Carnegie Science News - Department of Global Ecology

Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Carnegie’s Greg Asner Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Carnegie staff scientist Greg Asner has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates from 14 countries elected “in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.” The total number of active members now stands at 2,179.

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Monday, April 8, 2013
Surprising Predictor of Ecosystem Chemistry

Carnegie scientists have found that the plant species making up an ecosystem are better predictors of ecosystem chemistry than environmental conditions such as terrain, geology, or altitude. This is the first study using a new, high-resolution airborne, chemical-detecting instrument to map multiple ecosystem chemicals. The result is key toward understanding how species composition affects carbon, nitrogen and other nutrient cycling, and the effects of climate change, land use, and other ecosystem pressures.

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Monday, April 1, 2013
Extreme Algal Blooms: The New Normal?

A research team, led by Carnegie’s Anna Michalak, has determined that the 2011 record-breaking algal bloom in Lake Erie was triggered by long-term agricultural practices coupled with extreme precipitation, followed by weak lake circulation and warm temperatures. The team also predicts that, unless agricultural policies change, the lake will continue to experience extreme blooms.

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Monday, March 18, 2013
Male lions use ambush hunting strategy

It has long been believed that male lions are dependent on females when it comes to hunting. But new evidence suggests that male lions are, in fact, very successful hunters in their own right. A new report from a team including Carnegie's Scott Loarie and Greg Asner shows that male lions use dense savanna vegetation for ambush-style hunting in Africa.

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Thursday, February 21, 2013
Geoengineering by coalition

Solar geoengineering is a proposed approach to reduce the effects of climate change due to greenhouse gasses by deflecting some of the sun’s incoming radiation. This type of proposed solution carries with it a number of uncertainties, however, including geopolitical questions about who would be in charge of the activity and its goals. New modeling work from Carnegie’s Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira shows that if a powerful coalition ever decided to deploy a geoengineering system, they would have incentive to exclude other countries from participating in the decision-making process.

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Monday, February 11, 2013
Tree Die-off Triggered by Hotter Temperatures

A team of scientists, led by researchers at Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology, has determined that the recent widespread die-off of Colorado trembling aspen trees is a direct result of decreased precipitation exacerbated by high summer temperatures. The die-off, triggered by the drought from 2000-2003, is estimated to have affected up to 17% of Colorado aspen forests. In 2002, the drought subjected the trees to the most extreme growing season water stress of the past century.

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Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Preventing Climate Change: The Size of the Energy Challenge

In 2004 a very popular study aimed to address climate change by deploying wedges of different existing energy technologies or approaches. According to the study by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, each wedge would avoid one billion tons of carbon (1 GtC) emissions per year after 50 years. The study showed that, at that time, seven wedges could stabilize carbon dioxide emissions relative to what would happen if things remained “business-as-usual.” A new perspective paper from a group including Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira uses the wedge approach to estimate the size of the energy challenge posed by climate change today.

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Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Carnegie Airborne Observatory - AToMS

The Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO) is a revolutionary advancement in remote sensing and 3-D analysis of ecosystem composition, chemistry, and physiology.

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Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Carnegie debuts revolutionary biosphere mapping capability at AGU

Researchers from the Carnegie Institution are rolling out results from the new Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System, or AToMS, for the first time at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meetings in San Francisco. The groundbreaking technology and its scientific observations are uncovering a previously invisible ecological world. To watch a video about how AToMS is helping researchers look at the world in a whole new way, click here.

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Monday, October 22, 2012
Improving effectiveness of solar geoengineering

Solar radiation management is a type of geoengineering that would manipulate the climate in order to reduce the impact of global warming caused by greenhouse gasses. Ideas include increasing the amount of aerosols in the stratosphere, which could scatter incoming solar light away from Earth’s surface, or creating low-altitude marine clouds to reflect these same rays. Research models have indicated that the climatic effect of this type of geoengineering will vary by region, because the climate systems respond differently to the reflecting substances than they do to the atmospheric carbon dioxide that traps warmth in Earth’s atmosphere.

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