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 […]
ESSTE is a unique, 3-semester internship and mentorship opportunity for undergraduate students to help prepare the next generation to address the challenge of increasing drought, fires, and floods. The ESSTE program is in response to an awareness that there is a lack of job training and placement in fields related […]
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 and move small plots of soil along a mountain gradient […]
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 $3 million from the National Science Foundation to translate the […]
“As an historically underrepresented graduate student in biology, I believe that diversifying STEM fields highly depends on outreach programs. I became interested in helping create a more inclusive science space when I looked around my higher education classes and didn’t see the very diverse America I grew up in. As our […]
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 California’s changing climate—and what happens to carbon in their cell […]
On a recent weekday morning, I logged on to a zoom session of Mrs. Mathew’s summer science class at Greyhills Academy High School in Tuba City. A picture of two giant heaps of soil appeared on the screen, and then an image of Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park. […]
Climate change is altering disturbance regimes outside historical norms, which can impact biodiversity by selecting for plants with particular traits. The relative impact of disturbance characteristics on plant traits and community structure may be mediated by environmental gradients. We aimed to understand how wildfire impacted understory plant communities and plant […]
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 […]