18-year study: deer inhibit trees, raise plant diversity

News

At high densities, white-tailed deer inhibit growth of trees but increase the overall diversity of smaller plant and weed species, according to a long-term study published Dec. 23 in PLOS One. Twenty years ago, Cornell researchers established...
  • Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station
  • Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
  • School of Integrative Plant Science
  • Biodiversity
  • Environment
Scott Morris with plants in a greenhouse

Building a farm data and analytics platform that keeps things private

News

by Jackie Swift Farms generate huge amounts of data. A dairy farm in the United States, for instance, will typically produce data that tracks herd health and breeding, and milk production and quality, for a start. If the farm also grows its own...
  • PRO-DAIRY
  • PRO-LIVESTOCK
  • Animal Science
  • Agriculture
  • Digital Agriculture
  • Dairy
two men and a woman sit at a table talking with a schematic of farm and data on a view screen next to them

Grid sampling streamlines phosphorus loss risk assessments

News

Grid sampling– a process where fields are divided into small grids and a soil sample is taken from each section for individual analysis– can generally be very informative. It is capable of capturing variability throughout a field that may have...
  • Animal Science
  • Agriculture
  • Field Crops
A background of a corn field with two figures illustrating the P-index 2.0 in the foreground.

Finger Foods Farm: Soups made with Upstate NY ingredients now in stores

Field Note

The Cookfairs, who began farming together in New Jersey in 2010 before relocating to Georgia and then to the Finger Lakes, where they grow a variety of organic vegetables, including kale, mustard greens, broccoli, cauliflower, squash, and...
  • Center of Excellence in Food and Agriculture
  • Cornell AgriTech
Four pints of soup in paper cartons

COMM Updates - 1/21/2026

News

January 21, 2026 Awards & Grants Professor danah boyd has been awarded a Research Seed Grant on “The Political Economy of AI,” receiving $5,000 from Cornell Global Hubs. This grant supports a collaboration with researchers at the University of...
three individuals stand in front of a poster board

Jonathan Chai ’24: Exploring plants, insects and floral microclimates

Field Note

Jonathan Chai ‘24 worked for two years as an undergraduate research assistant in the lab of Robert Raguso , professor of neurobiology and behavior. Raguso’s lab made the first discovery that insects are attracted to plants as much by humidity as...
  • Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station
  • School of Integrative Plant Science
  • Agriculture
  • Biodiversity
Jonathan Chai in a green house with datura and squash flowers

Elizabeth Zhang: Living the dream

Field Note

Elizabeth Zhang ’26 is a senior in Animal Science with a concentration in pre-veterinary medicine. Currently she is an undergraduate researcher in the lab of Heather Huson , associate professor of animal genetics. We sat down together to talk...
  • Animal Science
  • Animals
  • Genetics
a woman holds a vial of liquid in a lab

Round Goby invade the Hudson River Estuary, NY

News

Kelsey Alvarez del Castillo published the second paper documenting her studies on round goby in the Transactions of the American Fisheries Society in January 2026. Round Goby are a highly invasive fish species that have recently invaded the...
  • Biological Field Station
  • Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment
  • Natural Resources and the Environment Section
  • Fish
person standing front of aquatic tank