Thanks to a “triple whammy” of declining sea ice, warming seawater and increased wave activity, the northern coastline of Alaska between Point Barrow and Prudhoe Bay is retreating at 30 to 45 feet a year – and University of Colorado researchers say there’s no end in sight to the fast-paced erosion. The research team, led […]
Long-established plow-based agricultural methods combined with the economic imperative to improve crop yields are rapidly depleting the Earth’s soil supply, says a University of Washington (UW) scientist. According to UW professor David Montgomery, plowing increases soil erosion to the point that it is not offset by soil creation. Rather than plowing, Montgomery suggests “no-till” agriculture […]
An ecologist from Cornell University reports that soil from the world’s croplands is being swept and washed away 10 – 40 times faster than it is being replenished. Astonishingly, an agricultural area the size of Indiana is destroyed every year. Cornell’s David Pimentel lamented that while climate change hogged the headlines, nobody cared much about […]
