Secrest Arboretum, part of CFAES’s Wooster campus, is hosting a free Guided Summer Walk on Friday, June 15.
Led by CFAES plant experts, the event, according to its website, will “call your attention to seasonal treasures and best practices for the landscape.”
Admission is free. It’s from 2-3:30 p.m. starting at the Seaman Orientation Plaza. Learn more.
Stone Lab’s summer guest lecture series will kick off on Thursday, June 14. The topics: climate change and presumably trees.
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“We’re taking advantage of something plants have been doing for millions of years” — evolving chemicals to defend themselves from pests — “to hopefully get a leg up on mosquitoes.”
So says CFAES scientist Pete Piermarini, pictured, explaining a recent study. In it, he and scientist Liva Rakotondraibe of Ohio State’s College of Pharmacy discovered a possible new mosquito-fighting chemical in a plant from Madagascar.
Read the full story. (Photo: Ken Chamberlain, CFAES.)
CFAES scientist Suzanne Gray explains her research connecting water quality, aquatic diversity and human activities in the video above. It’s her lightning-round talk (6:36) from CFAES’s Annual Research Conference. How do fish — from bluegills in the Scioto River, to walleyes in western Lake Erie, to cichlids in the Nile River basin — respond to rapid changes in their water caused by people?
(Photo: Hawksbill turtle, iStock)
Today, June 8, we celebrate World Oceans Day.
Even in Ohio, of course, we’re connected to the oceans. By Lake Erie, the Ohio River, our local watersheds, farming practices, food choices, plastic use, energy sources, and on and on.
Why celebrate, honor and care for the oceans? Here’s the eloquent, wise Rachel Carson in her 1941 book Under the Sea-Wind: “To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.”
Ohio State’s Student Farm is an “amazing place for students to learn how to grow their own food while getting more in touch with the environment.”
So says Maria Fredericks, an environmental policy major in CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources and the farm’s outreach coordinator. She’s quoted in a story about the farm on the CFAES Stories website and speaks in the video above. Tasty extra: Find out about the farm’s CSA and farm stand.
CFAES’s annual Manure Science Review, featuring a rich slate of talks and demos on manure’s nutrients, benefits and more, including science-based ways to use it that both help crops grow and protect water quality, is set for July 25 near Forest in northwest Ohio.
Ohio State scientists, including from CFAES, have successfully tested a new chemical to control mosquitoes, including the ones that spread Zika, and it comes from a traditional medicinal plant found only in Madagascar.
Read the story. (Photo: Zika’s main carrier, the Aedes aegypti mosquito, iStock.)
CFAES’s 2018 Annual Research Conference, held on the Wooster campus on April 27, featured keynote presentations by researchers from Iowa and Arkansas; a panel discussion featuring stakeholders from Ohio’s agricultural community; updates by CFAES leaders; and eight fast-paced lightning-round talks by CFAES scientists — good examples of the many ways that CFAES is working to improve water quality, while also securing its food production.
Margaret Kalcic of CFAES’s Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering was one of those lightning-round speakers. Her lab, according to its website, works “to provide producers in the western Lake Erie watersheds, as well as their advisors, information that encourages adoption of appropriate conservation measures to tackle Lake Erie’s nutrient goals.”
You can watch her (short!) presentation in the video above.
Birds are “incredibly important in the overall functioning of various ecosystems,” says EnvironmentalScience.org.
On Saturday, June 9, you can see birds functioning within the specific ecosystem of CFAES’s Secrest Arboretum. Members of the Greater Mohican Aududon Society will lead a guided bird walk there from 9-11 a.m. Admission is free. The arboretum is on CFAES’s Wooster campus.
Get details. (Photo: Scarlet (but not much gray) tanager, iStock.).