Not sure who to talk to about this or where to start. Looking for any contact suggestions or recommended universities with these departments.

Anyone have opinions on enrolling in graduate school in the near future? Thinking of either botany/plant ecology or archeology. Interests include native plant interactions with environment, glacial geomorphology, landowner attitudes towards conservation, insect interactions with plants, etc.

On Ecological Amnesia | The Tyee It’s why we forget the passenger pigeon, the reign of the buffalo. But not all of us suffer it.

thetyee.ca/Culture/2018...

Chunk Ducks, Blatherskites, Butterballs, and Slug-toots These used to be folk names for American birds. Where did they all go?

Americans used to know birds by thousands of unique local folk names. Ruddy Ducks alone were called dummy duck, dinky, dipper, dopper, dumb-bird, and god-damn. My latest piece is on the joy of folk names and losing them to the bureaucratic formalization of knowledge about birds.

Study Finds Plant Nurseries are Exacerbating the Climate-driven Spread of 80% of Invasive Species | UMass Amherst New research from UMass Amherst is the first to precisely map role of horticulture in spreading invasives, projecting ranges under 2 degrees Celsius of warming.

Support nurseries selling native plants. “But commercial nurseries that sell hundreds of different invasives are actually the primary pathway of invasive plant introduction.” www.umass.edu/news/article...

Opinion | Concentration camps are not just part of our past, but our present and future From David M. Perry: From Minnesota’s Fort Snelling to Japanese internment camps to Florida's Alligator Alcatraz, these camps have become an American tradition.

“Someday, I hope, we’re going to have a reckoning over the horrors of this moment, but I don’t think we can do it without a clearer understanding of how this fits into U.S. history. There’s a tendency to say, “This isn’t who we are,” and I get the impulse, but history is never that simple.”

Iowa State researchers obscure the truth on water quality | Opinion Chris Jones, in a new letter, rebuts a guest essay's assertions about the causes of unsafe water in Iowa.

www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinio...

Meanwhile, here are the weather balloon launches from this morning. The red dots indicate locations that missed the launch today owing to short staffing. The blue dots indicate long-term outages.

Funding cuts to U.S. archaeology could imperil field’s future A Science analysis of canceled and curtailed federal grants reveals hits to research, collections, and training

With all the news coming in, it's clear that it's a dire time for science. It's a very dire time for higher education. It's an especially dire time for archaeology

Archaeology has been facing funding cuts for years, and now it is being decimated

www.science.org/content/arti...

1.1 million pounds of nitrate-nitrogen will pass through the city of Cedar Rapids today in the Cedar River. That's equivalent to the contents of 322 of these. One day, one river, in Iowa.
waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv?cb_0...

The day started with tragedy with political violence in MN and instead of being scared, neighbors SHOWED UP to stand together at No Kings Twin Cities. We packed the Capitol Mall all the way to the Cathedral. Estimate 80,000+ right now. So proud of our state. #nokings #indivisible

Nitrates in Iowa's water near record levels. What are the dangers if they don't drop? Nitrate levels in Iowa's Raccoon River are at their highest since 2013. Lawn watering ban is trying to prevent more restrictions and keep water safe.

"If you live in DM, you could go years without drinking water below 3 milligrams per liter," Jones said. "So the fact that we're just meeting the standard at 10 and to do that we have to sacrifice lawn watering, well, that's just a small part of the story."

www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2...

Nitrates in Iowa's water near record levels. What are the dangers if they don't drop? Nitrate levels in Iowa's Raccoon River are at their highest since 2013. Lawn watering ban is trying to prevent more restrictions and keep water safe.

“This vulnerability is going to increase, there's no doubt about it," Jones said. "Until the state's leaders come to grips with that, we are going to continue to see these problems at a greater frequency." - @theswinerepublic.bsky.social

www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2...

In crashes, high-fronted cars typically strike adult pedestrians above the centre of gravity, often first hitting vital organs.

The higher the vehicle front the more likely a person will be knocked under the car, rather than pushed to the side, at speeds of up to 50 km/h.
3/

Watch the slow motion: it appears to me that the officers discuss the photographer and reporter before the one on the end fires on them (it looks to me like he's aiming at the camera, not the reporter, but you decide)

Four LAPD officers on horseback surround a man laying on the ground, trample him, and beat him with their polycarbonate "saber" batons.

Conglomerate Mesa is one of the most incredible sky islands in the West—rising like a giant cupcake above the desert, frosted with rare plants like the Inyo rock daisy.

Now, Canadian mining company K2 is nearly approved to drill it for gold.

#ProtectConglomerateMesa #PublicLands #botany

Drove through Iona today! Quite the transition to the Coteau driving west from there.

When I say you don’t have to worry about microplastics in your brain I mean that there is much stronger evidence that you should be worrying about other things that you don’t ever think about, like the draining of peatlands for agriculture, and things that you think about all the time, like fascism.

Increase tillable acres to boost land value?

Bring able to break of the illusion of "conservatism" and conserv. Christian lends to your credibility. You chose to leave a "secure" community that claimed to have your best interest in mind. You quickly learn it's at the expense of others. You chose a life of no cognative dissonance.

Satellite image showing plumes of dust blowing off fields in a dry landscape, moving northeastward

Plumes of dust coming from agricultural fields just south of Hope, New Mexico, yesterday. Marker is at -104.74, 32.82. Sentinel 2 image.

NEBRASKA CROWD: “TAX THE RICH! TAX THE RICH!”

@USRepMikeFlood: “So your proposal to solve (the debt) is tax the rich?”

NEBRASKA CROWD: *CHEERS WILDLY*

(not sure this went quite as he planned 😬)

Well, for all it's talk of "being part of the land," American agriculture is an enterprise divorced from planet Earth, suffering from massive cognitive dissonance.

At best, the ag industry is experiencing reality subjectively. At worst, it's a bunch of grifters and con artists.

Some parts of Minnesota's farm country have high cancer rates, but the causes aren't clear • Minnesota Reformer More than 37,000 Minnesotans will receive cancer diagnoses in 2025, and around 10,000 will die from one of the many forms of the disease, according to the latest projections from the American Cancer S...

“Counties in parts of western Minnesota’s farm country have seen the biggest increases in new cancer diagnoses since the mid-2000s”

So many variables, hard to tease out causation, but it makes you wonder.

Many links to relevant cancer research in this article.
minnesotareformer.com/2025/03/07/s...

Nothing like getting a nice misting of atrazine or 2,4-D on your gravel bike ride! Wonder what's in the dust on my water bottle? What's in that trail of liquid on the road? Just trying to stay healthy? Guess it's my fault for living in a toxic, industrial agland. Rural folks didn't sign up for this

So I wanted to look up something about nickel in Sudbury and stumbled on this wild story: www.thesudburystar.com/news/taking-....

BREAKING: The Supreme Court just weakened the Clean Water Act's limitations on raw sewage discharge into our water in a 5-4 ruling.

Do you ever get scared you won't get to know, everything you want to know, in your lifetime?