Pam Knox

  • According to an article this week in AgWeb, “While the corn yields dropped in the Midwest, southern States are seeing big gains in yields. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said this corn crop could potentially be the third-largest on record. When you look at the numbers, the southern States seem to be shining this…

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  • Here is an interesting story from the Washington Post about the problems that farmers and city dwellers in Peru are experiencing from a loss of up to 90 percent of their glaciers due to recent warming.  These Andean glaciers have provided summer meltwater needed for water supplies and irrigation for centuries, and now they are…

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  • Now that August is here, it’s time to give an updated outlook for fall and winter for the Southeast.  In the short term, for at least the next few weeks, it seems likely that that fairly warm and wet conditions are likely to continue through the region. This means that daily pop-up thunderstorms will continue…

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  • NOAA has a new tool in their Climate Resiliency Toolkit which allows you to look at the migration of a variety of sea life over time. It’s called OceanAdapt and you can read about it at https://toolkit.climate.gov/tool/oceanadapt or go directly to the link at https://oceanadapt.rutgers.edu/regional_data/. It includes information for dozens of different species and covers…

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  • Largest-ever dead zone in Gulf of Mexico

    A New Jersey-sized area of the Gulf of Mexico has been declared a dead one this year, the largest ever observed in the region. This means that the nutrient load in the water is so high that algal blooms which feed on the nutrients have depleted all of the oxygen in the water, making it…

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  • Bringing back longleaf pines

    The US Fish and Wildlife Service had an interesting story this week about two farmers in the Southeast who are working to restore longleaf pine forests in the region. Longleaf pine acreage was reduced to about 3 million acres at one time but is now making a comeback thanks to the work of these folks. …

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  • School flooding threat in the US

    The Pew Trusts released a comprehensive report this week describing how vulnerable the nation’s schools are to flooding, either from storm surge and coastal flooding or from inland flooding, especially if they are built in or near floodplains. The report shows that the schools in the Southeast, with the exception of those located near the…

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