Antibiotic resistance and public health: it’s an emergency
Press Coverage: The NAU Review • Date: Dec 26, 2024. (Coverage of Koch et al. 2024 in Communications Medicine.) NAU Review Publication: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43856-024-00693-7
News and Events
Climate and the Arctic
Press Coverage: The NAU Review • Date: Feb 6, 2025. (Context for the Science special collection on the Arctic; quotes Regents’ Prof. Ted Schuur.) NAU Review Publication: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126
Salmon’s Secret Superfood discovered through ecosystem science
In the Eel River, the symbiotic triad of the green macroalga Cladophora, its Epithemia epiphytes, and the diazoplasts within Epithemia are embedded in a complex food web with thousands of other algal and bacterial species. Despite high species richness of photoautotrophs and N-fixing bacteria at Read more…
NAU-led research team receives $9.6M to study how Alaska’s forests change, adapt to warmer future
Ecological memory stored in a landscape can help an ecosystem recover from disturbances like fire and outbreaks of disease. But what happens when climate warming disrupts that process? How long before ecological memories stored in the warming Arctic are overwritten Read more…
Lifestyles of the fast and slow (bacteria): In the wild, most live in the slow lane
A study led by Northern Arizona University offers new evidence that a common framework to sort bacteria into two lifestyles doesn’t easily apply to bacteria living in wild soil. The findings, published in The ISME Journal, show that rather than bacteria falling Read more…
Does a warmer future favor microbial friend or foe? Ecoss researchers win $3.4M to study interactions in changing soil
In 2002, the Odyssey probe discovered evidence of past ice on Mars. The U.S. Congress authorized the Iraq War resolution. The Anaheim Angels won the World Series. And in a meadow 15 miles north of Flagstaff, scientists began to monitor Read more…
Future emissions from ‘country of permafrost’ significant, must be factored into global climate targets
By the end of this century, permafrost in the rapidly warming Arctic will likely emit as much carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere as a large industrial nation, and potentially more than the U.S. has emitted since the start Read more…
A bridge to stronger, more diverse Earth sciences
The Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) at NAU has been named one of 15 new partner institutions of the AGU Bridge Program, which works to support students in applying to and succeeding in graduate school in the Earth Read more…
Decoding biological mysteries with algae: NAU team wins $3M from NSF to model microbiome
The tiny cosmos of organisms living on a streamer of algae in a river—the algal microbiome—could help scientists learn what turns an environment from healthy to toxic and back again. A multidisciplinary team led by Northern Arizona University has won Read more…
Relevant, dead, or both?: Team wins $15M from Department of Energy to study how microbes’ traits are linked to carbon storage
Do dead microbes control the future of Earth’s climate? A team of researchers led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) suspects they might. Using new tools, the team can see which soil organisms are thriving and which are dying in Read more…