The nonprofit Land Trust Alliance (LTA) reported last week that Americans have increased the conservation of private lands by more than 50 percent in just five years. Currently about 37 million acres of private land has been set aside as natural areas across the U.S., as compared to just 24 million acres when the group last conducted such a tally in 2000. LTA works with local land trusts to help conserve private lands.

The famed Appalachian Trail that stretches from Georgia to Maine may just become America’s largest living laboratory for environmental science, if an unlikely grouping of institutions has its way. The National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service are teaming up with Cornell University, the National Geographic Society, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy and the American Hiking Society to launch the Appalachian Trail Mega-Transect, a comprehensive and ongoing assessment of various environmental indicators along the 2,200-mile hiking trail.

Last week I showed the Al Gore film An Inconvenient Truth to an audience in the basement of my church, United Congregational, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was, I imagine, an event mirrored across the country, as the producers of the film have made it very widely available without charge to community groups for free showings.