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, […]
The boreal zone of Alaska is dominated by interactions between disturbances, vegetation, and soils. These interactions are likely to change in the future through increasing permafrost thaw, more frequent and intense wildfires, and vegetation change from drought and competition. We utilize an individual tree-based vegetation model, the University of Virginia […]
NAU joins with ASU, UA and Arizona communities to confront climate crisis As Arizona confronts the impacts of a hotter world, Northern Arizona University is joining partners from Arizona State University, the University of Arizona and communities from throughout the state to convene the first statewide, solutions-focused climate summit. Climate […]
Wired red oak is first of its kind in North America. As trees across the U.S. continue their picturesque march toward autumn, one 100-year-old oak tree in Massachusetts is attracting a crowd of admirers online. The tree is a scientific wonder—not because of its unique looks or a special way […]
The world’s oceans are getting hotter and acidifying under climate change at unprecedented rates, threatening coastal and high-mountain communities, marine ecosystems, and global fishing stocks, according to a new Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) released this week by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel […]
Digital repeat photography and near-surface remote sensing have been used by environmental scientists to study environmental change for nearly a decade. However, a user-friendly, reliable, and robust platform to extract color-based statistics and time series from a large stack of images is still lacking. Here, we present an interactive open-source […]
Arctic land ice is melting, sea ice is decreasing, and permafrost is thawing. Changes in these Arctic elements are interconnected, and most interactions accelerate the rate of change. The changes affect infrastructure, economics, and cultures of people inside and outside of the Arctic, including in temperate and tropical regions, through […]
Greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost in arctic ecosystems may amplify global warming, yet estimates of the rate of carbon release, and the proportion of carbon released as methane (CH4) or carbon dioxide (CO2), have a high degree of uncertainty. There are many areas where no measurements exist, and few […]
Deep beneath the tundra near Eight Mile Lake in Alaska, at the “thaw front” where the active layer meets the permafrost, Northern Arizona University postdoctoral researcher Rebecca Hewitt has been observing a surprising rally: mycorrhizal fungi are congregating, in some cases taking up nitrogen as it’s released from the permafrost […]
“NAU Regents’ Professor Bruce Hungate, director of the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss), recently joined a new initiative lead by LLNL to study how the soil microbiome controls the mechanisms that regulate the stabilization of the organic matter in soil. “How do different kinds of microorganisms in the soil grow? How […]