As the climate changes, extreme weather and flooding are intensifying and occurring more frequently worldwide. Scientists believe that by studying warming events in Earth’s past, they can better understand how the current warming trend is triggering other changes to the environment.
As part of a large, multidisciplinary study involving eight institutions and a multimillion-dollar National Science Foundation… Read more
Dec. 3, 2018
The ancient Nasca civilization, which flourished hundreds of years before the Inca along the southern coast of Peru, could be considered one of the earliest examples of a culture adapting to climate change. The Nasca thrived in one of the driest deserts in the world by growing corn and potatoes to sustain them, building an impressive irrigation system of… Read more
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
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
A new paper by Northern Arizona University professor Andrew Richardson published in the journal Scientific Data describes a vast network of digital cameras designed to capture millions of images documenting seasonal changes of vegetation across North America. The network, dubbed PhenoCam, is the result of a 10-year collaboration between Richardson, who led the effort, and scientists from the University of New Hampshire and Boston University to develop a reliable continental-scale observatory… Read more
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