natural resources

Jun 23, 2014

Carnivore Mystery: Why Fishers Thrive in East, Not West

For weasel-like fishers it’s a good time to live in the East. The fierce little carnivores are reclaiming historic habitats, including the Bronx, New York, where police have photographed one fisher. But it’s a different story for fishers in the West, which haven’t been as successful in repopulating areas they once roamed in the Pacific… 

Mar 11, 2014

Lignin Breakthroughs Serve as GPS for Plant Research

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed the equivalent of GPS directions for future plant scientists to understand how plants adapt to the environment and to improve plants’ productivity and biofuel potential. Two articles published March 11 in The Plant Cell offer a step-by-step approach for studying plant traits, drawing on comprehensive, quantitative research… 

Feb 27, 2014

Caught on Camera: Tree-Dwelling Orangutans on Ground

When researchers in Borneo set up camera traps to monitor tropical mammals on the ground, they didn’t expect to be photobombed by orangutans. In the wild, humans rarely see the red apes come down from the trees, says Dr. Rahel Sollmann, an NC State postdoctoral researcher in fisheries and wildlife. Sollmann helped analyze a database of… 

Feb 11, 2014

A Wealth of Wildlife, Right in the Backyard

Zoologist Roland Kays travels the world to study rare species, so he calls it a “cool surprise” to find a wealth of wildlife in the suburban backyards of Raleigh and Durham, N.C. “As scientists, we’ve traditionally thought of residential areas as non-habitat,” says Kays, a faculty member at NC State University and the North Carolina Museum… 

Dec 19, 2013

The Origin of Flowers: Tree Experts Help Unravel Evolutionary Mystery

NC State scientists had a hand in a massive research project highlighted in Science that sheds light on how flowering plants suddenly came into prominence more than 200 million years ago – what Charles Darwin referred to as an “abominable mystery” of evolution. A team of scientists sequenced the genome of Amborella trichopoda, a rare plant… 

Dec 17, 2013

Rainforest Life: Food Versus Fear

For a rainforest animal like the agouti, life revolves around the tension between food and fear. While foraging for seeds from the black palm tree, the rabbit-sized rodent has to avoid hungry ocelots. Living in an area where food is scarce greatly increases an agouti’s willingness to venture out of its burrow between sunset and… 

Dec 11, 2013

Tree Change: Is Raleigh Becoming More Like Baltimore?

Could Raleigh, proudly known as the City of Oaks, end up having much less tree cover, like Baltimore? Though it’s not likely that Raleigh will have to rethink its New Year’s Eve drop of the giant acorn any time soon, planners and policy makers need to take steps to prevent the City of Oaks from… 

Oct 15, 2013

The Housing Bomb: 5 Questions With Nils Peterson

Are we building our way to ruin? That’s the premise of a provocatively titled new book released this month: The Housing Bomb: Why Our Addiction to Houses Is Destroying the Environment and Threatening Our Society. Lead author Dr. Nils Peterson, associate professor of fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology at NC State, focuses his research on the… 

Oct 3, 2013

Slow Burn: Fall Foliage Taking Its Time

No, it’s not another sign of the federal government shutdown. North Carolina’s hardwood trees are taking their time to change colors this fall because of a low-stress growing season that included plenty of moisture and mild temperatures, a North Carolina State University expert says. “Growing conditions have been good, so trees have postponed shutting down… 

Aug 15, 2013

New Carnivore in the Cloud Forest

A two-pound mammal that looks like a cross between a house cat and a teddy bear has a claim to fame as the first new carnivore species discovered in the Western Hemisphere in 35 years. Today, scientists in Washington, D.C., and Raleigh unveiled the olonguito (oh-lin-GHEE-toe), a member of the same family as raccoons, coatis,… 

Aug 12, 2013

Trust and Towns in Transition

Near the Blue Ridge Parkway, three North Carolina towns have grown rapidly as jobs shifted from mining and timber to hospitality and tourism. In Macon County, natural resource-based jobs plummeted from 10 percent to almost zero in the last 35 years. Meanwhile, service-industry employment in the Franklin area topped 30 percent. It’s the kind of… 

Jul 3, 2013

Powerful Animal Tracking System Helps Research Take Flight

Call it a bird’s eye view of migration. Scientists are taking a fresh look at animal movement with a big data approach that combines GPS tracking data with satellite weather and terrain information. The new Environmental-Data Automated Track Annotation (Env-DATA) system, featured in the journal Movement Ecology, can handle millions of data points and serve… 

Jun 10, 2013

Hairpin Turn: Micro-RNA Plays Role in Wood Formation

For more than a decade, scientists have suspected that hairpin-shaped chains of micro-RNA regulate wood formation inside plant cells. Now, scientists at NC State University have found the first example and mapped out key relationships that control the process. The research, published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of June 10, describes… 

Oct 19, 2012

How to Avoid Getting Eaten by a Bear and Other Outdoor Safety Tips

It’s no accident that Dr. Aram Attarian is an expert on camping and outdoor adventure safety. Attarian, a professor of parks, recreation and tourism management at NC State University, has spent 35 years collecting accident reports, first-person accounts and newspaper articles about when things went wrong in outdoor and adventure programs. This year, he combined more… 

Oct 10, 2012

Bright Outlook for Fall Foliage

North Carolina’s fall foliage should put on a vivid show as it washes over the state this month. With color already beginning to pop in the western mountains, the foliage forecast is bright, says Dr. Robert Bardon, forestry and environmental resources professor at North Carolina State University. “The biggest thing to worry about is wet…