Related topics: climate change · drought

Wet winters may not dampen small wildfires

NASA scientists conducting research on the connection between fuel moisture and fires have uncovered a paradox: a wet winter corresponds to more small wildfires in the following fire season, not fewer, as is commonly assumed. ...

Study tracks 'memory' of soil moisture

The top 2 inches of topsoil on all of Earth's landmasses contains an infinitesimal fraction of the planet's water—less than one-thousandth of a percent. Yet because of its position at the interface between the land and ...

Soil pores, carbon stores, and breathing microbes

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) recently studied how moisture influences soil heterotrophic respiration. That's the breathing-like process by which microbes convert dead organic carbon in the ...

NASA study finds a connection between wildfires and drought

For centuries drought has come and gone across northern sub-Saharan Africa. In recent years, water shortages have been most severe in the Sahel—a band of semi-arid land situated just south of the Sahara Desert and stretching ...

During drought, dry air can stress plants more than dry soil

Newly published research by Indiana University scientists finds that low relative humidity in the atmosphere is a significant, growing and often under-appreciated cause of plant stress in hot, dry weather conditions.

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