Climate Change

Many of these programs offered incentive payments to farmers who adopt an environmentally sustainable or “climate-smart” practice. Some partnerships will be renewed and folded into a new program.

Scientists say amid climate change and biodiversity loss, the world’s herbaria could hold the keys to overcoming the crises in their folders of dried plant specimens. But their future is in question amid cuts to research and education funding.

Wildfires have become more frequent, burning bigger areas during longer seasons thanks to conditions exacerbated by climate change. More people in the Great Plains and Midwest are turning to “prescribed” burns, which can help reduce wildfire risk.

Peat bogs sequester a massive amount of the Earth's carbon dioxide. But even as scientists work to better understand bogs' sequestration, the wetlands are under threat.

The University of Missouri Extension and the Department of Conservation are enlisting landowners to plant and care for white oak seedlings. The tree species is essential for wildlife and industry, but it's struggling under climate change.

Wild rice grows in shallow waterways in the Great Lakes region and parts of Canada. It’s a plant that holds important ecological and cultural significance, but it’s been on the decline since the early 1900s.

A wood building material can be used in high-rise structures, giving it the potential to replace materials that are bad for the climate, while also locking carbon into buildings for decades.

Trees cool cities, soak up greenhouse gases and make people healthier, and Kansas City is planting thousands of them. It's more than halfway to its goal of adding 10,000 trees by 2026, and won a grant from the U.S. Forest Service.

Thousands of insect species use vibrations to communicate. Now, in part because of the foundational research of a Midwestern biology professor, more researchers are exploring insect vibrational communication to ward against pests and understand climate change.

Doctors who treat eating disorders in Kansas City are seeing more cases among younger people. But resources for "accepting" treatments are not meeting the demand. Plus: Wildlife in the Midwest and Great Plains are suffering from persistent drought.

Drought has scorched much of the Midwest and Great Plains for the last four years. It has destroyed crops and sparked wildfires. Wildlife is also reckoning with the dry conditions – which can change animal behavior and even push species out of some regions.

New research suggests silage has been overlooked as a substantial producer of nitrous oxide. A team at Kansas State University figured out why – and a potential way to tackle the problem.