Researchers prove past cooling trend caused by move from forests to agriculture
... due to the replacement of dark forests by lighter farms growing wheat, corn, etc.," said Caldeira, a climate model researcher who also is co-director for the Department of Energys Center for Research on ocean carbon sequestration. "This is an example of inadvertent geoengineering -- we changed the reflec...Antibiotic-resistant genes traced from farms to groundwater
...and in commercial feed. The use of tetracycline on farms is pushing the evolution of these genes, he said. ... of these genes in the environment surrounding the farms were consistent with the hypothesis that this occurrence was the result of gene flow from the animal......nd biodiversity are inextricably linked. In fact, farms and nature reserves are actually sharing common ground in many countries where species are most at risk. To avert widespread extinctions and feed the world, we must integrate biodiversity preservation into all landscapesfrom grazing lands to coffee ...Nonprofits, corporations can collaborate to improve environmental management
...fee to use a new shade-grown coffee harvested from farms using agricultural methods that help protect tropical forests. The goal of these and similar collaborative efforts is to promote environmentally sustainable development that allows people and organizations to pursue their current needs without compro...ORNL heads effort to build better supercomputer centers
...ard smaller systems aimed at Web serving, database farms and departmental-sized systems." The vision and goal of the center are to bring together a team of experts who, with industry involvement, can agree on and specify standardized interfaces between system components. Another goal is to produce a fully ...Terrorist threats to agriculture studied
...ued a report last January noting that the nation's farms and ranches are highly vulnerable. He said Texas A&M has been "heavily involved in counter-terrorism research" for at least 20 years. He cited, for example, Wild's mid-1980s development of an enzyme to inactivate chemical warfare agents. But, he sa...Virginia Tech leads global effort to sort out social, economic impacts of agricultural biotechnology
...globe, and it might help maintain the viability of farms producing the crops. "We say might benefit because no one really has studied in detail who is likely to benefit and who is likely to lose," Norton says. He says the research is expected to generate information for policy-makers as well as the general...University of Pennsylvania announces largest-ever U.S. purchase of wind energy
...e 75 percent of what the combined 24-megawatt wind farms will produce annually. Penn alone will purchase the output of five of the 215-foot-tall, 1.5-megawatt wind turbines, equivalent to more than 30 percent of the total energy generated from the two new wind farms. This purchase represents the largest...Impact of genetically engineered fish subject of U of Minnesota study
...tilapia, large numbers of which are raised in fish farms in the United States and around the world. According to ISEES Director Anne Kapuscinski, a professor of fisheries and conservation biology and principal investigator for the grant, the Thai government has discouraged several requests to introduce su...Ecosystems slowed 1990s greenhouse gas buildup
...r the air of CO2buildup. "Forests can only replace farms for so long," explains Schimel."Eventually new trees and grasses reach maturity and soak up lesscarbon dioxide. Similarly, there's a limit to how much forests canfill in and spread, even with successful fire suppression." The boostin CO2 and nitrogen...Studying plant adaptation to arctic helps understand the 'steps of wisdom of life'
... creation of living space. At the same time, many farms are being abandoned and vegetation and trees are re-growing, but they are deforesting faster than the land is replenishing. I predict that carbon dioxide will go closer to its original high," Scheckler said. Plants, animals, and Earth events creat...Outside-in conservation: What's around an area
...7). They also found thatwhile ant diversity on the farms decreased with distance from the forestfragment, t... low and many small producers areconverting coffee farms to cattle pasture, subsistence crops or evencoca, says Perfecto. One way to reverse this trend would...Poorer farmers benefit most from organic practices
...In Madhya Pradesh, India, average cotton yields on farms participating in the Maikaal Bio-Cotton Project are 20 per cent higher than on neighbouring conventional farms. * In Madagascar, SRI (System of Rice Intensification) has increased yields from the usual 2-3 tons per hectare to yields of 6,8 or 10 tons......lia and CSIRO to survey the flora and fauna on the farms and along the roadsides of this fertile farming region. The result of the survey is a checklist of biodiversity that amazed landholders and scientists. Over 100 bird species were recorded, as well as 145 different types of ants, over 250 species of n...Corals are being robbed of light
...fertiliser run-off into the ocean, from sugar-cane farms in Jamaica, for instance, is encouraging algal blooms. "The transparency has changed significantly in the past 10 or 20 years, so that the amount of light reaching the reef corals in some areas is really too low to sustain dynamic growth," says Yent...Report supports sustainable food production
...ance disease in humans. Animal crowding in factory farms and high-speed processing of food animals have been blamed for an increased incidence of foodborne diseases. The authors say the environmental impacts of industrial agriculture are many and far-reaching. For example, heavy farm machinery degrades soi...Changes in agricultural practices help clean up Lake Erie
CLEVELANDChanges in agricultural practices on farms around the Lake Erie basin have reduced the amount of pollutants in runoff into rivers that feed the lake, according to a landmark study by Case Western Reserve University geologists. Examining the water quality of the Maumee and Sandusky rivers, Pe...New program helps protect Asian elephants through crop-raiding prevention
...nd smaller forest blocks increasingly venture into farms for food. The results have been disastrous for both: farmers lose their crops and sometimes their lives, and elephants are either killed or captured and confined to "training centers." The initiative, already successfully implemented in Sri Lanka a...Hatchery salmon may threaten wild populations
...such as Norway, where salmon that escape from fish farms comprise more than half of the wild populations in some areas....Invading species have harder time cracking diverse plant communities
...c species have bedeviled ecosystems from lawns and farms to prairies and oceans. Recent invaders of North America include zebra mussels, purple loosestrife and Eurasian watermilfoil. In 1958 British ecologist Charles Elton hypothesized that communities with diverse arrays of organisms were better equipped ...