Environment

Chernobyl Damage Doesn't Just Keep Plants From Growing, It Keeps Them From Decomposing

Radiological damage at Chernobyl doesn't just keep plant life from growing, it even keeps plant life from decomposing. A paper in the journal Oecologia finds that   microbes near the site of the Chernobyl disaster has slowed the decomposition of fall ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 19 2014 - 12:43pm

Cover Crops Are Even More Valuable To Farmers And The Environment Than Believed

A team of agronomists, entomologists, agroecologists, horticulturists and biogeochemists have determined that planting cover crops in rotation between cash crops- widely agreed to be ecologically beneficial- is even more valuable than previously thought.  ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 19 2014 - 12:27pm

The Upside To Thawing Permafrost Is...Nothing, It's Bad

Every dark cloud has a silver lining and the silver lining for a thawing permafrost is...still a dark cloud. The climate is warming in the Arctic at twice the rate of the rest of the globe. That has led to a longer growing season and increased plant growt ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 21 2014 - 8:30pm

Vegetarian Advocates Say You Must Give Up Meat If You Care About Global Warming

Greenhouse gas emissions from food production may threaten the UN climate target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, according to a paper from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. What is the data? No data needed. ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 30 2014 - 4:51pm

Photosynthetic Activity Shows High Productivity Of US Corn Belt

American farmers lead the world in productivity coupled with environmental responsibility, producing far more food on far less land than was even imagined decades ago. If the world had America's efficiency in agricultural dematerialization, an area t ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 7 2014 - 3:30am

Urban Gardeners Could Be Doing More Health Harm Than Good

Consuming foods grown in urban gardens has become a big fad, and those foods might even offer health benefits, unless a lack of knowledge about the soil used for planting poses a health threat to both consumers and gardeners.  A new paper the Johns Hopkin ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 31 2014 - 2:58pm

How To Take Millions Of Tons Of Pesticides Out Of Our Environment

When Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" was taking the country by storm 50 years ago, it was a puzzle to scientists and farmers who did not see the cultural future looming in front of them. Scientists dismissed it as anecdotal evidence while fa ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Apr 1 2014 - 1:58pm

Environmental Groups Claim NASA Is Reneging On The Santa Susana Field Lab Cleanup Agreement

Five environmental groups are alleging that NASA could be about to break the commitments it made in a 2010 agreement to clean up all the detectable contamination at its former Santa Susana Field Lab (SSFL) rocket testing site in the Simi Hills of Californi ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 2 2014 - 1:35am

Can You Put A Price On Ecological Restoration?

Can you put a price on ecological restoration? Of course you can. In fact, you must, or the discourse will be taken over by activists for whom price is no object. In the real world, an evidence-based price on clean water and soil fertility helps the United ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 7 2014 - 6:42pm

The Mercury Threat To Antarctic Birds

Scientists who monitored skuas in Adélie Land and the Kerguelen Islands for ten years have found when these seabirds exhibit high mercury levels in their blood, their breeding success decreases.  The researchers from the Centre d'Etudes Biologiques de ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 11 2014 - 9:12pm