Climate is arguably the most influential factor and it produces the most identifiable differences among wines. So how is climate change affecting wines globally? And how do other factors, such as the bedrock below the vineyard and the soil, produce subtle expressions in wine? Climatologist and viticulturalist Greg Jones discusses the complexity of nature's effects on wine and the latest scientific research in the January issue of EARTH Magazine.

A persistent stalemate over ownership and resource allocation, of everything from beluga caviar to energy resources, has hung over the Caspian Sea ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Looking to help advance the discussion over the Caspian toward as efficient and equitable an outcome as possible, scientists are taking a stab at the decades-old dispute by applying game theory and related methods, which use mathematics to study of competition and cooperation and have predominantly been used by economists and sociologists.