Understanding the History of Fire Can Help Us Fight Today’s Biggest Blazes

Lessons From the Past and Warnings for the Future in 400 Million Years of Geological Record

Charcoal fragments are black, often small, and generally unremarkable. Most people would not realize it if they were to come across one. But over the past 40 years or so, Earth scientists have been revealing the story of fire through time by examining these little bits of carbon embedded in rocks throughout the world.

Understanding the history of wildfire is relatively new. That’s because fire science often falls between the cracks in established disciplines. As the well-known historian of modern fire Stephen Pyne has pointed out, while many universities have fire …

Can Hawai‘i’s Local Communities Lead the Global Fight Against Climate Change?

Cities and Counties Across the Islands, Through Innovations and Experiments, Are the Perfect Laboratory for Slowing Global Warming

Travel-brochure images of Hawai‘i conjure a pollution-free paradise, far removed from dying forests, rising seas, and other ecological mayhems. But it’s more realistic to view the island state as a …

To See the Fate of the Oceans, Look Back a Half-Billion Years

Too Much Carbon and Not Enough Oxygen Devastated Marine Life in Ancient Times

What can the deep geological history of the oceans tell us about the future?

This question is a difficult one. In fact, it is considerably easier to start with the opposite …

We’ll Always Have (the) Paris (Accord)

Economic Necessity Gives Hope That the Global Climate Agreement Will Endure

The United States is out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Trump administration says we will burn coal and fossil fuels if we like, and no one …

Why Groundhog Day Now Elevates Science Over Superstition

For a UCLA Biologist, Celebrating the Lowly Marmot Could Shed Light on Global Warming

I am a scientist who loves Groundhog Day, that least scientific of holidays. Every February, as Punxsutawney Phil shakes the dust off his coat, emerges from his burrow, glances …

What Self-Cloning Salamanders Say About Climate Change

An Evolutionary Outlier Could Inherit the Earth (or at Least Rural Maine)

Birds do it, bees do it, and so the song goes, even educated fleas do it. But unisexual salamanders don’t.

These all-female amphibians clone themselves to make eggs—all girls—and they’ve …