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The importance of bees in pollinating crops has been in the news in recent years because of declining populations of wild and domestic bees and other pollinators due to unidentified causes which may include both natural and manmade changes to their ecosystems, including climate. The University of Vermont released a map in December which shows the…
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The Los Angeles Times published a recent story on California farmers responding to 4+ years of drought. In addition to the drought they have experienced a number of related impacts, including decimation of some crops due to insect infestations. Some of them have run out of resources to keep farming and are taking a break…
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Now that the next episode of Star Wars has been released, I thought you might enjoy this look at the science behind the weather of the original Star Wars series, courtesy of Dr. Marshall Shepherd, UGA in Forbes.com. No spoilers, I promise! In the blog post, Dr. Shepherd points out that there is a website…
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AgFax printed a story from UGA scientist Lenny Wells on the impacts of microclimate on pecan production. You can read the article here. The impacts of the site on which the trees are planted is important in how likely the trees are to be affected by scab, which can seriously impair the trees’ ability to…
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For the first time in 38 years, there will be a full moon on Christmas. Even though a full moon occurs every 29.53 days, it has been a long time since the full moon and the date of December 25 lined up. You can read more about it at IFLT Science and at EarthSky using…
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This is the International Year of Soils. A number of stories have been written about the importance of healthy soils in stabilizing climate and improving yields of crops. University of Tennessee at Knoxville scientists recently released a study showing that the soil in the region encompassing the Dust Bowl in the 1930’s is still degraded,…
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Now that we are getting into the colder months, you can expect to see more atmospheric optical effects related to ice crystals high up in the sky, although it’s so cold up there that some of them can occur any time of year. One of the most common and spectacular of these is the halo,…