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By MADDIE FABIAN

In July 2021, heavy rainfall caused a beaver dam to burst, leading to the collapse of a 20-foot-long portion of East Street in Belchertown and causing property damage to nearly half a dozen homes.While the beavers faced the brunt of the blame,...

By CLAIRE MORENON, MARGARET CHRISTIE and PHIL KORMAN

On July 10, heavy rains led to widespread flooding alongside small rivers and creeks throughout our region. The next day, the Connecticut River overflowed its banks to levels not seen since Hurricane Irene in 2011.This flooding event was fast in some...

By STEVE PFARRER

Finding Home (Hungary, 1945)By Dean Cycon; Koehler BooksA common image from the end of World War II in Europe is that of cheering crowds of people welcoming Allied troops in towns and cities that had been liberated from the Nazis.A lesser-known and...

By SAM DRYSDALE

BOSTON — Facilities that burn wood to create energy should not be eligible for credits under a state program that rewards generators of “clean heat,” advocates said last week, arguing that two bills would close loopholes in the state’s climate...

By SOPHIE HAUCK

BOSTON — Time’s up for single-use plastics. Or at least that remains the hope of representatives from 10 environmental organizations who gathered last week on Beacon Hill to promote bills that would ban the distribution of plastic shopping bags at...

By JULIA BLATT

When we think of climate change, the first images that come to mind are of hot temperatures, melting ice caps, and greenhouse gases clogging the atmosphere. A recent report by the United Nations, however, warns that most people will actually...

By STEVE PFARRER

In 2019, Felipe Salles put the finishing touches on an ambitious project: an extended composition that blended jazz, Latin American music, and classical elements, all of it based on interviews he’d conducted with younger immigrants about what it was...

By RUSS VERNON-JONES

Early last week my adult daughter called me and asked what I was doing. I told her I was working on a project in my yard. She said, “Have you seen the Air Quality Index (AQI)?”When I said I hadn’t, she said it was over 100 in the Northampton-Amherst...

By ALEXANDER MACDOUGALL

NORTHAMPTON — When Patrick Goggins was growing up, downtown Northampton was a rather mild and plain place. There were many vacancies, with the area characterized mostly by stores selling men’s clothing and hardware appliances.“It wasn’t what we would...

By SCOTT MERZBACH

HOLYOKE — Twice facing the trauma of eviction and once making a vehicle home for herself and her four children, as well as living inside a mold-filled apartment, Shaundell Diaz of Springfield brings firsthand knowledge of homelessness.Now the...

By Sam Drysdale and Michael P. Norton

BOSTON — Senior care and health workforce advocates say increased pay for care workers included in a priority bill on Beacon Hill would help address the staffing shortages that have plagued the state’s nursing homes in recent years and led to a...

By Taylor Brokesh

The term “urban forest” may sound like an oxymoron, but it actually might be the key to mitigating climate change. A bill proposed in the state Senate aims to create a program that would increase tree canopy cover in cities to combat excessive heat in...

By STEVE PFARRER

Once We Were HomeBy Jennifer Rosner, Flatiron Books Northampton author Jennifer Rosner made a strong debut in 2020 with her first novel, “The Yellow Bird Sings,” a story set in Poland during World War II, in which a Jewish mother and daughter are...

By STEVE PFARRER

AMHERST — Tibetan activist and writer Tenzin Tsundue, who’s been arrested and jailed multiple times for his activism, is coming to the Valley for a series of talks and to introduce his newest collection of poetry.Tsundue was born in 1975 in India to...

By CHRIS LARABEE

With last month marking the warmest January on record for Massachusetts and New England, updated data from the University of Massachusetts is also putting the region on pace for one of its warmest winters ever.The average temperature in Massachusetts...

By CHRIS LARABEE

While campaigning, one of Gov. Maura Healey’s climate priorities was to place a moratorium on commercial logging on state-owned forest land, a move that foresters and environmental advocates say would be detrimental to forest health, the state’s...

By DANIEL A. BROWN

I collect old LIFE magazines and was recently surprised to see a two-page advertisement in a February 1962 issue by Esso (Later Exxon) boasting that each day, they “Supply enough energy to melt 7 million tons of glacier!” Those were the exact words...

By JULIAN MENDOZA

WHATELY — While winter’s warmest days remind us that our climate’s future could be bleak, the future generation reminds us that it may not have to be.Stephanie Apanell’s fourth grade class at Whately Elementary School joined forces with Amherst’s...

Sometime on Nov. 15, 2022, according to demographers, a baby was born somewhere in the world who brought the number of humans living on the planet to eight billion. That’s a lot of us!How does population growth relate to our efforts to solve the...

By CHRIS LARABEE

If you felt last year was historically warm, new data from the University of Massachusetts confirms that feeling as 2022 marked the sixth-warmest year and second-warmest summer on record in the state.With statewide temperatures averaging 50.3 degrees...