This could be the No. 1 way to keep phosphorus out of Lake Erie

The cheapest, most cost-effective way to reduce the phosphorus getting into Lake Erie is by taxing farmers on their purchase of the nutrient or by paying them not to use it on their fields. That’s according to a study by Shaohui Tang and Brent Sohngen, both of CFAES’s Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics.

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Celebrate ‘food, sustainability, community’

The next Environmental Professionals Network breakfast program, 7 a.m. to noon June 12, involves a field trip. Participants will ride a bus from Ohio State’s Columbus campus, or drive on their own, to the town of Mechanicsburg, 40 miles west of Columbus, where they’ll visit and hear from local food supporters The Hive Market and Deli (for breakfast), Hemisphere Coffee Roasters (for coffee), In Good Taste Catering and an associated family farm (for walking and wagon tours of its crops, livestock and conservation practices). It’s a celebration of “food, environmental sustainability and community,” says the event’s website.

Find details and a link to register.

CFAES’s celebrity snakes are back tweeting

Warm weather’s here, and the rattlesnake stars of the @TimberTweets feed — Jimbo, Hope, et al — are back, active and tweeting. Follow their rarely seen daily lives in the woods of southern Ohio. It’s all in the name of research being done by CFAES’s Peterman Lab. Fun fact (unless you’re a rodent or a tick): Timber rattlesnakes eat rodents that carry Lyme disease ticks. (Photo: iStock.)

And also there were snapping turtles

“Simply moving across the slick, gloopy wetlands was difficult.”

So says an article about how Ohio Sea Grant- and CFAES-affiliated researchers are helping The Nature Conservancy to (1) improve water quality and (2) give homes to fish and wildlife by restoring a large marshland near Lake Erie. (Photo: iStock.)

Here’s how CFAES is growing new scientists (and with them, sustainability)

Essentially all the winning research in CFAES’s 2018 Graduate Student Poster Competition, shown here, had connections to sustainability, whether agricultural, environmental, economic or all three. The competition, held at the April 27 CFAES Annual Research Conference, recognized outstanding research by CFAES graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and research assistants and associates. Check out the list of winners.

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Laser-guided ‘intelligent’ sprayer is good for all kinds of green

A CFAES research team has developed a laser-guided pesticide sprayer, for use by orchards, vineyards and nurseries, that gives control of diseases and pests but uses less pesticide to do it. Farmers’ wallets, food safety and the environment stand to gain.

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