By Susan Milius
Invisible freeways of wind may account for the similarity of plant species on islands that lie thousands of kilometers apart, according to a novel study of satellite data.
NASA’s QuikSCAT satellite, launched in 1999, offered the first big picture of winds over oceans, explains Jesús Muñoz of Real Botanic Garden in Madrid. He and his colleagues checked QuikSCAT’s data against records of mosses and other nonflowering plants that grow in 27 spots in the far reaches of the Southern Hemisphere.