For centuries Native Americans intercropped corn, beans and squash because the plants thrived together. A new initiative is measuring health and social benefits from reuniting the "three sisters."
Corn plants in a flooded field near Emden, Ill., May 29, 2019.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
New research shows that one-third of yearly nitrogen runoff from Midwest farms to the Gulf of Mexico occurs during a few heavy rainstorms. New fertilizing schedules could reduce nitrogen pollution.
Workers wait to enter a Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Logansport, Indiana. The plant had been closed after nearly 900 employees tested positive for the coronavirus.
AP Photo/Michael Conroy
Being able to identify communities that are susceptible to the pandemic ahead of time would allow officials to target public health interventions to slow the spread of the infection and avoid deaths.
A derecho moves across central Kansas on July 3, 2005.
Jim Reed/Corbis via Getty Images
Hurricane and tornado winds spin in circles, but there's another, equally dangerous storm type where winds barrel straight ahead. They're called derechos, and are most common in summer.
A restored prairie in southern Michigan.
Lars Brudvig
Restoring former prairies that have been plowed under for farming delivers land, wildlife and climate benefits. But a new study finds that the weather plays a surprising role.
Air conditioning cools city residents during heat waves, but also strains the power grid and fuels climate change.
Joanna Poe/Flickr
Climate change is making extreme weather events, both hot and cold, more frequent across the Great Lakes region. Weatherizing low-income residents' homes is an important way to prepare.
Water rushes through a breached levee on the Arkansas River in Dardanelle, Ark., May 31, 2019.
Yell County Sheriff's Department via AP
Over the past 20 years, Great Lakes water levels have gone from sustained multiyear lows to multiyear highs. Climate change is accelerating the transition between dry phases and wet phases.
One of the Ohio city’s many immigrant-owned restaurants.
AP Photo/Al Behrman
A climatologist who studies precipitation trends explains how climate change is projected to make flooding events in the Midwest more severe and more frequent.
Bundled up against the cold in downtown Chicago, Sunday, Jan. 27, 2019.
AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh
Life-threatening cold temperatures in the central US are caused by changes in wind circulation in the Arctic that bring cold air south. Climate change could make these events more frequent.
A farm in LaSalle County, Illinois.
Eddie J. Rodriquez/shutterstock.com
Conservative skeptics of climate change may support projects focused on 'resilience' – for example, preparing a community for future major weather events.
The poor treatment of Vietnam War veterans, many of whom had PTSD, angered Natasha Zaretsky’s Midwestern students.
REUTERS/Mike Theiler
A scholar raised by leftist San Francisco parents in the 1970s ends up teaching in the heartland, where her students represent a very different kind of politics. What she learns from them is profound.
Water from an irrigation system sprays flowering cotton plants on the farm of Allen Entz in Hydro, Okla, Aug. 16, 2012.
AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki
The Ogalalla Aquifer is a vast underground lake that irrigates farms across the US Great Plains. It took thousands of years to fill, but human use could drain it in roughly a century.
A farmer harvest his soybean field in Loami, Ill.
AP Photo/Seth Perlman