By Caleb Leonard When we think of lawns, most people envision short, green grass. However, few idealize the ecological expense of maintaining that type of yard. It’s time to rethink traditional lawns and opt for healthier landscapes that protect our coastal ecosystems. Gas-powered lawn equipment and greedy land developers are creating heat islands, while stormwater…
Consider the Earth Rehydration Drought Relief Carbon Offset Fund to fight climate change, increase climate resiliency, minimize human environmental impacts, and restore nature. The fund takes a two-pronged approach. The first part of the Fund focuses on slowing water down and restoring natural water cycles. In natural areas where the ground is covered in healthy soil,…
Restore the climate to 350 ppm CO2 by increasing the world’s soil by 2%. Excessive greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are warming our planet, damaging ecosystems, and increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, with devastating costs. There are currently 422 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere, but scientists have set the critical…
“Algae eats the fertilizer. Then there are too many algae, no more oxygen and the fish die.” “Carbon capture, yes.” “Do not take away my bees.” “I’ll leave the bees.” “I think water has got to stay at the top. Because we in a drought” “Fertilizer creates sunspills. I feel that could be lower down.”…
Thursday July 23, the Ocean River Institute’s Natural Lawn Care for Healthy Soils Competition was in Bridgewater. Jacklyn Norris (left) of Bridgewater University Environmental Action Team was assisted by Susanna Buckley (Connecticut College) and Adibah Shaikh (U Mass Lowell). The winning towns are those with the greatest number of households pledging to maintain natural lawns…
There is hope for the bees when there’s clover in the lawn. Researchers discovered that lawns in Springfield Massachusetts when cut every three weeks instead of weekly resulted in as many as 2.5 times more lawn flowers, mostly clover and dandelions, and a great diversity of 93 species of bees. Thursday, May 20th is the…
My family and friends used to paddle down the Ipswich River. We’d load up canoes, pull in hands and feet, put paddles out, to follow watery bends and turns down the river. In May, high water carried us over river banks, through trees and out onto flooded fields by the Topsfield fairgrounds. We floated outside…
News clips of forests burning in California, conflagrations on hillsides, black smoke billowing into communities, got me thinking about alternatives to the merits of planting trees to fight climate change. Trees store carbon that photosynthesis has pulled from the air as carbon dioxide. Plants take energy from the sun to break CO2 molecules into carbon…
