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May is a good time to look for sunfish nests. Sunfish build saucer-shaped nests (see the photo below) a foot or two across in the shallows of lakes, ponds, and rivers. Anxious males hover above the nests, guarding the eggs and hatchlings, chasing away intruders. Because the nests often are in very shallow water (sometimes almost on the shore), they’re easy to see and watch.

Given pending large scale investments in infrastructure systems around the country, how can we ensure that green infrastructure projects benefit all urban residents? This question guided two new projects: a nationwide analysis of green infrastructure plans and the development of a green infrastructure governance toolkit.

Dr. Zbigniew J. Grabowski shares results from a recent review of over 120 GI plans from 20 US cities evaluating their definitions of equity, procedural equity, and strategies to influence distributional equity.

In many developed countries with wastewater that is treated in sewage treatment plants, a significant fraction of the nutrient content is now captured in biosolids.  Initially, these were landfilled, but increasingly the biosolids are returned to agricultural lands as fertilizer. In the U.S., 55% of biosolids are returned to fields; 30% are landfilled and 15% are burned.

As snowstorms sweep the East Coast of the United States this week, transportation officials have deployed a go-to solution for keeping winter roads clear: salt.

Scientists led by community ecologist Jane Lucas examined the combined effects of a common cattle antibiotic and rising heat levels on microbes in the soil. They observed that these factors degrade soil microbe efficiency while also reducing soil’s resilience to future stress and capacity to trap carbon.

Bursting with life, the Amazon provides us with a wealth of resources. But for each of its potential riches a potential threat is lurking beneath the canopy. Increasing deforestation allows what is hidden within to find a way out, and with it the possibility for wildlife to spread deadly pathogens.

Many folks feel good when they take waste materials to their local recycling center.  What they may not realize is that what they deliver—paper, cardboard, glass, plastic bottles, and cans—are not materials that are in short supply.

U.S. citizens recycle more than 60% of all beverage cans each year, and each can saves 94% of the energy that would be used to make aluminum from new ore. Each can that is recycled saves 2.1 megajoules (MJ) of energy (a megajoule is roughly the energy contained in one fluid ounce of gasoline).

Green infrastructure (GI) has become an important sustainability and resilience strategy for US cities. As green infrastructure programs proliferate, how can we ensure that investments benefit all urban residents while addressing persistent environmental and social injustices?

Discover Governing Green, an experiential toolkit that immerses users in three true-to-life green infrastructure journeys.

Cary's Steward Pickett has received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology. He is described by the awards committee as a leading figure in the development of urban ecology: “He has been a pioneer in the important work of integrating humans as components of ecosystems into ecological theory,” the citation affirms, “linking ecology and urban design, and bringing ethical and philosophical perspectives into the study of human-dominated ecosystems.”

This talk examines key urbanization trends and their implications for sustainability, including impacts on climate change, croplands, and biodiversity

A closer look in winter shows that nature is very much alive, even in February’s coldest days. To begin with, a lot of what seems to be dead is just sleeping. Many plants and animals go dormant in the fall, only to awaken when temperatures rise or days lengthen with the arrival of spring.

Dense human settlements are typically situated in areas with wetland ecosystems, due to the types of benefits, or ecosystem services, wetlands, and aquatic systems provide. The explosion in urban growth in the 20th century has, however, driven tremendous wetland loss, as humans have drained, filled, and buried wetland areas to make them suitable for human occupation and use.

This webinar explores the history of deer in the Catskills, how deer influence the composition and health of our regional forests, and strategies to mitigate deer impacts.

Rapid hydroelectric dam expansion in the Amazon poses a serious threat to Earth’s largest and most biodiverse river basin. There are 158 dams in the Amazon River basin, with another 351 proposed; these projects are typically assessed individually, with little coordinated planning.

Forests play a critical role in cycling water, housing biodiversity, and sequestering anthropogenic CO2. Nutrients are major limiting factors for plant and forest productivity, but it is unclear to what extent plants are able to overcome nutrient limitation and continue to absorb CO2 at current rates.

Barbara Han, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, knew it was a question of when, not if, the coronavirus would spread to animals. As the first reports of infected animals appeared in 2020, she began working on an artificial intelligence model that would predict which creatures might be next.

To work towards more sustainable, liveable cities, it is important to understand where there are opportunities to manage cities for increased biodiversity and ecosystem service provision – requiring an understanding of urban areas as spatially heterogeneous and temporally dynamic ecosystems.