For the Ohio State students volunteering with the annual ArboBlitz, a service learning event hosted by CFAES’s Chadwick Arboretum, “this is usually their first time planting a tree.” The event was Oct. 30 in Columbus.
Month: November 2017
‘We may be grossly under-accounting for methane in our existing climate models’
From an Ohio State press release today: “A study of a Lake Erie wetland suggests that scientists have vastly underestimated the number of places methane-producing microbes can survive — and, as a result, today’s global climate models may be misjudging the amount of methane being released into the atmosphere.” (Photo: One of the sites used in the study, Old Woman Creek National Estuarine Research Reserve, near Huron, Ohio, by Jordan Angle, courtesy of Ohio State.)
All rise
Economic sustainability is one of the keys to sustainable agriculture. So this is good news.
With a little help from its (Master Gardener) friends
Fremont area residents, thanks to the Sandusky County Commissioners and the Sandusky/Ottawa County Master Gardeners, are getting a new community garden replete with a water feature, wildflower meadow, pawpaw trees and more.
The Master Gardener Volunteers program is a statewide effort coordinated by CFAES’s OSU Extension outreach arm.
‘They asked us to think of a different way of doing this’
CFAES is selling its long-standing Columbus sheep farm, located in a now heavily residential area about 7 miles north of Ohio State’s main campus, and the redevelopment guidelines, including keeping park space, open space and adjacent neighborhoods in mind, “are a first” for Ohio State, said a Nov. 6 story in Columbus’s This Week Community News.
Sale proceeds, the story said, will help pay for re-envisioning projects planned at CFAES’s Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory near the campus.
SENR names new head of EPN
The Environmental Professionals Network, a statewide, 1,800-member professional group coordinated by CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, has a new director.
Now hear this: ‘Sonic Sea’ on ocean noise is tonight in Environmental Film Series
Today, there’s more than just the sound of waves and whales in the ocean. There’s tremendous underwater noise from shipping, oil and gas exploration, and naval sonar training, and it’s causing stress, deafness and even death in marine animals, especially whales and dolphins, which have sensitive hearing.
The next screening in Ohio State’s 2017 Environmental Film Series, “Sonic Sea,” looks at that problem and at cooperative efforts — involving scientists, industry, the navies of nations and others — to solve it. It shows at 7 p.m. tonight — Monday, Nov. 13 — in Room 130 in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Chemistry (CBEC) Building on Ohio State’s Columbus campus. Admission is free and open to the public; free pizza and beverages at 6:45 p.m.
MORPC sustainability summit is Tuesday
The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission’s (MORPC) 2017 Summit on Sustainability — theme: “Communities Taking Charge” — is Tuesday, Nov. 14, in Columbus. The event, according to its website, is MORPC’s “signature environmental conference, bringing hundreds of community leaders together to explore and share sustainable ideas and solutions.” Get more details and register.
Changes made to rules on applying fertilizer
Ohio farmers who apply fertilizer on 50 or more acres now have the option to take an exam or attend a three-hour course to earn the required certification aimed at protecting water quality.
Drive, drive on down the field, in an e-car of scarlet and gray
On the @CFAES_OSU Wooster campus today testing GEM zero carbon emissions vehicles with @kboone at the wheel. Good thing max speed is 25mph pic.twitter.com/ISOnaudSwr
— Graham Cochran (@grahamcochran) November 2, 2017
Global Electric Motorcars (GEM) produces low-speed electric vehicles in Spirit Lake, Iowa. Among its activities, the company attended October’s 2017 exhibition of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
Graham Cochran is senior administrative officer with CFAES.
@kboone is Kris Boone, director of the Ohio State University Agricultural Technical Institute, CFAES’s two-year degree-granting unit in Wooster.