NAU scientists lead DoD project to assess environmental impact of changing climate on boreal forests

Credit US Forest Service

Scott Goetz, along with NAU Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (ECOSS) professor Michelle Mack, are leading a new Department of Defense (DoD) funded project to to assess the resiliency and vulnerability of boreal forest on DoD lands across central Alaska.  This project is just one example of many collaborations between the GEODE lab and ECOSS.

Read more about this project here.

New paper in Nature: Plant functional trait change across a warming tundra biome

Scott Goetz and Logan Berner are co-authors on “Plant functional trait change across a warming tundra biome,” a paper out this year in Nature.

Goetz and Berner collaborated with scientists from institutions across the world to assess climate impacts on plant functional traits across the tundra biome and three decades of climate warming.

Read more via NAU’s In the Spotlight and read the full paper here.

Total change in temperature (b) and soil moisture (c) over the period 1989-2015. Predicted changes in height (d) and leaf nitrogen (e) over this same period.