Publication archives

Biofuels can both bring down high pump prices and help halt climate change, their supporters hope. But the result of the global boom in the green fuel additive may just have precisely the opposite effects in the near-term, according to both oil company executives and green campaigners.

Population growth and urbanization present the largest changes and potential challenges to Southern forests.

My own delicious research shows the industry has taken giant steps. When I wrote about grass-fed beef in 2002 there were about 50 producers, and most of what they raised was not very good. Now there are about 1,000 of them, and after I grilled rib-eyes from 15 producers for friends, it was clear that more of them are learning to get it right.

The battle for bed linen supremacy - long fought over high, higher and highest thread counts - may be taking a detour from the cotton field to the forest. Instead of pitting pima cotton against Egyptian cotton or lustrous sateen against no-iron percale, this latest skirmish for market share involves sheets and pillowcases made using fibers of bamboo plants and beech trees.

In a publication last January by researchers from OSU and the Forest Service, based on a study of areas burned in Oregon's Biscuit Fire in 2002, researchers had concluded that post-fire logging resulted in significant mortality of natural conifer regeneration, and created conditions that could lead to fires of greater intensity in the near-term future.

When driving past temperate deciduous forests, walking beneath limbs of a 50-year-old northern red oak or stumbling over hundreds of acorns each autumn, it's easy to be fooled into thinking the oak - a mainstay of hardwood forests in the driftless area - is a picture of health.

Restaurants and convenience stores are changing their policy on handing out free disposable chopsticks after China, Japan's largest supplier, suddenly raised the price 30%.

Conservation groups and developers often find themselves on opposing sides when it comes to deciding how available land should be used. But during the past five years, the Caledonia Conservancy and Racine developer Ray Leffler have collaborated to preserve about 25 acres of the Tabor Woods Natural Area.