understanding of the magnitudes and rates of sea level rise, of how they vary around the planet, and of why the ocean is rising is based on a body of rigorous research that, for decades, has tracked past and present sea levels and projected future rise.
The United States has long been a key member of the global climate research community, including in producing the wealth of sea level research that has informed countries, states, and communities of what lies ahead for their shorelines. However, that role is now threatened by the Trump administration’s attacks on the country’s scientific research enterprise broadly and on climate research especially.
Analysis of the evolution of sea level rise projection science [Garner et al., 2018] underscores both the country’s prominent past role in the field and how the ongoing attacks may undermine progress in our understanding of sea level change. It also points to the urgency of acting across multiple fronts to preserve scientific knowledge and prevent further harm to the capacity to measure and project how much and how fast rising seas will affect global coastlines.
Four Decades of Advancing Sea Level Science
By the late 1970s, scientists around the world had begun to recognize the growing threat that climate change posed to the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and the danger their melting presented to coastal regions [Mercer, 1978]. The first global mean sea level (GMSL) projections were published in 1982 [Gornitz et al., 1982], and the first planning-oriented sea level scenarios were published just a few years later [e.g., National Research Council, 1987].
Since 1982, 103 studies have produced GMSL projections [Garner et al., 2018]. About one third of the studies (33 in total), including the first five, were published by teams led by scientists at U.S. institutions (Figure 1). Thirty-three studies (some, but not all, of which were also led by U.S.-based scientists) have also benefited from U.S. federal funding, sometimes from multiple agencies (Figure 2), including the National Science Foundation (NSF; 16 studies), NASA (10 studies), NOAA (8 studies), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE; 6 studies), the U.S. Department of Defense (3 studies), the U.S. Geological Survey (2 studies), and the EPA (2 studies).
Fig. 1. This time series shows the total number of sea level rise projection studies published each year from 1982 to 2025 (gray bars) and the number of studies each year that were led by scientists based at U.S. institutions (purple bars). The text at top left tabulates the total number of studies led by authors in each country or region listed.Fig. 2. The total number of sea level rise projection studies published each year from 1982 to 2025 is shown again here (gray bars), this time beside the number of studies each year that were supported by funding from various U.S. federal science agencies (stacked colored bars). Note that some studies were supported by more than one U.S. federal agency.
U.S. scientists have further played critical roles in developing GMSL projections for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments. For example, chapters producing sea level projections for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report [Church et al., 2013], the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate [Oppenheimer et al., 2019], and the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) [Fox-Kemper et al., 2021] were all coled by U.S.-based scientists.
Meanwhile, U.S. funding has been essential to the IPCC, constituting more than 25% of the nearly $207 million invested globally in the organization from 1989 to 2024 [IPCC, 2025]. NASA also played a key role in making IPCC AR6 sea level projections more accessible and usable through the NASA/IPCC Sea Level Projection Tool [Kopp et al., 2023; Fox-Kemper et al., 2021; Garner et al., 2021], which supports local assessments of sea level change around the world and has about 400,000 users annually.
U.S. institutions have been vital in developing, hosting, and maintaining critical sea level datasets.
Beyond direct contributions of U.S. scientists and federal funding to the global scientific community’s sea level projection research, U.S. institutions have been vital in developing, hosting, and maintaining critical sea level datasets. For example, the University of Hawai‘i Sea Level Center is a crucial part of the Global Sea Level Observing System, operating a network of more than 90 tide gauge stations and supporting global real-time oceanographic operations and long-term climate studies. NASA satellite missions, including TOPEX/Poseidon and the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE and GRACE-FO), have been instrumental in helping to measure changes in GMSL and ice sheets, providing new ways to assess the accuracy of global sea level projections [Törnqvist et al., 2025]. And the Sea Level Research Group at the University of Colorado has consistently processed such datasets, providing critical data access for the broader research community.
Efforts to apply climate science in U.S. policy have been hindered not only by political polarization and proposed funding cuts but also by deliberate suppression of data and research.
Efforts to apply climate science in U.S. policy have been hindered not only by political polarization and proposed funding cuts but also by deliberate suppression of data and research. Broadly, the current U.S. administration has removed more than 2,000 datasets from federal platforms, and more specifically, it has systematically scrubbed climate-related content from agency websites. Such erasures disrupt public access to critical information and undermine scientific transparency.
Furthermore, the DOE published a report that without conducting any statistical analysis, denied the scientific evidence for sea level acceleration. It similarly claimed, without any analysis of the numerous sea level projection studies documented here, that sea level is “rising at a lower rate than predicted.” The EPA went further, falsely claiming that “aggregate sea level rise has been minimal.” In fact, the most recent IPCC sea level projections are in good agreement with observations [Törnqvist et al., 2025; Dessler and Kopp, 2025].
The U.S. scientific community now stands at a precipice. Efforts to dismantle federal scientific agencies and diminish research are eroding the United States’ foundational contributions to our knowledge of global change and sea level rise.
The Path to Preserving Critical Science
As we plummet toward a loss of data, expertise, and innovation, we face a future that would not only further damage the United States’ reputation for scientific excellence and transparency but also cripple the global sea level research community at a time when the risks from sea level rise are rapidly increasing [Fox-Kemper et al., 2021].
While some U.S.-based sea level scientists could move to countries more committed to climate science, there are not enough positions in the world nor enough mobility for the vast majority to relocate. Grassroots archiving efforts have helped preserve some critical datasets, but this is a temporary and often insufficient stopgap. An urgent need remains for resilient and transparent scientific infrastructure, so that U.S. taxpayer–funded research findings and datasets are, and remain, publicly accessible.
Historically, federally funded scientific initiatives have enjoyed strong support across the political spectrum in the United States.
Historically, federally funded scientific initiatives have enjoyed strong support across the political spectrum in the United States. However, the unprecedented hostility facing science in the country today has revealed that new institutional safeguards and legal protections to prevent political interference are critically needed.
Expanding collaborations between U.S. universities and private foundations and donors provides one potential route to providing some protection and improving long-term stability for sea level science data and initiatives. Climate Central’s Surging Seas project offers one model to emulate. However, philanthropic efforts are far from sufficient to preserve the U.S. scientific enterprise.
Another avenue to protect federally funded science from political pressure is through bipartisan legislation. Bills such as the Scientific Integrity Act (which aims to ensure that scientific findings are not influenced or altered by political pressure) and the Protect America’s Workforce Act (which aims to restore collective bargaining rights for unionized federal employees) represent such opportunities.
Yet the effectiveness of such legislative efforts hinges on the critical caveat that the people holding authority in government recognize and abide by enacted legislation. Under an executive who does not abide by the rule of law, such legislative efforts, even if they are passed successfully, will offer little actual protection. The path to preserving U.S. climate and sea level science, therefore, cannot be separated from the path to restoring the rule of law within the U.S. government.
Progressing on this front requires the scientific community to advocate for its priorities more vocally and to build coalitions that include both academics and the stakeholders who benefit from scientific climate projections. It also requires making use of tools and levers that many scientists are unaccustomed to, such as the court system. AGU and other institutions have modeled this approach over the past year, joining legal efforts to protect federal workers, for example, and speaking up against the dismantling of valued science agencies.
Restoring the rule of law also requires electoral organizing to reestablish Congress as an independent and coequal branch of government that wields, rather than abdicates, lawful oversight of administration officials and federal agencies.
Scientific understanding of sea level processes and projections of future changes inform local, national, and international decisionmaking and provide a pathway to resilience against the risks of rising coastal waters. Safeguarding the long-standing leadership, integrity, and continuity of U.S. climate and sea level science is both a national and global imperative—one that many scientists are already stepping up to support. Now we need the rest of the scientific community—and its allies in academia, philanthropy, industry, and the public—to join in.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Amy Appollina and Jessica Slotter for their assistance in curating a database of global sea level rise projections.
References
Church, J. A., et al. (2013), Sea level change, in Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by T. F. Stocker et al., pp. 1,137–1,216, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, U.K., https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.026.
Fox-Kemper, B., et al. (2021), Ocean, cryosphere and sea level change, in Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by V. Masson-Delmotte et al., pp. 1,211–1,362, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, U.K., https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157896.011.
Garner, A. J., et al. (2018), Evolution of 21st century sea level rise projections, Earth’s Future, 6, 1,603–1,615, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000991.
Garner, G. G., et al. (2021), IPCC AR6 Sea Level Projection Tool, NASA Sea Level Change Portal, sealevel.nasa.gov/data_tools/17.
Kopp, R. E., et al. (2023), The Framework for Assessing Changes To Sea-level (FACTS) v1.0: A platform for characterizing parametric and structural uncertainty in future global, relative, and extreme sea-level change, Geosci. Model Dev., 16, 7,461–7,489, https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-16-7461-2023.
Mercer, J. (1978), West Antarctic ice sheet and CO2 greenhouse effect: A threat of disaster, Nature, 271, 321–325, https://doi.org/10.1038/271321a0.
National Research Council (1987), Responding to Changes in Sea Level: Engineering Implications, Natl. Acad. Press, Washington, D.C.
Oppenheimer, M., et al. (2019), Sea level rise and implications for low-lying islands, coasts and communities, in IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, edited by H.-O. Pörtner et al., pp. 321–445, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, U.K., https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009157964.006.
Strauss, B. H., et al. (2021), Economic damages from Hurricane Sandy attributable to sea level rise caused by anthropogenic climate change, Nat. Commun., 12, 2720, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22838-1.
Törnqvist, T. E., et al. (2025), Evaluating IPCC projections of global sea-level change from the pre-satellite era, Earth’s Future, 13, e2025EF006533, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF006533.
Author Information
Andra J. Garner (garnera@rowan.edu), Department of Environmental Science, Rowan University, Glassboro, N.J.; Robert E. Kopp, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.; Gregory G. Garner, Glassboro, N.J.; Aimée B. A. Slangen, Department of Estuarine and Delta Systems, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Yerseke; and Benjamin P. Horton, School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong
Citation: Garner, A. J., R. E. Kopp, G. G. Garner, A. B. A. Slangen, and B. P. Horton (2026), The global impact of losing U.S. sea level science, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260156. Published on 15 May 2026.
This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s).
On 31 March 2026, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the closure of 57 of its 77 U.S. Forest Service research facilities. The scientific community’s response was warranted: Save the science, restore the funding, protect the researchers.
All of that is correct. But it misses a structural problem inherent in agency governance, one that will recur at every reorganization until the Earth science community builds an instrument to prevent it.
In massive reorganizations like the ones f
All of that is correct. But it misses a structural problem inherent in agency governance, one that will recur at every reorganization until the Earth science community builds an instrument to prevent it.
In massive reorganizations like the ones federal agencies are currently experiencing, the threat to long-term research facilities is not primarily a lack of funding. The true threat is an oversight of administrative architecture. There appears to be no general federal requirement to have a successor stewardship plan in place before reducing the output or outreach of a long-term research facility—or closing it entirely.
The Physical Archive Is Not a Digital File
Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire was among the sites under review during the Forest Service restructuring but has since received a public reprieve. The future of Bartlett Experimental Forest, also in New Hampshire, remains unresolved. The governance problem, however, extends beyond either site.
Hubbard Brook’s physical archive holds more than 60,000 barcoded and cataloged samples: water, soils, plant material, and physical cores spanning 7 decades of continuous collection and stored under active environmental controls in a dedicated building on site.
These samples cannot be digitized. They cannot be migrated to a remote server, backed up to cloud storage, or emailed to a university partner. The samples require a functioning building, active temperature management, and a named human steward responsible for their integrity.
The physical archive at Hubbard Brook holds more than 60,000 barcoded and cataloged samples stretching back to the founding of the facility in 1955. Credit: Anthony Veltri
The archive includes core samples of trees dating to long before the experimental forest was established, and the archive maintains each as a managed scientific record with continuity of custody. Credit: Anthony Veltri
Core samples like these document the watershed at Hubbard Brook and anchor long-term understanding of system processes. Credit: Anthony Veltri
The archive at Hubbard Brook is impressive, but a governed record is defined by continuity, provenance, and stewardship, not by the number of observations it contains: Data volume is not data value. A 70-year unbroken record of watershed chemistry, maintained by named stewards who documented what they were measuring and why, is a governed product. Without that stewardship and physical anchor, volume can become noise.
The failure to maintain archives like this is likely not malicious; it is an example of administrative indifference or perhaps a lack of awareness or understanding. Environmental controls, for example, get zeroed out of a budget line item, and nobody notices until the temperature in the facility drifts. By then, the sample record has degraded in ways that cannot be reversed.
This Is Not a Hubbard Brook Problem
Many physical archives, calibration sites, and long-duration sampling programs operate without a formal requirement for stewardship continuity.
Hubbard Brook is the most visible instance of a pattern—the lack of a successor stewardship plan—that runs across the entire 84-site federal Experimental Forests, Ranges, and Watersheds network. The March order that identified Bartlett Experimental Forest and 56 other research facilities across 31 states for closure was executed without a mandatory requirement to identify successor stewards for what gets left behind.
Nor is the pattern unique to experimental forests. The Long Term Ecological Research network spans 28 core sites. AmeriFlux includes more than 500 monitoring locations across North America.
Throughout all these systems, many physical archives, calibration sites, and long-duration sampling programs operate without a formal requirement for stewardship continuity under agency reorganization.
What We Stand to Lose
Long-term physical archives provide scientists and other stakeholders the ability to ask future questions of past reality. Nobody collecting water samples at Hubbard Brook in 1963 was thinking about PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), for instance, but the baseline its site samples provide is why we can track the chemicals today. The same continuous record was central to the regulatory science behind the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990.
Archival value compounds silently and becomes visible only when someone needs it.
Archival value compounds silently for decades and becomes visible only when someone needs it.
When these archives fail, the loss is not historical. It is operational. Regulatory agencies rely on long-baseline records to determine whether interventions are working. Without a continuous physical reference, observed changes cannot be distinguished from measurement drift, instrumentation bias, or natural variability. The results are policy decisions made without a defensible scientific baseline.
Federal investment in continuous collection at a site like Hubbard Brook runs to tens of millions of dollars over decades. That investment is not recoverable once continuity is broken.
Unlike a paused research grant, a degraded physical archive cannot be restarted. You can photograph a sample, but you cannot rerun its chemistry 40 years from now if the physical sample has degraded.
In 2017, a double mechanical failure at the University of Alberta destroyed 12.8% of the Canadian Ice Core Archive over a single weekend, permanently erasing records dating back 12,000 years. That incident was accidental. A mechanical malfunction is a failure of equipment. Administrative disposal without a named successor steward is a failure of governance. One arrives without warning. The other can be prevented.
The Community Already Knows How to Do This
The Earth observation community has already built the governance model we need. We are not yet applying it to long-term ecological research infrastructure.
GRUAN, the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) Reference Upper-Air Network, operates under the World Meteorological Organization and GCOS, with explicit named stewardship obligations. Upper-air observations—measurements of temperature, humidity, and wind through the atmosphere—are foundational inputs to weather forecasting and climate monitoring. Each GRUAN station has a designated principal investigator with a documented succession obligation.
ICOS, the Integrated Carbon Observation System operating across Europe, applies the same logic to terrestrial ecosystem observations through formal site-level stewardship agreements and named succession requirements.
In the United States, the National Ecological Observatory Network is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and operated by Battelle, a science and technology nonprofit, under a contract that includes explicit data continuity obligations.
These systems did not emerge by accident. They were explicitly designed to solve a known failure mode: Distributed observational networks cannot maintain their own calibration integrity without a separately governed reference layer. That design decision is documented, enforced, and funded. The absence of an equivalent requirement in long-term ecological research infrastructure is not a technical limitation. It is a governance omission.
The pattern is consistent across every network that has solved this problem: Named continuity obligations must be written into the governance structure before the need becomes acute.
The Governance Instrument
The best outcome is the continued, uninterrupted operation of facilities like Hubbard Brook.
Any federal agency action that would reduce operational support for a long-term research facility should require a formal continuity plan before the action takes effect.
If reductions move forward, however, the proposed fix is specific and not novel: Any federal agency action that would reduce or eliminate operational support for a long-term research facility should require a formal continuity plan before the action takes effect. That plan must name a successor steward for each active long-term dataset and for each physical archive under active environmental control.
In practice this means specificity: the name and institutional affiliation of the successor, a funded maintenance budget sufficient to sustain environmental controls and sample integrity, documented protocols for custody transfer, and a timeline for uninterrupted handoff. The plan must demonstrate that the successor steward has the operational capacity and funded mandate to preserve the archive’s physical integrity and continuity.
This instrument prepares plant samples collected at Hubbard Brook using standardized methods. Consistent preparation is what makes results comparable across time and labs and why continued stewardship is so important. Credit: Anthony Veltri
The default should be continued stewardship by the responsible federal entity. If a change in custody is legally permitted and genuinely unavoidable, any successor steward, whether another federal unit, a university partner, a consortium, or another entity, must have a funded mandate, demonstrated technical capacity, enforceable continuity obligations, and the ability to maintain the archive without interruption.
Protocol demands that if the agency cannot name a viable successor steward, the agency cannot execute the closure. This requirement does not prohibit closure; it prohibits closure without continuity of custody.
The instrument requiring a research facility to have a formal continuity plan should be applied not on a site-by-site basis, but uniformly across networks. A limitation narrowly written to protect a named facility invites the agency to execute the same administrative disposal at adjacent sites while technically complying with the specific requirement. The governance is structurally sound only if it applies across the network.
How This Actually Happens
The pathways that would make such an instrument possible already exist.
Agencies can impose continuity requirements through policy directives, appropriations language, or funding conditions. The federal Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of Management and Budget have coordinated interagency data management guidance before, and a directive requiring named successor stewardship before any facility reduction does not require legislation. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) has already secured fiscal year 2026 language directing the Forest Service to prioritize staffing at long-standing experimental forests; attaching successor stewardship language is the logical next step. NSF, the Department of Energy, and NOAA could require stewardship continuity guarantees from partner agencies as a condition of incorporating facility data into federally funded continental-scale products.
Scientists recognize that agencies reorganize and funding for facilities can be downgraded. That is why preserving a continued record of any long-term research facility must be part of the facility’s governance structure from the outset. Credit: Anthony Veltri
What is missing is the requirement itself—and the strategic initiative to establish it. The Earth science community has the standing, the documented models, and the mechanisms to close those gaps.
This is not an argument against reorganization. Agencies reorganize. Budgets shift. Research priorities evolve.
The argument is that reorganization cannot be permitted to destroy multigenerational scientific infrastructure through administrative indifference when a specific, enforceable governance requirement can prevent it. The Earth observation community built GRUAN because it recognized that no federation of climate datasets can be a substitute for a governed anchor point. Long-term ecological research infrastructure needs the same recognition applied to the administrative layer that governs its continuity.
The scientific enterprise already knows how to do this. The governance has not caught up yet.
Author Information
Anthony Veltri (anthony@anthonyveltri.com) is an independent practitioner and former physical scientist and senior policy analyst with the USDA Forest Service Washington Office, where he worked on enterprise architecture and governance in federal programs, including those supporting scientific research.
Citation: Veltri, A. (2026), The governance gap threatening long-term ecological archives, Eos, 107, https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EO260172. Published on 27 May 2026.
This article does not represent the opinion of AGU, Eos, or any of its affiliates. It is solely the opinion of the author(s).
Despite its name, the Canadian Tuxedo is a distinctly American look. The denim-on-denim getup dates back to the 1950s, when Bing Crosby sported a full Levi’s ensemble while in Vancouver, setting a sartorial trend that continues today.
The national mythology woven into this utilitarian material is also the focus of Brooklyn-based Nick Doyle, who layers denim atop denim into large wall sculptures. From a pair of aviators reflecting puffy clouds to a vast Rocky Mountain landscape framed by br
Despite its name, the Canadian Tuxedo is a distinctly American look. The denim-on-denim getup dates back to the 1950s, when Bing Crosby sported a full Levi’s ensemble while in Vancouver, setting a sartorial trend that continues today.
The national mythology woven into this utilitarian material is also the focus of Brooklyn-based Nick Doyle, who layers denim atop denim into large wall sculptures. From a pair of aviators reflecting puffy clouds to a vast Rocky Mountain landscape framed by brick, the works evoke a sort of nostalgic road trip west, as if chasing a big break, and ultimately, realizing the American dream.
“First Come the Dreamers” (2026), bleached and collaged denim on panel, 25 x 72 inches
For Doyle, denim is a poignant, loaded metaphor for much of American culture and history. The material has roots in chattel slavery, when people enslaved in the South were dyeing cotton with indigo. There’s also its association with the brusque masculinity of James Dean and cowboy ruggedness, itself an extension of the gold rush and Manifest Destiny. The fabric, in many ways, is a stand-in for the contradictions, hypocrisies, and unreachable desires so bound up in American life.
While researching the visual language of Americana in 2018, Doyle came upon a roll of denim discarded by a fashion designer moving out of his building. “At the time, I had no money, so I was making work out of material I found in the garbage or at my local hardware store,” he shares. “As I was pulling [the roll] out of the trash, I noticed a network of ideas connecting in my brain… I felt the material reflected the historical complexities I was seeing in my research, as well as being reflected in my own familial history.”
This encounter was one of those providential moments that set off an enduring fascination. In his solo exhibition Collective Hallucinations, on view at Perrotin, Doyle presents the latest of his denim sculptures, including stylized cacti, landscapes cordoned off by chainlink fences, and more mystical objects like tarot cards and a life-sized fortune teller’s shop.
“Innocent Industry” (2026), bleached and collaged denim on panel, 72 x 64 inches
The show contains myriad symbols of American exceptionalism and individualism, presented in the heritage fabric of the nation. Doyle shares:
Over the last few years, my conception of American mythology has only become more complex… I think in a lot of ways what we’re experiencing now is a breakdown of these mythologies. They are in direct conflict with the current political reality, yet they are summoned as if it is business as usual. The world’s image of America has changed, but our country’s nostalgia for itself is making us late to the party. There’s tragedy in vanity.
Collective Hallucinations presents these unrealized dreams and confrontations in varying shades of blue, rendering what appears to be individual moments as simply different washes of the same story.
In addition to his practice, Doyle will soon open the second iteration of a kink bar called Human Resources at Basel Social Club and is working toward a fall exhibition of paper collages and prints at Pace. If you’re in New York, Collective Hallucinations runs through May 30. Otherwise, find more on Instagram.
“Here We Go Round the Prickly Pear Bush” (2026), bleached and collaged denim on panel, 48 x 26 inches“The Clouds” (2026), bleached denim on panel, 24 x 18 inches“Plastic Eden” (2026), bleached and collaged denim on panel, 68 x 42 inches“Black Market Bodies” (2026), bleached and collaged denim on panel, 36 x 64 inches
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has been a bipartisan priority for decades, but the federal government has never fulfilled its funding promise and the law has not been updated to reflect the realities of a post-pandemic educational landscape, leaving states and local districts to absorb the costs and students with disabilities vulnerable and exposed.
The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) has been a bipartisan priority for decades, but the federal government has never fulfilled its funding promise and the law has not been updated to reflect the realities of a post-pandemic educational landscape, leaving states and local districts to absorb the costs and students with disabilities vulnerable and exposed.
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Please be aware... Photos are purely for entertainment. I am no expert. Titles are from recognition - what I was told - or a quick search. Polite comments or corrections are welcome.
Please be aware... Photos are purely for entertainment. I am no expert. Titles are from recognition - what I was told - or a quick search. Polite comments or corrections are welcome.
Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.
More U.S. scientists are running for state and federal office in the U.S. midterm elections than ever before, Nature reports. Scientist-candidates represent an array of parties, although most profiled in Nature identify as Democrats.
314 Action, an organization focused on getting Democrats with scientific backgro
Research & Developments is a blog for brief updates that provide context for the flurry of news regarding law and policy changes that impact science and scientists today.
More U.S. scientists are running for state and federal office in the U.S. midterm elections than ever before, Nature reports. Scientist-candidates represent an array of parties, although most profiled in Nature identify as Democrats.
314 Action, an organization focused on getting Democrats with scientific backgrounds elected to public office, offers financial support and training to candidates who apply for it. This year, the organization told Nature, they’ve received nearly three times as many applications as usual.
Sam Wang, a neuroscientist at Princeton and director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, is running to represent New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District.
“Usually, scientists stick with a specialized field,” Wang, a Democrat, wrote in an opinion for The Daily Princetonian. “However, I am deeply unhappy with how unequally power is divided in our society. So I have used my statistical abilities to level one part of democracy’s playing field: by repairing unfair elections.”
Why Now?
This year, Democratic candidates appear to be motivated by cuts to federal science programs, grants, and agencies, Nature reports, while Republican candidates like Jeff Wilson, who is running to represent the 13th district of Illinois, cite the pursuit of energy independence. Third-party scientist-candidates have also run, and scientists are entering local and municipal arenas, too.
Specifically, with the recent repeal of the Endangerment Finding, loosened restrictions on pollution, and plans to break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research, some candidates and their supporters think science needs a more prominent position in public policy.
The rise in scientist candidates may also be part of an ongoing trend. More than 200 STEM professionals ran for office in the 2024 election, as Eos reported in October 2024.
“There are a lot of people who believe that science can help us live better lives and that science really does need to be front and center when we’re making public policy,” Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist, science advocate, and former Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives told Eos at the time.
In March, thousands of people attended Stand Up for Science rallies across the country to protest the misuse of science in federal policy and extensive staffing and funding cuts to scientific agencies. Since President Trump took office in 2025, more than 10,000 PhD-level scientists have left the federal workforce, Science reported in January.
Pew research data shows that public trust in scientists has declined since the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has seen modest improvements since 2023. The latest poll, released in January, found that 77% of adults in the United States have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in scientists to act in the public’s best interest, compared to 73% in 2023. The percentage is consistently higher among Democrats than Republicans: 90% versus 65%, in 2026. In contrast, only 27% of respondents reported at least a fair amount of confidence in elected officials.
“The last thing I want [is] to become a politician,” wrote one Redditor in response to the Nature story. “But at this rate I may not have a choice if current politicians keep screwing it up.”
These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was received on Thursday by his American counterpart Donald Trump at the White House, in his first official visit to Washington since his return to power in 2023 and the second face-to-face meeting between the two leaders, following a brief 45-minute encounter on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur last October. The meeting, formalized as a working session rather than a state visit, seeks to consolidate the frag
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was received on Thursday by his American counterpart Donald Trump at the White House, in his first official visit to Washington since his return to power in 2023 and the second face-to-face meeting between the two leaders, following a brief 45-minute encounter on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur last October. The meeting, formalized as a working session rather than a state visit, seeks to consolidate the fragile bilateral truce reached after one of the most severe diplomatic crises in two centuries of relations between the two most populous democracies in the Americas.
Washington's shift to a hyper-transactional foreign policy framework has weakened its strategic architecture, making Taiwan a flexible variable in the U.S.-China rivalry and threatening to unravel decades of American deterrence in Asia.
Washington's shift to a hyper-transactional foreign policy framework has weakened its strategic architecture, making Taiwan a flexible variable in the U.S.-China rivalry and threatening to unravel decades of American deterrence in Asia.
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