'Less than 1% probability' that Earth's energy imbalance increase occurred naturally, say Princeton and GFDL scientists miragenews.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from miragenews.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
âSee-Through Soil Could Help Farmers Deal With Future Droughts
In research that may eventually help crops survive drought, scientists at Princeton University have uncovered a key reason that mixing material called hydrogels with soil has sometimes proven disappointing for farmers.
Hydrogel beads, tiny plastic blobs that can absorb a thousand times their weight in water, seem ideally suited to serve as tiny underground reservoirs of water. In theory, as the soil dries, hydrogels release water to hydrate plants’ roots, thus alleviating droughts, conserving water and boosting crop yields.
Yet mixing hydrogels into farmers’ fields has had spotty results. Scientists have struggled to explain these uneven performances in large part because soil being opaque has thwarted attempts at observing, analyzing and ultimately improving hydrogel behaviors.
Tina Gerhardt
Tina Gerhardt is an environmental journalist and academic. She covers the annual U.N. climate negotiations and domestic energy policy. She is Barron Visiting Professor at the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University. Her writing has been published in Grist.org,
The Nation,