Given the tremendous ability of forests to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, some governments are counting on planted forests as offsets for greenhouse gas emissions—a sort of climate investment. As with any investment, however, it’s important to understand the risks. If a forest goes bust—through severe droughts or wildfires, researchers say—much of that stored carbon could go up in smoke.
Professor Scott Goetz of Northern Arizona University’s
As Arctic tundra has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet in… 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
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
(Photo credit GEDI Science Team) On December 5, 2018, the SpaceX Commercial Resupply Mission 16 successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, carrying a groundbreaking payload in the Dragon capsule of its Falcon 9 rocket to the International… Read more
Dec. 7, 2018
Predicting and managing the global carbon cycle requires understanding the ecosystem processes that control carbon uptake and storage.
Although scientists generally think of carbon cycling in terms of the uptake and exchange between ecosystem plant and soil pools and the atmosphere, a new study of animals and the zoogeochemistry of the carbon cycle published in the journal Science shows animals also… 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