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Energy and food together: Under solar panels, crops thrive
At a recent solar energy conference in Minneapolis, attendees unwound at happy hour, tasting free pints of a local honey-based India pale ale called “Solarama Crush.” Minnesota-based 56 Brewing makes the smooth IPA using honey from hives located on solar farms outside the Twin Cities.
Honey producers Travis and Chiara Bolton keep bees at three solar farms where developers seeded native plants underneath and around panels. “The advantage to these sites is that they are intentionally planted for pollinators,” says Travis Bolton. “At these sites, they’re really trying to get them back to a native prairie, and that’s a benefit to us…”
How much carbon can forests absorb? Michigan research in partnership with land trusts and conservation groups
Leelanau Conservancy and Little Traverse Conservancy have partnered with a number of local watershed groups and the University of Michigan to create Nature Change—Conversations about Climate and Conservation.
In this short video, forest ecology researcher Dr. Luke Nave (University of Michigan Biological Station) describes recently completed research to quantify the amount of carbon captured from the atmosphere by areas of reforestation throughout the United States. In referring to reforesting land, Nave says that includes areas that once were cultivated and areas that experience forms of deforestation such as fire.
Using well-documented research data and direct measurements, Nave and his colleagues focused only on those areas that are being reforested…
The Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS) develops synthesis products, fosters communication, and pursues science in climate change and carbon cycling and management
“The Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS) has been designed as a collaborative effort among the Forest Service, universities, conservation organizations, and forest industry to provide information on managing forests for climate change adaptation and enhanced carbon sequestration. As a regional, multi-institutional entity, NIACS builds partnerships, facilitates research, and synthesizes information to bridge the gap between carbon and climate science research and the information and management needs of natural resource professionals, woodland owners, policymakers, and members of the public.
The mission of NIACS is to provide applied ecological, economic, social, and cultural information that can be used in climate adaptation and forest carbon management…”
‘Whole thing is unravelling’: climate change reshaping Australia’s forests (There are warning signs here in the U.S. too)
Australia’s forests are being reshaped by climate change as droughts, heatwaves, rising temperatures, and bushfires drive ecosystems towards collapse, ecologists have told Guardian Australia.
Trees are dying, canopies are getting thinner, and the rate that plants produce seeds is falling. Ecologists have long predicted that climate change would have major consequences for Australia’s forests. Now they believe those impacts are unfolding…
Fossil fuel money crushed clean energy ballot initiatives across the country
“Most eyes Tuesday night were on the key House, Senate, and governor races — and Democrats had a mixed night, taking the House but watching as newfound heroes Beto O’Rourke and Andrew Gillum went down to defeat. But there were several climate change- and energy-related ballot initiatives up for a vote across the country as well.
For the most part, they did not go well for fans of clean energy. The ones that utilities and oil and gas companies mobilized and spent big against lost. After being boxed out of climate and energy policy at the federal level, the left has turned to states, but at least last night, the states did not deliver much good news…”
Planting milkweed won’t be enough
There’s been some good news about Monarch’s recently, yet even so, scientists have stated that climate change if left unchecked will cause irreparable harm.
It will be important to teach your community that planting milkweed may help in the very near term but the end game involves reducing pesticides and slowing down climate change.
It’s not too late to save them, but it’s a question of whether we will make the effort, scientists say…
Land trusts need to talk about climate change
How do you talk to someone who doesn’t believe in climate change? Not by rehashing the same data and facts we’ve been discussing for years, says climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe.
In this inspiring, pragmatic talk, Hayhoe shows how the key to having a real discussion is to connect over shared values like family, community, and religion—and to prompt people to realize that they already care about a changing climate.
“We can’t give in to despair,” she says. “We have to go out and look for the hope we need to inspire us to act—and that hope begins with a conversation, today.”
Choosing Clean Energy
Choosing Clean Energy highlights how the clean, renewable energy revolution is unfolding across the United States. It promotes the positive economic and health benefits of cleaner, low-carbon energy technology in the United States. The electric power industry is in a state of rapid transformation, and in the next decade we will see a reinvention of how we generate, store, transmit and use electric power.
TNC: Catalyzing clean energy in northern New England
A recent study by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Coastal Enterprises Inc. (CEI) identifies strategies to transition New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine to a clean energy economy. Innovative public-private partnerships and new investments can spark a clean energy future that has the potential to catalyze the creation of new jobs, expand access to renewable energy and energy efficiency, and lower greenhouse gas emissions…
TNC in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine and CEI commissioned the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC) to research and identify the opportunities and challenges to clean energy investment, the results of which can be found in the “Advancing Clean Energy Investment in Northern New England” report.
Adapting agriculture to climate change
“The strong trends in climate change already evident, the likelihood of further changes occurring, and the increasing scale of potential climate impacts give urgency to addressing agricultural adaptation more coherently. There are many potential adaptation options available for marginal change of existing agricultural systems, often variations of existing climate risk management. We show that implementation of these options is likely to have substantial benefits under moderate climate change for some cropping systems. However, there are limits to their effectiveness under more severe climate changes. Hence, more systemic changes in resource allocation need to be considered, such as targeted diversification of production systems and livelihoods…”