Results 41 to 50 of 85
For decades scientists have tried to find out why forests emit the volatile gases that give pine forests their distinctive smell. A new study led by LEAF scientists at the University of Leeds might help us understand the reasons. Particles in the atmosphere can scatter sunlight, causing light at the Earth’s surface to come from...
The extent of pre-industrial era fires, and the cooling that occurs due to their particulate emissions, may have been significantly underestimated, according to a new study. Fires cause large amounts of tiny particles, known as aerosols, to be released into the atmosphere. These aerosols, such as the soot in smoke or chemicals released by burning...
By John Hodgson, Hardknott Forest Project Officer Restoring Hardknott Forest is a partnership between the University of Leeds and the Forestry Commission. Since January, John has been in post as Project Officer, organising and leading volunteer days, and liaising with the Forestry Commission and the University of Leeds. As anyone who has done some fieldwork,...
By Karen Bacon - University of Leeds; article originally published on The Conversation. Japanese knotweed, a widespread invasive non-native species in the UK, is seldom out of the news and can strike fear into the hearts of anyone who finds it growing on their property, house owner or developer alike. It is a tall, herbaceous...
By Jamie Carr - University of Leeds; article originally published on The Conversation. Countries with high levels of human well-being are more likely to show increasing forest growth. That’s the finding of a new study by a group of Finnish scientists, published in PLOS ONE. Their work shows that countries exhibiting annual increases in the...
By Cat Scott (@catzigle) - University of Leeds Our recent research indicates that deforestation might be warming the climate even more than we thought. How cool are trees? We know that trees and forests affect the climate in a variety of ways. They’re constantly taking carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the air and storing it...
An international competition to estimate the diversity of plants across the whole of Britain has shown that mathematical modelling techniques are ‘coming of age’. Models are widely used by scientists to estimate the biological diversity of particular habitats, regions, countries and even continents, and to assess how this might be changing over time. Using models,...
The remaining undisturbed rainforests in Borneo, some of the world’s tallest and most carbon-dense, have been removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the past 50 years, a new study shows. The research, led by the University of Leeds, found that while the intact forest area has declined, those that remain have increased in biomass....
An international team of scientists, led by LEAF members at the University of Leeds, has quantified the relationship between natural sources of particles in the atmosphere and climate change. Their study, published recently in Nature Geoscience, shows that the cooling effect of natural atmospheric particles is greater during warmer years and could therefore slightly reduce...
By Suzanne Stas (@SuzanneStas) - University of Leeds I am researching the impacts of forest degradation on carbon storage in the Khe Nuoc Trong forest in Vietnam in a partnership between the World Land Trust (WLT) and University of Leeds. Last year we set up 24 sampling plots across the Khe Nuoc Trong forest and...