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Most of the world’s population lives in cities. As urban populations grow and climate change impacts become more severe, we need to rethink how cities look and function, with sustainability goals in mind. Two urban issues that are worsening with climate change are extreme heat and flooding. Insufficient access to green spaces is another issue facing many urban residents.

The promotion of green infrastructure (GI) as a tool for creating resilient and sustainable communities occurs across all levels of government. At the city level, emphasis on health and well-being, equity, and other positive ecosystem services are often used as justification for GI planning and implementation

I started my bachelor’s in animal science thinking I wanted to become a vet. I loved wildlife and thought that would be the best way to pursue my interest in animals.

Forests influence climate and sustain life globally. Trees sequester carbon emissions that cause climate warming, support much of the planet’s biodiversity, and provide essential services such as fuel, food, and clean water and air. Due to climate change, increasing disturbances, and deforestation, many forests are threatened. Winslow Hansen works to understand where and why forests are at risk, and how we can avoid catastrophic losses.

I can think of no subject related to the environment that garners more heated debate than the suggestion that we should curb human population growth.

Cary Institute had an unusual visitor last fall when a moose (Alces alces) was spotted on our 2,000-acre Millbrook campus. Trail cameras on our grounds snapped images of the adult female moose during October and early November before she moved off to whereabouts unknown.

A project using the SMAP satellite, called ‘SMAPVEX19-21’, found that the satellite’s sensors are able to ‘look’ through leaves to detect soil moisture in temperate forests.

Birds play an underrecognized role in spreading tickborne disease due to their capacity for long-distance travel and tendency to split their time in different parts of the world – patterns that are shifting due to climate change.

Cary Institute is pleased to announce that the Campaign for Cary has raised more than $1 million towards its $2 million goal to support the reimagining of the Institute’s headquarters. We want to thank our Trustees, the Campaign for Cary steering committee, and our donors for helping us reach this milestone. 

Take a virtual trip to Central and South America and discover why healthy tropical forests are our climate allies, how tree species diversity regulates forest regrowth following disturbance, and science-based recipes for reforestation success.

A long-standing belief is that buses and railroads use less energy for personal transport than passenger cars and airplanes. Several patterns emerge from a new analysis of data by Andreas Schafer and Sonia Yeh. Here, we define Energy Intensity as Energy Use (E) divided by Passenger-Miles Traveled (PKT), which is a good expression of what personal transport is all about.

A few years ago, in her wonderful book, The Seed Underground, Janisse Ray described the genetic homogenization of food crops. Three species (wheat, corn and rice) account for 87 percent of all grain production worldwide, and in the United States, nine species of wheat constitute half of that grown. 

In the past 120 years, voracious insects and fungi have swept across North America with frightening regularity, laying low the chestnut, the elm, the hemlock and, most recently, the ash.

For years, doctors have used an analysis of urine, including its color, to help recognize and diagnose certain diseases in humans. Similarly, ecosystem scientists can recognize subtle changes in ecosystems by shifts in the chemical composition and the color of rivers draining them.

In these months after our withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. citizens may feel remote from foreign wars. But we should be far from sanguine.

[Discussion] The role of carbon offsets has become an existential issue: offsets need to be real, and durable, if they are actually to play a role in reaching net-zero. But recent research shows that this may be hard to achieve.

Hydropower is the dominant source of energy in the Amazon region, the world’s largest river basin and a hotspot for future hydropower development. However, a new Global Environmental Change study warns that in the coming decades, climate change-driven reductions in precipitation and river discharge will diminish the Amazon’s hydropower capacity.

Individual variation in infectiousness is generated by heterogeneities in the host, the pathogen, and the environment. However, many models of disease transmission, especially those designed for wildlife and livestock populations, do not typically allow for such variation in individual infectiousness.

Research topics explored include: stakeholder engagement in stream management and stewardship, and using remote sensing to monitor hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive forest pest.