Squee self

Canada has long promoted itself globally as a model for protecting one of the country’s most vital natural resources: the world’s largest swath of boreal forest, which is crucial to fighting climate change.But a new study using nearly half a century of data from the provinces of Ontario and Quebec — two of the country’s main commercial logging regions — reveals that harvesting trees has inflicted severe damage on the boreal forest that will be difficult to reverse.Researchers led by a group from Griffith University in Australia found that since 1976 logging in the two provinces has caused the removal of 35.4 million acres of boreal forest, an area roughly the size of New York State.While nearly 56 million acres of well-established trees at least a century old remain in the region, logging ...

When Indiana officials created a new industrial park to lure huge microchip firms to the state, they picked a nearly 10,000-acre site close to a booming metropolis, a major airport and a university research center.But the area is missing one key ingredient to support the kinds of development the state wants to attract: access to the huge amounts of water that microchip makers might need.Officials floated a plan to pipe in enormous volumes of water from an aquifer about 40 miles away. But the plan raised concerns about straining groundwater supplies at the source, prompting widespread calls to scrap the idea, at least until more studies can be carried out.Last week, state officials said they would do just that, with Gov. Eric Holcomb and other leaders pledging to move on the project only af...