School of Information students are looking through the ‘lens of an information professional’ and using data to tackle urgent water-related issues in Michigan and around the globe. Partners in the school’s inaugural ‘theme year’ include representatives from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

No amount of air pollution is good for the brain, but wildfires and the emissions resulting from agriculture and farming in particular may pose especially toxic threats to cognitive health, according to U-M researchers in the School of Public Health. Given that the development of dementia could take a long time, researchers hope to provide evidence for policymakers to reduce exposures such emissions.

Discussions of valuable but threatened ocean ecosystems often focus on coral reefs or coastal mangrove forests. Seagrass meadows get a lot less attention, even though they provide wide-ranging services to society and store lots of climate-warming carbon. A new University of Michigan-led study shows that seagrass ecosystems deserve to be at the forefront of the global conservation agenda.

Did you know that over its lifetime, a tree can absorb more than a ton of carbon from the air and store it in wood and roots? Researchers now contend that mosses have the potential to store a massive amount of carbon in the soil beneath them, an important antidote to climate change.

How can we slow or reverse the frightening trend of increasing wildfires?

Knowledge may be power, says Ricky Rood, but the real power comes in knowing how to use said knowledge.

Ricky Rood compares modeling the climate to peering through a telescope — and seeing the future.

U-M’s Ann Arbor campus recently joined UM-Dearborn as a certified Bee Campus, reflecting the University’s commitment to pollinator conservation. U-M has long followed pollinator-friendly landscaping practices.

Researchers from U-M and the University of Wisconsin will assess flood risk for disadvantaged communities in Berrien County, Mich., and Milwaukee, and will provide a framework to extend the analysis throughout the Great Lakes.