Plant biology PhD student Uma Nagendra of the University of Georgia, Athens, wins the 2014 Dance Your PhD competion, sponsored by Science, AAAS, and HighWire Press. Floating on trapeze wires, young white pine seedlings unfurl and reach for light. But lurking in the roots of the parent tree are dangerous fungi that creep forth to strike at the young scions. The sprouts…
Read MoreThe practice of mountaintop removal mining has spurred a great deal of research and policy debate since January of this year, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) vetoed a federal permit for the 2,278 acre Spruce No. 1 mine in Logan County, West Virginia. The veto of the permit was EPA’s 13th use of its veto authority, granted under the…
Read MoreStretching approximately 2,181 miles (3,510 km), and reaching elevations higher than 6,000 feet, the Appalachian Scenic National Trail is a wilderness hiking trail that begins in Georgia, spans fourteen total states, and ends in Maine. An extension—the International Appalachian Trail—continues through Canada until it reaches the Atlantic Ocean. It is managed by the United States National Park Service and the Appalachian Trail…
Read MoreMountaintop mining, the practice of using dynamite or bulldozers to blast off the tops of mountains in search of coal and dumping the rock remnants into valleys, will apparently receive tighter restrictions in an announcement the White House is scheduled to make today. But the practice, which destroys both the mountaintop ecosystems it blasts away and many stream ecosystems buried…