Climate Change

Saving the Earth’s Sunscreen: The Ozone Layer

In honor of September 16th, otherwise known as World Ozone Day, let's spend some time talking about ozone in Earth's atmosphere! You may be wondering why ozone is significant enough to have its own designated day of acknowledgement. To answer this question we need to dive into a little bit of history involving early measurements

A Bad Year for Bugs – The Importance of Cold Winters for Insect Control

“It's going to be a bad year for bugs.” Last month, I was frequently reminded of this expression as a seemingly endless supply of caterpillars feasted happily on the sunflowers from our most recent study. We were in a month-long, losing battle against these numerous and voracious critters! For the past year and a half,

Read Between the Layers

The world's greatest library lies centimeters below the surface of the Earth. We would know the planet's best-kept secrets if we could understand the text in which its stories are written. PhD Candidate, Danielle Haskett, has dedicated the last six years learning to interpret this earthly code, written in the form of fossilized bug heads.

Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree – How Threatened Are Thy Branches

‘Tis the season for one of my favorite holiday traditions: selecting and decorating a Christmas tree. This annual holiday festivity became popular and widely adopted worldwide in the late 18th century as people started displaying ornately decorated evergreen conifer species (i.e. pines, spruces, firs) in their homes. Although the Christmas tree tradition now includes fake

Shake a Leg! Or a Branch…The Movement of Trees Under Climate Change

Florida torreya's (Torreya taxifolia) current habitats are threatened by climate change. The Torreya Guardians, a self-organized group of scientists and informed citizens, took it upon themselves in 2008 to move this tree species to new, suitable habitats north of its native range. This was the first assisted migration of an endangered species in the United

The World's Largest Lake is at Stake

Why is the world's largest body of freshwater (by volume), Lake Baikal, currently in danger and why does it matter so much? It is known for its unmatched biodiversity and happens to hold 20% of the world's freshwater. This impressive combination certainly makes it worthy of global attention. To better understand what's at stake, let's

Food Waste in the 21st Century

In 2012, food waste was the most abundant kind of waste produced in America (see chart below), beating even plastic and paper. This has led the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to choose food recovery as their theme for this year's Earth Week. Food waste affects multiple areas of the environment.  Wasting food means wasting our

What's the cost? Predicting the consequences of climate change

If you're wondering whether Earth's temperatures are rising, or whether people are responsible for global warming, then check out Hilde’s previous posts on climate change. Would global warming be really all that bad? We associate wintertime weather with unpleasantries like halting the agricultural growing season, overflowing of homeless shelters, and imperiling drivers. What will happen if

“Green” Pesticides: Can Fungi Fix Agriculture?

Farmers today face a number of challenges, old and new. Global climate change is exacerbating harsh growing conditions, invasive species are devastating crops, and consumer demands are shifting toward sustainable farming practices. Farmers also have to balance the increasing cost of fertilizers and pesticides with a need for high crop yield. An estimated 877 million

Burning down the house: Are humans causing climate change?

This is the second part of a three-part series on climate change. For information concerning whether or not the climate is changing, see part one. Part three will deal with the consequences we face from climate change. We can agree that the global climate is actually warming, so who or what do we have to blame

Why do we believe that the Earth is warming?

This is the first of a three-part series on common questions about climate change: This first article will address the question of whether the climate really changing. Subsequent articles will look more closely at human's role in climate change and the effects can we expect from climate change. It's no secret that there's a crisis

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