Publication archives

The dairy cows, mounds of hay and their accompanying smells are long gone. The ability to make a living off the rolling landscape above the Wisconsin River has remained. With a massive power saw, a $10,000 Swedish milling machine and three simple solar kilns, Jim Birkemeier is turning firewood into hardwood flooring and a sustainable income.

The key components to Jim Birkemeier's forestry and wood flooring operation include not only the way the wood is harvested, but the way in which it is prepared for milling. The 200 acres of woodland on the farm his parents bought in 1973 include eight miles of trails that provide access to the trees.

Canada's forest is emerging as an immense - truly immense - national and international player. The broad swath of often-scruffy timberland stretching from the Yukon to Labrador is one of largest stores of carbon on Earth, making it key to global warming and climate change.

Deforestation of the Amazon has surged in recent months and is likely to rise in 2008 for the first time in four years, a senior Brazilian government scientist said on Wednesday.

A self-destructing palm tree that flowers once every 100 years and then dies has been discovered on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar, botanists said Thursday. The name of the giant palm and its remarkable life cycle will be detailed in a study by Kew Gardens scientists in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society published Thursday.

Like arrows hitting their mark, power-filled packets of sunlight collide with pigment molecules inside a leaf, setting them abuzz with energy. Funneled by a tag team of subatomic particles, the energy converges on a central point until there's enough to drive the construction of special molecules that serve as the AAA batteries of the vegetable world.

In his January 16 column in the New York Times, Professor Steven Landsburg criticized Republican Presidential candidates for pandering to displaced workers in Michigan, counter to the free trade dogma that he supports.

California needs to overhaul its regulation of commercial substances and foster a sustainable chemicals sector, says a report released last week by University of California researchers.