NEWS

November 10, 2023
Noah Planavsky, a prominent figure in geochemistry and a faculty member at the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture, was recently highlighted by Nature as one of four young researchers worldwide making a significant impact in the sciences. Planavsky's research focuses on innovative techniques to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, addressing the climate crisis by leveraging Earth's natural processes. His work involves studying how atmospheric CO2 is absorbed and stored by natural systems, such as plants, rocks, and sediments, and exploring ways to enhance these processes for large-scale carbon removal.

April 5, 2023

The title of Isabella’s proposal was: Basalt Soil Amendments in Agricultural Corn: Effects on Nitrous Oxide and Phosphate Cycling.

Congratulations Isabella!

February 23, 2023

The rise of marine animals hundreds of millions of years ago had far-reaching implications for the eventual diversity of life on Earth. It also permanently changed the way the oceans store carbon.

In a new study published in the journal Nature, researchers found that at the same time the world’s oceans began to fill with animals with carbonate shells and skeletons, a major shift occurred in how carbonates formed in seawater. Suddenly — and permanently — the oceans were less readily able to precipitate carbonate minerals, or limestone.

The formation of carbonate minerals from dissolved chemicals in seawater allows, over millions of years, for the near-permanent storage of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

February 14, 2022

Deeper understanding of Earth’s atmosphere could help us identify signs of life beyond our solar system.

When did the Earth reach oxygen levels sufficient to support animal life? Researchers from McGill University have discovered that a rise in oxygen levels occurred in step with the evolution and expansion of complex, eukaryotic ecosystems. Their findings represent the strongest evidence to date that extremely low oxygen levels exerted an important limitation on evolution for billions of years.

February 8, 2022

How can we control carbon dioxide levels and slow climate change? The first step is understanding how CO2 has been absorbed and released in the earth’s soil and oceans over millions of years. Yale geochemist Noah Planavsky and his lab are leading new efforts to understand the history — and future — of CO2 with major implications for our environment.

September 28, 2021

A study from Yale and Georgia Tech offers new context for a pivotal step in the evolution of life on Earth: the dramatic proliferation of animal life, hundreds of millions of years ago, in the ancient sea.

The prevailing scientific theory has been that ancient waters were filled with nutrient-rich particulate matter, giving the oceans a soup-like consistency. In that scenario, early animal life — living on the seafloor and shaped like fronds, leaves, and bushes — could feed and thrive without moving.

June 29, 2021

Diatoms — tiny phytoplankton that are responsible for a fifth of all energy converted into matter by plants — may have become important much earlier in the development of Earth’s ocean ecosystems and carbon cycle than previously thought, according to a new Yale study.

June 21, 2021

Showcasing America’s most promising young scientists and engineers, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences today named 31 finalists for the world’s largest unrestricted prize honoring early-career scientists and engineers.

Three winners of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists – in life sciences, chemistry, and physical sciences and engineering ­– will be announced on July 20, each receiving $250,000 as a Blavatnik National Awards Laureate.

June 7, 2021

The ancient burrowers of the seafloor have been getting a bum rap for years.

These prehistoric dirt churners — a wide assortment of worms, trilobites, and other animals that lived in Earth’s oceans hundreds of millions of years ago — are thought to have played a key role in creating the conditions needed for marine life to flourish. Their activities altered the chemical makeup of the sea itself and the amount of oxygen in the oceans, in a process called bioturbation.

But did that bioturbation help or hinder the expansion of complex animal life? A new Yale study, published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, found that seabed burrowers were very helpful indeed.

January 7, 2021

Noah Planavsky and colleagues provide a new look at how the structure of biosphere on Earth has changed over Earth’s history and how these changes have reshaped Earth’s surface environments.