It’s time to ask a new, but related, question about trees and memory: What do humans remember about trees? Team leader Dr. Kiona Ogle shares about her home landscape, both what she remembers and what she predicts for the future of her corner of the Southwest. Then, she shares a sampling of what the team has learned so far in their research on legacy effects. You’ll hear how climate change has hampered this team’s research on exactly that topic.

What does research on tree memory have to do with humans? In episode four, we answer this question by discussing the carbon cycle and how both trees and humans fit into it. Carbon is a key building block of both trees and humans—it’s also in our food, clothing, and energy systems, and it touches all of human society. We talk about trees’ role in humanity’s future as we rearrange Earth’s carbon, and we talk about what tree memory has to do with it all.

How can scientists measure drought impacts? How do they know what’s truly an effect of drought vs. what would have happened anyway in a forest? In episode three of Season Two: Trees Remember, we meet two scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who combine satellite data with computing to discover the math behind forest behavior. They’re figuring out how drought affects a forest's ability to grow—to store carbon—not just during a drought, but years later.