Challenging long-held assumptions that phosphorus limits aboveground plant growth mainly in tropical regions, a new paper in Nature Communications by NAU authors suggests that this important nutrient actually helps govern plant production in temperate regions, too, and on every continent except Antarctica.
Analyzing data from phosphorus field experiments conducted worldwide between 1955-2017, authors Enqing Hou, Yiqi Luo, and… Read more
Professor Kevin Gurney of NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems is building a detailed three-dimensional map of the urban Washington, D.C. area that will reveal every source of greenhouse gas being emitted into the atmosphere down to individual buildings, like the Pentagon, and roads such as Pennsylvania Ave. Gurney, an atmospheric… Read more
As Arctic tundra has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet in… Read more
If the fate of carbon is a test that planet Earth is taking right now, one of the answer keys is likely to be found in soil, where microorganisms—which account for nearly 15 percent of global biomass, by some estimates—eat, store and respire carbon and other nutrients. As Earth warms, how these microbes change the way they live will have potentially big consequences for where the carbon goes.
Now, a team led… 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 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
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