Sept. 25, 2019
The world’s oceans are getting hotter and acidifying under climate change at unprecedented rates, threatening coastal and high-mountain communities, marine ecosystems and global fishing stocks, according to a new Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) released this week by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Ted Schuur, a researcher in the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) at Northern Arizona University, was one of the lead authors on the… Read more
Pools of old carbon in the soil of boreal forests historically safe from combustion are being released by more frequent and larger wildfires, a team led by researchers at Northern Arizona University announced in 
The Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and biosphere are huge reservoirs of carbon, and all play a critical role in global carbon cycling. Soil is one of the largest carbon pools on the planet, storing more carbon than the atmosphere and biosphere combined, yet scientists aren’t sure what regulates carbon persistence—the amount of carbon that remains in the soil.
Not long ago, Kevin Grady, assistant research professor of forestry at Northern Arizona University, was involved in the emergency response to a 30,000-acre wildfire. Land managers he worked with wanted to jump-start restoration immediately. Grady figured covering that many acres with plants would require 90 semi-trailer trucks full of seeds—seeds that weren’t easy to find. He… 
The boreal forest is home to one-third of the Earth’s forest cover and stores 40 percent of the planet’s terrestrial carbon. North America’s boreal forest alone, which spans the northern portion of the continent from Alaska all the way to Newfoundland, covers an astounding 1.5 billion acres—more than 2.3 million square miles.