Making room for prairie STRIPs: Lisa Schulte Moore (Land Sharing/Sparing #1)

Lisa Schulte Moore, an professor of natural resource ecology and management at Iowa State University, seems to have the energy of three people. She has a hand in agricultural landscape management, bioenergy development, oak restoration, and hemlock and pine forest management, among other projects, and still makes time to drive all over Iowa, talking to farmers. In this episode of Field Talk, she explains how integrating STRIPs of prairie into conventional row crops improves water quality — and helps farms, waterways, and wildlife.

This is the first interview in a series exploring “land-sparing” and “land-sharing” strategies to conserve wildness and a rich tapestry of species in our human dominated world. Read more ›

Changing climate, changing landscape: monitoring the vast wilderness of interior Alaska

  National Park Service plant ecologist Carl Roland lives in Alaska, where climate change is palpably present. Ecologists have predicted major landscape-scale changes in the future of the Alaskan interior, with a potential shift from the iconic black and white Read more ›

Immersed in the clouds: Interview with tropical cloud forest researcher

There is a world within the canopy of a tropical cloud forest that not many people get to see. In this unique ecosystem – maintained by the exceptionally wet microclimate of cloud cover—orchids, moss, lichens and other epiphytes grow in Read more ›

Taking a shot at photographing science and nature

Some projects implement photography as a means for exploring societal and environmental issues. One such project is gigapan.org, which allows users to share and discuss panoramic photographs (one of the most famous gigapans is of the 2009 Inauguration of President Read more ›