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Ecologist Sandy Milner has traveled to Alaska for decades to study the development of streams flowing from melting glaciers. He’s seen insects move in, alders and willows spring up, and spawning fish arrive in thousands.
The famously dry region has long been dismissed as a mostly lifeless wasteland, good for little more than mining of minerals and precious metals. To these researchers, however, it’s a microbial gold mine worthy of protection.
Decades of exploring the seafloor have helped oceanographer Samantha Joye tackle marine issues — from the underwater movement of oil from Deepwater Horizon to the biology of remote microbial communities
Crystals of the mineral zircon are rugged enough to survive the most violent geologic events. Impurities within them provide a time capsule of planetary history.
For most of Earth’s history, hardly any of the mucky stuff existed on land. It finally started piling up around 458 million years ago, changing life on the planet forever.
Researchers think they’re getting warmer: They’ve created amino acids and primitive membranes by simulating conditions found at scalding vents on the ocean floor
To understand what might be lost, ecologist Janet K. Jansson taps molecular methods to explore Earth’s underground microbes, from the permafrost to the grasslands
The mass die-offs of Earth’s past may hold clues to our future
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