Environment

Charting the animal origins of human diseases like COVID-19 can be difficult and often leads to unexpected discoveries.
In a place with long winters like Wisconsin, people tend to make use of one of its most visible seasonal resources: ice.
As climate change increases the likelihood of more extreme storms and subsequent floods in coming years, what is the state doing about the potential risks to dams? What does the situation look like at a more local level?
Solar energy is cheaper, more efficient and more widely available than ever, but its viability was never assured. Technologies that enable the conversion of sunlight into usable electricity are the products of an uncoordinated, decades-long series of events that followed a circuitous and halting path
A group of chemicals known as PFAS are prompting increasing attention and concern across Wisconsin. What are these chemicals and why are they such a big deal?
Christmas has come and gone for 2019, but an uninvited Grinch may still be lurking to steal the holiday spirit.
WisContext is focused on the long haul. Examining how Wisconsin's history shapes its contemporary issues and looking forward at how these trends may develop was a consistent element of our coverage in 2019.
In the longer term, warmer waters that come with a warming climate may make it more expensive to combat sea lampreys, longtime predators of Great Lakes fish.
It's been a big year for the lily leaf beetle in Wisconsin.
Hardly more than a century ago, deer were not to be found across broad swaths of southern and eastern parts of Wisconsin, with their dwindling ranks limited to its northern stretches after decades of mass hunts for hide and meat markets in the latter half of the 1800s.