Cover of the Living Landscape book, showing a girl in a red shirt in a meadow

New children’s book explores The Living Landscape

Oct. 10, 2022

A new children’s book is centered in the Critical Zone, the thin outer layer of Earth’s surface from the tops of the trees down to bedrock where life exists and interacts with rock, soil, water, and air. Designed for 8 to 12-year olds, the book is by INSTAARs Eric Parrish and Suzanne Anderson and is published by Muddy Boots Books.

Miles Moore and Jimmy Howe toss black sand onto a test plot on Niwot Ridge. Photo by Kelsey Simpkins, CU Boulder.

To study impacts of longer, hotter summers, ecologists haul 5,000 pounds of sand up a mountain (CU Boulder Today)

Sept. 12, 2022

For the past five years, a team of research assistants and volunteers have hiked up Niwot Ridge in late May to set the stage for a unique experiment in which they spread 5,000 pounds of black sand across portions of the remaining snowpack. Their goal is to simulate the near-future effects of a warming planet on alpine ecosystems.

Pika on a talus slope, by Derek Ryder via Unsplash

CU Boulder study finds climate change impacts in mountain microclimates (Broomfield Leader on Wayback Machine)

Sept. 7, 2022

Some effects of climate change are dramatic and visible, like wildfires and extreme weather, but a new study led by Chris Ray found that climate change can impact even hidden places and some of the state’s smallest residents: pikas.

Stone globes outside the entrance to the Benson Geological Sciences building on CU Boulder campus

CU’s Earth, atmospheric sciences rank No. 1 and No. 2 in world, along with other high standings (CU Boulder Today)

Aug. 11, 2022

CU Boulder's earth sciences and atmospheric science disciplines ranked No. 1 and No. 2 globally in the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy’s 2022 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS). The annual ranking includes over 1,800 universities from 96 countries scored across 54 academic subject categories.

Photo of Katharine Suding

3 faculty members headed out on Fulbright Program (CU Boulder Today)

Aug. 10, 2022

Katharine Suding is among three CU Boulder faculty members who received Fulbright fellowships to study internationally. Suding will travel to the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, to work on a project called Recovery, Resilience and the Ecology of Change.

Herd of bison in a grassland

Oft-overlooked grasslands build biodiversity, resilience over centuries (CU Boulder Today)

Aug. 4, 2022

Grasslands’ biodiversity and resilience to disturbances such as fire, heat and drought is the result of a slow process over hundreds of years, like that of old growth forests, finds new CU research led by INSTAAR Katharine Suding that was published today in Science. An implication of the research is that it's important to conserve grasslands that are still intact.

A multidisciplinary team walks through an open forest to survey the future site of an EcoTram, a moving monitoring platform

Persistent places update: Groups come together to define and map climate change in Colorado’s public lands

July 28, 2022

A convergence research project is uniting land managers, local residents, and scientists to jointly understand how Colorado Front Range ecosystems and public lands are responding to pressures from people and climate change.

Photo of sea ice floes

Smoke from Western wildfires can influence Arctic sea ice (Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine)

July 27, 2022

New CU Boulder research by Patricia DeRepentigny, Alexandra Jahn, and others finds that the presence of clouds—or lack thereof—caused by the smoke of wildfires thousands of miles away can either help protect or endanger Arctic sea ice.

 Photo of Lina C. Pérez-Ángel

Lina C. Pérez-Ángel: Proud to study paleoclimate in Colombia (AGU EOS)

July 26, 2022

As a young Latina, Pérez-Ángel brings a fresh perspective to paleoclimatology. She's profiled in an AGU Eos feature.

Peyton Thomas at the microscope

A passion for science and the outdoors fuels one woman’s drive to combat climate change (Rocky Mountain PBS)

July 21, 2022

INSTAAR postdoctoral scholar Peyton Thomas loves being in nature, but as a scientist she is well-aware of the threat climate change poses to our environment. She also hopes to inspire the next generation of Black women scientists.

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