Archive
Flooded Fields for Birds
National Geographic features “Walking Wetlands” – flooded fields for shorebirds. This has been used for waterfowl in the Mississippi Delta for a long time.
Agriculture and Aquaculture – Chesapeake Bay Videos
Here is a great 3-part series from Terra about agriculture, aquaculture, land development and sustainability in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Disappearing Catch
Farming Forward
Chesapeake Gold
Urban Agriculture II
Another article about the Slow Food movement in Detroit and elsewhere. Having lived in Michigan for a long time, I think this has exciting promise for revitalizing the state’s hurting urban areas. As a wildlife biologist, I can’t help thinking about the potential for urban farming for conserving wildlife diversity. Can it alleviate the pressure to convert natural habitats to farmland? Can it help support biodiveristy in urban areas? Pollinators? Birds even? My research (and lifestyle) are outside the urban farming realm, but I hope someone answers these questions.
Here is another link to Vertical Farming. Below is a video from Urban Farming about this phenomenon.
Urban Agriculture
Lands around airports represent valuable land that can be managed to support agriculture and/or conservation. Two examples below:
The “Garden Boys” farm plots around a major airport – from CNN.
Butterflies protected and thriving at LAX – from the Epoch Times.
How many bee species in New York City?
227 in New York City!! Maybe there is hope for an agricultural urban Detroit.
Web Soil Survey
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service has a new web-based soil survey. I quickly was able to define an “Area of Interest” and produce both a soils map and access information about the soil types (RUSLE information, building suitability, flooding potential, etc.). Once you have the soil map for your farm, you can go to NRCS’s new soil rental rate site (which I reviewed earlier) and enroll in Farm Bill conservation programs. NRCS is doing some nice work with their web-based technical tools lately.
