What do earthquakes, wealthy Italian families and your circulatory system have in common? Scientists use fractals, self-similarity and power laws to translate from local to global scales.
“Vic Stockwell’s puzzle”: a close but anciently separated relative of the eucalypts.
Frank Zich
Trees clean urban air, store carbon, slow floodwaters and can be used to design safer streets. Scholars are starting to calculate what these services are worth – a fitting topic for Arbor Day.
Autumnal displays may be dimmed in the future.
Shutterstock
Walking towards this tree, which grows only on a select few mist-shrouded mountainsides in Queensland, can feel like stepping into a prehistoric dinosaur-filled fantasy.
In 1919, 1,376 new Norway Maples were planted along streets in Brooklyn.
Department of Parks of the Borough of Brooklyn, City of New York
Whether plastic or natural, Christmas trees are generally bad for the environment. However, a new chemical process could recycle dead trees into all kinds of useful products.
Scotch pines on a Christmas tree farm in northern Michigan.
Bert Cregg
Both natural and artificial Christmas trees have environmental impacts, but they’re not major. What matters most is what happens to the trees after the holidays.
Climate change is shrinking winter snow cover in Northeast forests, which protects tree roots and soil from repeated freezing and thawing. This could stunt tree growth and forest carbon storage.