Fiona Martin

@vizscience.bsky.social

408 Followers 161 Following

Distilling complex concepts into beautiful visuals 📰 Graphic Artist & Science Illustrator at The Seattle Times 🎨 Founder of Visualizing Science 🌎 Climatebase Fellow 🏆 Pulitzer Finalist https://www.visualizingscience.com

Print version of graphic. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into sugars, using the food to grow. This process, called photosynthesis, allows plants to make their own food, storing the carbon in their tissues as they grow roots, branches and leaves. In this way, trees help fight climate change by absorbing and storing carbon pollution that is heating the planet. Big trees store the most carbon because of their mass, and long-lived species such as Douglas fir and red cedar can lock carbon away for centuries. Trees absorb carbon dioxide gas through openings in leaves or needles called stomata. Chloroplasts within leaves and needles use the energy of the sun to split water molecules drawn up through tree roots into hydrogen and oxygen, released through their stomata. Trees and other green plants create the air we breathe, and shelter and nourish life as we know it.

View of the water from second car deck on the Walla Walla

Refined sketch with attention given to proportions and details, as well as the overall composition.

Bull kelp off Burrows Island, WA

Infographic explaining how chocolate products can get contaminated with cadmium (mostly from soils) and lead (mostly dust polluted from lead gasoline or lead paint). This happens more often in poorer countries where farmers are not paid a living wage 🙁 That said there are safer brands out there. Originally published in Seattle Times February 2023.