Christopher Joyce
Christopher Joyce is a correspondent on the science desk at NPR. His stories can be heard on all of NPR's news programs, including NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.
Joyce seeks out stories in some of the world's most inaccessible places. He has reported from remote villages in the Amazon and Central American rainforests, Tibetan outposts in the mountains of western China, and the bottom of an abandoned copper mine in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Over the course of his career, Joyce has written stories about volcanoes, hurricanes, human evolution, tagging giant blue-fin tuna, climate change, wars in Kosovo and Iraq, and the artificial insemination of an African elephant.
For several years, Joyce was an editor and correspondent for NPR's Radio Expeditions, a documentary program on natural history and disappearing cultures produced in collaboration with the National Geographic Society that was heard frequently on Morning Edition.
Joyce came to NPR in 1993 as a part-time editor while finishing a book about tropical rainforests and, as he says, "I just fell in love with radio." For two years, Joyce worked on NPR's national desk and was responsible for NPR's Western coverage. But his interest in science and technology soon launched him into parallel work on NPR's science desk.
In addition, Joyce has written two non-fiction books on scientific topics for the popular market: Witnesses from the Grave: The Stories Bones Tell (with co-author Eric Stover); and Earthly Goods: Medicine-Hunting in the Rainforest.
Before coming to NPR, Joyce worked for ten years as the U.S. correspondent and editor for the British weekly magazine New Scientist.
Joyce's stories on forensic investigations into the massacres in Kosovo and Bosnia were part of NPR's war coverage that won a 1999 Overseas Press Club award. He was part of the Radio Expeditions reporting and editing team that won the 2001 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University journalism award and the 2001 Sigma Delta Chi award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Joyce won the 2001 American Association for the Advancement of Science excellence in journalism award as well as the 2016 Communication Award from the National Academies of Sciences.
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Many forests in the American West have evolved with fire, and actually benefit from the occasional wildfire. But researchers are finding that trees that once would survive and thrive with small fires are now losing their ability to do so. -
A fossilized tyrannosaur tooth found lodged between bones in a hadrosaur's tail is giving paleobiologists pretty firm clues about the tyrant king's meal plan. And Hollywood may have been right all along — T. Rex definitely knew how to kill. -
Pumping industrial wastewater into storage wells deep underground can prime nearby faults for an earthquake. And studies show that a large quake — even one on the other side of the planet — can also push faults over the edge and set off a swarm of mini-earthquakes. -
In Montana's Centennial Valley, conservationists made a grievous mistake while trying to save the trumpeter swan — they nearly wiped out Arctic grayling. Now they're looking for ways to make sure both species get a place on the ark. -
The chicken-size sage grouse is as much a part of America's Western range as antelopes and cowboys. The birds nest beneath sagebrush, and as it disappears, so do the grouse. Biologists hope to protect the bird without starting a 21st century range war. -
Sky-high prices for elephant ivory and rhino horn have pushed wildlife poaching to a fever pitch. So in attempt to outfox the sophisticated poaching operations, conservationists and government rangers are teaming up to launch small, camera-carrying drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles, above southwest Africa. -
An international team of doctors is helping Syrian health workers recognize the signs of a chemical attack. They're also teaching them how to collect and preserve tissues as potential evidence if war crimes charges are brought. -
Reducing carbon dioxide emissions is tough if you don't know exactly where those gases are coming from. Scientists at Arizona State University have invented a new way to pinpoint those sources — down to individual buildings and highways. -
Just how do trees die? It seems like a simple question, but the answer still eludes scientists. And understanding forest ecology is increasingly important as the effects of climate change begin to take root. -
Millions of acres of forest in the Southwest are overgrown — and ripe to ignite as climate change intensifies drought and heat. Selective thinning and other efforts aim to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires, but those efforts may not be enough to overcome ever-bigger, ever-hotter fires.
