Leopold Center adds several new on-line features
The Leopold Center has added several new features to its Web site that are designed to keep users better informed about projects and activities.
One of the easiest ways to stay informed of Leopold Center activities is to subscribe to the new Leopold Center news feed. This news feed will provide links to new tools and resources as they become available, and to all Leopold Center news and announcements.
News feeds (also called RSS, for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary) offer a handy way to check the latest headlines and postings on favorite Web sites and blogs. The feed requires a news reader or news aggregator, available from Google, Yahoo and most Web browsers. To subscribe to the feed, click on the orange RSS icon
for more information.
Another new feature is On the Ground with the Leopold Center, a series of short videos that highlight ongoing research funded by the Center's Ecology Initiative. In these videos, project investigators explain their work and how it fits the Leopold Center mission.
"On the Ground with the Leopold Center" has profiled three projects with videos entitled Adding Perennials to an Annual Landscape, Forage Diversity, the Spice of Life in Southern Iowa, and Developing the Portfolio: Biomass Options. More video features will be added as they are produced.
A third new on-line feature that began in April 2009 is a Leopold Center photo gallery. Each month (and sometimes more frequently) a different Leopold Center project will be presented in the photo gallery. Some of the galleries also include audio features.
The latest photo gallery looks at Leopold Center-supported research in high tunnel structures. For Earth Day in April, Iowa State University student and Leopold Center communications assistant Natalie Askren produced a photo collection of Iowa landscapes and wildlife.
Information from seven research projects completed within the past year has been added to Food Facts, the Leopold Center's on-line publication of key findings from research, demonstrations, studies and surveys supported by the Leopold Center's Marketing and Food Systems Initiative and the Value Chain Partnerships project. To request a printed copy of this publication, contact the Leopold Center at (515) 294-3711.
Initiative pages
On-line information about the Leopold Center's research initiatives also is easier to navigate. The Center's Marketing and Food Systems Initiative page--one of the most visited pages on the Center's Web site--has a new format with reports and resources organized according to 10 timely topics from farmer profitability and food miles to supply networks and climate change.
Visitors will see a similar reorganization of on-line information about the Ecology Initiative. The initiative's work across the landscape is featured in a more user-friendly format and highlighted in videos about current research, updates on special projects and links to essays and resources devoted to current ecological and environmental thinking.