Virginia Tech study sheds light on solar farm impacts to property values

The team looked at over 8.8 million real estate sales to determine how the presence of solar farms influenced nearby property values, and the answer is: It's complicated

Virginia Tech

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Rows of solar panels at a large-scale solar capture site.

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Credit: Photo by Alana Martin for Virginia Tech.

As solar energy becomes more affordable and widespread, farmland has emerged as a prime location for large-scale solar development. But with this expansion comes a persistent question: Do nearby property values suffer when solar farms move in?

In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers in Virginia Tech’s Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences looked at millions of property sales and thousands of commercial solar sites to shed some light on one of the mostly commonly cited downsides of large-scale solar adoption. 

“As the U.S. scales up renewable energy, solar installations are increasingly being sited near homes and on farmland, and this often leads to pushback from residents worried about aesthetics or property value loss,” said Chenyang Hu, a graduate research assistant in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics and the paper’s lead author. “Until now, much of this discussion has been based on anecdotal evidence.”

The stigma that solar panels are visually unappealing and will lower the value of nearby land has been around in some form or another since adoption of the technology first began in the '70s.  

Mapping solar’s real estate impact

Led by Zhenshan Chen, assistant professor of agricultural and applied economics and the study’s corresponding author, in partnership with Pengfei Liu, associate professor of environmental and natural resource economics at the University of Rhode Island, the team set out to understand whether the phenomenon is really occurring or just a common misconception.

Team members realized that in order to understand the full scope of this belief, they’d need to look at an exhaustive number of examples. They started by identifying 3,699 large-scale solar photovoltaic sites. The researchers then found residential homes and agricultural or vacant land sites near each installation by combing through nearly 9 million real estate transactions, which allowed them to chart the value of the properties over time – starting 15 years prior to construction of the solar site through 2020 – against their distance from the solar array.  

“We also built a national model of solar visibility from properties, which allows us to see whether simply having a view of a site matters for home prices,” Hu said. “We used a difference-in-differences econometric model to estimate property values over time.”

Agricultural land sees a big boost while residential values dip slightly

What they found was that the answer isn’t so straightforward. On average, agricultural and vacant land within two miles of the site saw a 19.4 percent increase in value. Chen said this indicates that the value of land with high potential for future solar leasing has risen considerably.  

How residential properties were affected is where it gets complicated. Residential homes within three miles of a site lost a small amount of value – 4.8 percent on average.

“This negative impact also decreased with distance from the site, time since the installation was built, and did not affect residential homes on lots larger than five acres,” Chen said. “Site visibility from the property didn’t significantly impact the cost.”

Given the relatively minor impact on residential properties and the wide number of variables that affect it, Hu chalks it up to small variations in regional views on solar energy.

“The negative residential impacts appear to stem more from perception or a stigma effect than from any physical harm,” he said. “Interestingly, these effects are much smaller or even reversed entirely in counties that are politically left-leaning.” 

Guiding smarter solar development

Chen hopes their findings will help dispel negative perceptions about solar panel adoption, especially when it comes to agriculture. He wants other researchers to take the baton and run with it.

“In this study, we provided a very general quantification of the property value impacts, and we anticipate more similar works in specific contexts,” he said. “Ideally, policymakers, developers, and local communities could absorb such information and organize meaningful discussions on how such problems could be addressed.”

Hu said he wants the study to lead to smarter community planning and give residents more of a voice in how nearby solar installations are built.  

“I hope this work helps improve how solar projects are planned and approved by providing data that shows where and how local impacts are most likely to occur,” he said. “Ideally, developers and local governments can use this information to make siting decisions that minimize disruption and to respond more directly to community concerns.”

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Article Publication Date

9-Jun-2025

 

Rings of time: unearthing climate secrets from ancient trees

FAU study chronicles millennia of climate data in an American Southeast swamp

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Florida Atlantic University

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Pieces of ancient stumps, roots and cypress knees hauled up during maintenance work at the Altamaha Wildlife Management Area on the Georgia Coast lie in the foreground of this flooded field.

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Credit: Florida Atlantic University

Deep in the swamps of the American Southeast stands a quiet giant: the bald cypress (Taxodium distichum). These majestic trees, with their knobby “knees” and towering trunks, are more than just swamp dwellers – they’re some of the oldest living organisms in Eastern North America. Some have been around for more than 2,500 years, quietly thriving in nutrient-poor, flooded forests where most other trees would wither.

But life isn’t easy for these ancient trees. They’re under siege from a variety of threats: rising seas, insect infestations, wildfires and increasingly erratic weather patterns. Unlike most animals, trees generally don’t die of old age – they succumb to the stresses around them.

A study by Florida Atlantic University, in collaboration with Lynn University; the University of Georgia; the Georgia Department of Natural Resources; and the Georgia Museum of Natural History, reveals how dramatic shifts in climate can have long-lasting effects on even the toughest, most iconic trees – and offers a glimpse into the powerful forces that shape our natural world.

Researchers studied bald cypress trees from a buried deposit, preserved in subfossil form at the mouth of the Altamaha River located in Southeastern Georgia. They used radiocarbon dating, counted tree rings, and measured the width of each ring in the subfossils to investigate how these trees grew in the past. These remains tell a striking story.  

Results of the study, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveal that beginning around 500 A.D., the trees began to live shorter lives and grow at a faster pace. Before this period, bald cypress trees in the region commonly lived for more than 470 years. However, after 500 A.D., their average lifespan declined sharply to just 186 years.

This coincided with a major climate downturn in the sixth century known as the Vandal Minimum, a time of cooling temperatures and global upheaval likely caused by volcanic eruptions and possibly even a comet impact. After this period, the trees not only lived shorter lives – they also grew faster, which may have made them more vulnerable to stress and damage over time. The last of the post-500 A.D. long-lived trees died during the Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1200 to 1850 A.D., another chilly period with big environmental changes.

Despite these troubling trends in the past, hope still stands tall in the Southeast’s old-growth swamps. In some rare pockets of preserved forest, bald cypress trees between 800 and 2,600 years old are still alive today.

Interestingly, scientists found no signs of fire, logging or human interference in the death of these trees, which makes the exact cause a mystery. However, the pattern is clear: after 500 A.D., bald cypress trees at this location on the Georgia coast never again reached their former longevity.

“This shift wasn’t a brief disruption. Even centuries later, the trees never regained their former longevity. In fact, their lifespans continued to decline over time,” said Katharine G. Napora, Ph.D., senior author and an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology within FAU’s Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters. “The last of the long-lived trees found in the deposit died during another major climatic event, the Little Ice Age. Our findings underscore how long-lasting the localized effects of major climate shifts can be, especially for coastal forests that are already vulnerable to wind damage, saltwater intrusion and rising seas.”

After 500 A.D., conditions along the coast may have become more unstable, with more storms, higher salinity and less consistent flooding, making it harder for trees to survive for long periods. Pests like mites, which thrive in dry conditions, may also have contributed to increased tree death during drier periods.

For the study, researchers studied 95 ancient bald cypress trees recovered from the Altamaha Wildlife Management Area on the Georgia coast. These trees, buried for centuries, were unearthed during routine maintenance and sampled over three years. Careful testing ruled out the possibility that these results were due to differences in preservation.

“These ancient giants not only inspire awe but also serve as natural archives, helping scientists understand how trees have weathered past climate events – and how they might fare in the face of modern climate change,” said Napora.

 Although the climate shift the researchers studied wasn’t truly global or perfectly synchronized across regions, the bald cypress provides a powerful lens into how widespread and enduring environmental changes can be.

“The rings of the bald cypress are like nature’s journal entries, written year by year and season by season, showing how even slow changes can shape the course of life. In their quiet persistence, these trees offer both a warning and a lesson: that the world is more interconnected than we often realize, and that the story of the Earth isn’t only told through written history – it’s etched into wood, embedded in landscapes and carried forward by living organisms,” said Napora. “The past lives on in the trunks of these ancient trees, reminding us that environmental shifts – whether natural or human-caused – reverberate through time in ways we are only beginning to understand.”

Study co-authors are Alanna L. Lecher, Ph.D., an associate professor at Lynn University; Alexander Cherkinsky, Ph.D., senior research scientist at the Center for Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia; Robert Horan, a wildlife biologist; Craig Jacobs, a wildlife technician; and Blaine Tyler, a wildlife technician, all with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources; and Victor D. Thompson, Ph.D., a distinguished research professor at the University of Georgia and executive director of the Georgia Museum of Natural History.

This research was supported, in part, in association with the Georgia Coastal Ecosystems LTER project National Science Foundation (NSF) grants OCE-0620959 and OCE-123714 as well as NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award Number 1834682, the University of Georgia Department of Anthropology, and the Center for Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia.

- FAU-

About Florida Atlantic University:
Florida Atlantic University, established in 1961, officially opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, Florida Atlantic serves more than 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students across six campuses located along the Southeast Florida coast. In recent years, the University has doubled its research expenditures and outpaced its peers in student achievement rates. Through the coexistence of access and excellence, Florida Atlantic embodies an innovative model where traditional achievement gaps vanish. Florida Atlantic is designated as a Hispanic-serving institution, ranked as a top public university by U.S. News & World Report, and holds the designation of “R1: Very High Research Spending and Doctorate Production” by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. Florida Atlantic shares this status with less than 5% of the nearly 4,000 universities in the United States. For more information, visit www.fau.edu.

Study authors Katharine Napora, Ph.D., and Craig Jacobs, stand on the base on an ancient cypress tree hauled up from the Altamaha Wildlife Management Area on the Georgia coast.

Credit

Florida Atlantic University

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2421181122 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Southeast Atlantic Coast of the United States

Article Publication Date

9-Jun-2025

 

Even bumble bee queens need personal days, too

UC Riverside study reveals surprising breaks in egg-laying cycle

University of California - Riverside

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Queen bumble bee in early nest-building stage. 

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Credit: Blanca Peto/UCR

Some queens don’t rule nonstop. A new study from the University of California, Riverside shows that even bumble bee queens, the sole founders of their colonies, take regular breaks from reproduction—likely to avoid burning out before their first workers arrive.

In the early stages of colony building, bumblebee queens shoulder the entire workload. They forage for food, incubate their developing brood by heating them with their wing muscles, maintain the nest, and lay eggs. It’s a high-stakes balancing act: without the queen, the colony fails. Yet, researchers noticed an intriguing rhythm: a burst of egg-laying followed by several days of apparent inactivity.

“I saw these pauses early on, just by taking daily photos of the nests,” said Blanca Peto, a doctoral student in entomology at UC Riverside and lead author of the new study. “It wasn’t something I expected. I wanted to know what was happening during those breaks.”

The findings are detailed in a paper published in BMC Ecology and Evolution.

To find out what triggered the pauses, Peto monitored more than 100 queens over a period of 45 days in a controlled insectary. She documented each queen’s nesting activity, looking closely at their distinctive clutches—clusters of eggs laid in wax-lined “cups” embedded in pollen mounds. Across the population, a pattern emerged: Many queens paused reproduction for several days, typically after a stretch of intense egg-laying.

The timing of these pauses appeared to align with the developmental stages of the existing brood. To test this, Peto experimentally added broods at different stages—young larvae, older larvae, and pupae—into nests during a queen’s natural pause. The presence of pupae, which are nearly mature bees, prompted queens to resume egg-laying within about 1.5 days. In contrast, without added broods, the pauses stretched to an average of 12.5 days.

This suggests that queens respond to cues from their developing offspring and time their reproductive efforts accordingly.

“There’s something about the presence of pupae that signals it’s safe or necessary to start producing again,” Peto said. “It’s a dynamic process, not constant output like we once assumed.”

Eusocial insects, including bumble bees, feature overlapping generations, cooperative brood care, and a division of labor. Conventional thinking about these types of insects is that they’re producing young across all stages of development. However, Peto said this study challenges that conventional thinking about bumble bees, whose reproductive behavior is more nuanced and intermittent.

“What this study showed is that the queen’s reproductive behavior is much more flexible than we thought,” Peto said. “This matters because those early days are incredibly vulnerable. If a queen pushes too hard too fast, the whole colony might not survive.”

The study focused on a single species native to the eastern U.S., but the implications could extend to other bumble bee species or even other eusocial insects. Queens in other species may also pace themselves during solo nest-founding stages. If so, this built-in rhythm could be an evolutionary trait that helps queens survive long enough to raise a workforce.

Multiple bumblebee populations in North America are declining, largely due to habitat loss, pesticide exposure, and climate stress. Understanding the biological needs of queens, the literal foundation of each colony, can help conservationists better protect them.

“Even in a lab where everything is stable and they don’t have to forage, queens still pause,” Peto said. “It tells us this isn’t just a response to stress but something fundamental. They’re managing their energy in a smart way.”

This kind of insight is possible thanks to patient, hands-on observation, something Peto prioritized in her first research project as a graduate student.

“Without queens, there’s no colony. And without colonies, we lose essential pollinators,” Peto said. “These breaks may be the very reason colonies succeed.”

 

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Journal

BMC Ecology and Evolution

Article Title

Social control of egg-laying in independently nest-founding bumble bee queens

 

Reelin marks cocaine-activated brain neurons and regulates cocaine reward

These findings implicate the Reelin signaling pathway as a potential therapeutic target for cocaine use disorder.

University of Alabama at Birmingham

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Kasey Brida

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Credit: UAB

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Cocaine, a drug of abuse, activates just a portion — 10 to 20 percent — of the neurons in the brain’s nucleus accumbens, a critical region linked to motivation and addiction. Though small in numbers, this activated neuronal population strongly controls drug-related behavior through downstream changes in gene expression, nerve synapses, neural circuitry and neural function that lead to behavioral change, including addiction.

In a study published in Science Advances, University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers led by Kasey Brida and Jeremy Day, Ph.D., report that the secreted glycoprotein reelin is a marker for those nucleus accumbens neurons that have been activated by cocaine.

In order to identify whether reelin contributes to drug-related cellular and behavioral changes, the team developed a CRISPR interference strategy to target and reduce the expression of the reelin gene in nucleus accumbens neurons. Knockdown of reelin in rats decreased gene expression associated with activation by cocaine, altered expression of ion channels related to neuronal excitability and impaired excitability of nucleus accumbens neurons. The knockdown also abolished cocaine-induced behavioral changes in movement and place preference, and it dampened cocaine self-administration by the rats.

“Together, these results identify reelin as a stable marker of cocaine-sensitive neurons and reveal a key role for reelin in the transcriptional, electrophysiological and behavioral properties of cocaine-induced striatal plasticity,” said Brida, a graduate student in Day’s UAB Department of Neurobiology lab. “These findings highlight an opportunity for high-precision manipulation of reward circuitry using reelin-based tools, reveal the necessity of reelin in the cellular response to cocaine and implicate the reelin signaling pathway as a potential therapeutic target for cocaine use disorder.”

Prior studies have demonstrated that cocaine’s effects in the nucleus accumbens occur at medium spiny neurons, which are the principal neuronal type in this brain region and express receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine. The researchers identified reelin as a marker of cocaine-activated medium spiny neurons by leveraging unbiased single-nucleus RNA sequencing datasets previously collected after cocaine exposure. More than 80 percent of activated medium spiny neurons in the nucleus accumbens expressed reelin mRNA, with average expression about 10 times greater compared to neurons that were not activated by cocaine. They also showed that reelin is enriched in a subpopulation of medium spiny neurons in both the rat and human brain.

Researchers then used the CRISPR interference knockdown of reelin expression to identify its influences on medium spiny neuron physiology and drug-related behaviors. The CRISPR interference system was carried by lentiviruses injected directly into the nucleus accumbens in the rat brain. The knockdown experiments together suggested that reelin expression allows neurons to be excitable and initiate signal transduction cascades that cocaine uses to shape neuronal function over longer timescales, Brida says.

Reelin has long been known to be crucial for development of mammalian brains during embryogenesis, and it is also known to play a role in synaptic plasticity and function in the adult brain. Reelin also has links to diverse neuropsychiatric disorders. Still, the finding that mRNA for the protein reelin was enriched in medium spiny neurons that were activated by cocaine was unexpected, Brida and Day say.

Co-authors with Brida and Day in the study, “Reelin marks cocaine-activated striatal neurons, promotes neuronal excitability, and regulates cocaine reward,” are Emily T. Jorgensen, Robert A. Phillips III, Catherine E. Newman, Jennifer J. Tuscher, Emily K. Morring, Morgan E. Zipperly and Lara Ianov, UAB Department of Neurobiology; and Kelsey D. Montgomery, Madhavi Tippani, Thomas M. Hyde, Kristen R. Maynard and Keri Martinowich, Johns Hopkins Medical Campus, Baltimore, Maryland.

At UAB, Neurobiology is a department in the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.ads4441 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Reelin marks cocaine-activated striatal neurons, promotes neuronal excitability, and regulates cocaine reward

 

Creatine is safe, effective and important for everyone, longtime researcher says

A Texas A&M University expert explains the health benefits of the supplement.

Texas A&M University

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Creatine, the supplement popular with athletes for its ability to help build strength and power, is increasingly being recognized for its broad health benefits.

The compound’s usefulness extends well beyond the gym, according to Dr. Richard Kreider, professor and director of the Exercise & Sport Nutrition Lab at Texas A&M University. Kreider has spent more than 30 years investigating the effects of creatine, a naturally occurring compound stored in the muscle that combines with phosphate to form creatine phosphate, which is needed for cellular energy.

“When the body is stressed, like in exercise or under metabolic conditions like some diseases, creatine phosphate is needed to maintain energy in the cell, and therefore has a lot of protective and health benefits, in addition to the exercise performance effects that have been seen,” Kreider said.

How Much Creatine Do We Need?

Our bodies create about a gram per day, but it’s recommended to get two to four grams of creatine per day, depending on muscle mass and activity levels. According to Kreider, most people fall short of getting enough creatine from diet alone. The best sources of creatine in the diet are meat and fish.

“You only get about a gram of creatine per pound of red meat or fish, like salmon, so it’s expensive and takes a lot of calories to get a gram,” Kreider said. This is why supplementation matters, especially for vegetarians or vegans who do not consume enough creatine in their diet.

For athletes with performance-related goals, Kreider said it’s recommended to supplement 5 grams, four times a day for a week. Supplementation “helps load the muscle up with more energy,” which makes for improved high-intensity exercise, recovery and even cognitive function. After that, consuming 5 to 10 grams per day will maintain creatine stores and provide enough creatine for the brain.

Beyond boosting athletic performance, creatine is important for everyone as they age throughout their lives, Kreider said. It can help older adults who lose muscle mass and cognitive function as they age, he said, and in adolescents, low dietary creatine intake is associated with slower growth, less muscle mass and higher body fat.

Is Creatine Safe?

In a comprehensive review published in February in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, Kreider and colleagues analyzed 685 clinical trials on creatine supplementation to assess its safety and the frequency of reported side effects. The analysis showed there were no significant differences in the rate of side effects for participants taking a placebo and those taking creatine.

As for anecdotal concerns like bloating or cramping, Kreider says those claims don’t hold up under scrutiny, and studies have shown creatine can actually prevent cramping because it helps the body retain more fluid.

Despite the strong evidence base, Kreider said creatine has long been the subject of misconceptions and misinformation. He’s among the members of the International Society of Sports Nutrition who recently issued a letter affirming the safety and efficacy of creatine, urging lobbyists and policymakers not to restrict access to it.

“There’s absolutely no data supporting any negative side effect anecdotally reported about creatine on the internet and in the media,” he said. “Creatine is safe, and it’s important for everybody, not just bodybuilders and athletes.”

By Caitlin Clark, Texas A&M University Division of Marketing and Communications

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Journal

Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition

DOI

10.1080/15502783.2025.2488937 

Article Title

Safety of creatine supplementation: analysis of the prevalence of reported side effects in clinical trials and adverse event reports