University of Wisconsin–Madison

Tag: conservation

Bird habitat changing quickly as climate change proceeds

The climatic conditions needed by 285 species of land birds in the United States have moved rapidly between 1950 and 2011 as a result of climate change, according to a recent paper published in Global Change Biology. “Our goal was to look at the climate where these birds were observed breeding over this period and …

UW–Madison offers free Leopold’s land ethic online course and February event

The University of Wisconsin-Madison will offer its next round of six Massive Open Online Courses beginning Jan. 26 with “The Land Ethic Reclaimed: Perceptive Hunting, Aldo Leopold and Conservation.” MOOCs are free online, noncredit learning experiences that allow people from around the globe to participate. Participants watch educational videos, engage in discussion forums, read articles and often take quizzes or complete educational activities. More than 135,000 registrants from approximately 140 countries and all 50 states signed up for UW-Madison’s previous phase one pilot of four courses.

Grasshoppers signal slow recovery of post-agricultural woodlands, study finds

New research by Philip Hahn and John Orrock at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on the recovery of South Carolina longleaf pine woodlands once used for cropland shows just how long lasting the legacy of agriculture can be in the recovery of natural places. By comparing grasshoppers found at woodland sites once used for agriculture to similar sites never disturbed by farming, Hahn and Orrock show that despite decades of recovery, the numbers and types of species found in each differ.

Climate change alters cast of winter birds

Over the past two decades, the resident communities of birds that attend eastern North America’s backyard bird feeders in winter have quietly been remade, most likely as a result of a warming climate. Writing this week in the journal Global Change Biology, University of Wisconsin-Madison wildlife biologists Benjamin Zuckerberg and Karine Princé document that once rare wintering bird species are now commonplace in the American Northeast.