Without healthy soil there can be no food. And without any food there can be no life.
That’s the message of an opinion piece by Rattan Lal, Distinguished University Professor of Soil Science in the CFAES School of Environment and Natural Resources and 2020 World Food Prize laureate, that recently ran on the global development website Devex.
Continue reading On our greatest hope for a sustainable future
Around the world, planting billions of trees could possibly help in solving the climate crisis. On Wednesday, Aug. 14, in CFAES’ Secrest Arboretum, you can see, walk among, and enjoy the shade of trees that are already helping. Join us.
The next monthly Tree Walk in Secrest Arboretum is set for 1–2 p.m. Wednesday, July 10. Admission is free.
The arboretum, part of our CFAES Wooster campus, is home to 100-plus acres of life-sustaining green things.
Sara Place, senior director of sustainable beef production research with the Centennial, Colorado-based National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, presents “Beef in a Sustainable Food System” (“Can a sustainable global food system include beef?”) from 10–11:30 a.m. Jan. 11 in Ohio State’s Nationwide & Ohio Farm Bureau 4-H Center in Columbus. There’s no charge to attend.
Continue reading Can beef be part of a sustainable food system?
CFAES’s Department of Entomology hosts talks by two of its graduate students starting at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 12: “Lady Beetles in the City: How Does Urban Habitat Management Affect the Abundance and Diversity of Native and Exotic Lady Beetles?” by Denisha Parker; and “The Impacts of Soil Legacy and Management on Biodiversity and Biocontrol Services in Urban Landscapes” by Emily Sypolt.
CFAES wildlife specialist Marne Titchenell presents “Common Frogs and Snakes of Ohio” from 10:30-11:30 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 20, in the Gwynne Conservation Area at Farm Science Review. It’s a look at your small, shy, helpful neighbors — American toads, green frogs, garter snakes and others — and the good they do for farms, yards and gardens. See the full Gwynne schedule. (Photo: Leopard frog, Getty Images.)
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.).
Marne Titchenell, wildlife program specialist in CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, presents a free public program on bats from 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 23, at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center, 505 W. Whittier St., Columbus. Learn more.
Got a live Christmas tree? Now’s the time to prepare for planting it. So says Paul Snyder of CFAES’s Secrest Arboretum, who gives tips in the video above. (Hint: It’s best to dig the hole before the ground freezes.)
Visit Secrest Arboretum and see 18 examples of big, tall, still-growing Christmas trees. Read more, get their GPS locations and see photos of all 18. (There’s a slideshow, too, of their needles close up.) The arboretum is on CFAES’s Wooster campus. (Photo: Eastern white pine, Ken Chamberlain, CFAES.)