ESA news release: February highlights from Ecological Society of America publications Future of Alaskan forests, proliferation of plastic greenhouses, and the intersection of watershed protection and urban renewal
For Immediate Release: 21 February 2013 Contact: Liza Lester (202) 833-8773 x 211; [email protected] For the full, hyperlinked press release, please check out http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-02/esoa-fhf022113.php ->Weighing the costs and benefits of plastic vegetable greenhouses The economic benefits of intensive vegetable cultivation inside plastic greenhouses, particularly for small-holders, have driven a rapid mushrooming of long plastic tents in farmlands worldwide - but particularly in China, where they cover 3.3 million hectares and produce approximately US $60 million in produce (2008 figures). The method conserves water, binds up carbon, shrinks land use, protects against soil erosion and exhaustion, and mitigates problematic dust storms. But this change from conventional vegetable farming has harmful environmental effects as well. ->Ten-year study sets baseline for climate change modeling and park and forestry management in Interior Alaska's Denali National Park Recent studies have predicted major landscape-scale change for the future of the Alaskan interior, with a potential shift from spruce-dominated boreal forest to broadleaf forest or grasslands, through a combination of heat, drought, insect outbreaks, and more frequent wildfires. The National Park Service's Inventory and Monitoring program reports on the first decade of ongoing ecosystem monitoring in Denali National Park. ->Integrating urban renewal and watershed restoration Watershed 263 is a partnership of Baltimore's Parks & People Foundation, the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, the USDA Forest Service, Baltimore's municipal Department of Public Works, and neighborhood volunteers - in the neighborhood David Simon depicted in "The Corner." ->Ecological knowledge reduces religious release of invasive species. ->Water, climate, and social change in a fragile landscape - Special Feature on Sustainability on the U.S./Mexico Border. ->Where do Seeds go when they go Far? Distance and Directionality of Avian Seed Dispersal in Heterogeneous Landscapes.
