Jennifer Tank has received the 2016 Rodney F. Ganey, Ph.D., Community-Based Research Award for working together with Kosciusko County farmers and local conservation staff to reduce nutrient runoff in the Shatto Ditch watershed. The award is a $5,000 prize presented annually to a regular faculty member at the University of...

SOUTH BEND — University of Notre Dame biological sciences professor Jennifer Tank has received the 2016 Rodney F. Ganey Community-Based Research Award for work related to agricultural runoff in Kosciusko County. Tank worked with farmers and local conservation staff to reduce nutrient runoff…

The world’s total human population has jumped to more than 7.4 billion just this year. Feeding the human species takes a tremendous toll on our natural resources including water, soil and phosphorus — a chemical element in fertilizer essential for food production. In modern agriculture, fertilizer…

Nearly ten years ago, the largest recorded tundra fire in the Arctic, known as the Anaktuvuk River fire, was sparked by a lightning strike, burning its way across more than 400 square miles of the North Scope of Alaska. The fire released nearly as much carbon – a greenhouse gas...

McKibben’s lecture, “The Last Ditch Effort for a Working Climate: Report from the Front Lines,” will offer strategies and tactics for countering climate change in the context of the Paris climate accords, Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, and the hottest year ever measured on the planet, 2015. This lecture...

A new program aimed at improving water quality in the nation’s heartland by using watershed-scale conservation to reduce nutrient runoff from farms has been recognized by the Obama Administration during the United Nations World Water Day Summit.

A new program aimed at improving water quality in the nation’s heartland by using watershed-scale conservation to reduce nutrient runoff from farms was highlighted Tuesday at a White House Water Summit. The Water Summit was the backdrop for the Obama administration’s announcement of a national strategy…

A new program aimed at improving water quality in the nation’s heartland by using watershed-scale conservation to reduce nutrient runoff from farms was highlighted Tuesday (March 22) at a White House Water Summit. The program is spearheaded through a collaboration between the University of Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative and...

On a spring morning in New Hampshire, 2,000 years ago, sunlight struck a black cherry tree, opening its white-and-yellow blossoms. As the tree swayed gently in breeze, spiky, spherical pollen grains spilled out of its flowers, and floated up through the limbs and leaves of the canopy, before drifting…

When Europeans came to the New World in the 16th century, they brought measles and smallpox with them. Without the immunity Europeans had cultivated over the years, the native people in America quickly fell ill. Millions died as a result. Today, trees in the New World are also dying from...

In the spring of 2015, two bald eagles took over an existing red-tailed hawk nest at the University of Notre Dame Linked Experimental Ecosystem Facility (ND-LEEF) at St. Patrick’s County Park and fledged one eaglet. Over the past few months, the birds have returned and are again building up a...

As the celebration of the sesquicentennial of science comes to a close and the one-year anniversary of Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C.’s passing approaches, the University of Notre Dame reflects on the life of Father Hesburgh and his impact on the growth and development of the sciences and scientific research...

Professor Patrick Regan has been appointed the Associate Director of the University of Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative (ND-ECI) for ND-GAIN.   In this new role, Regan will lead academic scholarship around ND-GAIN by amplifying faculty engagement in climate adaptation, identifying funding opportunities to enhance the University’s climate research capacity, directing scholarly...

Make no mistake: climate change is the environmental problem of this century. Arctic sea ice is melting, along with land-based glaciers and ice sheets. Sea levels are rising, threatening the security of hundreds of millions of people living in coastal regions, and ocean acidification is disrupting important ecosystems and food...

Paris Agreement reflects University of Notre Dame's climate research assets.  Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index is key to the success of the Agreement, providing knowledge, products and services for all of the signatories and other private sector and development actors working to achieve adaptation and resilience goals.

Professor Jennifer Tank has been named the new Director of the University of Notre Dame Environmental Change Initiative (ND-ECI),…

As health apps and wearable technology devices like Fitbits inundate the market, there’s one population that has been largely ignored, says a University of Notre Dame researcher. Director of the school’s Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science and Applications (iCeNSA) Dr. Nitesh Chawla is going against the current, targeting seniors with...

On Monday (Jan. 25), the World Health Organization announced that Zika virus, a mosquito-borne illness that in the past year has swept quickly throughout equatorial countries, is expected to spread across the Americas and into the United States.

Using web samples from black widow spiders fed with crickets, researchers at the University of Notre Dame have successfully used DNA samples to identify both the spider and the species of its prey. Such noninvasive sampling to obtain genetic information could have practical implications in several fields including conservation research...

Cellphones, any parent can attest, play a central role in the lives of college students. Studies show that nearly all college students own a cellphone, and most of those students use text messaging as their main form of communication. Researchers from the University of Notre Dame used the centrality of...

Maggie Xenopoulos straps on a pair of hip-waders, grabs a 1-litre plastic bottle from her truck and wades into Ontario’s Nottawasaga river. “See this brown colour?” she says, scooping up water the colour of weak tea. “That’s dissolved organic carbon. It blocks UV rays. It’s a bit like SPF for aquatic life.”...

If they successfully invade Lake Erie, Asian carp could eventually account for about a third of the total weight of fish in the lake and could cause declines in most fish species — including prized sport and commercial fish such as walleye, according to a new computer modeling study.

A new study suggests that Asian carp, which have been spotted in watersheds close to the Great Lakes, would make themselves right at home if they made it to Lake Erie. The study, published recently in the journal Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, used computer modeling to estimate the...