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Minnesota prairie attracts Norway's Prime Minister
Norway's Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is in the Twin Cities for a whirlwind tour of meetings and events. One of his stops included a prairie in Bethel, to see University of Minnesota research experiments which could one day have implications on how Americans and Norwegians live. "Do the plants remove environmental containments?" U of M Adjunct Professor Clarence Lehman asked while explaining a field research project at Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in Bethel. What would bring the Prime Minister of Norway to the prairie of Minnesota? Important experiments on the future of atmosphere and agriculture. Tests like the one grad student Jared Trost is conducting on a patch of prairie. "We've applied some contaminants to this plot and we're basically tracking their movement from land surface down to ground water," Trost said. It's Minnesota research to see if prairie plants could one day be both a biofuel and a biocleaner. "It seemed like a win-win situation if we fertilized prairie with biosolids or manure and could efficiently remove contaminants. At the same time, harvesting the biofuels," Trost added. On the other end of the field, more Minnesota research. "This is an open-air experiment in which we create the environment of the year 2075," U of M Regents Professor Peter Reich said.. An environment to show how carbon dioxide levels and nitrogen supplies will affect future flora. "There are only five experiments anything like this in the whole world," Reich added. Five in the world. One right here. "Minnesota is very progressive. The whole idea of biodiversity and its effect on ecosystems really started...at least on a large scale started here," Lehman added. It started and continues here. The reason why Monday the Prime Minister came to the Prairie. Read more about the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve
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