In Cleveland, CFAES’s Mary Gardiner and her team are doing a large-scale, never-tried-before study. They’re evaluating eight different landscape treatments on 64 vacant lots in eight Cleveland neighborhoods. Why: To see how the treatments affect biodiversity and ecosystem function in the lots — and hopefully to come up with cheaper, greener options to just planting the lots with grass. Read more. (Find a New York Times story on the work here.)