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Mustafah Abdulaziz has spent years documenting humanity’s relationship to a precious natural resource – water. His latest work focuses on the challenges facing California, a highly populated state and a major agricultural center. Water: California was the first prize winner in the Syngenta photography award professional commission category for 2014–15, and will be on display at the National Geographic Museum in Washington DC from 12 November to 30 January 2017

To celebrate the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust’s 70th anniversary, we asked you to share pictures of wetlands around the UK. From incoming flocks to frolicking otters, here are some of our favourites

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Changing autumn colours in the US, New Delhi’s architecture and Hurricane Matthew were among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last month

The snowy landscape of the Putoransky state nature reserve, a Unesco world heritage site in the central area of the Putorana Plateau in northern central Siberia. The site, about 100km north of the Arctic Circle, serves as a major reindeer migration route – an increasingly rare natural phenomenon – and is one of the very few centres of plant species richness in the Arctic. Virtually untouched by human influence, this isolated mountain range includes pristine forests and cold-water lake and river systems. The lakes are characterised by elongated, fjord-like shapes, such as lake Ayan in the upper-central part of the image. Zooming in on the lake we can see that it is mostly ice-covered, with small patches of water peeking through around its lower reaches. Another feature of this area are the flat-topped mountains, formed by a geological process called ‘plume volcanism’: a large body of magma seeped through Earth’s surface and formed a blanket of basalt kilometres thick. Over time, cracks in the rock filled with water and eroded into the rivers and lakes we see today.

Anyone who voted for Trump shares the responsibility for the climate damages resulting from his presidency

Many of us in the United States are in deep shock and despair. The election of Donald Trump speaks of a country and a world that represents so many things that go against our deepest grains. However, as I told my children this morning, the Earth will still turn, the sun will still rise. In fact, a Trump presidency will not have the dire consequences that many of us fear – especially for people like me who will be insulated from his policies. Surely it will change the economics and courts in the US, among other things. But really, all of these are transient.

The one thing that isn’t transient is the impact this will have on climate change. It is now virtually certain the world will not meet any of its climate targets. If Trump (and the Republican-controlled Congress) stand by their pledges, we will see a major rollback of the tremendous progress that has been made on reducing emissions. A Trump presidency will likely set us back at least a decade, perhaps longer. And that is a decade we can’t afford.

Underworld is an immersive exploration of London’s Victorian sewers and is the Guardian’s latest virtual reality offering. Step into the shoes of an urban explorer and experience the labyrinth of subterranean tunnels and hidden waterways that run beneath the city

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Ministers reject court proposal to deliver an effective plan within eight months following their legal defeat against NGO ClientEarth last week

Action to combat the UK’s air pollution crisis has been delayed again after the government rejected a proposal to deliver an effective action plan within eight months.

Environmental lawyers ClientEarth inflicted a humiliating legal defeat on ministers last week – its second in 18 months – when the high court ruled that ministers’ plans to tackle illegal levels of air pollution in many UK cities and towns were unlawfully poor.

Leaving more contaminated soil and rubble on-site instead of moving it to dedicated dumps is cheaper and allows for quicker clean-ups, say officials

More contaminated soil and rubble will remain at the sites of Britain’s old nuclear power plants rather than going to a dedicated dump, under government-backed proposals.

But officials said that the sites would not be left in a hazardous state because international radiological standards would still be upheld.

Numbers pass the level deemed viable for the raptor’s long-term survival but it remains missing from a third of its traditional territories

Britain’s golden eagle population has soared to new heights, according to a new survey released on Wednesday.

There are now more than 500 breeding pairs in the UK, up 15% and passing the threshold at which bird’s long-term future is thought viable.

Riseley, Bedfordshire Nissen huts stored ammunition here, hidden by tall elms whose offspring are just bushes, cursed with perpetual youth

American servicemen came in wartime with concrete and bombs to Coppice Wood. They paved the paths with cement and put up a parking lot – a series of wide bays with Nissen huts storing explosive shells. Chipped and cracked, this network of hard standing remains, though the army is long gone. So too the elms remain, the trees that hid the ammunition stores from enemy aircraft under their canopy.

The elms’ descendants are cursed with perpetual youth. Always a bush, never a tree, seems to be the mantra, the leafy sprays doomed to shrivelled adolescence by Dutch elm disease. Only a few have made it to the heights.

Streets around the country have been brightened by the trees’ blooms in the lead-up to summer. Here are some of our favourite snaps from Instagram

Caper whites descend on state’s south-east – only to be replaced by plague of flies as temperatures climb to 38 degrees

From butterflies to plain old flies, south-east Queensland is experiencing a two-phase swarm of insects amid weather conditions that allow both species to thrive.

Last Friday residents began reporting a sudden surge of butterflies, an influx of tens of millions of caper whites in what experts said was a phenomenon that occurred about once a decade.

Algae on drifting plastic waste gives off a sulfur compound which smells similar to the krill many marine birds feed on, researchers have discovered

Seabirds are enticed into eating plastic debris because it smells like their food, according to scientists.

The study found that drifting plastic waste accumulates algae and gives off a smell very similar to the krill that many marine birds feed on. The findings could explain why certain birds - including albatrosses and shearwaters - which rely on their sense of smell for hunting, are particularly vulnerable to swallowing plastic.

William Beaton took his first egg at the age of five in 1948 and had illegally collected hundreds more since, court told

A retired solicitor from Devon who amassed a collection of hundreds of eggs over nearly 70 years has been fined almost £5,000 and had his haul confiscated.

William Beaton, 73, told Plymouth magistrates he took his first egg – from a blackbird’s nest – on a “fine April evening” when he was five.

Cristal Pigment Ltd has been sentenced for two serious incidents at its titanium dioxide plant that arose from poor operational practices, reports ENDS UK

A global chemical company has been fined for poor operational practices that killed one of its employees and seriously hurt another when they were overcome by a toxic vapour cloud.

Cristal Pigment UK Ltd was sentenced at Hull Crown Court on 8 November for two incidents that occurred within less than two years at Europe’s largest titanium dioxide plant at Stallingborough in north-east Lincolnshire.

Many fear Donald Trump will reverse the ambitious course set by Barack Obama, withdraw the US from the accord and increase fossil-fuel spending

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Just days after the historic Paris agreement officially came into force, climate denier Donald Trump’s victory has thrown the global deal into uncertainty and raised fears that the US will reverse the ambitious environmental course charted under Barack Obama.

International environmental groups meeting at the UN climate talks in Morocco said it would be a catastrophe if Trump acted on his pledge to withdraw the US from the deal, which took 20 years to negotiate, and to increase federal spending on oil, gas and coal.

Investment fund would help wave and tidal power to provide a tenth of the bloc’s power by 2050

The EU is proposing to spend hundreds of millions of euros to help the budding ocean energy industry to provide a tenth of the bloc’s power by 2050.

The boost would take the form of a €250m investment fund, with an additional €70m set aside for insurance, loans and guarantees, according to the roadmap for channelling the potential of wave and tidal energy.

From rapid genetic analysis to spectrography, high-tech advances in forensics are being used to track down and prosecute perpetrators of the illegal wildlife trade, reports Environment 360

Feisal Mohammed Ali, a prominent member of the Kenyan business community, was convicted last July of trafficking two tons of elephant ivory found in a Fuji Motors parking lot in Mombasa. The landmark ruling came after two years of drama: Feisal’s flight to Tanzania, his capture and repatriation, the disappearance of nine vehicles that were major evidence in the case, and accusations of evidence tampering.

The landmark wildlife crime verdict – and 20-year sentence for Feisal – in part came down to political will, courtroom monitoring by NGOs, and police work. Also key, experts say, was the ability to use genetic tests to tie the illegally trafficked elephant tusks from different shipments to the cartel headed by Feisal.

Government to phase out the most polluting fossil and replace it with cleaner sources, such as gas, to meet climate commitments

The last coal power station in Britain will be forced to close in 2025, the government has said as it laid out the detail of its plan to phase-out the polluting fossil fuel.

Ministers promised last year that the UK would close coal power within a decade and replace it with gas and other sources to meet its climate change commitments.

‘Equivalent of a Hazelwood a year’ will need to close by early 2030s to meet Paris targets, witnesses tell Senate inquiry

Coal-fired power stations in Australia will need to shut at the rate of about one a year between now and the mid-2030s for the country to meet the commitments made in Paris, a Senate hearing has been told.

Witnesses also told the hearing that since Australia’s coal-fired power stations are now very old – mostly built in the 1970s and 80s – they would be shutting in the coming decades regardless of climate policy, further highlighting the need for a transition plan.

Wenlock Edge I listen for owls and smell the wet leaves that awaken some wordless feeling like a very misty memory

This has been one of the most vivid autumns I can remember. Days of clear skies and bright sunlight have been plenty this year, and apart from some fog there have yet to be many washouts or frosts. This warm, sunny, weather has been wonderful in the trees, and the furnace colours of oak, birch and beech, the buttery sycamores and field maples, lemony ash and golden syrup limes, have been spectacular. But surely this happens every year, more or less?

Every year the deciduous trees change colour before falling. Every year before winter there is a burst of transition that looks beautiful, and our feelings for it have something to do with an increase in wild food mammals need to bulk up for the winter. The absence of chlorophyll to mask leaf pigments before the tree jettisons them hardly captures the significance of autumn colour or that sense of wonder in seeing the woods shine brightly like a bedtime story before the long sleep.