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Global warming clouds our future. Pollution degrades our air, soil and water. Environmental toxins compromise the health of our children. Misuse threatens the sustainability of our forests, fisheries, wetlands and coasts, and the health of species that live there.

But there is reason for hope.

Through sound science and policy research, we're finding answers to these problems. Airborne lead and acid rain have been dramatically reduced. Industrial water pollution has decreased. Habitats are being preserved.

Faculty members from the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Duke University are part of the effort to help find these answers and establish new environmental practices and policies to safeguard our natural resources for generations to come.

To contact our experts or learn more about what we're doing in states across the nation, click on the state you're interested in.

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Wisconsin
Forests & Wetlands
Despite a 7.4 percent increase in forest acreage since 1950, the ecological health of the Volunteer State’s forests is declining. Increases in forest acreage are largely due to fallow farmland reverting to upland forest. Meanwhile, critical bottomland forest habitats have declined nearly 26 percent. Only 9 percent of the original forested wetlands of the Mississippi River remain. In East Tennessee, the spruce/fir forest, weakened by years of exposure to acid rain, is being destroyed by wooly adelgids and other non-native pests.

 

 

Contact Information

Norm Christensen is an expert on forest ecology and sustainable forest management.
 tel: (919) 613-8052  e: normc@duke.edu