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This post is part of the Science Tuesday feature series on the USDA blog. Check back each week as we showcase stories and news from the USDA’s rich science and research portfolio. In forests, climate change ramps up stress already occurring from extreme weather events, disease and insect outbreaks...

One in six Americans lives in hunger every day, as millions of Americans struggle to put food on the table for their families. Traditionally, summer is a time when food banks and charities encounter decreases in donations and increases in the need for assistance.

Forests absorb carbon like a giant sponge into what scientists call a carbon sink. This fact is well known throughout the scientific community. However, what scientists weren’t sure of until now is the amount of carbon forests can store. For years scientists knew a large amount of carbon was somehow...

The original slogan of the trekking group GreenXC read: Share a Ride, Tell a Story, Save a Park. Now they added and a National Forest (as in the U.S. Forest Service). This is because these young folks (all under 30), embarking on this bold transnational ride-share journey that departs July 27 th...

The long battle to mitigate and potentially eliminate cheatgrass, one of the American West’s most menacing invasive weeds, has just taken a positive step forward. U.S. Forest Service research, conducted by ecologist Susan Meyer, has demonstrated in field trials that the fungal pathogen known...

David Ferrell seems to rebound from setbacks with a vengeance. During his first semester of college, his mother fell ill and he had to drop out to help take care of her and his four younger siblings. Back home, Ferrell met Charles Minor, a local Virginia man who would become a lifelong influence and...

The Forest Service fondly remembers the contributions of Dr. Walter A. Soboleff, a centenarian deeply revered and Tlingit elder, who died last month at the age of 102. Located in Alaska, the Tlingit are a Native society that developed a complex hunter-gatherer culture in the temperate rainforest of...

The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center located on the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska is a site to see for many tourists. This recently renovated Center is a popular cruise ship destination giving a boost to the local economy. Tourism spending in the Juneau, Alaska area is expected to...

USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist’s Climate Change Program Office has released the “U.S. Agriculture and Forestry Greenhouse Gas Inventory: 1990-2008” report. This report provides detailed estimates of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration from the management of livestock, croplands...

How do you turn biting, stinging, pantry raiding, picnic ruining pests into pollinating, irrigating, aerating, fertilizing, ecosystem balancing helpers? … By educating as many people as possible about the role of bugs in the environment. One of the responsibilities of the U.S. Forest Service is to...