URBANA, Ill. – Canada geese collide with aircraft, intimidate unassuming joggers, and leave lawns and sidewalks spattered with prodigious piles of poop. They’re widely considered nuisance birds, and municipalities invest considerable time and money harassing geese to relocate the feisty flocks. But new University of Illinois research shows standard goose harassment efforts aren’t effective, especially in winter when birds should be most susceptible to scare tactics.

URBANA, Ill. — Three researchers affiliated with the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have been named to the 2022 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list. The list recognizes research scientists and social scientists who have demonstrated exceptional influence – reflected through their publication of multiple papers frequently cited by their peers during the last decade.

URBANA, Ill. – Forest managers cut down trees, but their ultimate goal is to keep forests healthy and growing. Bats might help with that, according to recent University of Illinois research, thanks to their appetite for bugs that could otherwise destroy tree seedlings.

URBANA, Ill. – Rivers split across mountaintops and other geographic barriers may flow only a few miles from one another, but to the aquatic creatures in those waters, the separation could represent millions of years of evolutionary time. So, when an angler or a curious child moves a fish from one side of the mountain or one side of the country to the other, it’s a very big deal to the fish. Some may discover a competitive advantage in a new stream, potentially disrupting eons-old ecological hierarchies.

URBANA, Ill. – Bats help keep forests growing. Without bats to hold their populations in check, insects that munch on tree seedlings go wild, doing three to nine times more damage than when bats are on the scene. That’s according to a groundbreaking new study from the University of Illinois.

Kaiyu Guan is a researcher with lofty goals – he hopes to monitor, model and ultimately optimize every farmland. Guan aims to achieve these goals in the coming decade or so. He’s a researcher with a mission; of helping create tools so farmers can check on and manage their crops – every single field – in real-time to maintain a healthy and productive growth cycle. But simply reaching that goal isn’t enough. Guan also hopes to achieve co-sustainability of environment quality and food security.

A team of Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC) scientists, including faculty from the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences and the Department of Crop Sciences, was awarded a grant from the Illinois Nutrient Research and Education Council to quantify streambank erosion across the state and its contributions to phosphorus loading of surface waters. 

URBANA, Ill. – Decades of corn breeding efforts emphasizing yield have contributed to modern hybrids with shallower and less complex root systems than their predecessors. Because the breeding and selection of most modern hybrids has taken place in environments with high nutrient concentrations, optimal weed control, and soil moisture conditions, hybrids perform best under high input systems.

Now in veterinary school at U of I, animal lover Jacob Dalen got his start in the Department of Animal Sciences' pre-vet track, and minored in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. This week's 5 Questions Friday looks back at Dalen's time at ACES.

Where did you grow up? Do you have an agriculture background? If so, what did that look like?

URBANA, Ill. – How do we bring threatened and endangered animals back from the brink? The task is never easy or simple, but one thing is undeniably true: If we don’t understand these animals and what they need to survive, we have little chance of success.

Saving bats, then, is arguably a trickier endeavor than for other species. After all, the cryptic critters only emerge at night and are highly mobile, making it difficult to track their movements and behavior.