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The Science of Depression
The mind is an incredibly powerful tool. Thoughts and beliefs can formulate individual actions, which can motivate people to make significant changes in society and the world. But what happens when peoples’ beliefs, crafted by very powerful minds, are the exact things holding them back? Although help exists for those experiencing clinical depression, a third […]
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Picking a Ph.D. Program
In the United States, most graduate schools require that you accept their offer for employment or study by April 15 to begin in the summer or fall. With that deadline just three short weeks away, I thought now would be the prime time to help you make the right choice. I am a second year […]
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Dinners of Choice for Outdoor Domestic Cats
Lions, tigers, cheetahs, jaguars, and leopards are the main cats that wildlife researchers are passionately driven to study. Their status as apex predators with enormous toe beans undoubtedly contribute to making them the focus of countless research and conservation efforts. Big cats even appear in ancient folklore. But what about the much smaller, yet fierce, […]
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Recovering Carbon on the California Coast
As the world is increasingly impacted by climate change, people are turning to nature-based climate solutions to increase carbon storage and limit emissions from the world’s ecosystems. Restoring degraded wetlands is an especially popular natural climate solution in the state of California, where land is literally sinking due to the removal of groundwater. By measuring […]
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Are Millennials Saving the Planet with Anti-Car Attitudes?
Glowing, unmoving, beautiful, and toxic. These are the words used to describe California traffic in the Los Angeles Times, but essentially describes driving in cities anywhere. Public officials want people to buy more cars while somehow using them less. It’s no wonder millennials appear to have a lack of excitement about driving compared to earlier, […]
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Fired Up About Fire
Watching the air outside my window cloud up with smoke, I felt like a cranky old neighbor. I debated whether or not to write about something as mundane as my neighbor’s choices, which would probably impact them more than me. The urge to educate the public through this environmental blog won out. If there is […]
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Shattered Mushroom Dreams
After harvesting my first mushroom meal of fresh chanterelles I thought my new hobby would really take off. I was excited for the mushroom hunting apparel that I could don for future forest expeditions, namely the collection basket that allows the spores to spread as you walk. Instead what I found was that every other […]
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Animal Tracks
Throughout my visits to coastal Georgia for fieldwork, I noticed a stark difference in animal life compared to my previous residence in Wisconsin. Animals looked smaller, had different colorations, and some were tropical species I had only ever seen at the pet store. Perhaps it was just the sense of wonder in a new place […]
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Understanding Your Local Air Quality
These days, air quality information is so prevalent that it can be viewed alongside the daily weather on a phone or television. Satellite data can be accessed through the internet to evaluate air quality on a broader scale regardless of where one is on the globe. One thing that stands in the way, other than […]
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Wetlands Stop Emitting Methane When Water Level Is Too High – But Is That a Good Thing?
High water levels result in higher wetland methane emissions for a couple reasons. First, more water on the wetland surface creates the ideal oxygen-deprived conditions for microbial growth down in the soil. Methanogenic microbes ramp up the process of methanogenesis, producing methane to send up through the water as diffuse gas. Second, wetland plants continue […]
definearth
writing about the environmental issues nobody is writing about.
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