Fire and water. Timeless, opposing forces, they are actually linked in powerful ways that can have major impacts on communities and ecosystems. The 2011 Las Conchas mega-fire in New Mexico burned more than 150,000 acres and threatened the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Now, using data from the fire, researchers at Los Alamos have created an…
Online Climate Data Benefits Producers
Are you a farmer who wants to keep better track of the climate conditions around you? There’s an app for that. A group from the USDA Agricultural Research Station (ARS) has introduced a web-based application to help. It allows users to access important historical information about the past climate in their area. This could allow…
Water Resilience That Flows
Communities around the world are familiar with the devastation brought on by floods and droughts. Scientists are concerned that, in light of global climate change, these events will only become more frequent and intense. Water variability, at its worst, can threaten the lives and well-beings of countless people. Sadly, humans cannot control the weather to…
Upstream Trenches, Downstream Nitrogen
Water quality scientist Laura Christianson is working on a solution to the “dead zone”–an area with dangerously low levels of oxygen– in the Gulf of Mexico. Christianson lives over a thousand miles north of the Gulf in Illinois. But human activity in the Mississippi River basin, which connects to the Gulf, can lead to major…
A ‘Fitbit’ for Plants?
Plant breeders test their experiments by growing the seeds of their labor. They cross two different plants that have desirable traits. They sow the resulting seeds and evaluate the results, hoping to find a candidate variety that is better than anything currently available. The “laboratory” is often an outdoor field with thousands of plants. Farmers…
Helping Satellites Be Right as Rain
As you read this paragraph, a NASA satellite orbits around planet Earth, gathering data on — of all things — soil moisture. Moisture in the soil acts like a thermostat for the planet. Along with affecting agricultural production, it has a large influence on the weather and climate. Its impact on the planet is so…