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Sheep ranching has destroyed habitat and decimated species in many areas of the world, but in Patagonia declining wool prices provide an opportunity to turn the tide. This case study places students in the role of advisor to an international NGO that has funds to advance conservation goals. A PowerPoint slideshow is used to present the Patagonian landscape, species, and variables that should be considered in conservation decisions.  After the presentation, students are given two maps: the first shows park boundaries, topography, roads, and major land forms; the second includes land prices overlaid on the first. Student groups are assigned a budget, and with the help of a set of guiding questions, students identify and defend a potential land purchase to develop as a protected area. The case is intended for use in an undergraduate class in conservation biology, environmental science or ecology, and presupposes another case in our collection, "The Great Patagonia Land Grab" by C.E. Quinn and J.E. Quinn

With increasing U.S. government support for biofuel production in the late 2000s came increased pressure to convert more land to cornfields for ethanol. To make way for more corn, millions of acres of prairie grassland were plowed under, destroying an extremely diverse wildlife habitat that also served as a large carbon reservoir. This case study focuses on the reasons for and consequences of large carbon losses when prairie grasslands are converted to agricultural lands. Many students are challenged when faced with linking together energy flows, decomposition, and nutrient cycles.  This case gives students the opportunity to consider different pools in the carbon cycle and the fluxes between them in order to model (on paper) an integrated picture of why carbon is lost when prairie grasslands are plowed and planted to cornfields.  Students also consider ways that carbon loss from land conversion due to ethanol production might be avoided via government incentive programs or mitigated via changes to farming practices. This case study was developed for an introductory ecology, environmental science, soil science, or agriculture course.

Microbes 2,500 meters below the seafloor in Japan are most closely related to bacterial groups that thrive in forest soils on land, suggesting that they might be descendants of ones that survived when their terrestrial habitat was flooded 20 million years ago

The heavy impact on the environment of meat production was known but the research shows a new scale and scope of damage, particularly for beef. The popular red meat requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken, 11 times more water and results in five times more climate-warming emissions. When compared to staples like potatoes, wheat, and rice, the impact of beef per calorie is even more extreme, requiring 160 times more land and producing 11 times more greenhouse gases.

5 minute video: The evolution of whales has been a mystery. How did a large, big-brained mammal -- air-breathing, warm-blooded, giving birth to live young -- come to live entirely in water, when mammals evolved on land?

To what extent should corn be used for the production of ethanol? Are we better off producing corn for food or producing corn for fuel? This case study uses a technique called "intimate debate" (also known as "constructive controversy") in order to examine this issue. Each student participates in a set of mini-debates for which there is no audience. Students are paired with a teammate; these teams then take turns arguing each side of the issue while seated across from their opponents who do the same. The session concludes with opposing teams reaching consensus. Detailed instructions are included in the case handout to prepare students for the experience before debate day. This case was used successfully in a sophomore/junior level, general education, environmental biology course. It would fit appropriately into any college course that discusses environmental issues related to farming practices, land use, alternative fuels, renewable energy, or sustainability.

Human activities currently add about nine gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere yearly. Photosynthetic organisms on land and in the ocean absorb about five of those gigatons through the natural uptake of CO2, leaving to humans the task of dealing with the rest. But no matter how much carbon there is, capturing it and preventing it from reentering the atmosphere is an immense engineering challenge; even today's best technology is orders of magnitude less effective than photosynthesis at trapping atmospheric carbon.

The complex systems of high school dating and chemical reactions may have more in common than you think. Explore five rules for speeding up chemical reactions in the lab that might just land you a date to a dance!

Data from three major climate-tracking groups agree: The combined land and ocean surface temperatures hit new highs this year, according to the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United Kingdom's Met Office and the World Meteorological Association.

Are we witnessing a sixth mass extinction? What factors threaten ecosystems on land and in the sea? What are researchers doing to try to conserve biodiversity and ecosystems such as tigers in Asia and coral reefs around the world? What tools do we have to avoid a global catastrophe? In six half-hour lectures, three leading scientists describe the state of biodiversity on our planet and how to face the great challenges that lie ahead.

Part 2 of 2. David Attenborough explains how early sea life developed and adapted to dry land, becoming Reptiles and Amphibians. After the era of the Dinosaurs came to a sudden end, Mammal species began to proliferate. From BBC 1 documentary 'Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life'.

A decade ago, an international research team completed an ambitious effort to read the 3 billion letters of genetic information found in every human cell. The program, known as the Human Genome Project, provided the blueprint for human life, an achievement that has been compared to landing a man on the moon.

"A lot of people are still suspicious of genetically engineered foods," Profita said. "But they're also concerned about the environmental impacts of making them. A lot of the time, genetically engineered plants are engineered so that you can put more chemicals on the plants. And a lot of people don't want to be engaged in eating those types of foods." Environmentalists have worried about putting genetically modified fish in facilities near rivers, fearing the fish could escape into the wild. The company takes pains to say that these salmon are meant to be raised in tanks on land - not in netted pens in open waters. Otherwise, the operations are similar, Profita said.

One concern repeatedly raised by critics who don't want the FDA to give the transgenic fish the green light: What would happen if these fish got out of the land-based facilities where they're grown and escaped into the wild? Would genetically modified salmon push out their wild counterparts or permanently alter habitat? In a review paper published this month in the journal BioScience, scientists tackle that very question. Robert H. Devlin, a scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada, led a team that reviewed more than 80 studies analyzing growth, behavior and other trait differences between genetically modified and unaltered fish. The scientists used this to predict what might happen if fish with modified traits were unleashed in nature.

3:46 video

To promote understanding and awareness of the importance of agriculture. Our educational programs provide a wealth of opportunities for embedding agriculture, food and natural resources education into the K-12 classroom. MAITC seeks to improve student achievement by applying authentic agricultural examples to teach core curriculum concepts in science, social studies, language arts, math and nutrition. These programs cultivate an understanding and appreciation of the food and fiber system that we all rely on every day.

Charles is an African giant pouched rat, a species endemic to sub-Saharan Africa. He's also a pioneer, one of 30 of his species that live and work here in Morogoro, a few hundred kilometers west of Tanzania's largest city, Dar es Salaam, on a program to sniff out tuberculosis (TB).