BiotechMashup

Using sophisticated airborne imaging and structural analysis, scientists mapped more than 40,000 termite mounds over 192 square miles in the African savanna. They found that their size and distribution is linked to vegetation and landscape patterns associated with annual rainfall. The results reveal how the savanna terrain has evolved and show how termite mounds can be used to predict ecological shifts from climate change.

The majestic animals most closely associated with the African savanna -- fierce lions, massive elephants, towering giraffes -- may be relatively minor players when it comes to shaping the ecosystem. The real king of the savanna appears to be the termite, say ecologists who've found that these humble creatures contribute mightily to grassland productivity in central Kenya via a network of uniformly distributed colonies.

by Lydia Beaudrot, Yanjun Du, Abdul Rahman Kassim, Marcel Rejmánek, Rhett D. Harrison

(Carnegie Institution) Christopher Field, director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, is among the scientists elected this year to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Academy, one of the world's most prestigious honorary societies, cited Field for his research in global ecology and contributions to the assessment and understanding of climate change.

(Carnegie Institution) Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have taken a new approach on examining a proposal to fix the warming planet by injecting stratospheric aerosols of sulfates to shade the Earth. Past approaches modeled how the aerosols might affect Earth's climate and chemistry. These researchers began with climate goals and modeled the aerosol distribution pattern that would come closest to achieving their idealized climate. This is the first attempt to determine the optimal way of achieving defined climate goals.

(Carnegie Institution) Global warming is causing climate belts to shift toward the poles and to higher elevations. To keep pace with these changes, the average ecosystem will need to shift about a quarter mile each year, says a new study led by scientists at the Carnegie Institution. For some habitats, such as low-lying areas, climate belts are moving even faster, putting many species in jeopardy, especially where human development has blocked migration paths.

(Carnegie Institution) A tiny, little-understood plant pore has enormous implications for weather forecasting, climate change, agriculture, hydrology, and more. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, with colleagues from the Research Center Juelich in Germany, have now overturned the conventional belief about how these important structures called stomata regulate water vapor loss from the leaf -- a process called transpiration. They found that radiation is the driving force of physical processes deep within the leaf.

(Carnegie Institution) By 2100 only 18-45 percent of the plants and animals making up ecosystems in global, humid tropical forests may remain as we know them today, according to research led by Greg Asner at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology. It is the first study to combine effects from new deforestation and selective logging data with climate-change projections for all humid tropical forest ecosystems. The work will help conservationists be more effective.

(Carnegie Institution) Brazilians are world leaders in using biofuels. About a quarter of their automobile fuel consumption comes from sugarcane, which significantly reduces carbon dioxide emissions. Now scientists from the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology have found that sugarcane has a double benefit. Expansion of the crop in areas previously occupied by other crops cools the local climate by reflecting sunlight back into space and by lowering the air temperature as the plants "exhale" cooler water.