UMD's Jennifer Kreps Frisch is pretty excited about teaching teachers how to get their students outside. And that was before she knew it was due to hit 70°F today. You would think teachers - college professors or those who hope to become teachers when they graduate - would be the last people to have anything good to say about the effects of the pandemic on their profession, but Frisch says this is a chance to allow teachers to do what they do best: think on their feet and build on the

If you mention "natural gas" to Melissa Partin, she's likely as not to correct you. "Natural gas is only natural when it stays in the ground," says Partin, who wrote a report called The Health, Safety, Climate, and Economic Risks of Fossil Gas Extraction and Use . The report outlines the dangers of fossil gas (her preferred term) that run counter to the myth that it's clean and safe. It takes issue with the idea that we need it to transfer to renewables, and points out that Black and Indigenous

Phragmites. You say "frag-MITE-eez," not "FRAG-mites." But the most important thing to know about phragmites is that it's an invasive, non-native species, not to be confused with native phragmites. The invasives came to America originally from central and eastern Europe, and they've been marching steadily - if slowly - across the continent from New England. Now the Community Action Duluth Stream Corps, headed by Brandon Van Tassel, is tasked with getting rid of the plants, which are a perfect

Dr. Brandon Knott and the other members of the international team working on a better way to recycle plastics are excited about their work. For one thing, they're trying to solve a problem that everyone "gets," more or less. Here's the deal: when you recycle plastics these days, it's done with machines that grind them up, melt them down, and make new stuff out of them. But just like the old days of analog videotape and sound recording, everytime you make a new copy - in this case, a new pop

For decades, the St. Louis River Alliance has been leading the charge to heal the badly polluted St. Louis River. Spurred by the enthusiasm of more and more people drawn every year to the water to volunteer, recreate or just sit and watch the water flow by, the St. Louis River has continued its comeback story. From cleaning up the pollution left by decades of dumping in the river, to fostering habitat for wild rice, sturgeons and piping plovers, people have been working hard to heal the St.

It's still 2020, so of course we'd have a new invasive species in Minnesota, right? Meet the "jumping worm," a slightly-hysterical creature that hatches early, grows fast, makes more little earthworms quickly, and can wreak havoc on your garden or anywhere it finds itself. Jumping worms live in the top two or three inches of soil, and there can be so many, comsuming organic material so fast, that nothing can take root. The Minnesota DNR even has a viideo of their impact you can watch. Of course

Haley Diem was a little embarrassed this past weekend. The One Vegetable, One Community coordinator (it's a new position this year at the Duluth Community Garden Program) had just covered every flat surface of her kitchen with home-grown produce and had only one thing left before she began her annual salsa-making operation: getting some canning jars. Long story short, Diem returned home sans jars and had to start dumping out condiments and Mason-jar vases in order to start canning. From no seeds

It's not just couch potatoes that the Great Lakes Gear Exchange wants to get outside. Maybe you feel like the only person in the Northland who doesn't know how to cross-country ski and you're a little shy about admitting that. Maybe your budget can't stretch to equip yourself with brand-new gear for a brand-new hobby. Luckily for sofa spuds, the frugal and those hungry to learn new skills, the Great Lakes Gear Exchange wants to be a place not only of re-purposing good gear, but of learning and

At least, when it comes to dark skies, that is. Northlanders probably remember the first time they stepped out of the tent in the middle of the night and saw the stars hanging right in the treetops, close enough to touch.

Here's something more fun to think about than online learning or how to get kids to social distance: electric school buses. The $2.9 billion dollar settlement the federal government reached with Volkswagen over the car maker's violation of emissions standards has meant, among other things, that Minnesota can spend $3 million dollars of its share on an electric bus pilot program. Are electric school buses feasible in our double-digit-below-zero winter temperatures? How fast do their batteries