URBANA, Ill. – Land managers know one of the best ways to prevent forest fires is to set fires. Periodic controlled or prescribed burns can reduce the amount of flammable materials lying about on a forest floor, so when wildfires do start, they stay small.

Prescribed fires do more than that, though. New University of Illinois research shows frequent fires can help keep invasive plants in check by reducing nitrogen availability in soils.

URBANA, Ill. – Corn didn’t start out as the powerhouse crop it is today. No, for most of the thousands of years it was undergoing domestication and improvement, corn grew humbly within the limits of what the environment and smallholder farmers could provide.

URBANA, Ill. -- Agricultural scientists who study climate change often focus on how increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will affect crop yields. But rising temperatures are likely to complicate the picture, researchers report in a new review of the topic.

URBANA, Ill. ­– Economists and urban planners generally agree that local pollution sources disproportionally impact racial minorities in the U.S. The reasons for this are largely unclear, but a University of Illinois study provides new insights into the issue. 

Researchers at the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI) found that transitioning land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to bioenergy agriculture can be ad­­­vantageous for American landowners, the government, and the environment.

URBANA, Ill. -- As most of us learned in school, plants use sunlight to synthesize carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water into carbohydrates in a process called photosynthesis. But nature’s “factories” don’t just provide us with food — they also generate insights into how ecosystems will react to a changing climate and carbon-filled atmosphere.

URBANA, Ill. – From flooded spring fields to summer hailstorms and drought, farmers are well aware the weather is changing. It often means spring planting can’t happen on time or has to happen twice to make up for catastrophic losses of young seedlings.

URBANA, Ill. ­– Illinois residents value efforts to reduce watershed pollution, and they are willing to pay for environmental improvements, according to a new study from agricultural economists at the University of Illinois.

URBANA, Ill. – Soil erosion is a major challenge in agricultural production. It affects soil quality and carries nutrient sediments that pollute waterways. While soil erosion is a naturally occurring process, agricultural activities such as conventional tilling exacerbate it. Farmers implementing no-till practices can significantly reduce soil erosion rates, a new University of Illinois study shows.

URBANA, Ill. – Large perennial grasses like miscanthus are a primary target for use as bioenergy crops because of their sustainability advantages, but they take several years to establish and aren’t ideal for crop rotation. Maize and other annual crops are easier to manage with traditional farming, but they are tougher on the environment.

Energy sorghum, a hefty annual plant with the ecological benefits of a perennial, may combine the best of both crops.