Grapes have a high establishment cost of $20-30K/acre and delayed returns during a 3-4 year establishment period. Profitability and sustainability depends upon reliable productivity and resilience to inevitable climate-related injury.
Each potential adopter faces a crucial decision--to lease or to own the panels. Leasing the panels from a solar company incurs little to no upfront cost. A fixed lease payment, however, reduces the net saving from the electricity generated by the panels. On the other hand, owning solar panels includes a high immediate cost with a higher return in future periods resulting from the absence of lease payments. Moreover, solar owners can receive additional revenue from selling Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (SREC).
Municipalities worldwide are showing substantial interest in urban greening, defined here as the introduction or conservation of outdoor vegetation in cities. In many cases greening involves substantial tree planting, and across the United States cities have established ambitious canopy cover goals and major tree planting programs.
Predation is considered a key limiting process, and management actions for declining species, such as forest-dwelling songbirds, are often aimed at reducing impacts of predation. This is of particular concern in areas undergoing urbanization, since densities of potential predators tend to increase dramatically with urbanization.
Plants are an ancient, rich and sustainable source of natural chemodiversity in the form of alkaloids, terpenoids, flavonoids, tannins and other classes of small-molecular-weight compounds (phytochemicals). Lacking the adaptive immunity of animals, plants evolved to rely on small molecules for their survival, proliferation and reproduction.
During estrus, mares can behave in a manner that can make handling, riding, training, or competing these horses difficult. Current methods to suppress estrus behavior during the breeding season, when most horse competition takes place, include: pharmacological treatments; glass marbles; and negative reinforcement. This work will develpe strategies to control estrus behaviour without the need for pharmacological treatments or negative reinforcement.
Results from the proposed new NE multistate project will help us to develop an understanding of how vernal pool ecosystems differ across the region in distribution, hydrology, periods of inundation (hydroperiod), redox chemistry, and carbon storage, flux, and accounting. In addition, we will continue our region-wide focus on hydric soils and hydric indicators to determine if there is a need for additional hydric soil indicators for vernal pool ecosystems.
The overall objective of this research is to use beneficial bacteria and fungi to improve medicinal and aromatic plant yields quantitatively and qualitatively. Specific objectives are:
A primary issue of concern with biofuels and bio-products is the ability to produce enough feedstock oils without displacing food crops. Plant seed oils have tremendous potential as environmentally, economically and technologically feasible replacements for petroleum, but the relatively low oil yields from existing crops limits the commercial viability of seed oil based biofuels.
Improving water management is of increasing importance in horticultural operations. A growing global population and changes in water availability will mean that less water will be available for ornamental plant production. There are also a growing number of federal and state regulations regarding water use and runoff from production areas. Better irrigation and fertilization management practices will help to limit the environmental impact of container plant production by limiting the runoff of water and nutrients from nurseries.
