While collecting sediment cores from a New York City coastal marsh, Dorothy Peteet, a botanist and climatologist at the Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, explains how such ecosystems store massive amounts of carbon, but are under threat from sea-level rise.
“We’re building a chronology to understand the carbon storage, the human impact…the local history and tying it to our record,” says Peteet. “Then we’re putting that carbon story into a bigger picture of New York City marshes, the whole East Coast sea level rise and trying to fill in the puzzle.”
This is the first video of Science for the Planet, a short explainer series about how Columbia Climate School scientists and scholars are trying to understand the effects of climate change and help solve the crisis.
Learn more about Peteet’s work:
She’s on a Mission to Plumb the Secrets of New York’s Disappearing Wetlands
