Leafsnap: An Electronic Field Guide

Columbia University, the University of Maryland, and the Smithsonian Institution are working on visual recognition software to help identify species from photographs. Leafsnap is the first in a series of electronic field guides being developed to demonstrate this new technology. This free mobile app helps identify tree species from photographs of their leaves and contains beautiful high-resolution images of their flowers, fruit, petiole, seeds, and bark. Leafsnap currently includes the trees of New York City and Washington, D.C., and will soon grow to cover the trees of the entire continental United States.

CNN : Eco Solutions : Vertical farming

Professor Dickson Despommier suggests vertical farming may be the solution to many of today's environmental problems.

FUTURE FARMS: High-Rise, Beach Pod, and Pyramid Pictures

The Pyramid Farm, designed by vertical farming guru Dickson Despommier at New York's Columbia University and Eric Ellingsen of the Illinois Institute of Technology, is one way to address the needs of a swelling population on a planet with finite farmland.

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Vertical Farming

By Bryan Walsh

www.time.com/

Photo: An experimental farm in El Paso, Texas, reduces water and fertilizer waste for crops.

Dickson Despommier became the guru of vertical farming because his students were bummed out. A professor of environmental health at Columbia University in New York City, Despommier teaches about parasitism, environmental disruption and other assorted happy topics. Eventually his students complained; they wanted to work on something optimistic. So the class began studying the idea of rooftop gardening for cities. They quickly discarded that approach--too small-scale--in favor of something more ambitious: a 30-story urban farm with a greenhouse on every floor. "I think vertical farming is an idea that can work in a big way," says Despommier.

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