Everyday Environment 2025

The world is teeming with biodiversity: Fungi, plants, insects, animals, and all of the living things. Often, these things exist unknowingly right alongside us. In our woods, in our streams, in our skies, and in our soil. It’s understandable that we don’t see the biodiversity around us. Sometimes,...

Sports enthusiasts and data lovers go hand in hand — just like hot dogs and mustard at Wrigley Field. Recently, I took a deep dive into the Illinois Department of Natural Resources database, exploring historical trends in hunting and fishing license sales, as...

While commuting to work in southernmost Illinois, I regularly lament seeing crushed eastern box turtles and other roadkill along the mostly rural roads. I sometimes see as many as 5-10 living eastern box turtles on the road in the morning. Unfortunately, I do not always have time or feel that it is...

The diversity of forms of wildlife in Illinois is astonishing. There are hundreds of species of fish and birds, and thousands of species of plants and insects. Illinois is home to over 400 species of bees alone! How do you define wildlife? I think wildlife includes any living organism...

Not very long ago, you couldn’t walk a fencerow or open field in Illinois without your heart skipping a beat as a covey of quail flushed beneath your feet. After a long day in the fields, through all the noise of the world, their iconic two-beat whistle stuck in your head as you try to fall asleep...

Nitrates in drinking water can be a concern in Illinois. In June, nitrate levels of 11.9 mg/L, higher than the federal standard of 10mg/L set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, were discovered in the northern Illinois community of University Park, where bottled water is now being...

When the Everyday Environment team first looked at water as our season two topic, we brainstormed a lot of different approaches. Unlike our first season, where we covered climate change, water is an overarching part of our environment. Yes, water can be a challenge, flooding for example, but it can...

Over a decade ago, I was sitting in a city council meeting in Illinois and on the agenda was a water rate increase. Over-pumping deep groundwater aquifers had degraded water quality, forcing the community to choose between upgrading infrastructure to meet standards or switching to a new water...

Do you know where your drinking water comes from? If you are like most people, the answer is no. While the City of Chicago and many of its surrounding communities access water from Lake Michigan, the rest of northeast Illinois relies primarily on groundwater aquifers for its drinking...

Community systems to manage water were built a long time ago and since then, historical hydrological patterns, or how water moves through the landscape, have changed. Changes in rainfall distribution is increasing the risk of flooding in some regions and leading to water scarcity in others. These...

Urbanization has not historically been too kind to the health and well-being of rivers. It’s a rough irony that something so important to the foundation of human society – rivers flowing through major population centers – has been negatively impacted by the very groups that rely so heavily on them...

Rain gardens are bowl-shaped landscape features that capture and absorb rainfall and snowmelt. These nature-based solutions can help to reduce local flooding issues while improving downstream water quality and recharging groundwater. They also provide a variety of other benefits, like habitat...

It’s a crisp spring morning, and I’m driving by the Rock River, watching as the water reflects the newly emerging leaves. Like most others across Illinois, this river is part of a complex system that connects to the Mississippi River and ultimately flows to the ocean. Hidden beneath the river...

Unexpected guests can be a drag, especially when they show up uninvited, eat all your food, and wreck the place. Now, imagine if your unexpected guest could duplicate themselves from a single small fragment of their body!Spare a thought for aquatic ecosystems — ponds, rivers, and lakes — when non-...

As a child, my friends and I played in a neighborhood stream, catching crawdads. What I didn’t know then was this small waterbody was mainly comprised of stormwater runoff and was connected to everything on our landscape.What is stormwater runoff?Stormwater is rain or melted snow that flows off...

From microplastics to pharmaceuticals, contaminants of emerging concern, CECs, are increasingly making their way into our environment, but with awareness and simple actions, we can all play a role in reducing their impact. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,...

When rain falls, the water doesn’t just disappear; it has to go somewhere. Some of it soaks into the ground, replenishing groundwater, while the rest flows downhill over the land’s surface. As water moves, it gathers into small rivulets, which join creeks, which then merge with larger rivers and...

In early February, dead birds began washing up on the Chicago lakeshore: red-breasted and common mergansers, Canada geese, and others. In a city where frequent songbird window strikes are unfortunately...

Many of us have streams in our neighborhoods or cities that we see regularly but often take for granted. Maybe we have a stream in our backyard, one that flows through a local park where we walk our dogs, or one we drive over every day on our way to work or school. But how often do we take time to...