Research & Academics

As collaborators on one of the first coordinated ecology research projects to study what happens to streams as they dry across the United States, Northern Arizona University researchers Ben Ruddell and Abe Springer will develop an improved smartphone application for mapping wet and dry reaches of streams.

Based on lessons learned from phone apps developed to map the desert springs of the southwestern United States, this project will make the science accessible to citizen scientists nationwide, while empowering professional scientists… Read more

Can a person look hard to understand?

The answer, Northern Arizona University researcher Okim Kang found, is yes. And that expectation of listeners—that the person standing in front of them will be less intelligible because English is likely their second language, before the speaker opens their mouth—is harmful both to speakers and to listeners and the ability of all us to effectively communicate.

With that in mind, Kang, an associate professor of applied linguistics, has spent her career figuring out why… Read more

New findings published in the journal Nature by Northern Arizona University researcher Andrew Richardson offer some of the first experiment-based evidence that a warmer world will significantly shift ecosystem-wide growing seasons, putting plants at higher risk during extreme temperature swings.

Richardson and a team of collaborators conducted a unique experiment in boreal forests showing that warmer temperatures triggered earlier springs and delayed the onset of fall—lengthening the growing season by three weeks or more. Surprisingly, the longer growing season… Read more

By Lara M. Schmit
Merriam-Powell Center for Environmental Research

Soil fungal communities, which are strongly influenced by a plant’s inherited genetic traits, affect seedling success during drought conditions, according to Northern Arizona University research recently published in New Phytologist. These findings could be used to improve restoration success for Arizona forests experiencing drought-induced die-offs.

The study examined the soil fungal communities of pinyon pine seedlings (Pinus edulis) that were produced by either drought-tolerant or drought-intolerant… Read more

The School of Art at Northern Arizona University has created a New Media Art degree emphasis, which includes applied sciences and creative pursuits to help students explore new ideas. The emphasis will launch in Fall 2019, but classes are available now.

“New Media Art is situated between the critical and creative thinking found in studio arts and the analytical and research thinking found in non-traditional art areas,” said David Van Ness, senior lecturer and new media coordinator. “We are… Read more

By Kerry Bennett
Office of the Vice President for Research

Colonizing Mars as a backup planet for Earth has been a theme in both science fiction and popular science for decades, and NASA plans to send human explorers to the Red Planet within the next 20 years.

But how feasible is it for… Read more