Thanks to the generosity of the Woodwell donor community, the second round of 2026 Fund for Climate Solutions (FCS) awardees has been announced. The FCS supports innovative, solutions-oriented climate science through a competitive, cross-disciplinary process. With more than $10 million raised to date, donor support has already fueled 88 research grants and leveraged millions of dollars in additional research grants since the program’s launch in 2018.
This most recent round of grants is supporting Woodwell experts in building policy engagement skills, improving land managers’ preparedness for future fire seasons, and updating carbon budgets based on the newest science.
Woodwell Policy Fellowship: A Pilot Program to Advance the Internal Science to Policy Pipeline
Lead: Laura Uttley
Since the Center’s founding by Dr. George Woodwell, our leadership, scientists, and researchers have engaged with local, state, federal, and international policymakers to facilitate the development of science-based policy solutions. This project will develop an internal Policy Fellowship pilot program to amplify Woodwell Climate’s science in decision-making and better position our scientists and researchers for engagement and advocacy opportunities. A cohort of five to ten science staff will collaborate with the Policy and Government Relations team through attending monthly webinars on federal and international processes, developing policy briefs relevant to their work, and participating in either COP32 or Woodwell’s 2027 DC fly-in. This Policy Fellowship will leverage the diverse backgrounds and experiences of Woodwell Climate scientists to ensure robust climate science is complemented with compelling narratives and public policy applications.
The 2024 Amazon fire crisis: A postmortem to advance proactive management
Lead: Dr. Manoela Machado
Despite 2024’s lower-than-average deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon, wildfires there reached record levels. For every hectare of forest lost to deforestation, 11 hectares were affected by wildfire—an unprecedented proportion. Leaders from Prevfogo (National Center for Prevention and Combat of Forest Fire) have called for scientific evidence that can help aggregate data on burned area, land tenure, agency mandates, and resource constraints in order to reinforce requests for increased budgetary support and avoid a repeat of the 2024 season during the anticipated 2026–2027 El Niño year. The project team will create maps of the 2024 fire crisis to support proactive preparedness for future fire seasons. These maps will identify where fire risk and occurrence, institutional responsibilities, and operational capacity may be misaligned, supporting proactive planning, improving coordination, and justifying targeted funding for agencies preparing for future fire crises.
Permafrost emissions and remaining carbon budgets under peak-and-decline pathways
Lead: Dr. Christina Schӓdel
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Seventh Assessment report (AR7) is underway, and a key priority of the report is examining overshoot pathways. Overshoot, or peak-and-decline pathways, describe climate scenarios where global temperatures temporarily exceed 1.5 or 2°C before declining as a result of mitigation actions (emissions reductions and carbon dioxide removal). This project will create the first synthesis of overshoot models of permafrost emissions, and calculate how including permafrost emissions impacts global carbon budgets. Using this model synthesis, the team will develop policy-relevant visualizations, conference presentations, and a peer-reviewed manuscript to inform IPCC AR7 and UN assessments of global progress on climate goals.
Forest carbon allocation decoupling under climate extremes: Implications for carbon budgets, forecasting and forest management
Lead: Kathleen Savage
When trees capture carbon from the atmosphere, they can store it aboveground in their trunks and branches, where it can persist for a long time, or belowground in their roots, where it can return to the atmosphere more quickly. Recent studies have shown that under extreme conditions like drought, trees shift to storing more of their carbon in their roots instead of in wood growth. However, current ecosystem models don’t reflect this allocation shift. This project will study long-term forest carbon data from Howland Research Forest in Maine to better understand carbon allocation changes, how they vary across management practices, and their implications for forest management and conservation goals. The team will host a two-day workshop to present their results to forestry managers, conservation organizations, and policymakers. They will also visit Washington, D.C. to deliver insights directly to federal policymakers.
At this summer’s Esri User Conference, the world’s largest geospatial technology conference, Woodwell Climate Research Center scientists Jackie Dean and Heidi Rodenhizer were recognized with top cartography awards for maps illustrating the challenges threatening those on the front lines of climate change and the beauty of a personal cycling journey through Norwegian landscapes. This is the fourth year in a row that Woodwell has won major awards at the Esri conference.
Rising Waters, Sinking Ground: Navigating Climate Threats for Community Relocation, by Jackie Dean, was a finalist for Outstanding Spatial Analysis. Across Alaska, warming temperatures are intensifying climate risks – thawing permafrost, erosion and flooding, catastrophic ground collapse, and increasingly frequent storms – that threaten the safety of Alaska Native communities like Nunapicuaq, forcing them to consider relocation as the only option to protect their villages. The map illustrates the effects of climate change and rapid warming, as well as the factors that influence considerations and efforts to relocate. It was developed in partnership with Nunapicuaq residents Morris Alexie, Woodwell’s Community Engagement Specialist, and Vincent Wassillie, Permafrost Pathways Liaison for Nunapicuaq, to support the community’s chosen site and identify more suitable, higher ground their community could safely and viably move to.
“It is incredibly important to build maps in collaboration with Indigenous communities on the front lines of the climate crisis right now, to share their reality and the intricacies and adversities that they are being faced with,” said Jackie Dean, research assistant at Woodwell Climate Research Center. “Without serious intervention, climate change will only continue to impact people, and thoughtful adaptation and resilience will be increasingly critical for communities across Alaska and the globe.”
Norway By Bicycle, by Heidi Rodenhizer, received the International Cartographic Association and International Mapping Industry Association (ICA-IMIA) Recognition of Excellence in Cartography award, and illustrates the expedition Heidi and her husband undertook once they could travel safely following the global COVID-19 pandemic. The map depicts the path that took them across deep-cut fjords lined with brightly colored houses, through the alpine tundra, over bright green islands, and to the summit of Galdhøpiggen, the highest mountain in Norway.
“The map allowed me to capture the data of three months of adventure on one page as a reminder of the stunning and highly varied landscapes and topography of Norway that both inspired and, at times, impeded our tour,” said Heidi Rodenhizer, research scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center. “Now our trip and days of travel are memorialized visually, in a display that merges Norway’s spectacular scenery with the journey we took, and allows us to revisit and share the experience with others.”
“These maps show the range of impact and narrative work that cartography is able to provide, tracking critical data for scientists solving the problems of climate change and serving as vehicles for storytelling and amplifying important lived experiences,” said Greg Fiske, Director of Geospatial Technology at Woodwell. “We are excited to continue exploring our understanding of geospatial data and sharing these complex stories in an accessible manner.”
The Esri User Conference, held annually in San Diego, hosts over 20,000 geospatial professional attendees and hundreds of maps submitted for the gallery. Woodwell Climate has developed a noteworthy partnership with Esri, the industry leader in mapping software, and has attended the conference for decades. From art exhibits to scientific journal articles, Woodwell prioritizes cartography as a means to transform complex environmental data into clear, accessible visual stories that can reach broad audiences.
To learn more, view Rising Waters, Sinking Ground here and Norway By Bicycle here
Dr. Zhongqi Chen has dedicated his career to understanding how fish handle environmental stress. Now, as a Research Scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, he is bringing his expertise in fish physiology, stream ecology and data sciences to the Science on the Fly project as the new Science Lead. We sat down with Zhongqi to discuss why a two-degree water temperature shift is a game-changer for wild trout, how local water sampling scales up to global conservation, and why the single bottle of water collected by our community scientist is a critical piece of a much bigger puzzle.
Read more on Science on the Fly.
HOWLAND, Maine — Scientist Kathleen Savage leaned out from the basket of a boom lift, a red safety helmet perched on her head.
She sealed a few needle-covered stalks from an Eastern Hemlock tree inside a clear plastic cylinder and pulled out her phone. On the screen, a meter rose and fell as the level of gases inside the cylinder fluctuated. The question she was asking: What were the microscopic bugs on the stalks and leaves doing in there?
But looked at another way, it could also buy the planet critical time as the world races to address the climate crisis.
“These small, microscopic organisms are everywhere,” she said. “When you translate that to an entire forest, they add up and pack a big punch.”
Savage, a senior research scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center in Woods Hole, is part of a team of experts trying to better understand which of these microscopic bugs — or, as they’re technically called, microbes — consume potent methane gas, and whether they could eventually be marshaled as a tool to combat climate change. Methane is among the world’s most potent greenhouse gases, accounting for roughly 30 percent of global warming. Once emitted, it only lasts in the atmosphere for a little over a decade, but in that time, it is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
Read more on Boston Globe.
A recent study provides new evidence of increasing life-threatening heat waves, focusing on the accumulation of dangerous heat that is known to cause severe health impacts. Researchers have developed a new metric – the accumulated dangerous heat index (ADHI) – that includes the combined effects of temperature and humidity to identify summer hours that surpass a dangerous threshold. Hourly exceedances are summed over each day, month, and season across the Northern Hemisphere.
Trends in ADHI are attributed to temperature, humidity, or a combination to better understand the cause of increased life-threatening heat conditions regionally. The researchers found areas historically prone to excessive heat have experienced longer-lasting, more intense, and expanded dangerous conditions, with some regions becoming uninhabitable. They found temperature to be the dominant factor driving increased ADHI during the daytime in most regions, while increasing humidity plays a more important role at night.
“We know that extreme heat causes by far the most fatalities of any type of hazardous weather, and it is crucial that we are able to fully assess and understand its risks,” said the lead author, Dr. Jennifer Francis, Senior Scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center. “Brutal heat waves have already wreaked havoc across the Northern Hemisphere in 2026, even though summer has barely begun. Record-smashing temperatures are blamed for thousands of deaths in Europe, while dangerous heat invaded major eastern cities of the U.S. during celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the nation’s independence.”
“Escalating extreme heat is putting communities, ecosystems, and livelihoods at risk across many areas of the globe,” added co-author Dr. Natasa Skific. “The Accumulated Dangerous Heat Index gives scientists a new and straightforward tool to warn leaders and help them prepare for life-threatening heat events.”
Co-author and MIT Research Scientist Dr. Judah Cohen noted, “As we found in our companion study that focused on severe winter conditions, the warming Arctic also appears to be contributing to the longevity of dangerous heat waves in many areas at lower latitudes.”
The findings in this new study provide further motivation to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases, and the regional trends will assist decision-makers and planners in preparing for a future with a better understanding of the threats from deadly heat.
Find the full paper here.
In 2023, Canada experienced its worst wildfire season to date. Fires raged across all 13 provinces and territories, breaking national records for burned area and carbon emissions.
Fires have a complex impact on both the global and regional climate. While fires contribute to warming through the release of stored carbon from trees and soil, they also create an unexpected cooling effect. Postfire changes to vegetation composition and coverage have an impact on albedo—the amount of sunlight reflected by a surface. The absence of the tree canopy no longer conceals snow, thus reflecting more incoming solar radiation which can cool the local environment.
“If you have a more reflective surface, like ice or snow in particular, it’s going to reflect more of that sunlight back to space, and so it’s going to have a cooling effect compared to if it wasn’t there,” says Rogers. “Because if it wasn’t there, then the darker land or the ocean would have absorbed more of it and heated.”
These changes in albedo have historically partially offset the warming caused by fire-induced emissions; however, climate change is disrupting this balancing effect.
In a newly published paper, co-authored by Woodwell Climate Senior Scientist Dr. Brendan Rogers, researchers found a 29% decrease of the regional climate-cooling impact of boreal wildfires since the 1960s. This represents one aspect of a critical shift in past ecosystem dynamics—not only is climate change responsible for rising global temperatures, but it is also weakening the natural mechanisms that once regulated this rise.
“The consequences of retreating snow cover become especially clear at the scale of individual fires,” says Max van Gerrevink, lead author of the study and postdoctoral researcher at Wageningen University and Research. “Historically, nearly half of all Canadian wildfires reached a natural climatic break-even point, where snow-driven surface cooling fully offset the warming caused by fire-related emissions. Today, that proportion has fallen dramatically, to only about one in four or five fires.”
The study used remote sensing to map the predicted changes in surface albedo over a 70-year postfire period assuming carbon dioxide emissions maintain current levels until 2050, then decrease, eventually reaching net zero by 2100. For Canada’s boreal forests, this means earlier snow disappearance rates, later snow onset and warming temperatures—all of which impact albedo.
When considered alongside a previous study co-authored by Rogers, the decreasing power of the cooling effect is projected to continue even further.
“Compared to pre-climate change, we’re talking about, over the next several decades… a 50% to 60% reduction due to earlier snowmelt,” says Rogers. “It’s important to be aware of this when you’re thinking about ‘What does this mean for the earth system,’ and ‘How might you manage these fires.’”
The implications of this finding are of growing concern, as warmer and drier weather conditions associated with continued climate change are subjecting Canada’s boreal forests to more severe and longer fire seasons. During the 2023 Canadian fire season, an estimated 647 teragrams of carbon were released—a number comparable to the annual fossil fuel emissions of the largest-emitting nations and only exceeded by India, China and the United States.
With more carbon being released annually from worsening fire seasons and a diminishing climate-cooling effect, Canada’s boreal ecosystems are facing an amplified threat from exacerbated warming. As the study found, the subsequent weakening of the climate-cooling impact implies that contemporary boreal fires are, on average, twice as likely to result in a net climate-warming influence.
“Fires both warm through greenhouse gas emissions and cool through changes to land surface albedo,” says Rogers. “The cooling impact is declining, but the carbon impact is not, and it might even be growing because we’re seeing more permafrost emissions after wildfires.”
Rogers stressed the importance of considering albedo and carbon as two parts of a larger equation rather than two factors that act in opposition. This is due to the fact that albedo’s impact is limited to the geographic area where these fluctuations occur and therefore is not as widespread. Furthermore, he emphasized the need for measures that directly target carbon emissions in order to comprehensively address climate change.
“The reality is the spatial footprint from the albedo changes in Canada have very little impact on us down here in the lower 48 or other parts of the globe,” says Rogers. “And I think that’s important, because the carbon impacts are global and do impact us and everyone else on the planet.”
Grazing lands are everywhere. These lands, used to raise domesticated animals like cows and sheep, span over 12 billion acres, comprising nearly 40% of ice-free land on Earth, and represent the largest category of human land use.
Grazing lands are not just working lands, they are also critical grassland, shrubland, and woodland ecosystems that provide important ecological benefits like carbon storage. Poor management practices like overgrazing have resulted in the degradation of these ecosystems. In the United States, over half of rangelands are considered degraded, resulting in the loss of 50 billion tons of carbon that would otherwise be stored in soils. Grassland species are in decline, and the productivity of these lands has dropped, with economic consequences for ranchers.
What is regenerative grazing?
Regenerative grazing is the practice of moving livestock between pastures to allow more time for vegetation to rest and re-grow, and it is often touted as an antidote to degradation. The technique is intended to emulate the movements of wild grazers like bison and elk and can maximize grass growth and help incorporate more plant biomass into the soil, two factors that are key to increasing soil carbon. Regenerative practices can also improve the quality and diversity of food for grazing animals.
Because of its potential, regenerative grazing practices have generated much buzz, particularly in the world of carbon credits. Current proposed grassland management projects on the Verra Registry —the world’s largest public database on carbon credits — estimate that in total they will remove as much as 40 million tons of CO2 per year. Despite these claims, there have been few conclusive scientific studies to verify. Accurate soil carbon estimates are crucial to right-size expectations for producers, policymakers, and financial markets supporting regenerative grazing practices as a potential climate solution, yet this lack of conclusive evidence leads to the need for more rigorous analysis.
Why is it so hard to study rangeland carbon?
An ideal study of the carbon storage potential of regenerative practices requires before and after measurements on comparable fields using both conventional and regenerative techniques. This is hard to do for a couple of reasons.
First, rangelands are complex systems with many different factors, including soil type, vegetation and land use history, playing into how much carbon gets locked away in soils. Second, the grazing practice changes are individually tailored to work with each ranchers’ operation, adding complexity. Third, expected changes in soil carbon are small relative to the large and variable background carbon stocks in rangelands, often leaving scientists looking for a needle in a haystack.
A review assessing the quality of existing evidence, led by Woodwell Climate researchers, found 70 papers that attempted to answer this question. Of those 70 papers, only 10 were found to make scientifically robust comparisons of soil carbon between conventionally and regeneratively managed sites. These 10 studies showed an average result of no change in carbon. Most of these 10 studies used small experimental plots that allow researchers to control for confounding effects, but can simplify the system past the point of recognition for a rancher. Two studies even used lawn mowers instead of grazing animals, raising questions about the applicability of these findings to real, working ranches.
A large subset of the 70 studies compared soil carbon levels at ranches already under regenerative management with nearby conventionally grazed ranches. These studies suggest that on average regenerative grazing can sequester 0.7 tons of CO2 per acre per year more than conventional grazing. However, this approach makes the assumption that the present-day soil carbon level on a conventionally grazed site is equivalent to the baseline level of the regenerative site prior to change. This assumption requires careful pairing of vegetation, soil type, climate and land-use history that was not documented in most of the studies.
The variable quality of existing studies leaves us no closer to understanding the benefits of regenerative grazing, and scientific study is still needed.
Woodwell’s rangeland carbon projects are working to fill the data gap
The flurry of attention on regenerative management practices means funding and executing long-term studies that can generate high-quality data is an urgent priority. Projects on the Verra Registry are claiming to sequester more than twice as much carbon as the Woodwell analysis was able to estimate based on existing data. Left unverified, this could result in greenwashing ranching operations and carbon credit programs.
Woodwell researchers are actively exploring ways to fill this knowledge gap. Soil spectroscopy, a method that measures the interaction between light beams and soil particles to determine their chemical composition, offers a lower cost option for analyzing a large amount of soil samples to determine carbon content. Easier and cheaper soil analysis options will facilitate future research into the benefits of various land management practices, with applications for farms, ranches and other landscapes.
Woodwell scientists have also developed RangeSTAR, a system for tracking changes in plant productivity and soil carbon at a land management scale with a high level of detail. RangeSTAR combines computer simulations with remote-sensing data and field measurements of rangeland-health indicators. As the project progresses, researchers hope to get a clearer picture of the role rangelands can play in combating the climate crisis.
In a new joint “Feeding Resilience” report, the Center for Climate and Security, an institute of the Council on Strategic Risks, along with the Woodwell Climate Research Center, shows that climate change is sharply increasing the risk of crop failures in global breadbaskets, which would pose serious threats to Europe, the NATO alliance, and global stability, at a moment of multiple geopolitical shocks. In India and Europe, for example, climate change in the next decade and a half is set to increase the chance of key crops failing by between two- and six-fold. This rising risk comes as the world is already facing severe food shocks due to the wars in Iran and Ukraine, and is entering into a potentially unprecedented El Niño season. The report offers a range of policy recommendations to address this major risk.
The report, Global Breadbaskets: Food System Resilience as a Strategic Imperative, draws on a range of global crop models to assess the growing risk of climate-driven agricultural failures in ”key producers of wheat, maize, and rice” like Europe and India, and examines the cascading geopolitical consequences of a world in which multiple breadbaskets fail at once.
The lead author on the report, Tom Ellison, Deputy Director of the Center for Climate and Security, stated: “We have plenty of examples of how crop failures can contribute to political instability, from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring. In today’s environment, global breadbasket failures could strain NATO priorities, prompt unrest in key countries, and upend trade relationships. Amid climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, food shocks from the war in Iran, and Russian hybrid warfare, investing in a resilient food system isn’t in competition with security–it’s a key part of it.”
Co-author of the report, Noah Fritzhand, Research Fellow at the Center for Climate and Security, added: “With the implementation of NATO’s updated baseline resilience requirements come July and adoption of the EU’s new integrated framework for climate resilience later in 2026, member countries have an opportunity to prioritize investments in resilient food systems, at home and abroad, that can both limit exposure to climate risks and meet Europe’s strategic goals.”
Dr. Alexandra Naegele, co-author of the report and Research Scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, noted: “Climate change doesn’t just threaten crop yields and grain quality—it destabilizes entire food systems, from labor and livestock to food storage and transport. These impacts are colliding with a powerful El Niño taking shape, which is expected to weaken the monsoon, trigger heatwaves, and reduce rainfall across India. Quantifying these climate-driven risks is an essential step toward building resilient food systems and safeguarding global food security.”
Co-author of the report, Monica Caparas, Research Scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, concluded: “The consequences of a breadbasket failure extend far beyond the region where it occurs. As globally important food-producing regions face growing risks of climate-driven disruption, the effects can ripple through livelihoods, supply chains, food assistance systems, and geopolitical relationships. Understanding and preparing for breadbasket failures is both a national security priority and a humanitarian imperative—one that can help protect lives, reduce instability, and strengthen food resilience before a regional shock becomes a wider crisis.”
