December 3, 2018
On Nov. 28, Penn State Mont Alto forestry students climbed a 145-foot yellow poplar on the Penn State Mont Alto campus in Forest Technology Instructor Craig Houghton’s arboriculture class.
November 30, 2018
With a selling price of $500 or more per dry pound, wild ginseng is one of the most coveted and valuable medicinal plants harvested commercially in the U.S. People are drawn into the woods to find, dig, and sell ginseng, sometimes illegally.
November 7, 2018
The rut, the mating period for white-tailed deer, is upon us. It is the time of year that bowhunters look forward to, beginning in late October and lasting about a month. The rut signals an increased activity period for bucks as they patrol their scrapes with hormonal hankering in their eyes and search for does with which to breed. For hunters, it means that new bucks might move into the area where they are hunting.
November 7, 2018
Katie Turner, a 2013 Penn State graduate in environmental resource management, is putting her love of soil science to good use as the Pennsylvania agricultural program manager for The Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental organization that serves the global community.
November 5, 2018
Pennsylvania’s next version of a fertilizer planning calculation will give farmers better site-specific information for preventing phosphorus loss. Jennifer Weld, a Penn State doctoral student and project associate, spoke on the topic at the Keystone Crops and Soils Conference on Oct. 23 at the Holiday Inn Harrisburg.
November 2, 2018
The team, a registered student organization on campus, is made up of 14 members. And while they all come from a variety of backgrounds and majors, they all have one thing in common: They like working with their hands and getting dirty.
October 31, 2018
The Penn State Soil Judging Team placed 4th at the Regional Collegiate Soil Judging Contest in south-central Ohio. The contest was held the week of October 22nd in the area around Hillsboro and Wilmington.
October 31, 2018
Jacob Johnson, a doctoral candidate in forest resources and in international agriculture and development in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, has received a Paul D. Coverdell Fellows Award in recognition of his service to others.
October 11, 2018
The 2018 Pumpkin Festival, hosted by The Arboretum at Penn State on Oct. 14 and 19-20, will feature a pumpkin-carving contest and lighted jack-o'-lantern display. Festivities will take place in the Arboretum's H.O. Smith Botanic Gardens, at the corner of Bigler Road and Park Avenue on the University Park campus.
October 11, 2018
The Penn State Beekeepers Club, which was founded in 2013, brings together beekeeping enthusiasts and those who simply are interested in learning about and sharing the beekeeping hobby.
October 4, 2018
On October 7, Pennsylvanians across the state will walk in, and celebrate, Penn’s Woods! Rural, urban and suburban woods, state and national forests and parks, municipal watersheds, conserved areas, private lands and industry in the state’s 67 counties will hold open houses and guided woods walks showcasing the multiple values and diverse uses of our state’s priceless forest resources.
September 27, 2018
Michael Jacobson, professor of forest resources in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management, has been named the first Global Faculty Fellow in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.
September 27, 2018
Warm, wet weather is predicted to continue through the rest of September and most of October in the mid-Atlantic, Northeast and Great Lakes regions, and those soggy conditions likely will result in a subdued foliage display, according to a Penn State forest expert.
September 25, 2018
While a warming climate in recent decades may be a factor in the waning of some local populations of frogs, toads, newts and salamanders, it cannot explain the overall steep decline of amphibians, according to researchers.
September 18, 2018
Fracking has eaten up nearly 1,800 acres of state forest in Pennsylvania over the past decade — wiping out critical habitat for native species and creating corridors for invasive species to thrive. How do we best revive areas cleared for fracking?
September 18, 2018
Despite many decades of annual brook trout stocking in one northcentral Pennsylvania watershed, the wild brook trout populations show few genes from hatchery fish, according to researchers who genotyped about 2,000 brook trout in Loyalsock Creek watershed, a 500-square-mile drainage in Lycoming and Sullivan counties celebrated by anglers for its trout fishing.
September 11, 2018
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $3 million grant to an interdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers to create a new graduate program that will train students to find solutions to real-world problems facing Food-Energy-Water (FEW) systems.
September 10, 2018
Soil may be a natural filter that can act as a tertiary treatment for wastewater, preventing antibiotics from contaminating groundwater, according to researchers who conducted a study at Penn State's Living Filter.
September 7, 2018
The inaugural Pennsylvania One Health Symposium, which focused on zoonotic diseases — infectious diseases that are caused by viruses, bacteria, parasites and fungi spread between animals and people — was sponsored by the Maurice K. Goddard Chair in Forestry and Environmental Resource Conservation.
August 27, 2018
Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences has awarded funding to three individuals and two teams to support the development of innovative curricula under the college's Harbaugh Faculty Scholars program.
August 24, 2018
Jillian Barskey, an environmental resource management major in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, aspires to reduce game-day waste by serving as this year's student sustainability coordinator for Intercollegiate Athletics and Penn State's Sustainability Institute.
August 8, 2018
Anywhere large-bodied mammalian carnivore species are present, other, smaller carnivores are less likely to occur, according to an international team of researchers that conducted the first global assessment of carnivore interactions using camera trap data.
August 6, 2018
Elizabeth W. Boyer, associate professor of water resources, has been honored with the 2018 Witherspoon Lecture Award by the American Geophysical Union. She will present the lecture at the organization's fall meeting, Dec. 10-14, in Washington, D.C.
August 2, 2018
A Penn State Extension article about butterflies prepared by Margaret C. Brittingham, professor of wildlife resources, and Judith Mank, former graduate research assistant.
August 1, 2018
The looming threat posed by the invasive spotted lanternfly will take center stage in the College of Agricultural Sciences Exhibits Building and Theatre during Penn State's Ag Progress Days, Aug. 14-16. Displays and presentations in the building also will highlight programs related to pond management and bait-fish production, hemp research, animal health, and agricultural policy.
July 31, 2018
Research underway at the Joseph Valentine Turfgrass Research Center on the University Park campus is focusing on the effectiveness of a neonicotinoid insecticide — imidacloprid — in controlling grub populations.
July 31, 2018
Carrie Zamonski, of Brookhaven, Pennsylvania, is spending her summer at the beach -- but she's not there just for a vacation. Zamonski, a senior majoring in environmental resource management and minoring in watershed and water resources and marine science, is an intern at the Bald Head Island Conservancy in North Carolina.
July 25, 2018
Researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences examined the use and user-friendliness of SILVAH-Oak — short for Silviculture of Allegheny Hardwoods — a decision-support tool developed by the U.S. Forest Service for making silvicultural decisions in mixed oak forests.
July 23, 2018
Throughout the eastern United States, forests of eastern hemlock, Tsuga canadensis, are under attack by a tiny invasive insect with an insatiable appetite for these giant trees. This attack is causing the decline of eastern hemlock and as a consequence, it is driving the disappearance of a variety of birds that are specialized to them, according to a recent study.
July 12, 2018
How forests respond to elevated nitrogen levels from atmospheric pollution is not always the same. While a forest is filtering nitrogen as expected, a higher percentage than previously seen is leaving the system again as the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, say researchers.
