<B><U>Querido DiálogoEcológico:</U> Ahora que ha llegado el otoño se van a apilar de nuevo las hojas en mi jardín. ¿Es verdaderamente malo quemarlas? Y ¿por qué es ilegal quemarlas en tantos lugares?</B>
<B><U>Querido DiálogoEcológico:</U> He oído que usando un calentador de agua solar en mi casa podría reducir mis emisiones de CO2 en forma dramática. ¿Es cierto eso? ¿Y cuáles son los costos?</B>
Soil is often misunderstood and under-appreciate but it truly supports everything else we do with our public and private property and needs to be nurtured to help us succeed.
This was my second AltWheels festival, and my how the event has grown! Last year it was a relatively modest display of clean vehicles, from hydrogen fuel cells to battery electrics, on the grounds of the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Massachusetts. This year it was on steroids, occupying the vast concrete plaza outside Boston City Hall September 22 and 23.
Drylands cover 41 percent of the Earth’s land surface. Of that area, desertification has rendered 20 percent unfit for human use, and an additional 70 percent remains vulnerable. According to the United Nations, desertification is degrading soil quality in 110 countries, directly impacting 250 million people and threatening a billion more, all without creating a single new desert.
Against the recommendations of a long list of science and health organizations—not to mention two of its own scientific advisory committees—the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week it would leave in place its 1997 standards for annual exposure to particulate pollution (soot generated from coal-fired power plants, industrial facilities and vehicles), while only moderately strengthening its daily exposure soot standard.
Forest protection advocates are cheering a ruling last week by Federal Judge Elizabeth Laporte to throw out the Bush administration’s roadless area development rule of 2005.
Randy Miles likes to teach soil science from pits dug deep into the earth. The University of Missouri soil science professor enjoys taking his students into the field, prying clods from the pit face and showing the distribution and properties of soils across Midwestern landscapes.
If soils do indeed achieve the higher profile they so desperately need, John L. Havlin will be one of the people to thank. The professor at North Carolina State University is past president of the Soil Science Society of America, and a dedicated campaigner whose work is helping to establish the House of Representatives Soils Caucus and a $4 million Smithsonian educational exhibit on the subject, opening in 2008.
Can toxic waste be turned from a disposal problem into a useful and benign fertilizer? That’s the question some scientists and activists are asking about a product that is routinely used by farmers and home gardeners to feed their soils.
<U><B>Querido DiálogoEcológico:</U> ¿Cómo se define un "pantano" y cómo se protegen éstos en los E.U.A. y Canadá de la destrucción por el desarrollo urbano y otras amenazas?</B>
<B><U>Querido DiálogoEcológico:</U> ¿Qué impactos ecológicos puede esperar nuestra comunidad esperar si Wal-Mart abre una tienda en las cercanías?</B>
