For the past eight years, every time its Princeton Public Library organizers brainstormed an annual goal to provoke exploration of their Princeton Environmental Film Festival, they focused on a word or phrase. One year it was “a sense of place.” Another time it was “risk.”… Bracketed by a March 13 Climate Change Cabaret at the library beginning at 7 p.m. and ending with an April 25 “Let It Go” community yard sale, the film festival includes the world premiere “Antarctic Edge: 70 Degrees South” at The Garden on March 24 at 7 p.m… The documentary is the result of a partnership between the Rutgers University Film Bureau and the Rutgers Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences that explores the National Science Foundation’s long-term ecological research in the West Antarctic Peninsula. The film follows a team of scientists who are in a race against time to understand the fastest winter-warming place in the world, a location whose ice sheet was declared unstoppable just last year.
Community
An Equine Intervention: Rutgers Students Team up With Horses in Need of New Homes
Horses in need of re-homing and animal science students — perfect together. That’s the idea behind the new Rutgers University Teaching Herd (RUTH): Fostering horses for teaching and outreach program. These horses, fostered at Rutgers for the spring semester, will be trained and shown by students at Ag Field Day on April 25. Representatives from their parent equine rescue/placement organizations will be on hand to accept adoption applications after the horse show… Rutgers professor, Dr. Sarah Ralston stressed that this was not a continuation of the Young Horse Teaching and Research Program, which went on hiatus two years ago after a decade of success. This new herd is strictly for teaching and outreach purposes… Dr. Wendie Cohick, chair of the Department of Animal Sciences, came up with the idea for the teaching herd. “As any horse owner knows, it is very expensive to have horses — and a primary reason why many horse lovers don’t own horses,” said Cohick… Rutgers Associate Professor and Extension Specialist, Dr. Carey Williams noted that students will be using the teaching horses in a variety of ways.
More Snow Heading This Way; Find Out How Much
Up to 8 inches of snow may fall in Monmouth and Ocean counties tonight into Thursday, following a wintry mix of snow, sleet, freezing rain and rain that began Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service… The late Wednesday- Thursday snowstorm …
What’s Causing Freezing Temperatures Across the U.S.?
With temperatures in the teens in Washington D.C., the C&O Canal is frozen solid. So are tens of millions of people from Maine to the Carolinas… “And now to add insult to injury there’s been some of the coldest air in the last couple of decades invading the Northeast from the Arctic,” says Dave Robinson, a professor of climatology at Rutgers University. He says what’s behind it all is the polar vortex…”The polar vortex is essentially the coldest air found in the Northern Hemisphere, and it’s situated up in the Arctic in the bulk of the winter,” Robinson says. “But occasionally, a lobe of that will dip south above the jet stream and allow that cold air down into the Middle Atlantic states. Sometimes last winter, it was into the northern Plains.”
Winter Wallop: Why the Next Week is Going to be the Worst
If you’re still making plans for the upcoming holiday weekend, you may want to keep them indoors. New Jersey will be stuck in a revolving door of dangerous cold and snow over the next week, with record cold, wind chills below negative 20 and disruptive wintry weather all possible… In fact, the likely snow on Saturday may help exacerbate the cold. Fresh snowpack can absorb lingering moisture in the air quickly following a storm, allowing heat to more readily radiate out into the atmosphere, according to David Robinson, the state climatologist at Rutgers University. “If the winds are calm and you have that fresh snowpack, that’s when you can see the temperature drop 5 or 10 degrees as the sun sets,” he said.
Experts: Climate Change May Make Northeast Winter Storms Worse
Snow has been no friend to the Northeast this winter, and as another storm is ready to pummel the Northeast this weekend, climate change experts offer an explanation of why record-breaking amounts of precipitation may become a norm for the region. “Simple physical laws will tell you that a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture,” Dr. David Robinson, a state climatologist at Rutgers University, says. “So it’s related to warmer temperatures and more abundant moisture available in the atmosphere, but you still need an impetus. You still need a storm.” This weekend’s winter weather and the last few weeks’ rash of storms is that exact impetus.
Rutgers Master Gardeners of Somerset County Helpline Office Opens March 2
The Rutgers Master Gardeners of Somerset County, a volunteer organization of the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, are busy getting ready to open the Helpline office in Bridgewater on March 2… The Rutgers Master Gardener Helpline volunteers…
Bringing Local Foods into Schools: A Food Innovation Center Partnership
School lunch quality has been getting a lot of attention on the web lately. Whether it’s images of tantalizing school lunches from around the world juxtaposed with a bland U.S. school lunch, or students’ snapshots of globs of unidentifiable food on school lunch trays, people are taking notice. The Rutgers Food Innovation Center is working […]
Opinion: Do our Urban Water Systems Have What it Takes to Handle Rapid Growth?
What if urban redevelopment is successful? There are major implications for water and sewer systems if our cities bounce back and thrive… Daniel J. Van Abs is currently associate research professor for Water, Society and Environment at the Rutge…
Cape Coastal Towns Embracing Native Species of Plants
The Japanese black pine is the Rodney Dangerfield of trees. It gets no respect. Banned from Avalon’s dunes for the last three years, the species is under consideration for elimination from Stone Harbor’s dunes. Recommended until 1990 by the USDA to be planted in shore areas, the tree- labeled invasive and a fire hazard- has since fallen out of favor… Several Cape May County coastal communities have already started to branch out on their own, and a strong trend toward cultivating native species is beginning to take root… “You have to look at the whole system,” said Jenny Carleo, agricultural and resource management agent with Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Cape May County. “You have to look at the animals that depend on the food in the area, the utility of the beach for access, and you have to prioritize use. You have to ask, ‘What are the impacts to the whole environment of doing a certain activity?'”
