The NAU Review — Recapping the University Convocation, an inside look at the diamond industry, space research and why we should be concerned for future rainforests

In the annual University Convocation, President Cruz Rivera reflected on NAU’s long history of championing student access and success, welcomed new faculty to campus, shared highlights from last year and set some big goals for the future, anchored by a bold challenge to structure and prioritize work across the university to improve retention, persistence and graduation to facilitate students’ academic momentum. Students should also keep an eye on the course catalog for the spring—Cruz Rivera announced that he’d be teaching a class.

A new study, which combines satellite thermal and in situ warming experiment data from across the world’s tropical forests, looks at the variation of leaf temperatures within forest canopies. The data collected by Christopher Doughty and his team revealed that a small percentage of tropical leaves are already reaching, and occasionally exceeding, the temperatures at which they can no longer function—suggesting that as climate change continues, entire canopies could die, eliminating a key regulator of Earth’s climate and putting the world’s biodiversity at risk.