In a first-of-its-kind warming experiment, researchers at Northern Arizona University found that microbes growth rate decreased over 15 years of warming. The research, published this week in Global Change Biology, showed that under warmer climate conditions, growth decreased among all types of microbes in the community, and suggested that a loss of soil carbon may be responsible… Read more
Program prepares students for STEM careers critically important to DOE mission
Graduate students Maria Bolar and Megan Foley are the first from Northern Arizona University to receive awards from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) through its Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program. Only 65 graduate students from across the country were recognized this year. Through world-class training and access to state-of-the-art… Read more
Xin Huang wants to make modeling and using big data easier for everyone, especially ecologists who don’t have extensive computer programming experience. As a third-year doctoral student in the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society at Northern Arizona University, Huang saw a technical barrier between the earth system modeling community and ecologists who want to improve models with data: coding.
That’s why she created a user interface called “MIDA”—model-independent data assimilation—which allows a scientist to improve a model with data without… Read more
Team of NAU paleoclimatologists contribute to major report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, forming scientific underpinnings for negotiations to limit carbon emissions worldwide
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) has just released its latest major assessment report on global climate change, approved by the world’s… Read more
Scientists at Northern Arizona University, Arizona State University, the Arizona Geological Survey at the University of Arizona and the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder have been awarded almost $2 million from the National Science Foundation to develop a virtual reality teaching tool called Polar Explorer. In this… Read more
As the Arctic endures another summer of record-breaking surface air temperatures, a team from NAU, led by Ecoss’ assistant research professor Christina Schädel, has been awarded a three-year, $764,000 grant from the Department of Energy to help improve models that predict what will happen to permafrost carbon as the Arctic continues to warm. The team, which includes Ecoss Regent’s Professor Ted Schuur, School of… Read more