Terrestrial animal communities are largely shaped by vegetation and climate. With climate also shaping vegetation, can we attribute animal patterns solely to climate? Our study observes ant community changes along climatic gradients (i.e., elevational gradients) within different habitat types (i.e., open and forest) on the Colorado Plateau in the southwestern […]
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 […]
Like a long-distance food delivery app with no apparent highway, fungi that associate with shallow-rooted shrubs in the tundra are accessing deep stores of nitrogen being released by thawing permafrost. The findings by Northern Arizona University researchers, announced this week in New Phytologist, could change scientists’ understanding of who accesses […]
Shifts in the extent of the boreal forest during past warm intervals and correlations between climate and the position of the forest–tundra ecotone suggest that recent temperature increases will facilitate forest expansion into tundra ecosystems. In this study, we used a unique set of high-resolution repeat photographs to characterize white […]
Climate warming is leading to greater precipitation variability, resulting in increased frequency and intensity of both drought and wet extremes. However, how these extreme events interact with climate warming and hay-harvest in grasslands to impact ecosystem functions has not yet been well explored. In this study, we took advantage of […]
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 […]
Ecoss postdoc Drew Peltier led a 2 hour class on tree ring science and climate change at Mangum Ranch on the North rim of the Grand Canyon. Drew joined a Grand Canyon Trust Climate change research trip, where Flagstaff High school students were helping with climate change research at the […]
Organisms influence ecosystems, from element cycling to disturbance regimes, to trophic interactions and to energy partitioning. Microorganisms are part of this influence, and understanding their ecology in nature requires studying the traits of these organisms quantitatively in their natural habitats—a challenging task, but one which new approaches now make possible. […]