Volunteer citizen scientists in Great Smoky Mountains National Park are documenting the park's species, from lichens and mosses to fungi and salamanders, as part of a long-running all taxa biodiversity inventory. The group, known as GRISLD, hikes remote spruce-fir forest and logs what they find on iNaturalist, often with help from lichenologists and mycologists. The park's inventory has documented more than 22,000 species, and more than 1,000 of those recorded since 1998 are new to science. Researchers believe that is only a third to a quarter of the park's real diversity. Climate change is altering the park through invasive insects such as the woolly adelgid, which has killed thousands of hemlocks, along with more intense floods and fires. The high-elevation ecosystems behave like sky islands, so species there may have nowhere cooler to move as temperatures rise. Volunteers provide year-round coverage that federal budget cuts have made harder to sustain.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.