Scientists say climate change could cause a ‘massive’ tree die-off in the U.S. Southwest
Tree physiologist Nate McDowell, LANL image.
In a troubling new study just out in Nature Climate Change, a group of researchers says that a warming climate could trigger a “massive” die off of coniferous trees, such as junipers and piñon pines, in the U.S. southwest sometime this century.
The work was led by Nate McDowell of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who conducted the research along with 18 other authors from a diverse group of universities and federal agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey.The work was led by Nate McDowell of the Los Alamos National Laboratory who conducted the research along with 18 other authors from a diverse group of universities and federal agencies, including the U.S. Geological Survey.
The SUrvival/MOrtality (SUMO) experiment at LosAlamos, LANL image.
Southwestern states may lose all of their pine and juniper trees by 2100, according to research recently published in Nature Climate Change.
“We have been uncertain about how big the risk of tree mortality was, but our ensemble of analyses—including experimental results, mechanistic regional models and more general global models—all show alarming rates of forest loss in coming decades,” said Nate McDowell, a forest ecologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author of the paper.
Also from the Global Plant Council
Dick Sayre, LANL image.
The benefits of algal biofuels make them top alternatives to petroleum products and batteries. Algae’s appetite for CO2 and their remarkable ability to produce oil might soon have us saying thanks again. A new research project led by Los Alamos National Laboratory seeks to drive algal biofuels to marketability, decreasing our nation’s dependence on fossil fuels and putting the brakes on global warming.
This flu season will likely peak in February and could be a mild one, according to a new model that aims to forecast the flu in the United States this winter.
There's a 57 percent chance that flu season will peak in February. That would be relatively late — the last three flu seasons have all peaked in December, said Dave Osthus, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory who leads the flu forecast project.
Liftoff of the New Horizons Pluto
mission, NASA image.
Plutonium-238 produces heat as it decays, which can then be converted into electricity by NASA’s radioisotope power system, a kind of nuclear battery called the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, or MMRTG.
Researchers at Oak Ridge plan to collaborate with facilities at Idaho National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory to begin scaling up production.
stars that contain far less metal than previously
thought. NASA illustration.
Astronomers have found a star with an incredibly low concentration of heavy elements that still has a sizable planet around it — the most metal-poor star ever discovered with an orbiting, rocky planet.
Jarrett Johnson, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who has studied exoplanets told Space.com that this discovery of a rocky planet around a metal-poor star bodes well for finding more of them.
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