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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 […]
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Spooky Season
It’s that time of year when creepy pumpkins adorn porch steps, kids jump into piles of crispy leaves, and witches brew hard cider. It is what some like to call the “spooky season”. In the Northern Hemisphere, spooky season (i.e., meteorological fall) lasts from the first day of September to the last day of November. […]
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A Sine of the Tides
My fourth week of fieldwork on Sapelo Island, Georgia started off with a drive through the small nearby town of Darien before we caught the ferry over to the long-term field site. The most popular place to grab a bite to eat in Darien, Georgia is probably Skippers’ Fish Camp, which offers all kinds of […]
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Sapelo Island Week Three
Sea oats have everything you are looking for in a plant: shade tolerance, perenniality, general hardiness. They provide food for small mammals and birds, can be used for bird nesting material, and host Skipper butterfly caterpillars. Gardeners and home decorators are encouraged to purchase sea oat seeds from nurseries rather than pick their own because […]
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Sapelo Island Week Two
Dolphins look like sharks lingering near the shallows of Sapelo Island’s coastal estuary, where the marsh meets muddy brackish water. But if you look closely, the slow roll of their fin down into the water and then back up a few seconds later gives them away. That’s the point where I can breathe again and […]
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Enchanted with Chanterelle
Something I love about Georgia is that tens of mushrooms emerge from the mossy soil below the trees in shaded backyards like gumdrops in Candyland. Within a few days of swelling to an enormous size, they shrivel up and disappear into the earth, leaving each passerby the unique chance to harvest, photograph, or simply just […]
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Sustainable Development and Ecotourism
Seventeen brightly colored squares describe each of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs. Sustainable cities and communities, goal number eleven, is a tidy row of white office buildings on a cheery orange background. It makes one of the world’s most pressing issues appear simple. We can solve that, a reader might think, while reading […]
definearth
writing about the environmental issues nobody is writing about.
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