In areas from rainfall to lake levels, fish to algal blooms, shipping to agriculture, drinking water quality to public health, “Climate change is causing significant and far-reaching impacts on the Great Lakes and the Great Lakes region.”
That’s according to the science-based Assessment of the Impacts of Climate Change on the Great Lakes, released last week by the nonprofit Environmental Law & Policy Center, based in Chicago, and the nonprofit Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
Here’s another reason to celebrate Ohio Agriculture Week, March 10-16:
CFAES’ Rattan Lal, esteemed soil scientist in the School of Environment and Natural Resources (SENR), recently achieved an unusual triple crown, winning the prestigious World Soil Prize, World Agriculture Prize, and Japan Prize in the span of about four months.
Weather extremes like those seen last year in Ohio, including more rainfall, heavier downpours, and warmer temperatures, will likely become the norm rather than the exception, says CFAES climate specialist Aaron Wilson. He says farmers in the state may need to make adjustments to deal with the extra water. Read the story.
On March 26, Wilson speaks on the topic in Shelby.
Aaron Wilson, climate specialist with CFAES’ OSU Extension outreach arm, presents “Recent Weather Trends & Future Resilience for Farms” at the Ohio Soil Health Symposium on March 26 in Shelby. Read what he said about our wet year last year here, and learn about a new app he helped develop—one that tells farmers the best times to apply fertilizer and manure to avoid rain—here.
Dig further details about the symposium.
The monthly Wooster Science Café series continues at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 6, with “Anti-Science in a Post-Truth World” by Mark Wilson, geology professor at the College of Wooster.
A new video posted today, serving as the first episode of a new series called ETHOS—Ethics Throughout Ohio State—features CFAES soil scientist Rattan Lal. You can watch it above.
From a press release by our Ohio State colleagues: “Greenland is melting faster than scientists previously thought—and will likely lead to faster sea level rise—thanks to the continued, accelerating warming of the Earth’s atmosphere, a new study has found.” Read the story.
Read the CFAES press release about Rattan Lal winning the Japan Prize.
Rattan Lal, Distinguished University Professor of Soil Science in CFAES’ School of Environment and Natural Resources, was today (Jan. 16) announced as a winner of the 2019 Japan Prize, considered one of the most prestigious honors in science and technology.
A Japan Prize Foundation press release said the award is for Lal’s work in proposing and practicing sustainable soil management methods that contribute to “both the stability of food security and environment conservation for climate change mitigation.”
More details to come.
Many moons ago, as a wet-behind-the-ears grad student, I spent a winter living and working at CFAES’s Stone Laboratory at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie. The winter was a good one for cold, snow, and ice, the lake freezing over in late December, the ice being broken up once by a storm, but then locking in and staying that way, solid, thick, and getting thicker, right into March. My roommate would drive his van on the lake, hauling his ice fishing gear. Guys from Canada’s Pelee Island would zip to Put-in-Bay by snowmobile, a distance of about 5 miles. Dozens of ice fishing shanties, a semi-permanent village, dotted a part of the lake where I’d seen a lone Lyman boat cruising just two months before, a mildish day in early December, the water black, eerily calm, but still then definitely liquid.