Assignment Earth Tag

Assignment Earth, Environmental Journalism, Environmental Protection, Sustainable Living / 23.03.2011

  Making the growing season grow longer, that’s the idea for Daphne Yannakakis, an organic farmer in western Colorado. Along with husband Don Lareau on Zephyros Farm, they’re growing vegetables in wintertime as part of a study by Colorado State University. The vegetables grow under the protection of unheated green houses called high tunnels, which hold in heat stored by the Earth at night and capture solar heat during the day. They also provide protection from the wind. These farmers plant a variety of cold hardy vegetables at monthly intervals and record weather data electronically with custom software. The data is collected from five farms across Colorado and will be compiled and made available to other small-scale farmers. Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and called the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program or SARE, the study is intended to help small-scale farmers in the Rocky Mountains remain productive and profitable through much of the winter by utilizing high tunnels. Even when outside temperatures reach sub-zero extremes these simple structures allow vegetables to survive harsh winter conditions and enable farmers to grow more.
Assignment Earth, Climate Change, Environmental Journalism, National Parks, Video / 03.02.2011

A love of backcountry skiing explains David Gonzales’ obsession with white bark pines. A writer and photographer, he spends a lot of time beneath these ancient trees. But the white barks are under attack. And that has this skier marshaling forces to fight back. Once the snow melts, he leads volunteers called Tree Fighters into the forest surrounding Yellowstone National Park. Tree Fight is an organization that is working to curb the loss of white bark pines due to the escalating impact of climate change. Scientists say rising temperatures have opened the door to a mountain pine beetle invasion. White barks live at the highest, harshest elevations in the northwestern United States and Southwestern Canada. Extremely cold temperatures used to keep this native pest at lower elevations. Now these beetles are capitalizing on warmer temperatures, killing white barks at a staggering rate. Tree Fight aims to stop them.