Study finds that loss of tree diversity affects the ability of tropical forests to sequester carbon
During live Q&A, expert in natural disasters explains ways to mitigate damage
For many residents of New York City and upstate communities, the Hudson River is such a constant presence that it can sometimes fade into the background of daily life. On Wednesday, October 12, however, Earth Institute researchers contributed to the efforts of volunteers and students from Troy to Brooklyn in putting the Hudson front-and-center by…
Droughts that last several years are a recurring feature of the American West. They are also potentially costly natural disasters with impacts ranging from declining agricultural production, reduced water availability, increased forest fires, variable river flows, and declining fisheries. The Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s, which was memorialized in some of the greatest works…
In 2002, Christian Webersik spent months on and off in war-torn Somalia, conducting interviews with both the elite and the layperson for his research on the link between armed conflict and natural resources. “You can see how different political sides tried to monopolize natural resources to finance their militia,” says Webersik. His work suggests it…
Economists, physicians and a range of social scientists have long found an easy place at the table when it comes to promoting sustainable development in the poorest areas of the world. But an agroecologist? “Agroecologists always feel a little outcast when working on development issues,” says Fabrice De Clerck, an Earth Institute Fellow with the…
The Natural Disaster Hotspots report released earlier this year showed that the U.S. Gulf Coast is among the world’s most at-risk regions in terms of human mortality and economic loss due to storms like Katrina and Rita. The study, which was produced by researchers from the Center for Hazards and Risk Research, The International Research…
Scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have ended a nine-year debate over whether the Earth’s inner core is undergoing changes that can be detected on a human timescale. Their work, which appears in the August 26 issue of the journal Science, measured differences in the time it…
New databases give researchers a look into processes inside the Earth’s mantle