Using satellites
to measure
farm success
By Emma Bryce/Anthropocene
Photo by James Feller/flickr
High-resolution satellite data can be used to monitor crops and help farmers double the gains from sustainable intensification, finds
a new Nature Sustainability study
.
It’s the first to show how satellite technology could be used to help farmers quantify the environmental and commercial benefits of sustainable farming – identifying which interventions work, and which don’t.
Sustainable intensification
has become a buzzword in agriculture, covering a fleet of new farming methods, interventions, and technologies that are designed to scale up farming at the lowest-possible environmental cost. But one catch is that it’s difficult to measure how effective these methods really are across large areas of farmland.
The new study, however, provides some convincing evidence that some interventions really are worth their salt.
|
|
Fly fishing
hooks new, younger fans
By Alexandra Marvar/The New York Times
Photo by Steve Corey/flickr
Step aside, goat yoga. The chic way to unwind now is fly fishing.
That’s right. For some of the same reasons millennials recently flocked to bird-watching, this sport is gaining popularity with a younger set.
For those who can afford the leisure time and some rudimentary equipment, it offers a reason to be outdoors, a closer connection to nature, an avenue for environmentalism, built-in community, opportunity for creative expression, and a lifetime’s worth of niche expertise. Fly anglers who are not vegetarian nor vegan, nor otherwise bound by the code of “catch and release,” see it as an extension of the farm-to-table movement. Plus, it’s very Instagrammable, even as it encourages people to put down their phones.
And where millennials go, hospitality brands follow.
|
|
Can the abalone make a comeback
in California?
By Rosanna Xia/Los Angeles Times
Photo by Amanda/flickr
Abalone once were to California what lobster is to Maine and blue crab to Maryland, so plentiful they stacked one on top of another like colorful paving stones. Californians held abalone bakes, spun abalone folk tales, sang abalone love songs. They grew large and hardy and fetched extraordinary prices. One diver once said it was like pulling $100 bills from the seafloor.
But we loved them almost to death.
The white abalone — one of seven species along the California coast — once numbered in the millions, but in 2001 it became the first marine invertebrate to be listed as a federal endangered species.
How to save the white abalone has become a scientific puzzle. No one had thought to study them when they were abundant: What do they eat? How often do they reproduce? By the time this information was crucial to their survival, there were few left to study.
|
|
Once feared extinct, ‘mouse-deer’ lives o
By Marisa Iati/The Washington Post
Photo by Emily Orpin/flickr
A small deer-like creature that conservationists feared was extinct has been photographed, in Vietnam, for the first time in almost three decades.
Scientists had last spotted the silver-backed chevrotain, also called the Vietnamese mouse-deer, in 1990 in central Vietnam, Global Wildlife Conservation said in
a statement
. The rabbit-size chevrotain lives in a tropical forest-covered part of the Asian nation, is often targeted by poachers and is the first mammal on the Texas-based organization’s list of
25 most-wanted lost species
to be found.
“For so long this species has seemingly only existed as part of our imagination,” An Nguyen, an associate conservation scientist for Global Wildlife Conservation, said in the statement. “Discovering that it is, indeed, still out there, is the first step in ensuring we don’t lose it again, and we’re moving quickly now to figure out how best to protect it.”
|
|
Connecting veterans with conservation
By Jenny Rogers/nature.org
Photo by Joseph/flick
r
Fred Napoleon is the first to arrive at the ranch. Nicely dressed in a sweater and carrying boxed wine as a hospitality gift, he’s the only one whose flight to Montana wasn’t delayed.
Napoleon, a retired Army soldier who deployed in the first Gulf War, is one of 11 veterans gathering at Pine Butte—a remote former guest ranch in western Montana now owned by The Nature Conservancy. He sits in the kitchen as the organizers of this gathering, a fly-fishing retreat, scurry around making lunch sandwiches and final preparations.
Back in the kitchen, the three organizers scramble. They are TNC staffers, but everything they’re doing here is on top of their day jobs: Brent Lathrop, who served in the Army as a reservist from the Vietnam era through the Gulf War, is a director of TNC’s work in southeast Wyoming. Kaylee Kenison is a former Iraq War medic who handles operations for TNC’s Montana chapter. Michelle Kotulski, an e-learning developer and the wife of a career Marine, flew all the way from Hawaii and has been awake for 36 hours straight.
They’re part of a larger team that has taken on something of a second job advocating for veterans who work for TNC and helping connect the organization with veterans in general.
|
|
To read past McGraw Reports click
here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
