CNY ecoBlog

Just trying to get my head back into the game:

The first day of spring welcomes Daughter number three.

I hope these three sisters are happy together. What do you think?

Here is a download from one of our kid’s favorites CDs, Joanne Shenandoah’s All Spirits Sing:

Light Up The World.mp3 (mp3 warning, 4.6MB).

Some recent data and demographic analysis confirm that the fastest growth areas are in the “exurbs”, the “suburbs of the suburbs” on the fringes of metropolitan areas. “Some of the fastest-growing counties in 2005 lie on the farthest edges of large metropolitan areas, stretching the definition of “exurbs” to the limit” (USA Today: [...]

I came across some research from the University of Kansas on the impact of ponds used in agricultural practice. I loaded the paper to this site as well as an earlier paper I’ve read on our bovine friends. Beyond the concrete results of these papers, they remind us the open integration of geomorphology and landscapes, soils and agriculture.

This Buffalo First article, Albany called on to ‘Unshackle Upstate’, describes an alliance of western New York business groups that’s pretty fed up with Albany’s inattention to the problems of Upstate New York.
“It’s becoming increasingly difficult for upstate business owners to make payroll, let alone compete nationally or globally,” said Robert Brady, CEO of Moog [...]

The Former Fulton Terminals site has been given a clean bill of health by the EPA and meets the NYDEC’s soil clean-up standards and groundwater quality standards. Nicole Reome writes on the history of the clean-up and specifically the efforts of Sandy Weston in the Fulton Daily News.

Here’s an interesting premise from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee – that local government’s reliance on property taxes for funding school districts is an important factor driving suburban sprawl (via Environmental News Bits).
Land use experts say reliance on property taxes for education puts suburbs in a tight spot. Some want to try allowing [...]

Recent studies using satellite data of the Antartic and Greenland ice sheets confirm a extensive thinning and other effects of global warming:
Climate warming is changing how much water remains in Earth’s greatest treasuries of ice and snow, NASA scientists have confirmed. The most comprehensive survey ever undertaken of the enormous ice sheets covering both [...]

Maple Ridge, the largest alternative-energy project east of the Mississippi, as well as other Wind Farm projects are being touted as an “economic bonanza” by some Upstate New York communities according to today’s New York Times (via NYCO). Not only are these wind projects increasing the tax base of some communities, but the projects [...]

Last week the Grist had dished out an interview with Lester Brown, one of the founders of the Worldwatch Institute and current president of the Earth Policy Institute. His latest book is Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble whose central premise is the need to develop a [...]