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It has been of great interest among plant geneticists to develop crop plants that avoid photorespiration. In theory food production might rise by about 30% from the same area of land now used for agriculture.

Agriculture accounts for about 8% of our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, so it is with some enthusiasm that I would embrace efforts by agronomists to reduce these forms of pollution.

Currently there are about 75,000,000 pigs in the United States. They generate a lot of poop, for which disposal is an ongoing problem in need of good solutions.

Projects like living roofs, green spaces, bioswales, and street trees are often assumed to be good for all urban neighborhoods and residents. But are the burdens and benefits equitable across urban areas?

In the annals of invasive species, humans would surely rank among the best. Rabbits, Red deer, rats and feral cats offer no match to the worldwide impact of the human species and its ability to colonize new habitat.

The southwestern deserts are criss-crossed by linear structures.  Some were built to carry materials and energy along the structure—roads, pipelines, canals and electric lines.  Some were built to prevent the flow of materials across the structure—drainage ditches, fences, and now the Border Wall.   

Where the surf meets the turf, the world’s coastlines harbor a number of specialized marine habitats, including estuaries, salt marshes and tidal flats.

During the next few months, we’ll spread 20 million tons of salt on roads and sidewalks across the northern tier of the U.S. Mostly, this is rock salt, also known as sodium chloride or table salt when it is refined for human consumption.

When my wife and I built our retirement house in eastern coastal Maine, we powered it with 6.2 kW of mono-crystalline silicon solar cells manufactured by SunPower. We chose to connect to the grid, because while the summer days are very long in Maine, the winter days are very short.

Dr. Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist and national expert on Lyme disease ecology discusses why ticks and tick-borne disease are on the rise and ways that ecology can inform tick management.

There has been a lot of media attention in recent weeks devoted to “natural climate solutions”—various ways by which we can reduce the potential for damaging climate change by the better management of forests and agricultural soils. Preventing deforestation and planting trees top the list of favorable activities.

Every year the Washington Post publishes a list of “What’s Out and What’s In” for Washington, D.C. On New Year’s Day, we always spend a few minutes with friends trying to guess “What’s In.” I thought it might be fun to do the same for environmental science and policy, even though this list of about 20 is rather depressing.

Forests are too valuable to burn, but growing interest in using wood to replace fossil fuels to help mitigate climate change stems from the wood-pellet industry, led by Enviva, in the southeastern United States. Most of Enviva’s production of wood pellets is sent to Europe, where the pellets are used in place of coal and mistakenly considered to be carbon-neutral with respect to climate change.

Disease ecologist Barbara Han talks to NBC News about the Coronavirus and the ways that algorithms can be used in the prevention and tracking of the spread of infectious diseases.

All children are fascinated by farts. So are atmospheric chemists.

These days, kids have a lot more to worry about for Santa Claus. The North Pole is a lot warmer than it was a few decades ago, thanks to the ongoing global warming that we are causing.  The arctic sea ice is a lot thinner than it used to be, and there’s a good chance that Santa’s sleigh will break through the ice and sink in the cold arctic waters.

At the first Earth Day, our campus slogan was, “Whatever your cause, it’s a lost cause unless we control population.”  Those words are as true today as they were in 1970.

Sarah Batterman uses large-scale ecosystem experiments, field observations, and modeling to analyze how the biodiversity of tropical tree species, their microbial partners, and nutrients govern tropical rainforest recovery from disturbance, response to environmental change, and future potential as a carbon sink.

In the past, I’ve written on how air pollution affects human health, focusing on how breathing fine particles—PM2.5 or particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter—can increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, as well as respiratory diseases such as asthma and emphysema.