Latest Smithsonian Environmental Research Center Stories

Climate change appears to be driving accelerated growthSpeed is not a word typically associated with trees; they can take centuries to grow. However, a new study published the week of Feb. 1 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found evidence that forests in the Eastern United States are growing faster than they have in the past 225 years. The study offers a rare look at how an ecosystem is responding to climate change.For more than 20 years forest ecologist Geoffrey...

Overfishing and disease have decimated shellfish populations in many of the world's temperate estuarine and coastal ecosystems. Smithsonian scientists, led by Whitman Miller, ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md., have discovered another serious threat to these valuable filter feeders"”rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide that contribute to the acidification of open ocean, coastal and estuarine waters. Their findings are being published in the...