A World In A cubic Foot.

[Gloria]

The article is very interesting though it left me wondering what was found in home gardens and city parks. I think I will be looking for both books mentioned below. I will let you know what I find. If anyone has already come across this let us know.

Cornstalks Everywhere But Nothing Else, Not Even A Bee : Krulwich Wonders... : NPR

There were 30 different plants in that one square foot of grass, and roughly 70 different insects. And the coolest part, said a researcher to the Guardian in Britain, "If we picked the cube up and walked 10 feet, we could get as much as 50 percent difference in plant species we encountered. If we moved it uphill, we might find none of the species." Populations changed drastically only a few feet away — and that's not counting the fungi, microbes, and the itsy-bitsies that Liittschwager and his team couldn't see

Cornfields, however, are not like national parks or virgin forests. Corn farmers champion corn. Anything that might eat corn, hurt corn, bother corn, is killed. Their corn is bred to fight pests. The ground is sprayed. The stalks are sprayed again. So, like David, Craig wondered, "What will I find?"

David Liittschwager's book, called A World In One Cubic Foot is a photographic collection of all the plants and animals that turned up in his various cubes, as you see in my post. But the book takes you to many more places, coral reefs, streams, rivers, backyards. Craig Childs' account of his long weekend in the cornfield comes from his book, Apocalyptic Planet; Field Guide to the Everending Earth. Craig writes like a dream; he uses the cornfield as a metaphor for what a mass extinction might be like, where the Earth becomes "lots of one thing and not much of any other."

[havalotta]

I think I saw that on television a while back.

It's usually big animals that catch our attention. But if we get down on our knees and examine any small patch of ground, "gradually the smaller inhabitants, far more numerous, begin to eclipse them."

They are the critters that create and aerate the soil, that pollinate, that remove the clutter. And there are lots and lots and lots of them.

I think that would be a fun endeavor to take part in...

[Staff]

Corn Monoculture: No Friend of Biodiversity
Aaron F. Price

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/vi...rnalismstudent
Excerpt from above:

Nine-Mile Prairie near Lincoln, Neb., is a biodiversity goldmine. Big bluestem, little bluestem and sawtooth sunflowers sprinkle the landscape. Red-winged blackbirds, eastern phoebes and northern blue jays sing their unique songs. With little human disturbance, forces of nature have, for centuries, built complex interactions of wildlife, plant and soil communities in this 230-acre prairie.

In 2008, Nine-Mile Prairie provides habitat for 80 species of birds and 350 plant species, including the endangered prairie fringed orchid. Federal mandates for corn ethanol, which encourage farmers to plant more corn, may threaten the biodiversity of grassland ecosystems like…