June 2021 – Fireflies
On a fine June evening, my pre-teen son and I ventured out at sunset to watch the sun go down over Lake Mendota. We found a grassy hill-top view from the iconic Observatory Hill on UW-Madison’s campus and awaited the golden hour. If you regularly track Wisconsin phenology, you might know what happened next. Slowly and quietly the field below us filled with a glittering array of duty-bound fireflies. My son, who moments before was too cool to be seen ...Continue Reading
May 2021 – Birding & Phenology
The International Crane Foundation is reopening soon, with their grand reopening scheduled for May 1st! As many cranes are migratory, moving with the seasons to different breeding and wintering grounds, I thought now would be a great time to think about birding as a means to engage with phenology. Spring is a great time for phenological observation, with so many species changing - plants are blooming, birds are returning from their overwintering locations, and insects are emerging once again (noticing ...Continue Reading
March 2021 – Habitat Restoration
Did you know that much of the greater Midwest was originally wetland and prairie? Today, estimates suggest that only about 1% of the tallgrass prairie that once existed still remains. Loss of this habitat means the loss of all the things that live there. For many, preservation of what is left is not enough. In comes restoration! Fun fact - the Nature Net member University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum is often considered the birthplace of ecological restoration, beginning in 1936 with the restoration of the ...Continue Reading
February 2021 – Gardening, Culture, and Community Resilience
When you think of gardening and growing your own food, do you also think of your cultural heritage, and the deep history attached to using plants to feed one’s family? Maybe today I can convince you that gardening (and foraging!) can be a cultural practice that connects people together through time and space, evoking cultural roots and a deep sense of community belonging that has tied people together for centuries. Maybe I can also show you how urban agriculture and ...Continue Reading
January 2021 – Greenhouses
In temperate areas, the growing season is only so long, and the plants that can be grown are limited by their hardiness in local soils and climates. Enter the greenhouse: using temperature and humidity controls, we can grow nearly any type of plant year-round within glass walls! Greenhouses have been essential in increasing food production as well as in maintaining collections of rare plants from around the world. In the cold of winter, it's amazing to think that plants that ...Continue Reading
December 2020 – Biodiversity
Many biologists believe we are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction on our planet. Pretty scary to think about - but it's not all bad news for the future. Many organizations and individuals are working hard in conservation efforts to support biodiversity and the diverse ecosystems of this planet, and there have been successes! One of the first major biodiversity conservation successes in the United States was the recovery of bald eagle populations after being decimated by DDT. ...Continue Reading
May 2020 – Four Ways to Encourage the Next Generation of Environmentalists
Some of the Nature Net readership might know that I've spent the last couple months as a part time graduate student at the University of Wisconsin's School of Human Ecology. The program, Civil Society & Community Research, is designed to encourage scholars to look at communities as human-centered yet ecological. That is, our civil societies, just like ecological systems, are rich in diversity, interconnections, and interdependencies. Just as you pull on one strand of the web in an ecological system ...Continue Reading
January 2020 – Urban Trees
When my kids were little, we had a paper map of all the trees growing around the Wisconsin capitol square. As I remember, it was produced by the Madison Children's Museum. I did a quick search online and couldn't find it - a paper version of anything these days is simply a relic. But hope was not lost! This past year, at an Environmental Education Conference, I had the pleasure of meeting Nicole Filizetti from the LEAF Program (read more ...Continue Reading
September 2019 Nature Net News – Climate Conferences
September Climate Conferences You would be hard pressed to turn on the news this week and not see a story about Greta Thunberg and her appearance at the United Nations Climate Action Summit. And so it was, when my middle-school son breezed by my home-office, that I was watching a clip of the 16-year-old activist speaking to an audience of roughly 250,000 protesters in New York city. "Wait, what was that?" he asked. I hit replay and we watched it ...Continue Reading
August 2019 Nature Net News – Composting
July/August Composting Long before memes were cool, and back when chain emails were definitely a thing, I remember being forwarded a massive group message that poked fun at how humans handle yard waste and compost. It took a bit of searching, and it seems no one knows the true origin, but I found a version of the allegory and it goes as follows: God to Saint Francis: Frank, you know all about gardens and nature. What in the world is ...Continue Reading