ENVIRONMENT

Over the last few years, I’ve found myself transformed into a locavore. This term, which Oxford English Dictionary named its word of the year for 2007, refers to someone who eats a local diet. There are a multitude of reasons a person might become a locavore. I certainly didn’t start out with that as a […]

Is it possible to build an oasis in the desert? Not the desert that brings to mind scorched earth and stretches of hot sand miles away from water and civilization. No. The question speaks to deserts that exist in urban centers across our country. Neighborhoods in the very heart of our otherwise thriving cities where […]

I’m writing this essay because I’m worried. I’ve grown attached to America in the 27 years I’ve lived and worked here but I’m forced to look elsewhere for useful examples of government action, corporate innovation and citizen activism to meet the fast approaching crises of climate change, future declining oil supplies and sustainable energy production. […]

With our warm late summer temperatures, moist conditions from humidity and evening thunderstorms, this is certainly the time of year to spot mushrooms in the woods. Growing up in the area, I’d always took note of mushrooms, but rarely given them more than a passing glance. Then a few years ago, I overheard a biologist […]

One of the delights of an academic life is the opportunity to spend time in the summer traveling on research trips to foreign countries; there really is nothing like studious foreign travel to give useful perspectives on conditions here in America. This year I went home to England and traveled to several other European countries […]

I’ve traversed some rugged country in the Uwharries. My dad and I have bushwhacked through laurel thickets and scrambled up and down steep and slippery slopes to blaze trails and mark property lines. In general, though, our land is more accessible than isolated coves in the mountains or impenetrable swamps at the coast. And yet […]

“They come from Tennessee in a covered wagon.” That was all I could get out of my grandfather…” So begins this essay by Ruth Ann Grissom, first published in 1998 in the newsletter of The LandTrust for Central NC. Guest contributor Ruth Ann Grissom is a freelance writer who splits her time between Atlanta and […]

The Carolina Raptor Center is a unique local resource. Please check out this video to learn more about this organization. Staff

From 1976 to 2006, land development in the North Carolina mountains increased 568 percent – from 34,348 acres to 229,422 acres – and is expected to increase another 63 percent by 2030. Population, meanwhile, increased only 42 percent between 1976 and 2006 and is projected to increase only another 25 percent by 2030. The result? […]

The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) at UNC Charlotte expanded the urban growth mapping and forecasting into 19 counties in the Western part of North Carolina: Alleghany, Ashe, Avery, Buncombe, Cherokee, Clay, Graham, Haywood, Henderson, Jackson, Macon, Madison, Mitchell, Polk, Swain, Transylvania, Watauga, Wilkes, and Yancey Counties. The final report maps historical development patterns from 1976-2030 […]