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Farm runoff is accelerating demise of protective coastal salt marshes
Posted by ClimateWire: Robert S. Eshelman on October 23rd, 2012
ClimateWire: Pollution from agricultural production degrades coastal salt marshes more quickly than previously thought, according to a study published in the journal Nature. The decline of these ecosystems, the authors add, not only harms the plants and animals that inhabit them but undermines the storage capacity of one of the world's primary carbon sinks.
"Perhaps the most obvious [benefit that salt marshes provide] is they're nursery grounds for many fish, shellfish and birds, especially migrating birds...
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Could Africa hold the answers to America’s drought woes?
Posted by ClimateWire: Robert S. Eshelman on July 27th, 2012
ClimateWire: The world's poorest continent could offer clues to how America's farmers might cope with a hotter, drier climate, leading agriculture experts say.
In the African Sahel -- the belt of semiarid savanna running from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea -- farmers have successfully fought back an expanding Sahara and turned once dry, uncultivated scrub into highly productive farmland.
The key to their success has been allowing trees to grow, where they once cut them down, and adopting agricultural...