People in the SNR community are in the news:
John Benson part a story on urban habitats of Red Foxes on Channel 10/11 July 30
Daniel Snow, director of the Water Sciences Laboratory at Nebraska, was interviewed for a July 24 New York Times article on a new study showing that sharks off the coast of Brazil have cocaine in their system. More than a decade ago, he was among the first researchers to measure an illicit drug, methamphetamine, in wastewater in Nebraska. “It not too big of a stretch to imagine that these chemicals that wind up in the water can affect aquatic organisms that live in that same water,” he said.
Brian Fuchs, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center, was interviewed for a July 24 San Francisco Chronicle article on drought conditions in California. He said it could be argued that flash drought is developing in the northern part of the state. Rapidly changing conditions could ramp up the region’s susceptibility to wildfires, he said, and there could also be impacts to natural ecosystems.
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln has received two federal grants totaling $1.7 million to build on the university’s environmental sustainability work on two issues: nitrogen management for sugar beet production, and alley cropping, an agroforestry practice involving the planting of trees or shrubs alongside crops. The funds are part of $90 million in Conservation Innovation Grants awarded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. The former project is led by Bijesh Maharjan, agronomy and horticulture, and Rebecca Larson, chief scientist and vice president of governmental affairs with Western Sugar Cooperative; and the latter is led by Lord Ameyaw and Ann Powers, both School of Natural Resources. Articles on the grants appeared in Nebraska Ag Connection, Farms.com and The Fence Post.
Eric Hunt, a climatologist with Nebraska Extension, was interviewed for an Aug. 13 Brownfield Ag News article on crop conditions in the Corn Belt. Hunt said most of the area has remained drought-free this summer, though some farmers in Nebraska and Kansas haven’t been as fortunate. “We’re definitely starting to see signs of (crop) stress here across portions of Kansas and southeast Nebraska, where we haven’t been particularly wet the last month or so,” he said.
Husker faculty are leading a federally funded initiative to develop a national cyber-ecosystem for agricultural producer data. The project recently advanced with a strategic visioning session during a national planning conference Aug. 8-9 on East Campus. High Plains Journal ran an Aug. 28 brief on the conference. Husker faculty leading the initiative include Scout Calvert, University Libraries; Jennifer Clarke, statistics and food science and technology; Trenton Franz, School of Natural Resources; Joe Luck, biological systems engineering; Matt Spangler, animal science; and Hongfeng Yu, computing.