Sustaining ‘the people’s universities’

Former Ohio State President E. Gordon Gee talks about land-grant universities (of which Ohio State is one), colleges of agriculture (such as CFAES), the importance of agriculture, research, Extension and more in an interview with Inside Higher Ed about his new co-authored book Land-Grant Universities for the Future.

How climate change is affecting water

“The quality and quantity of water available for use by people and ecosystems across the country are being affected by climate change, increasing risks and costs to agriculture, energy production, industry, recreation, and the environment.”

So say some of the summary findings of the recently released Fourth National Climate Assessment.

“Rising air and water temperatures and changes in precipitation are intensifying droughts, increasing heavy downpours, reducing snowpack, and causing declines in surface water quality, with varying impacts across regions,” the findings also say.

Read all of the report’s summary findings on water. Check out the report’s complete “Water” chapter.

Registration open for OEFFA conference

Registration is open for the 40th annual conference of the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association (OEFFA), set for Feb. 14-16 in Dayton. Scientists from CFAES are typically among the many speakers at the event, which is described as Ohio’s largest sustainable food and farm conference. More than 1,200 people are expected to attend.

Find out more and register.

What you might have missed on Black Friday: Feds release dire climate report

“Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities. The impacts of global climate change are already being felt in the United States and are projected to intensify in the future.” So begins the overview of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, which the White House released late last week — on Nov. 23, the big Black Friday day of shopping. Read the full report (excellent, searchable website).

The report’s chapter about the Midwest notes, for example, that “Projected changes in precipitation, coupled with rising extreme temperatures before mid-century, will reduce Midwest agricultural productivity to levels of the 1980s without major technological advances.”

If you’re a member of the media and would like to interview someone about the effects of climate change in Ohio, including on agriculture, contact Aaron Wilson, who’s a climate specialist with CFAES’s OSU Extension outreach arm and a senior research associate with Ohio State’s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. He’s at wilson.1010@osu.edu, 614-292-7930. (Photo: Polar bear crosses a melt pond in the high Arctic Ocean, Getty Images.)

‘Life at the speed of your feet’

The fourth Environmental Film Series co-hosted by CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources wraps up at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 26, with a screening of “3 MPH.” The film, its website says, follows a half dozen friends from Canada to Mexico “on an incredible 3,000-mile six-month thruhike.” One of those friends is Eddie Boyd of Columbus, who has finished the “triple crown” of hiking — the Appalachian, Pacific Crest and Continental Divide trails — and who will be present for the evening.

Find complete details. Watch the trailer above.

Giving thanks for a most interesting bird

“The great size and beauty of the Wild Turkey, its value as a delicate and highly prized article of food, and the circumstance of its being the origin of the domestic race … render it one of the most interesting of the birds indigenous to the United States of America.” — naturalist and artist John James Audubon in his classic Birds of America, published in sections between 1827 and 1838.

Read Audubon’s full entry on the turkey.

Get the inside, outsized story on how Audubon’s epic tome came to be — what’s a double-elephant folio? — in writer Erin McCarthy’s “The Book So Big It Needed Its Own Furniture” published by Mental Floss. (Image by Audubon from the book, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.)

Rising seas threaten Bangladeshi farmers

Rising seas caused by climate change are making soils salty, and that could force about 200,000 coastal farmers in Bangladesh inland as glaciers continue to melt into the world’s oceans. So says a recent study co-led by CFAES scientist Joyce Chen (pictured), as reported by Ohio State science writer Misti Crane. Read the story.