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 by new ones, and what does that mean for the […]
Drought—even in a single year—can leave aspen more vulnerable to insect infestation and other stressors decades later, a new study by NAU researchers found. Aspen trees that were not resilient to drought stayed smaller than others, growing more slowly and succumbing to an outbreak of insects known as aspen leaf […]
PhD and MS positions in Ecosystem Ecology are available in the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) at Northern Arizona University. Graduate student benefits include a stipend (teaching assistantship or research assistantship), tuition waiver, health insurance, and payment of non-tuition fees. The Ecoss mission is to conduct high-impact, innovative […]
Pools of old carbon in the soil of boreal forests historically safe from combustion are being released by more frequent and larger wildfires, an Ecoss team led by Xanthe Walker and Michelle Mack announced in Nature this week. As the climate of these forests in the Northwest Territories of Canada […]
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 […]
Several Ecoss members presented at the 2015 AGU fall meeting. Topics ranged from permafrost C cycle responses to climate change, to priming effects on soil C, to forest fires in the Arctic. Below you can find an overview of the presentations; click on the presentation title for more information at the AGU meeting page. […]