Climate and Ag in the news
-
The USDA has a new detailed posting on Medium.com describing how their work in agriculture and forestry are helping producers to deal with changes in climate and other long-term risks over time. You can read their review article at https://medium.com/usda-results/how-food-and-forestry-are-adapting-to-a-changing-climate-2f5b84bff9c0#.dcpt7pnr9. The USDA has supported this blog since it started through grants that help pay my salary…
-
This week, May 2-6, is National Air Quality Week. EPA has a web site which describes some of the events which are going on around the country at https://www3.epa.gov/airnow/airaware/. You can also find information on this topic from NOAA at https://www.airquality.noaa.gov/.
-
AgWeb reported today that the State Senate in South Carolina passed a bill giving aid to farmers that were devastated by the October floods at the end of last growing season. According to the post, “Agriculture officials say October’s torrential rains wiped out $330 million worth of crops at harvest time. Farmers lost an additional…
-
Clint Thompson of UGA posted a story on this year’s water melon crop which was picked up by Online Athens. According to his story, seedlings were ahead of normal development this spring in spite of rainy weather, and many field were planted early, but some growth was further delayed due to cool, rainy weather later…
-
Smithsonian had an interesting article this week on a long-term source of proxy climate data that was collected by Japanese priests monitoring the ice conditions on Lake Suwa. As the lake froze each year, the priests recorded the time of development and the orientation of a ridge of ice that built up as the lake…
-
The latest WunderBlog from Jeff Masters discusses something that I have not heard of before: food system shock. His blog started out this way: “The greatest threat of climate change to civilization over the next 40 years is likely to be climate change-amplified extreme droughts and floods hitting multiple major global grain-producing “breadbaskets” simultaneously. A…
-
The US Forest Service published an interesting article this week on how trees respond to drought by looking at the mechanics of water movement within the tree and through the leaves. Different species of trees respond in different ways and at different rates. You might enjoy reading about this at https://www.srs.fs.usda.gov/compass/2016/04/26/open-or-shut-how-trees-respond-to-drought-at-the-leaf-level/.