Modeling experiments show Pacific warm and cold patches persisted even when continents were in different places

Ph.D. students Keqi He, Rafaella Lobo honored for their respective scholarship.

Meet the Silliman Lab, learn more about its research focus, a PhD student's experience in the lab and the opportunities the lab offers Duke students.

Maintaining a water level between 20 and 30 centimeters below the local water table will boost southern peatlands’ carbon storage and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they release back into the atmosphere during dry periods by up to 90%, a Duke University study finds.

Brian R. Silliman, Rachel Carson Distinguished Professor of Marine Conservation Biology at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, has been elected a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (ESA).

Duke leaders rise to face the challenges of climate change.

The National Science Foundation and the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation have awarded a $1.2 million grant to support a new initiative aimed at boosting ecosystem restoration and climate resilience along North Carolina’s coast.

Rewetting and restoring 250,000 acres of southern pocosin peatlands that had been drained for farming but now lie fallow could prevent 4.3 million tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide, now stored in their soils, from oxidizing and escaping back into Earth’s atmosphere each year, a Duke University study shows. That amount equals 2.4% of the total annual reductions in CO2 emissions needed for the United States to be carbon neutral by 2050.

Slashing emissions of carbon dioxide by itself isn’t enough to prevent catastrophic global warming, a new study shows. But if we simultaneously also reduce emissions of methane and other often overlooked climate pollutants, we could cut the rate of global warming in half by 2050 and give the world a fighting chance.

Human activities such as marsh draining for agriculture and logging are increasingly eating away at saltwater and freshwater wetlands that cover only 1% of Earth’s surface but store more than 20% of all the climate-warming carbon dioxide absorbed by ecosystems worldwide. A new study published May 5 in Science by a team of Dutch, American and German scientists shows that it’s not too late to reverse the losses.

Using satellite images, scientists have detected hundreds of very large and previously unreported methane releases at oil and natural gas production sites across the globe.

Coastal marshes that have been invaded by feral hogs recover from disturbances up to three times slower than non-invaded marshes and are far less resilient to sea-level rise, extreme drought and other impacts of climate change.

Joel Dunn (MEM’04) Helps Create America’s First National Marine Sanctuary in 20 Years

Recent Duke grad Alexandra DiGiacomo (BS ’20) is using drones to better understand how rising seas, warming waters and rapid development are killing protective saltmarshes at our coast, and what can be done to reverse the losses.

Sixteen years after the restoration of Upper Sandy Creek began, hundreds of species, some rare, now call the once-heavily eroded and degraded stream home, and nitrogen pollution flowing off Duke’s campus into downstream waters has been slashed by 75%.