By Carol Clark

It has long been known that agricultural pesticides are one of the greatest threats to bees and other essential pollinators. What farmers have lacked is an understanding of how different pesticides, applied at various times on a variety of crops, affect the risk of exposure to bees living near the fields. 

Researchers have drawn from real-world data to try to address this gap, developing and testing a spatial model for predicting pesticide exposure in bumblebees. The journal Science of the Total Environment published the work, based on the interactions of the yellow-faced bumblebee (Bombus vosnesenskii) with crops in California. 

“We were able to explain nearly 75% of the spatial variation in pesticide exposure among the bumblebee hives using our model,” says Eric Lonsdorf, first author of the study and assistant professor in Emory’s Department of Environmental Sciences. 

Relatively simple models were more effective at preventing exposures than the researchers expected.

“Our results suggest that simply data on where and when a pesticide was sprayed is all that you need to make a good prediction for the threat to nearby hives,” Lonsdorf says. 

Including data on how long a particular chemical lingers in the landscape or how attractive the flowers in a particular crop are to the bees did not make a significant difference in the model’s predictive power. 

“We found that even if a crop is not that attractive to the bees, the chemicals from that crop are still going to be found in their pollen,” Lonsdorf says. “The bees may be picking up the chemical due to drift of the pesticide onto nearby weeds where they are foraging.” 

Providing tools for conservation 

Lonsdorf studies natural capital, or nature’s contributions to humans. He translates ecological principles and knowledge into predictive models that enable industry leaders and policymakers to better manage natural resources. 

He’s currently using models he developed to help the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service identify bee conservation priority areas in the United States. 

More research is needed, Lonsdorf says, to determine whether the bumblebee risk-prediction model will scale up across different landscapes and for different species of bees. The current study also did not delve into how the amount of a particular pesticide found in the pollen translated into toxicity for the bees. 

Co-authors of the paper include Neal Williams from the University of California, Davis, and Maj Rundlöf and Charlie Nicholson, who are affiliated with the University of California, Davis, and Lund University in Sweden. 

Drawing from fine-scaled data 

The researchers began with experiments set amid a variety of crops in northern California’s Yolo County. Fourteen pairs of yellow-faced bumblebee colonies were placed around the agricultural landscape. This species of bumblebee is native to the West Coast and the most abundant wild species of bee in this range, found in both urban and agricultural areas. 

Pollen that bees in each hive collected were sampled at six different times during the growing season. The pollen samples were then assessed for exposure to 52 different active ingredients encompassing a range of pesticides. 

Data from these experiments were combined with field-level data from the California Department of Pesticide Regulation on what pesticides were sprayed and what days they were sprayed. 

“California is unique in providing such fine-scaled, public data,” Lonsdorf says. “In most places in the United States, information on what pesticides are being sprayed is only collected at the county level and summarized on an annual basis.” 

The detailed data allowed the researchers to consider a range of factors in their predictive model to identify those factors with the most predictive power. 

“Our risk-prediction model marks another step toward evaluating pollinator-conservation issues to help guide policies for pollinator landscapes,” Lonsdorf says. “The next step is to do a field-toxicity assessment to get a better understanding of how pesticides are affecting bee health.” 

He and colleagues are now conducting such a study with honeybees, he adds. 

The current paper was supported by the National Science Foundation, California Department of Food and Agriculture, Almond Board of California, KIND Foundation Fund for Pollinator Health and the Swedish Research Council.

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"Computer performance fascinates me," says Emory graduate student Yazhuo Zhang, co-first author of the discovery, shown on a visit to Switzerland. Set to receive her PhD in May, Zhang accepted a post-doctroal fellowship at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich).

"Our project is unique in that it focuses on the Southern Piedmont and an often under served piece of our food system, but one that is vital to providing us the nutrients we need — the vegetable sector," says Emily Burchfield, assistant professor of environmental sciences.

Three Emory University researchers received $5,100,000 as part of a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) project to help measure and promote climate-smart practices that support small-scale, diversified vegetable farmers in the Southern Piedmont. A plateau below the Appalachian Mountains and above the coastal plain, the Southern Piedmont is a banana-shaped region spanning a bit of eastern Alabama, up across part of northern Georgia and into North and South Carolina and Virginia. 

Emory is one of 12 organizations involved in the $25 million project, headed by the Rodale Institute and titled “Quantifying the Potential to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Increase Carbon Sequestration by Growing and Marketing Climate-Smart Commodities in the Southern Piedmont.” 

The five-year project is part of the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative. “This effort will increase the competitive advantage of U.S. agriculture both domestically and internationally, build wealth that stays in rural communities and support a diverse range of producers and operation types,” USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack says of the initiative. 

The Emory team encompasses three faculty from the Department of Environmental Sciences: Emily Burchfield, Eri Saikawa and Debjani Sihi. 

• Burchfield combines spatial-temporal social and environmental data to understand the future of food security in the United States. 

• Saikawa is an atmospheric chemist who models global soil nitrous oxide emissions and quantifies soil greenhouse gas fluxes. 

• Sihi is an environmental biogeochemist who researches soil organic matter dynamics and greenhouse gas emissions from natural and managed systems. 

Read more here.

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Diverse land cover boosts yields for major U.S. crops, study finds 

Soil quality critical to help some U.S. crops weather climate change

"We are taking basic information about golden eagle ecology in the Anthropocene and developing it into predictive frameworks for how to protect them," says Eric Lonsdorf, Emory assistant professor of environmental sciences.

By Carol Clark

Wind energy is a major component of the U.S. clean-energy goals. Already one of the fastest growing and lowest-cost sources of electricity in the country, it is poised for even more rapid growth, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. 

Wind power, however, does not come without tradeoffs, including some negative impacts on wildlife. Throughout the United States, for example, it’s been estimated that as many as three golden eagles per wind farm are killed each year by wind turbines. 

“Renewable energy sources, including wind energy, are critical for us to achieve a net-zero emissions future,” says Eric Lonsdorf, assistant professor of environmental sciences at Emory University. “We need to address conflicts between renewable energy and wildlife conservation so that we can combat climate change while also limiting damage to biodiversity.” 

Lonsdorf and colleagues are developing data-driven methods to determine how much effort is needed to save golden eagles in order to offset the impact of wind turbines on their populations. 

The Journal of Wildlife Management recently published their latest model for calculating the benefit of one mitigation strategy — removal of large, road-killed animals that can lead to golden eagles getting hit by cars. 

Quantifying the benefits of natural capital

Lonsdorf is an expert in natural capital, or the quantifiable benefits that nature provides humans. He translates ecological principles and data into computer models that enable industry leaders and policymakers to better manage natural resources. 

Co-authors of the current study include James Gerber and Deepak Ray, from the University of Minnesota; Steven Slater, from HawkWatch International; and Taber Allison, from the Renewable Energy Wildlife Institute. 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) monitors golden eagle populations, which are protected through the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Threats to golden eagles include loss of habitat and prey. 

Additional threats that are directly linked to human activities include illegal shootings, electrocution at power poles, lead poisoning from consuming parts of bullets in the entrails of deer carcasses discarded at the site of hunters’ kills, collisions with cars at sites where the birds are scavenging roadkill and collisions with the blades of a wind turbine. 

Across the western United States, hundreds of wind turbines have gone up in sage-brush flats that are part of golden eagles’ core habitat, and many more turbines are planned. In order to meet the permit requirements of the FWS, wind-energy companies must agree to mitigate their impact on the animals by offsetting the predicted number of golden eagles that will fly into their turbines each year. 

Currently, the only offset strategy approved by the FWS for wind-energy companies is to retrofit power poles to prevent golden eagles from becoming electrocuted. 

Adding empirical data

For the past five years, Lonsdorf and his colleagues have combined their expertise to develop a range of potential offset strategies for golden eagle fatalities. 

Their current paper — an updated model for golden eagle mortality due to vehicle collisions based on data from Wyoming — considered myriad factors such as the population density for golden eagles in the region, the number and size of deer roadkill carcasses expected and the traffic volume on the roads. The model also incorporated observational evidence of eagle-carcass roadside interactions obtained by motion-triggered cameras, data that was lacking in a previous model the researchers created. 

The addition of this empirical data allowed the researchers to make estimates for how long a golden eagle typically spends at a carcass, how the decay rate of the carcass affects the number of visits from eagles and the effects of seasonality on the scavenging behavior of the eagles. 

The model results suggest that carcass relocation is a viable golden eagle mitigation strategy that could save up to seven golden eagles annually in some Wyoming counties. On average, the model indicates that the prompt removal of four roadside carcasses would save at least one golden eagle. 

The researchers can make a user-friendly version of the prediction framework available to the FWS and wind-energy companies if the FWS decides to approve carcass removal as an eagle mortality offset strategy. 

“We’re taking basic information about golden eagle ecology in the Anthropocene and developing it into predictive frameworks for how to protect them,” Lonsdorf says. “As wind energy continues to grow, more mitigation strategies will likely be needed. Our goal is to provide scientific evidence for a portfolio of methods to help accomplish a zero-net loss of golden eagles from wind-energy facilities.” 

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"Bison were not just key to the economies of some Indigenous nations," says Emory economist Maggie Jones, co-author of the study. "The bison were also important cultural and spiritual symbols."

Eri Saikawa, associate professor of environmental studies (bottom, right) led a delegation of students to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Egypt. Click here to see bios of the delegation members.

By Carol Clark

Emory students helped raise the profiles of youth activists during this year’s United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, better known as COP, continuing through Nov. 18 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. 

A delegation of five Emory undergraduates and four graduate students, led by Eri Saikawa, associate professor of environmental sciences, attended the first week of COP as official U.N. observers. They sat in on negotiations and co-hosted a side event with the Climate Justice Program entitled “Youth: From Resistance to Power.” The event featured a panel discussion by four young activists — from Pakistan, Kenya, Mexico and the Philippines — followed by an interactive networking event moderated by the Emory students. 

“It’s inspiring and energizing seeing so many youth raising their voices and pushing for climate action,” says Saikawa. 

Saikawa began leading students from her Climate Change and Society class to the annual global climate talks in 2015, when COP was held in Paris. That year, nearly 200 member countries hammered out the Paris Agreement, aiming to keep the global mean rise in temperature to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. 

Student delegates will share what they learned during this year’s COP at a campus event entitled “Climate Conversations: Advancing Towards Global Justice” on Thursday, Nov. 17 at 6 pm in the Emory Student Center, multi-purpose rooms 5 and 6. Attendees can join in activities geared to the topics of environmental justice, climate and business, urban planning, conservation and more. 

The students will also produce podcasts on different aspects of COP for the Emory Climate Talks AmpliFIRE series. 

Following are brief summaries of the experiences and views of four of the Emory undergraduates who traveled to Egypt for COP. 

"Right after we touched down in Sharm El-Sheikh we grabbed our badges and headed to the conference," says Gabriela Rucker, right, shown with fellow senior Clare McCarthy.

“It was exciting to be immersed among 45,000 people working to generate solutions to the climate crisis," says Gabriela Rucker, a senior majoring in environmental sciences on the social science and policy track. 

Her interest in sustainable agriculture took her to the food-systems pavilion. She learned about programs to compensate farmers for preserving ecosystems and the increasing use of seaweed as a nutrient. “That was cool, right off the bat, to hear about those food solutions.” 

Rucker is a member of the Plastic-Free Emory task force and appreciated insights from Eric Njuguna, an activist from Kenya, during the “Youth: From Resistance to Power” event. 

“The United States exports a significant amount of plastics and other recycling abroad, where it ends up in landfills and becomes another country’s problem,” she says. “Eric Njuguna talked about his experiences dealing with trash from the United States. It’s important that people in the United States understand where our trash goes when we throw it away.” 

The connections she made during COP were a highlight for Rucker. “I met a lot of youth with passion and drive,” she says. “We have our careers in front of us so connecting with fellow youth about where they want to go and what they want to work on was invaluable.” 

Rucker is currently an intern at a solar-power development company. “My dream job would involve building solar plants to provide clean electricity for the United States,” she says. “During the next 20 years we need to build out a significant amount of renewable energy infrastructure.” 

Ultimately, COP further fueled her optimism. “I generally have a lot of hope for the progress of humanity,” Rucker says. “I’ve witnessed throughout my life people’s work toward a cleaner and more equitable society. My hope stems from the people who are doing the work to make that vision happen.”

Senior Jack Miklaucic is grateful for the anonymous donor who funds the trips by Emory students to COP. "It's a tribute to Dr. Saikawa's work that a donor is willing to do this for her students year after year," he says.

“The best part of COP for me was attending events led by civic groups doing energy-justice advocacy, which is the kind of work that I want to do,” says Jack Miklaucic, a senior majoring in environmental sciences and philosophy, politics and law. “They were led by really cool people who are fearless about calling out the fossil fuel companies and speaking truth to power. Hopefully, their examples will make me a more effective activist going forward.” 

Miklaucic plans to attend law school and hopes for a career involved with ensuring that utility companies and other energy providers are better regulated. “I want my work to have a direct, positive impact on society,” he says. 

“Enhancing energy efficiency is a big win for everybody,” Miklaucic adds. “It will improve people’s lives on the economic, climate and health levels. We’re already seeing movement toward more energy efficiency so that provides incentive to keep working towards more.” 

He is optimistic regarding climate solutions. “We were looking at a 3-to-4-degree Celsius rise in the global temperature average a few years ago and that’s no longer likely,” he points out. ”It’s important to stay focused on what kind of impact we can make because every tenth of a degree matters for what kind of world we’re going to live in.” 

Miklaucic appreciated the international perspective he gained from COP. “It was interesting to learn how climate activism is different around the world,” he says. “In some places they are persecuted and outright killed for doing what they do. It drove home to me that while it can be frustrating at times working for energy justice in the United States, it’s also a much safer place to be doing it.” 

"Every single person will be affected," says senior Clare McCarthy of climate change.

Clare McCarthy is a senior majoring in environmental sciences on the community building and social change track. She is also pursuing the 4+1 BS/MPH in environmental health at Rollins School of Public Health. 

She began learning about how the climate crisis is a social justice issue while she was in high school. It made her feel guilty to realize how people in the Global South tend to disproportionately suffer the greatest impacts of climate change as opposed to more privileged people in her hometown, where climate change felt distant. 

“That guilt paralyzed me,” she recalls, “until I came to Emory, when I decided to take action.” McCarthy is involved in efforts to hold the Emory administration accountable to stronger climate action through the Emory Climate Coalition and Emory Climate Reality Project. 

COP helped solidify her interest in loss and damage, or the harmful impacts of climate change, as well as efforts by local communities to adapt. She learned more about these issues first-hand by talking to leaders of nongovernment organizations, such as the International Center for Climate Change and Development, based in Bangladesh. 

“Loss and damage and how to address it became a headline issue for the first time at this year’s COP,” McCarthy says. “While it’s great to see this, it cannot be celebrated as a final victory because it’s way overdue and much more work is needed.” 

Countries in the Global South are asking countries in the Global North to set up a mechanism for financing recovery from both economic and health impacts due to climate events. “They want the money to be payments and not in the form of loans because then they will be in debt,” McCarthy says.

She envisions a career working internationally or within the United States to help communities build their capacity to respond to climate change. 

“It makes me feel hopeful to meet so many impressive people working on solutions,” McCarthy says. “The passion and dedication of my fellow activists, here at Emory and in communities around the world, keeps me going.” 

"Climate change is the greatest challenge that my generation faces," says senior Jackson Pentz, second from right. While in Egypt he visited the Great Sphinx of Giza along with his fellow undergraduates, (from left) Clare McCarthy, Gabriela Rucker, Jack Miklaucic and Nick Chang. 

“A lot of people associate environmental science with governmental policy but I’ve always been interested in business as a way of creating social change,” says Jackson Pentz, a senior majoring in Economics and Environmental Science on the Social Science and Policy Track. Pentz is also a member of the Goizueta Business School’s Environmental Management program. 

At COP he was impressed to learn that companies that compete for market share are actually collaborating on sustainability. “Many businesses are finding that in order to address sustainability issues they need to pool their research-and-development funding and share their knowledge,” he says. “The private sector is taking sustainability seriously and can come together more quickly and effectively than governments.”

Pentz already has a job lined up after he graduates in May. He’ll be working as a business consultant at McKinsey and Company specializing in sustainability and natural resources. 

Thinking about the climate crisis at the global, or even the national, level can make you feel helpless, he says. “But if you zoom in on individuals or organizations at the smaller scale, you start to see lots of positive action that can be replicated to make a bigger impact,” he adds. 

At the “Youth: Resistance to Power” event Pentz was buoyed by the remarks of Ayisha Saddiqa, a young climate justice activist who grew up in Pakistan as the member of an Indigenous community.

“She told us that young people shouldn’t feel responsible for saving the world. That’s obviously too big of a burden,” Pentz says. “But she personally feels responsible for working to help her community. If everybody does something manageable to help those around them, that’s how you start a social movement and collective action to improve things on a global scale.”

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"Keeping soil healthy is a key component needed to adapt to the climate crisis," says Debjani Sihi, assistant professor in Emory's Department of Environmental Sciences.

By Carol Clark

The capacity of soil to hold water will be critical to determine how well farms in some regions of the United States manage the problem of prolonged heat stress due to climate change, a new study suggests. The journal Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems published the finding, based on analyses of 30 years of data on four major U.S. crops — corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat. 

“At the same time that farmers are facing more extreme weather events caused by climate change they are dealing with the growing problem of soil degradation,” says Debjani Sihi, first author of the study and assistant professor in Emory University’s Department of Environmental Sciences. 

Sihi is a biogeochemist who studies environmental and sustainability issues at the nexus of soil, climate, health and policy. 

Globally, according to Sihi and her co-authors, 750 million people were undernourished in 2019 due to the effects of climate change, including a decline in food production, hikes in food prices and increased competition for land and water. And the problem of global food security is expected to intensify. World crop yields are projected to decrease by 25% overall within the next 25 years due to climate change, and yet global food production would need to double by 2050 to feed the projected growth in human population. 

How soil impacts climate 

“Keeping soil healthy is a key component needed to adapt to the climate crisis,” Sihi says. Healthy soil contains microbes that provide the nutrients needed for healthy plants to grow, she explains, while also helping make the plant foods that we eat more nutritious. 

The presence of these microbes also improves the ability of soil to sequester carbon. The top 30 centimeters of the world’s soil contains about twice as much carbon as the entire atmosphere, making soil the second-largest natural carbon sink after oceans, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. 

The rise in average temperatures, however, is contributing to declines in soil moisture in some areas, which can impact crop production while also degrading the soil over the long term. 

For the current paper, the researchers sought to quantify the long-term impact of climate and soil properties on yields of corn, soybeans, cotton and wheat across the mainland United States. They drew on county-level data of the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1981 to 2015. Their dataset contained precipitation rates and accumulation of average daily temperatures over a crop’s growing season, known as growing-degree days. The data also factored in soil variations, including water-holding capacity, organic matter texture (the percentage of sand, silt and clay), pH, slope, erodibility and soil-loss tolerance. 

How farmers can adapt 

The researchers used an explainable machine-learning approach to evaluate the impact on crop yields of each of these climate and soil variables. The results singled out growing-degree days as the most important climatic factor and water holding capacity as the most influential soil property for crop-yield variability. 

“The take-home message,” Sihi says, “is that farmers in regions facing added heat stress for their crops may want to proactively focus on the water-holding capacity of their soil.” 

Clay soil and soil rich in organic material holds water better than sandy soil, she explains. So farms with sandy soil, or with soils containing less organic material, may want to add more amendments to improve the water-holding capacity of the land. Another possible adaptation is to use more mulch to reduce evaporation. 

The researchers hope that their findings will help farmers, land-management specialists and policy makers in decision-making related to sustainable and long-term soil-, water- and crop- management practices. 

Co-authors of the study include Kanad Basu and Abraham Peedikayil Kuruvila from the University of Texas at Dallas; Biswanath Dari from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and Gaurav Jha from Montana State University. 

Funding for the work was provided by Emory University, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University and Montana State University. 

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"It's important to begin thinking about how to transition out of our current damaging monoculture paradigm toward systems that are environmentally sustainable, economically viable for farmers and climate-smart," says Emily Burchfield, assistant professor in Emory's Department of Environmental Sciences.

By Carol Clark

Climate change will make the U.S. Corn Belt unsuitable for cultivating corn by 2100 without major technological advances in agricultural practices, an Emory University study finds. 

Environmental Research Letters published the research, which adds to the evidence that significant agricultural adaptation will be necessary and inevitable in the Central and Eastern United States. It is critical that this adaptation includes diversification beyond the major commodity crops that now make up the bulk of U.S. agriculture, says Emily Burchfield, author of the study and assistant professor in Emory’s Department of Environmental Sciences. 

“Climate change is happening, and it will continue to shift U.S. cultivation geographies strongly north,” Burchfield says. “It’s not enough to simply depend on technological innovations to save the day. Now is the time to envision big shifts in what and how we grow our food to create more sustainable and resilient forms of agriculture.” 

Burchfield’s research combines spatial-temporal social and environmental data to understand the future of food security in the United States, including the consequences of a changing climate. 

More than two-thirds of the land in the U.S. mainland is currently devoted to growing food, fuel or fiber. And about 80 percent of these agricultural lands are cultivated with just five commodity crops: Corn, soy, wheat, hay and alfalfa. Previous research based on biophysical data has established that climate change will adversely affect the yields of these crops. 

Building predictive models

For the current paper, Burchfield wanted to investigate the potential impacts of climate change on cultivation geographies. She focused on the six major U.S. crops that cover 80 percent of cultivated land in the United States: Alfalfa, corn, cotton, hay, soy and wheat. She drew from historical land-use data classifying where these crops are grown and publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Geographical Survey, the WorldClim Project, the Harmonized World Soil Database and other public sources. 

Using these data, she built models to predict where each crop has been grown during the 20 years spanning 2008 to 2019. She first ran models using only climate and soil data. These models accurately predicted — by between 85 and 95 percent — of where these major crops are currently cultivated. 

Burchfield ran a second set of models that incorporated indicators of human interventions — such as input use and crop insurance — that alter biophysical conditions to support cultivation. These models performed even better and highlighted the ways in which agricultural interventions expand and amplify the cultivation geographies supported only by climate and soil. 

Burchfield then used these historical models to project biophysically driven shifts in cultivation to 2100 under low-, moderate- and high-emission scenarios. The results suggest that even under moderate-emission scenarios, the cultivation geographies of corn, soy, alfalfa and wheat will all shift strongly north, with the Corn Belt of the upper Midwest becoming unsuitable to the cultivation of corn by 2100. More severe emissions scenarios exacerbate these changes. 

“These projections may be pessimistic because they don’t account for all of the ways that technology may help farmers adapt and rise to the challenge,” Burchfield concedes. She notes that heavy investment is already going into studying the genetic modification of corn and soy plants to help them adapt to climate change. 

“But relying on technology alone is a really risky way to approach the problem,” Burchfield adds. “If we continue to push against biophysical realities, we will eventually reach ecological collapse.” 

The need for diverse landscapes

She stresses the need for U.S. agricultural systems to diversify beyond the major commodity crops, most of which are processed into animal feed. 

“One of the basic laws of ecology is that more diverse ecosystems are more resilient,” Burchfield says. “A landscape covered with a single plant is a fragile, brittle landscape. And there is also growing evidence that more diverse agricultural landscapes are more productive.” 

U.S. agricultural systems incentivize “monoculture farming” of a handful of commodity crops, largely through crop insurance and government subsidies. These systems take an enormous toll on the environment, Burchfield says, while also supporting a meat-heavy U.S. diet that is not conducive to human health. 

“We need to switch from incentivizing intensive cultivation of five or six crops to supporting farmers’ ability to experiment and adopt the crops that work best in their particular landscape,” she says. “It’s important to begin thinking about how to transition out of our current damaging monoculture paradigm toward systems that are environmentally sustainable, economically viable for farmers and climate-smart.” 

Burchfield plans to expand the modeling in the current paper by integrating interviews with agricultural policy experts, agricultural extension agents and famers. “I’d especially like to better understand what a diverse range of farmers in different parts of the country envision for their operations over the long term, and any obstacles that they feel are preventing them from getting there,” she says. 

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Data-driven study digs into the state of U.S. farm livelihoods

Diverse landcover boosts yields for major U.S. crops, study finds 

"Farmers are fundamental to our survival, their work is risky and difficult, and ensuring their quality of life is necessary for U.S. agriculture to persist," says Emily Burchfield, Emory assistant professor of environmental sciences and lead author of the study.

A wild bumblebee visits a blossom. The current study involved lab experiments on a different species of bumblebee as a first step to understanding the potential effects of the agricultural use of streptomycin on pollinators.

Emory economist Hugo Mialon led a major study on the impact of international trade bans on the status of endangered species, such as Madagascar's Antsingy leaf chameleon, above, once popular in the pet trade. (Photo by Bernard Dupont, via Wikipedia).

Emory students and alumni are raising diverse voices on equity during the United Nations Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP26) now underway in Glasgow. This year, Emory is not sending an in-person student delegation, due to the pandemic and related concerns, says Eri Saikawa, associate professor of environmental sciences, who normally leads students at COP. Instead, the 17 undergraduate and six graduate students in Saikawa's "Climate and Society" class are contributing virtually by hosting virtual seminars for COP's Zero Emissions Solutions Conference. They are also producing a series of Emory Climate Talks seminars and AmpliFIRE podcasts, also aimed at bringing in diverse viewpoints to discuss key issues at COP.

Read the full story here.

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