Posts Tagged ‘Environment’
Is your barbecue causing water pollution?
Monday, June 14, 2010, 6:49 pm 2 Comments | Post a CommentFarmers’ market managers tell me that consumers are becoming incredibly knowledgeable, quizzing farmers about their use of chemicals and antibiotics in order to be well informed about the food they eat. Now here’s a new question to ask farmers when you buy pork: what are you doing to protect the environment?
Here’s the background. Hog production is one of the cornerstones of North Carolina’s agricultural economy, with more than 10 million hogs produced annually in the state, or roughly one pig per person. In recent years, most of these hogs have been raised in indoor operations known as Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs.
But consumer demand is driving a movement back to pasture-raised pork, and about 100 farmers in the state are responding to the call for hogs raised in natural conditions that many people consider more humane.
Consumers are driving the market for pasture-raised pork. Photo by Lisa M. Dellwo
Seventeen Years of Discovery in Duke Forest
Tuesday, June 1, 2010, 1:22 pm 5 Comments | Post a Comment
Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide are pumped into four of the experimental rings. Photo: Will Owen
Late in 2010, an epic ecological experiment in the Triangle will begin drawing to a close when carbon dioxide stops pumping from four massive rings of towers in the Duke Forest. Since 1996, more than 250 scientists at Duke and dozens of other institutions have measured the response of this forest ecosystem to the elevated amounts of carbon dioxide expected in the Earth’s atmosphere in the future. They’ve measured tree and plant growth, photosynthesis, leaf size, soil composition, root growth, and water use in the plots bathed in elevated carbon dioxide and in three other “ambient” control plots.
The first, prototype ring was built in 1994; six more came in 1996 (three controls and three experiments). Each ring consists of 16 metal towers in a 30-meter diameter. Computer-controlled instruments in the experimental rings bathe the interior of the plot in carbon dioxide. It’s called Free-Air CO2 Enrichment, or FACE. As opposed to “chamber studies,” in which plants are studied in carefully controlled growth chambers or greenhouses, the rings are open to nature. That means that mammals and insects can circulate freely and that natural events like hurricanes, ice storms, and droughts affect the research site. Read more…
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Emily Fisher
Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 11:34 am No Comments | Post a CommentContinuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years’ interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Emily Fisher from Oceana to answer a few questions:
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Amy Freitag
Tuesday, May 18, 2010, 2:38 pm No Comments | Post a CommentContinuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years’ interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Amy Freitag from Southern Fried Science to answer a few questions:
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Russ Williams
Thursday, March 11, 2010, 12:19 pm No Comments | Post a CommentContinuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years’ interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Russ Williams from North Carolina Zoological Society and the Russlings blog to answer a few questions:
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with DeLene Beeland
Wednesday, March 10, 2010, 10:08 pm No Comments | Post a CommentContinuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years’ interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked T. DeLene Beeland to answer a few questions:
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Andrew Thaler
Tuesday, March 2, 2010, 2:56 pm No Comments | Post a CommentContinuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years’ interviews as well: 2008 and 2009.
Today, I asked Andrew Thaler from Southern Fried Science to answer a few questions:
