URBANA, Ill. – Dried distiller’s grains with solubles (DDGS), a co-product from corn ethanol processing, is commonly used as feed for cattle, swine and poultry. However, DDGS contains more phosphorus than the animals need. The excess ends up in manure and drains into the watershed, promoting algae production and eventually contributing to large dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

Champaign, Ill. – Environmental concerns about hydraulic fracturing – aka “fracking,” the process by which oil and gas are extracted from rock by injecting high-pressure mixtures of water and chemicals – are well documented, but according to a paper co-written by a University of Illinois environmental economics expert, the technique also poses a serious safety risk to local traffic.

URBANA, Ill. – Only a fraction of conventional row crop farmers grow cover crops after harvest, but a new global analysis from the University of Illinois shows the practice can boost soil microbial abundance by 27%.

The result adds to cover crops’ reputation for nitrogen loss reduction, weed suppression, erosion control, and more. Although soil microbial abundance is less easily observed, it is a hugely important metric in estimating soil health.

URBANA, Ill. – The prehistoric-looking alligator snapping turtle may be the largest freshwater turtle in North America, but that doesn’t make it easy to spot. The up-to-200-pound armored beasts have only been officially recorded in Illinois 16 times since the late 1800s. But, in a recent study, University of Illinois scientists have demonstrated an effective new method to detect the secretive reptiles in the wild.

URBANA, Ill. – Alexander County sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, at the southernmost tip of Illinois. The sparsely populated jurisdiction is perhaps best known for devastating floods resulting from repeated failures of the Len Small levee in 1993, 2011, and 2016. Homes and businesses have been severely damaged, residents stranded, and rich agricultural land irreversibly degraded by sand deposition and erosion.

URBANA, Ill. ­– Urban areas face increasing problems with stormwater management. Impervious surfaces on roads and buildings cause flooding, which impacts the water quality of streams, rivers and lakes. Green infrastructure, including features such as rain barrels, green roofs, rain gardens, and on-site water treatment, can provide affordable and environmentally sound ways to manage precipitation.

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a $3.3 million grant to a multidisciplinary research team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to develop a precise system for measuring greenhouse gas emissions from commercial bioenergy crops grown in central Illinois.

URBANA, Ill. – The U.S. Midwest produces at least a third of the world’s corn and soybean supply each year. Feeding the world requires a lot of fertilizer, mostly in the form of nitrogen and phosphorus. While nitrogen can literally be pulled out of the air, phosphorus has to be mined from finite phosphate rock reserves and treated to be made available to plants. Most of the world’s phosphate rock is in Morocco, and at some point these reserves will run out.

From mid-November 2015 through February 2016, scientists used GPS transmitters to track the movements of Canada geese near Midway International Airport in Chicago. They discovered that – in the colder months, at least – some geese are hanging out on rooftops, in a rail yard and in a canal close to Midway’s runways. This behavior increases the danger of collisions between geese and airplanes, the researchers say.
 

Read more from the University of Illinois News Bureau.

A revolution in Midwestern agriculture has to happen to minimize the Gulf of Mexico’s hypoxic zone, according to the University of Illinois Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment (iSEE).

It is a little-known fact that corn — a Midwestern staple crop — has a bearing on the Gulf of Mexico’s health. The link is nitrogen, a common agricultural fertilizer component. According to a team of Illinois researchers, each annual harvest removes just 60-70% of nitrogen from fields.