Kate Grumke
Senior Environmental Reporter, STLPRI report on agriculture and rural issues for Harvest Public Media and am the Senior Environmental Reporter at St. Louis Public Radio, my hometown NPR station.
I started at STLPR as an education reporter, covering late night school board meetings and tagging along on field trips. Before moving back to Missouri, I spent more than five years producing award-winning television in Washington, D.C., most recently at the PBS NewsHour. In that work I climbed to the top of a wind turbine in Iowa, helped plan the environmental section of a presidential debate and produced multiple news-documentaries on energy and the environment.
I graduated from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and hold a certificate in data journalism from Columbia University’s Lede Program.
You can reach me at kgrumke@stlpr.org or follow me on social media @kgrumke.
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Algae is a 'little vacuum' for microplastics. Midwest scientists think it could clean up the problemTiny shards of plastic called microplastics are all over the environment and even inside human bodies. Researchers have found a type of bioengineered algae that can clean up these pesky particles. -
More than 1,600 plants and animals are protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, but out of all of those, only one is a moss. A new effort seeks to protect these often overlooked plants. -
An anonymous $14 million grant to the Missouri Botanical Garden is prompting scientists there to look at their herbarium collection in new ways, taking their cues from the stars. -
The Republican Missouri senator introduced bipartisan legislation that would require data centers to build their own power plants and would increase transparency around data center energy use. -
The new plant will be on the site of the retired Rush Island coal plant in Jefferson County. It is being built, in part, to power proposed data centers. -
New federal funds for people who are sick after living near radioactive waste are a win for advocates, but now they are turning their focus to cleanup. As part of the ongoing cleanup effort, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is demolishing some homes near Coldwater Creek. -
Scientists in the middle of the country told Harvest Public Media that 2025 was a year of major changes and uncertainty. -
At grassland sites worldwide, including the Midwest and Great Plains, scientists simulated extreme drought conditions. The study provides a far-reaching and systematic look at the effects of drought severity. -
The brown tarantula is about the size of an apple or orange. University of Missouri-St. Louis scientist Becky Hansis-O’Neill and her team of students have been using an app to track their locations, tag and measure them, and learn how to protect their populations. -
Artificial intelligence could help scientists and state conservationists count waterfowl more quickly and accurately, according to a new study.
