Report shows how to say goodbye to Lake Erie’s harmful algal blooms

OSU, CFAES, OSUE, Dr. Jay Martin, SNER, Toledo OH, Lake ErieHarmful algal blooms dangerous to human health and the Lake Erie ecosystem — such as the one that shut down Toledo’s water supply for two days in 2014 — could become a problem of the past.

A new report shows that if farmers apply agricultural best management practices (BMPs) on half the cropland in the Maumee River watershed, the amount of total phosphorus and dissolved reactive phosphorus leaving the watershed would drop by 40 percent in an average rainfall year — the amount agreed to in the 2012 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the U.S. and Canada. Continue reading

Algal bloom effort releases report

Image of algal bloom report 2Ohio Sea Grant, on behalf of Ohio State, the University of Toledo and the Ohio Department of Higher Education, has released the annual report for the first year of funding for the Harmful Algal Bloom Research Initiative (HABRI), which seeks solutions for harmful algal blooms in Ohio. Included are details on 18 new studies; some involve CFAES scientists. Read the press release. Read the report.

 

 

Workshop: Get to know your woods and what lives there

Image of people exploring a woods 2Experts from three major universities (including Ohio State and specifically from CFAES) will teach about the trees, bees, birds, frogs, fungi and more on one’s land at the Ohio River Valley Woodland and Wildlife Workshop. It’s on April 2 in southeast Indiana’s Clifty Falls State Park. Continue reading

Ohio State tapped to lead major IPM project in East Africa

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAJohn Cardina, professor in CFAES’s Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, along with collaborating faculty in the Office of International Programs in Agriculture and four other departments in the college, have been awarded a major Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Innovation Lab project titled “Vegetable Crops for East Africa.” Continue reading

Forests across U.S. face drought threat: Study

Image of green forest 2Almost all of America’s forests, not just those in the West, are vulnerable to increased drought and climate change, according to a study that appeared last month in the journal Global Change Biology. The new study “brings together many different perspectives on drought impact in forests,” says CFAES’s Stephen Matthews, one of the co-authors, “and it is through this effort that the great reach drought can have on forests is clear.” Read more. (Photo: Ookawaphoto, iStock.)