trees
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PhillyTreeMap: Crowdsourcing the urban forest
PhillyTreeMap, an open-source mapping system, helps Philadelphia keep track of an urban treasure -- its trees.
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Destroying nature so people can look at nature in Yosemite Park
Yosemite National Park is a great place for appreciating nature, what with the mountains and the wildlife and so forth. But there's one thing spoiling the bucolic beauty for everyone: All those damn trees. They are so in the way! They're like the mist that comes up off Niagara Falls and ruins all your photographs. If only they'd cut them down, so we could get back to looking at nature!
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Critical List: Financial assistance for cooling costs down; Atlanta's trees are dying
Stuck in a heat wave? Can't afford A/C? Too bad: Groups that dole out government assistance for cooling have had their funding cut and have turned away up to 80 percent of applicants.
Today's the first anniversary of the climate bill's death.
Atlanta loves trees! It charges $1,000 to chop one down. But drought, storms, invasive species, and natural causes get to kill trees for free, and they’re are all contributing to a large-scale die-off. -
DuPont herbicide may have caused mysterious tree plague
Millions of dollars worth of spruce and pine trees across the country have mysteriously withered and died in the past few months. The likely culprit is an herbicide marketed as a way to control lawn pests like dandelions.
The herbicide is Imprelis, a new product from DuPont. It was supposed to be better for the environment than its predecessors and has been sold at a premium to professional landscapers. DuPont claims it "may not have been mixed properly or was applied with other herbicides." Landscapers just want to know if they're going to have to pay to replace the trees that died on their watch. -
Critical List: Bean sprouts newest E. coli suspect; the ‘golden age’ of natural gas
German authorities are now accusing bean sprouts of causing the E. coli outbreak in Europe, but don't have inarguable proof, yet. Vegetables, unlike humans, are guilty until proven innocent, it seems. Climate delegates begin meeting today in Bonn, in the run-up to the Durbin round of climate talks. They've got a lot to hash over, […]
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Can barcodes enforce sustainable logging in Liberia?
Liberia, semi-miraculously, is still covered in rainforest, even though at one point in its history, warlord Charles Taylor was more or less giving arms traffickers logging tracts in exchange for weapons. The U.N. eventually noticed this problem and ended up saving the country's forests by putting an embargo on the country's "logs of war.” But […]
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New app lets you identify the few remaining trees
Wouldn’t it be nice to get to know trees while they’re still around? Leafsnap can help. The new app, developed by a team of researchers at Columbia, University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution, contains a database of beautiful photos of leaves, barks, flowers, and fruits. All the lazy naturalist has to do to identify […]
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Barking up the wrong tree: Ask Umbra on printing emails
Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, Can you bring some balance and common sense to the Wall Street Journal‘s aw-shucks oversimplification of the issue of to print or not to print emails? I learned about it from a few colleagues’ change in email signatures, encouraging people to print their emails to promote a […]
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Can genetic engineering save the redwoods?
A group of tree-lovers wants to save giant redwoods by cloning existing trees, reports The New York Times. There are a couple of problems with this plan: Giant redwoods are three things: red, wood, and GIANT. Where are you going to put them? (The group says they have plans for slightly more travel-sized trees as […]