The 2026 Rutgers Cooperative Extension (RCE) Annual Conference convened on January 15 at the Busch Student Center, bringing together faculty, staff, and stakeholders from across New Jersey. The annual gathering provided a shared space for networking, professional development, research collaboration, and the exchange of best practices in delivering research-based educational programming with service excellence. The conference opened with welcoming remarks …
Ask a New Jersey middle schooler what they think about when choosing what to eat, and you’ll probably hear: taste, texture, and whether it’ll upset their stomach. Ask them what they do to help the planet, and they’ll mention picking up litter or recycling. What most won’t mention? The connection between the two. A new study out of Rutgers University set out to understand what drives food choices among New Jersey …
A mysterious disease has been quietly destroying coral reefs across the Caribbean for over a decade. Stony coral tissue loss disease, or SCTLD, causes coral tissue to simply fall away, killing entire colonies — and no one has been able to pinpoint exactly what causes it. Now, new research is offering some of the clearest clues yet. Debashish Bhattacharya, RCEI …
An article from Centraljersey.com explores a question many New Jersey residents may have wondered about during blustery days: Is the state actually getting windier? The piece examines the science behind measuring wind, the challenges of identifying long-term trends, and why understanding wind patterns matters for issues like drought, wildfires, bird migration, and climate change. Wind forms when air moves from …
An article from The New Republic written by RCEI affiliate Robert Kopp examines how the second Donald Trump administration has systematically targeted U.S. climate science infrastructure—while researchers mobilize to defend and preserve it. The piece begins by explaining that for more than 75 years, the United States has led the world in climate research, launching major modeling centers and building …
In laboratories and greenhouses at Rutgers University-New Brunswick – alongside collaborators at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Florida and Bar-Ilan University – scientists are advancing plant breeding innovations to protect one of the world’s most widely used herbs: basil. Now, supported by a $3.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, …
Droughts are the world’s most widespread natural disaster, and climate change is making them longer, more intense, and possibly more frequent. But how much do droughts actually hurt local economies and can water storage help cushion that blow? A new study tackles these questions on a global scale. Hilary Sigman, RCEI Affiliate and Professor of Economics at Rutgers University, is a co-author of the study along with Sheila Olmstead, Professor at …
Miles off the coast of New Jersey and New England, two major forces are converging: the rapid expansion of offshore wind energy and some of the most valuable fisheries in the United States. A new editorial published in Fisheries Oceanography takes stock of what we know — and what we urgently need to find out — about how these two uses of …
An article from Inside Climate News examines how powerful winter storms can trigger dangerous coastal flooding in New Jersey—highlighting that nor’easters, not just hurricanes, pose serious risks to the state’s densely populated shoreline. The story focuses on a recent blizzard that blanketed New Jersey with more than two feet of snow and brought strong winds that caused flooding in places …
A collaboration among Rutgers, NASA and other institutions outlines an integrated approach to greenhouse gas and wind observations A study published by the W. M. Keck Institute for Space Studies in collaboration with Rutgers University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, presents a roadmap for harnessing global-scale trace gas and atmospheric wind observations to improve the …
