📰 Curb‑cutting Resistance Helped Reshape Tucson’s Urban Ecology

🌧️ Tucson: A man illegally diverted rainwater into streetside basins in 1998. Years later, it transformed a desert neighborhood into a shaded, food‑producing micro‑ecosystem.

🌵 The approach revived Indigenous rain‑harvesting traditions but also caused Tucson to change water management laws to be more nature positive.

🔗 upworthy.com/in-1998-a-man-ill…

#SolarPunkSunday
#LandscapeEcology #UrbanRestoration #UrbanEcology #RainwaterHarvesting #NativePlants #Sustainability #Environment

In 1998, a man illegally cut holes in a Tucson street curb. The result changed the law.

Brad Lancaster shares with permaculture expert Andrew Millison how illegal curb cutting to divert rainwater 30 years ago changed Tucson.

^{Annie Reneau (Upworthy)}

📰 Apex Predators Are Quietly Reshaping the West

🦅 Western U.S.: Bald eagles, gray wolves, condors, and black bears are back from the brink due to decades of environmental policy, habitat restoration, and public support.

🌄 Their return is restoring ecological function at landscape scale, from scavenger networks to trophic balance, even as some species adapt to more urbanized terrain.

🤝 Coexistence now depends on community‑level choices: wildlife‑friendly ranching, lead‑free hunting, habitat connectivity, and everyday tolerance that allows wide‑ranging species to move, feed, and reproduce safely.

🔗 ktla.com/news/nationworld/apex…

#SolarPunkSunday
#WildlifeRecovery #ApexPredators #HabitatConnectivity #Conservation #WildlifeConservation #EcologicalRestoration #Biodiversity

#solarpunk #solarpunksunday #energy #fossilfuels

Switzerland is densely cloudy in winter when energy is needed the most. So engineers installed solar panels above the clouds on the sides of mountains. It’s so effective that they’re expanding the project to other mountains.

ecoportal.net/en/switzerland-5…

Switzerland bolted 5,000 solar panels onto a dam wall 8,000 feet up in the freezing Alps where everyone said

High in the Swiss Alps, on a concrete dam wall more than 8,000 feet above the sea, someone bolted thousands of solar panels to a place almost no one thought

^{Hugo Rojas (ecoportal.net)}

#solarpunk #solarpunksunday #cleanenergy #solar

MIT scientist created a new type of solar panel that is transparent. It picks up only infrared and ultraviolet light. These can be used on windows or any clear pane (like cell phone screens) as well as flexible surfaces.

“They estimate that using coated windows in a skyscraper could provide more than a quarter of the building’s energy needs without changing its look.”

energy.mit.edu/news/transparen…

Transparent solar cells

Overview MIT researchers are making transparent solar cells that could turn everyday products such as windows and electronic devices into power generators—without altering how they look or function today.

^{MIT Energy Initiative}