Scientists: By 2500 Earth Could Be Alien to Humans
Climate projections should not stop at year 2100. To fully grasp and plan for climate impacts under any scenario, researchers and policymakers must look well…
Agriculture
Growing Climate Solutions: Climate-Smart Agriculture
Stanford Earth scientists discuss climate-smart agriculture. A bill under debate in Congress would pave the way to verifying and paying for farms’ carbon savings. Stanford…
Strong El Niño Drives Nearly 6 Million Children Into Severe Hunger
Up to 3 times more children suffer severe hunger with each El Niño than from Covid-19. El Niño events provide a snapshot of the future…
Consuming Wild Meat Instead of Domesticated Livestock Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Consuming sustainably sourced wild meat instead of domesticated livestock reduces greenhouse gas emissions and retains precious tropical forest systems, which in turn mitigates the effects…
Going Hyperspectral for CHIME – The Copernicus Hyperspectral Imaging Mission for the Environment
With Covid restrictions a little more relaxed, scientists from Europe and the USA were finally able to team up for a long-awaited field experiment to…
Chemical Discovery Gets Reluctant Seeds To Sprout – Could Help Increase Food Supply
Seeds that would otherwise lie dormant will spring to life with the aid of a new chemical discovered by a UC Riverside-led team. Plants have…
Plant Patch Enables Continuous Monitoring for Crop Stress and Diseases
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a patch that plants can “wear” to monitor continuously for plant diseases or other stresses, such as…
NASA at Your Table: Where Food Meets Methane and the Greenhouse Effect
Today, human sources are responsible for 60% of global methane emissions, coming primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, decomposition in landfills, and the agriculture…
Using the “Smell of Fear” To Protect Gardens and Crops From Destructive Insects
For home gardeners and farmers, herbivorous insects present a major threat to their hard work and crop yields. The predator insects that feed on these…
Human Waste Is Nutrient-Rich – It Can Be Used To Sustain Agriculture and Improve Economies
The future connection between human waste, sanitation technology, and sustainable agriculture is becoming more evident. According to research directed by University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign civil…
NASA Watches Water From Space to Help Grow our Groceries
Every day – up to thirty times a day, in fact – one of Mark Mason’s employees at Nature’s Reward Farms in Monterey County, California…
Improving Photosynthesis in Crops To Boost Yields
In order to feed a projected 9 billion people by 2050, farmers need to grow 50% more food on a limited amount of arable land….
The Waste Product That Could Help Mitigate Climate Change – Locking Carbon in the Soil “For Hundreds to Thousands of Years”
A product made from urban, agriculture, and forestry waste has the added benefit of reducing the carbon footprint of modern farming, an international review involving…
Corn’s Rich Genetic Diversity on Display in New Genome Mapping Study
The newly assembled genomes of 26 different genetic lines of corn illustrate the crop’s rich genetic diversity and could pave the way for a better…
The Secret History of Corn – And Its “Jumping Genes” – Revealed in Its Genome
Humans adapt through language and culture, passing down knowledge from one generation to the next. Corn plants can’t talk, so they solve the problem of…
Farm Robots Are the Future – We Must Prepare Now to Avoid Dystopia
No longer science fiction, farm robots are already here — and they have created two possible extremes for the future of agriculture and its impacts…
GLAM: Keeping Track of Food Production From Space
While USDA has monitored crops around the world for almost a century, the discovery that satellites can “see” greening of vegetation has revolutionized agricultural monitoring…
Citrus Mystery: Juicy Past of Favorite Okinawan Fruit Revealed
Citrus fruits from the mandarin family have important commercial value but how their diversity arose has been something of a mystery Researchers analyzed the genomes…