Striving to Be Everywhere, All the Time: How Citizen Science Can Help Environmental Research

The world is pretty big. Sometimes, even when scientists breakdown and reduce their study area, they don’t have the resources to collect enough samples to be able to reliably interpret the results of their studies. Here is where citizen science comes in. Citizen science is when the general public becomes voluntarily involved in scientific processes, helping researchers collect data and reporting on what they see. But, how efficient and accurate is this new resource we’re only recently applying? And, how can you get involved?

Read more

More Accessible Monitoring: Using Freely-Available Aerial Photos and Software to Map Changes in River Migration and Vegetation

Riverside vegetation, or “riparian buffers”, provides wildlife habitat, maintains water quality, and reduces flood damage. Human activity can negatively affect these services, and monitoring this vegetation over time can be costly and resource-intensive. Researchers at SUNY ESF have developed a new way of mapping river channels and vegetation that uses open-source remote-sensing software, using the Genesee River in New York to develop this method. Their method greatly improves our ability to monitor this important resource over time with over 90% accuracy.

Read more

As Oceans Change, HABs Invade

Global ocean temperatures are currently rising and have been for decades. Scientists are working to discover how this changing climate affects species around the world, from the very large to the very small. This includes phytoplankton, the microscopic marine algae that live in most bodies of water around the globe and produce half the world’s oxygen. But some of these species are toxic, and can cause harm to human and wildlife alike if they are able to grow out of control. Though a number of studies have been undertaken to try and understand more about these harmful algal blooms, much is still unknown about their growth. A group of scientists were interested in how changing ocean temperatures affected the geographic ranges of harmful algal blooms over time in order to better predict blooms in the future.

Read more

The Cows and the Bees

In the age of the sixth extinction, we need to think carefully about how we use our land– especially when different land uses are at odds. As a way to advance conservation, researchers in Israel examined “land sharing” of rangelands: a way of using land to benefit agriculture and biodiversity alike.

Read more

Planting Trees for your Next Flight: Studying Behavior Around Carbon Offsetting

Want to fly without the carbon guilt? Offsetting programs let you pay to plant trees to take that carbon from the air, and researchers are studying how social factors and global policies might influence these environmentally-minded behaviors.

Read more

Pollution in Polish Rivers, and the Cucumber Solution

Pollution is dangerous, both to humans and the ecosystems we care about. But researchers in Poland have studied the sources and dynamic movement of pollutants in rivers, and may have found potential in cucumbers to help improve the system.

Read more

Microbes for Disappearing Dunes

A major challenge our coastal ecosystems face is rapid loss of sand dunes due to coastal erosion. Plants play an important role in sand dune restoration. However, without the right microbes these plants may not be able to establish themselves in the dunes.

Read more

Listen for a Change: Bioacoustics in Restored Habitat Combats the Bird Decline

Excerpt: A recent study has revealed that 3 billion birds have disappeared since 1970 in North America. Restoring habitat can help reverse this loss, and technology in listening for birds can be a vital tool to see if this approach to restoring bird habitat is working.

Read more