Like lobster rolls, wild blueberries are iconic in Maine. But heat and drought have set the plants back to a point where many small farmers are struggling against reduced yields and increased costs for mulch and irrigation.

By Sydney Cromwell

Last summer, the wild blueberry fields at Crystal Spring Farm turned red too soon.

Wild Blueberry Farms Across Maine Suffer as Climate Change Upends Growing Seasons

Tribes navigating the U.S. lithium boom have little power to influence decisions on homelands seized from them. Governments in other countries have begun to build systems that offer stronger legal protections.

By Johanna Hansel, Carla Samon Ros, Wyatt Myskow

In the U.S., many Native American tribes maintain deep cultural and historical ties to ancestral lands outside of reservation boundaries. A 19th-century mining law still governs much of today’s lithium boom—and it doesn’t require the federal government to consult tribes before mining projects advance on these ancestral lands.

What the US Could Learn About Mining on Indigenous Peoples’ Ancestral Lands

More than 100 projects to mine for the metal powering the green-energy transition have been proposed in the U.S. alone.

By Johanna Hansel, Carla Samon Ros, Wyatt Myskow

There’s a global rush for new sources of lithium to power the green-energy transition, including a major push for mining the critical metal in the U.S. Columbia Journalism Investigations and Inside Climate News teamed up to track this development trend. Here’s how we collected and analyzed data on new lithium projects—and examined which communities may be most affected by them.

How We Tracked the Lithium Rush