A toxic red tide, or harmful algae bloom, is killing swaths of marine life and affecting the health of people living along Florida's southwest coast. Nationwide, harmful algae blooms cost an estimated $50 million each year. Excess nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus flowing downstream act as fertilizer, sparking these blooms in waterbodies such as the Gulf of Mexico, Lake Erie and Chesapeake Bay.

Trees falling as fragile forests become cropland is a visual shorthand for the environmental costs exporting countries pay to meet lucrative global demands for food. Yet a new study reveals a counterintuitive truth: Importing food also damages homeland ecology.

In this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) and their colleagues show that the decisions domestic farmers must make as imported food changes the crop market can damage the environment.

Delta: A place where sediment carried downstream by a river enters the sea, forming a fan of sand or mud.

Although deltas make up just 1 percent of the world's land, they're home to more than half a billion people -- and to fertile ecosystems such as mangroves and marshes. Deltas also serve as economic hotspots. They support much of the world's fisheries and forest products, and are major food production areas for many nations.

While science usually gets recognized for churning up big answers, Michigan State University (MSU) researchers are mining the big questions.

Sustainability scholars across the globe have made the leap to embrace integrative and interdisciplinary research, yet where to best place that energy hadn’t been well defined. In the journal Ecology and Society, a focus for understanding and managing coupled human and natural systems is gaining clarity thanks to surveys that asked scholars what were the most important questions