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 Nature this week. As the climate of these forests in the Northwest Territories of Canada becomes warmer and drier and prone to more frequent… Read more
carbon
NAU researchers join Department of Energy project to study the soil microbiome and its effect on carbon persistence
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.
Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)… Read more
NAU scientists publish first estimate of carbon emissions from 2014 mega-fires in Canada’s boreal forests
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.
As mega-fires in the boreal forest become more frequent and more intense, scientists believe the burning of these… Read more
NAU’s Permafrost Carbon Network study links climate policy to reduced effects of emissions from thawing soil
Findings of a new study organized by the Permafrost Carbon Network (PCN) suggest that putting more effective greenhouse gas controls in place for the rest of this century could help mitigate the effects of climate change on the release of carbon from thawing soils of the northern permafrost region.
The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, represents a collaboration between ecosystem scientists Ted Schuur and Christina… Read more
Which microbes matter most? NAU scientists develop technique for measuring bacterial growth rates
Ecological research focuses on understanding how population-level dynamics—such as the growth rate of a particular population of microbes—contribute to ecosystem-level processes. Ecosystem scientists researching climate change often study the role of microbes in the carbon cycle, for example, so knowing how quickly they grow is a fundamental metric to reaching that understanding.
Until now, however, scientists have not had the ability to measure growth rates of individual microbial populations… Read more