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Old-growth trees more drought tolerant than younger ones, providing a buffer against climate change
A new analysis of more than 20,000 trees on five continents shows that old-growth trees are more drought tolerant than younger trees in the forest canopy and may be better able to withstand future climate extremes.
The findings highlight the importance of preserving the world’s remaining old-growth forests…
Mongabay series: Global Agroforestry
An ancient agricultural system, agroforestry combines trees with shrubs, crops, and livestock in a system that produces food, supports biodiversity, builds soil horizons and water tables, and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere — this series explores how and where it is being practiced by Indigenous communities, traditional agriculturists, and new farmers.
More on agroforestry
Agroforestry developed as a set of indigenous land-use practices over thousands of years across our global community. The interventions utilize trees, crops, and livestock in intimate combinations to produce positive ecological, social, and economic outcomes. In the United States, agroforestry systems are defined in the following ways: alley cropping, forest farming, riparian buffers, silvopasture, and windbreaks.
American agroforestry accelerates with new funding announcements
“There is a windfall of federal money entering the agroforestry sector,” Meghan Giroux told Mongabay. The director of Vermont-based agroforestry consultancy Interlace Commons, she is currently implementing a program to boost regional training capacity toward helping farms implement this sustainable farming technique — which blends annual crops and livestock with perennial shrubs and trees in a carbon-sequestering system that’s also more resilient to droughts and floods — while keeping her eye on the sizable new opportunities coming from the federal government.
That federal funding comes as interest in agroforestry is growing rapidly in the U.S., alongside the need to rapidly adopt more climate-positive types of agriculture…
Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities Project summaries
This project proposes to accelerate long-term cover crop adoption by creating a platform to incentivize farmers. The platform will quantify, verify, and facilitate the sale of ecosystem benefits, creating a marketplace to generate demand for climate-smart commodities. This project plans to support the implementation of more than 1 million acres of crop crops across 20 states. It also plans to enable corn and soybean commodity groups to achieve greenhouse gas emission reduction goals while supporting their farmer members and advancing more productive and sustainable practices.
How artists can raise awareness of climate risks and solutions
As communities work to raise public awareness about climate change risks and solutions, some are asking artists to help.
“How can we bring artists to think through that messaging in a more culturally resonant way?” asks Claudia Zarazua, the Arts and Cultural Planning Director for the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Inflation Reduction Act is a game changer for nonprofits seeking solar + storage
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has been signed into law. While the IRA is one of compromise, some good and some not-so-good, its impact on the energy sector is significant. For Clean Energy Group’s Resilient Power Project and its partners, the IRA will significantly influence nonprofits seeking to develop solar PV and battery storage (solar+storage) solutions in low-income communities by removing barriers to accessing significant federal tax incentives.
The Great Exhaustion: long-lasting pandemic effects
If you are feeling exhausted, and you are not quite sure why, you are not alone. At least once a week, I hear from patients and colleagues alike that “I am just so bone-tired, and I don’t know why.”
While I am not aware of the numbers and official statistics nationwide, I personally know many individuals who have at this point needed to take time off from work under the Family and Medical Leave Act due to COVID-19-related mental health difficulties.
Bees, sheep, crops: solar developers tout multiple benefits
Silflower was among native plants that blanketed the vast North American prairie until settlers developed farms and cities. Nowadays confined largely to roadsides and ditches, the long-stemmed cousin of the sunflower may be poised for a comeback, thanks to solar energy.
Researchers are growing silflower at nine solar installations in the Minneapolis area, testing its potential as an oilseed crop. The deep-rooted perennial also offers forage for livestock and desperately needed habitat for bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.
Europe melts under Sahara heat wave, smashes heat records
Even ice cream, Italian gelato or Popsicles couldn’t help this time.
Temperature records that had stood for decades or even just hours fell minute by minute Thursday afternoon and Europeans and tourists alike jumped into fountains, lakes, rivers or the sea to escape a suffocating heat wave rising up from the Sahara.
On a day that no one on the continent will ever forget, two potential drug dealers in Belgium even called the police, begging to be rescued from the locked container they managed to get themselves trapped in.