Third through seventh graders who love science are invited to become Dandelion Detectives, a youth-focused citizen science program sponsored by CFAES’ Gardiner Lab. Find out what it’s about.
(Photo: Getty Images.)
ecosystems
This bird must be a Buckeye
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.).
Tonight: Life in the city
CFAES scientist Mary Gardiner will speak on vacant land, biodiversity and ecosystem health, focusing on her research in the city of Cleveland, at 7 p.m. tonight, Jan. 23, at the First Amendment Public House, 150 W. Liberty St., Wooster. Her talk is part of the free Wooster Science Café series. Organizers offer the series as a forum for discussion of timely topics between scientists and the public. The sponsors are the College of Wooster and CFAES’s research arm, OARDC.
EcoSummit preview: Take them to the river … to show it being restored
Also part of that EcoSummit 2012 wetland tour: The Olentangy River Restoration Project, which a press release last week calls “one of the largest efforts to return an urban river to a more natural state.” Previous posts on the project here, here, here, and here.
EcoSummit preview: Two of our own will be plenary speakers
Distinguished company: Two of the 10 plenary speakers at the big EcoSummit 2012 in Columbus will be from our college. The lineup includes not just our own Rattan Lal and Bill Mitsch, both of the School of Environment and Natural Resources, but UCLA’s Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel), Harvard’s E.O. Wilson (The Social Conquest of Earth), and Iceland’s President Olafur R. Grimsson. Check it out.
Also, 1 planet
Here’s a look by the numbers at EcoSummit 2012, which is Sept. 30-Oct. 5 in Columbus and involves a number of CFAES scientists: 10 plenary presentations by some of the world’s top ecologists, environmental scientists, and practitioners. 21 forums and workshops on practical issues related to improving the environment. 600 presentations in 65 symposia. 850 general sessions and poster presentations. (Complete program here.) And 1,500 to 1,600 delegates from 75 countries. Ohio State is a co-host.
Prescription for health?
Can prescribed fire help sustain mixed-oak forests in the central Appalachians? Todd Hutchinson of the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station in Delaware, Ohio, speaks tomorrow.
Before the dam came down … and after
The Olentangy River Wetland Research Park, which is part of our School of Environment and Natural Resources, has issued a report related to Columbus’s 5th Avenue dam removal project, which came to a head, or lowhead, as it were, last week. The report describes the background conditions in the Lower Olentangy River (its animal and plant life, water quality, etc.) before the dam was removed and predicts the changes we’ll see in it now. Read the park’s Aug. 29 announcement here (pdf), where you’ll find details on how to get the report.
Bring back the bobwhite
Ohio used to have more partridges — aka the native but declining northern bobwhite — in its pear trees. Today, researchers in our college are working to help the birds come back — to bring them home for the holidays, as it were, as well as throughout the year …