Reading Time: 5 minutes For 20 years, Pablo Sobron sought a better way to learn exactly what was in the soil, rock or any other substance on Mars.  Instead of sampling and laboratory analysis — the old way of soil testing — scientists began to use lasers and sensors to get high-precision data quickly. Eventually, that led Sobron to think the same type of technology could work on Earth, particularly farms. “The idea is to do exactly what we do on Mars, which is drive and, without stopping, get real time measurements of every square inch if you want to. As small as you want,” he said. Impos ..read more

Reading Time: 8 minutes Sabrina Chandler spent much of her life on the other end of the Mississippi River.  Growing up on the Gulf Coast near New Orleans, where levees wall the river off, she had to work to see it. Near the delta, the river is a big, scary, powerful thing. People fear it.  Now the manager of the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, Chandler recounted those days as she drove to one of her favorite places. She pulled up to Verchota Landing, where the river opened up in front of her, expansive and calm. She pointed to a pile of felled trees – a bea ..read more

Reading Time: 6 minutes WEC Energy Group in southeastern Wisconsin is planning to significantly expand its capacity for natural gas electricity generation, even as it has vowed to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. In recent filings by its subsidiary WEPCO (also known as We Energies), the company has asked state utility regulators for permission to bill ratepayers for two new natural gas power plants, a liquified natural gas (LNG) storage facility and a 33-mile pipeline to supply the proposed new plants. Altogether, the projects represent a more than $2 billion investment the utility say ..read more

Reading Time: 5 minutes Spring migration is underway along the Mississippi River flyway, making the river and its floodplain a hotspot for waterfowl and soon-to-arrive songbirds. The Mississippi plays a critical role guiding these birds across the country and providing them habitat to rest. Here’s everything you need to know about this important flyway — and when and where to see the birds amid their long journey. What is the Mississippi River flyway, and which birds use it? The Mississippi Flyway is a migration route along the Mississippi, Missouri and lower Ohio rivers that birds take each s ..read more

Reading Time: 9 minutes During the 2023 harvest season, one of Jake Lieb’s tractors quit working. A week later, his combine stopped working, too. Both were new — and he was locked out from making any repairs himself because of software restrictions embedded in the machines. Instead, a technician from John Deere was dispatched to diagnose and repair the problems. While waiting for the technician to come out, Lieb fired up a 20-year-old tractor he hadn’t used for harvesting in years. Crops are vulnerable to the weather, and had he not, Lieb could have lost at least a day of harvest. Some of the ..read more

Reading Time: 5 minutes Click here to read highlights from the story This year’s maple sap season began early in Upper Midwestern states for many producers, who experienced shorter seasons. Some credit those shifts to the year’s record warm winter.  Experts say human-caused climate change also is having varied and unpredictable effects on the maple harvest. Farmers and Indigenous communities whose ancestors have tapped trees since time immemorial are altering their practices and planning for an erratic future. The art of maple syrup production flows through generations of Dan Potter’s f ..read more

Reading Time: 4 minutes Anthony Larson describes himself as a hard-core ice fisher. Living in La Crosse, Wisconsin, right next to the Mississippi River, he has the luxury to fulfill that description. Once the river and its backwaters ice over each winter, he aims to fish every day, using his work commute to scope out particular spots he wants to hit. Even if all he can spare at the end of the day is 15 or 20 minutes, he goes for it. This winter was different. The above-average temperatures across the upper Midwest, driven in part by the El Niño climate pattern and in part by human-caused clima ..read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday signed bipartisan bills designed to jump-start creation of an electric vehicle charging network along the state’s interstate system and major highways. The new laws free up nearly $80 million in federal construction aid and make it easier for gas stations, convenience stores and other businesses to operate the electric vehicle charging stations. The measures were backed by businesses and environmentalists alike and cheered as a way for Wisconsin to expand its electric vehicle charging network. The funding is designed to support Lev ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Many people might go their entire lives without seeing a bald eagle, our majestic American emblem, in the wild.  But if you live within driving distance of the upper Mississippi River, that’s not a problem, especially this time of year.  Each winter the upper Mississippi River plays host to hundreds of bald eagles that are migrating to and from their breeding grounds. They join the so-called “resident eagles” that always live along the river to create an impressive sight, particularly at the end of February and beginning of March: Some viewers have reported se ..read more

Reading Time: 5 minutes The white trailer blends into the winter landscape at SKB Environmental’s landfill in Rosemount, Minnesota, but inside, machinery is working to capture one of the most pervasive environmental pollutants of our time. The landfill is the final stop for industrial waste, incinerator ash and demolition garbage, where all of that material is mixed into massive, lined cells. Like in every landfill, moisture in the trash that’s trucked in mixes with rainfall and collects into a polluted soup known as leachate. SKB is experimenting with filtering PFAS chemicals out of that liqu ..read more