(This post was updated on April 19, 2016.)
Ecologist Natalie Boelman is headed back to the far north to study birds—this time to the town of Slave Lake, in northern Alberta, Canada, to track the migration of American robins. She will have some schoolchildren in New York remotely helping her as she and her colleagues get to work.
Migrating birds and other animals and plants are feeling the effects of warming climate, particularly in North America’s arctic tundra and boreal forests, where the climate is changing faster than the global average. A consortium of U.S. and Canadian researchers is starting a 10-year campaign to study tundra and boreal ecosystems under climate change. Among other things, they are putting satellite trackers on animals including eagles, caribou, wolves and bears, to observe their behavior in relation to fires, insect outbreaks, snow cover and other factors.