Grassland

A new University of British Columbia (UBC)-led study looking into the impacts that large industrial farming has on biodiversity found that increased farm size causes a decline in bird diversity.

Florida, the "Sunshine State," is rapidly increasing installation of utility-scale solar energy (USSE) facilities to combat carbon emissions and climate change. However, the expansion of renewable energy may come with environmental tradeoffs. Reducing the energy industry's carbon footprint is impeding a large carnivore's paw-print.  

We are now producing more food more efficiently than ever, and there is plenty to go around for a human population of 7 billion. But it is coming at a drastic cost in environmental degradation, and the bounty is not reaching many people.

Planting beneficial plants next to gardens and crop fields large and small has been a standard practice for decades, even centuries. The plants provide what are known as ecosystem services. These include attracting pollinators and preventing weeds.

Grasslands are widespread and relevant ecosystems responsible for sustainable roughage production. Plant genetic diversity (PGD; i.e., within-species diversity) is related to many beneficial effects on the ecosystem functioning of grasslands. In their recently published paper, Miguel Loera-Sánchez, Bruno Studer and Roland Kölliker report a set of 12 multispecies primer pairs that can be used for high-throughput PGD assessments in multiple grassland plant species.