Environment

URBANA, Ill. – Nitrogen fertilizer has major implications for crop yields and environmental health, specifically water quality in the Gulf of Mexico. Federal and state governments have shied away from regulating nitrogen fertilizer use, but voluntary and incentives-based programs have not been particularly successful; the oxygen-starved “dead zone” in the Gulf remains much larger than goals set by the federal-state Hypoxia Task Force.

URBANA, Ill. – Sandy Dall’erba, professor of agricultural and consumer economics and co-founder of the Center for Climate, Regional, Environmental and Trade Economics (CREATE) at the University of Illinois, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award for the 2022-2023 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

URBANA, Ill. – Imagine if you had to catch every bite of your dinner with your mouth, while flying, in the dark. You’d be exhausted, and probably pretty hungry. Though some bats go for sedentary insects, most catch their food on the wing every single night. Let that sink in.

This week’s 5 Questions Friday features Jenna Schaefer, ACE major with environmental science focus

Where did you grow up? Do you have an agriculture background? If so, please describe.

I’m from St. Joseph, which is a small town about twenty minutes from campus. I do not have an agricultural background. The only agriculture-related experience I had before college was my job as a corn pollinator one summer.

What year are you, and how did you choose your ACES major?

URBANA, Ill. – Growing crops in a changing climate is tough enough, but when weeds factor in, soybean yields take a massive hit. That’s according to new research from the University of Illinois and the USDA Agricultural Research Service, and it means farmers will need to achieve greater weed control than ever to avoid yield loss.

URBANA, Ill. – Deep in a Panamanian rain forest, bird populations have been quietly declining for 44 years. A new University of Illinois-led study shows a whopping 70% of understory bird species declined in the forest between 1977 and 2020. And the vast majority of those are down by half or more.

Agricultural runoff from Midwestern farms is a major contributor to a vast “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. Nitrogen, phosphorous and other farm nutrients drain into the Mississippi River, which empties into the Gulf, spurring algae to overpopulate and suffocating other aquatic life. Illinois is a main culprit in this ongoing environmental blight. News Bureau life sciences editor Diana Yates spoke with U. of I.

Ensuring long term sustainability is the goal of College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) professor Mike Ward’s ongoing work to track and study grassland birds that migrate between the United States and Mexico.  

“Many of the grassland birds that breed in the United States spend their winters in the Potosino Altiplano Region of San Luis Potosi in north-central Mexico. Because these species are declining, we want to understand their movement, the habitat they use, and their survival,” Ward says.

URBANA, Ill. – Human-induced climate change is already causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world. The consequences will grow much worse with time unless more concerted efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the expected changes start now. People and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit, but no part of the globe will be spared, say scientists in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released this week.

The Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE), in partnership with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES), invites applications and nominations for the Stuart L. and Nancy J. Levenick Resident Scholar in Sustainability Leadership for the 2022-23 academic year at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.