Researchers used both aerial and satellite imagery, as well as machine learning, to map the carbon stock of every overstory tree in Rwanda—the first such inventory in the world.
Earth science
Posted inNews
UV Radiation Contributed to Earth’s Biggest Mass Extinction
To find the first direct evidence of heightened UV radiation during the end-Permian mass extinction, researchers turned to chemical evidence preserved in pollen grains.
Posted inNews
Small Shrubs May Have Played a Large Role in Decarbonizing the Ancient Atmosphere
Vascular plants may have contributed to shaping Earth’s atmosphere long before trees evolved.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
A New Measure of Roughness Could Advance Earthquake Geophysics
Scientists recently developed an alternative way to measure a rock’s roughness. It might help them understand the physics of faults.
Posted inNews
Roughed-Up Hillsides Reveal Tree-Toppling Winds
Researchers are reading pockmarks in the forest floor to study the uprooting of trees in southern Indiana and estimate how fast winds howled through the forest in the past.
Posted inNews
Centuries-Old Archive Reveals Far-Flung Impacts of Major Eruptions
Weather records preserved by staff and students at Williams College reveal cool spells in New England after volcanic blasts in Indonesia and South Asia.
Posted inNews
Seaports Could Lose $67 Billion Yearly from Natural Disasters
Small islands and low-income nations face the largest relative monetary losses to their ports and maritime trade.
Posted inFeatures
Baked Contacts Focus a Lens on Ancient Lava Flows
Two studies, conducted 40 years apart, show how combining field observations and thermal modeling can reconstruct the history of massive lava flows and how they altered the surrounding landscape.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
How Much Greenhouse Gas Do Tropical Soils Emit?
New research found that tropical soils emit nitrogen mostly as inert dinitrogen rather than as greenhouse gases.