Ecology

A vast meshwork of soil-bound fungi governs life aboveground. In Alaska, and at field sites around the world, researchers are racing to understand exactly how, with essential stores of carbon at stake.

The physics of mixing water layers — an interplay of wind, climate and more — makes lakes work. When it stops, impacts can ripple across an ecosystem.

Building an accurate model of Earth’s climate requires a lot of data. Photography reveals the extreme efforts scientists have undertaken to measure gases, glaciers, clouds and more.

A collection of short dispatches from the field of climate microbiology conveys the contributions that single-celled life forms make to our climate system, and how we can work with them to address climate change.

Tipping points in our climate predictions are both wildly dramatic and wildly uncertain. Can mathematicians make them useful?

Elfatih Eltahir explains why we need more local and social data, like disease spread and population growth, to better predict and address climate-related challenges.

Scientists reconstructed 500 million years of evolutionary history to reveal which came first: colorful signals or the color vision needed to see them.

By speedrunning ecosystems with microbes, researchers revealed intrinsic properties that may make a community susceptible to invasion.

Slight changes in the number, shape, efficiency and interconnectedness of organelles in the cells of flight muscles provide extra energy for birds’ continent-spanning feats.