Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
-
- Social and Behavioral Sciences (3)
- Life Sciences (2)
- Agriculture (1)
- Anthropology (1)
- Architecture (1)
-
- Business (1)
- Chemistry (1)
- Computer Sciences (1)
- Earth Sciences (1)
- Economics (1)
- Environmental Chemistry (1)
- Food Science (1)
- Geography (1)
- Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology (1)
- Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology (1)
- Urban, Community and Regional Planning (1)
Articles 61 - 90 of 157
Full-Text Articles in Sustainability
The Impacts Of A Changing Climate And Human Activities On The Hydrology In High Mountain Asia, Fadji Z. Maina
The Impacts Of A Changing Climate And Human Activities On The Hydrology In High Mountain Asia, Fadji Z. Maina
Sustainability Seminar Series
High Mountain Asia (HMA), the third pole, encompasses Asia’s most prominent rivers such as the Ganges, the Indus, and the Yangtze. HMA, home to over a billion people, experiences warming at a rate that is double the global average making it one of the most vulnerable water towers on Earth in addition to a significant decline in groundwater due to anthropogenic activities and high vegetation greening rates. Understanding the changes in water budgets in HMA and their drivers is essential for water management and climate change mitigation strategies. We used remotely sensed datasets to represent the hydrology of the region …
Exploring Innovative Engineering Solutions To Environmental Challenges, Yang Deng
Exploring Innovative Engineering Solutions To Environmental Challenges, Yang Deng
Sustainability Seminar Series
Our environment faces different challenges. Environmental engineers find solutions at the interface between humans and the environment. Technology innovation and inventive engineering design provide an approach to surmount the challenges. My research program focuses on environmental systems and processes. Particularly, we use physical and chemical principles to tackle water quality-related issues. Because water actively interacts with other environmental elements (e.g., air, soil, sediments, and solid waste), our efforts will ultimately benefit the whole environmental system. This presentation will introduce two intertwined research threads that my group has nurtured over the past years. The first theme is technology innovations for mitigation …
Path To Net Zero: On The Ground Approaches And Challenges In The Corporate World, Manveer Mann
Path To Net Zero: On The Ground Approaches And Challenges In The Corporate World, Manveer Mann
Sustainability Seminar Series
With growing pressure from regulators and investors, the corporate world is reckoning with the need to account for its impact on the climate. As a result, ESG teams are being chartered with mandate to commit to and develop pathways for net zero targets. However, the path to net zero presents numerous challenges even to the most committed teams. In this talk, I will discuss the approaches being taken and challenges faced as corporations set out on decarbonization journeys. Among others, I will discuss the frameworks being used to account for emissions, and limitations that lead to issues such as over …
More Crops, Less Drops? Agriculture And Climate Interactions Via Soils, Sonali Shukla Mcdermid
More Crops, Less Drops? Agriculture And Climate Interactions Via Soils, Sonali Shukla Mcdermid
Sustainability Seminar Series
There is an increasing focus on reducing agricultural GHG emissions, while also facilitating cropping systems’ adaptation to climate change. Much of this combined agriculture mitigation and adaptation work centers on managed soils’ carbon and nutrient processes, and interactions with water. I will present two on-going projects evaluating agricultural soil-water-crop interactions and discuss implications for climate mitigation and/or adaptation. I will first describe new, on-going work using an integrated climate-crop modeling framework to Asia. Preliminary results suggest that while specific combinations of management options, including conservation water and soil management, can provide mitigation and adaptation benefits, several trade-offs may exist between …
The Ecology And Evolution Of Phenotypic Plasticity: Insights From Amphibians, Rick Relyea
The Ecology And Evolution Of Phenotypic Plasticity: Insights From Amphibians, Rick Relyea
Sustainability Seminar Series
Nearly every species on the planet exhibits traits that are the product of the genes they possess and the environments in which they live. Dr. Relyea will examine the ecological and evolutionary insights from more than two decades of studying amphibians as a model system, including the many different predator, competitor, and contaminant environments that induce changes in behavior, morphology, and life history. He will also explore the phylogenetic patterns in how plastic traits have evolved, including how traits and trait plasticities can exhibit dramatically different evolutionary patterns.
Global Climate Change Driven By Marine Methane Hydrate Dissociation: Reality Or Fiction?, Yige Zhang
Global Climate Change Driven By Marine Methane Hydrate Dissociation: Reality Or Fiction?, Yige Zhang
Sustainability Seminar Series
Methane hydrate dissociation has long been considered as a mechanism for global carbon cycle perturbations, climate change and even mass extinctions in Earth’s history. However, direct evidence of hydrate destabilization and methane release that coincides with such events is scarce. We use diagnostic lipid biomarkers directly linked to methanotrophic microorganisms to track the dissociation of gas hydrates in Earth’s Cenozoic history. We show biomarker and compound-specific isotope evidence of methane release and oxidation at several climate change events, suggesting that aerobic oxidation of methane in seawater which consumes oxygen and acidifies the ocean is a key process that drives climate …
Paleo-Perspectives On Marine And Terrestrial Ice Sheets, Lauren Simkins
Paleo-Perspectives On Marine And Terrestrial Ice Sheets, Lauren Simkins
Sustainability Seminar Series
The geological record of deglaciated landscapes extends spatial and temporal perspectives on ice-sheet processes and behavior that transcend the timeframe of modern instrumental observations. Based on geophysical, remote sensing, and sedimentological data from Antarctica and North America, I will discuss my group’s work on reconstructions of past ice-sheet changes and understanding processes and conditions that contribute to those changes, including subglacial meltwater drainage, grounding line retreat, and influence of topography on ice flow. The work that I will present highlights the importance of understanding past ice-sheet changes in assessing the stability of contemporary glacial systems – and what the multi-faceted …
Environmental Consequences Of Depleted Stratospheric Ozone Layer And The Biology Of Skin Cancer, Carlos Molina
Environmental Consequences Of Depleted Stratospheric Ozone Layer And The Biology Of Skin Cancer, Carlos Molina
Sustainability Seminar Series
The stratospheric ozone layer is Earth's “sunscreen” – protecting living things from too much ultraviolet radiation from the sun. The emission of ozone depleting substances has been damaging the ozone layer. Due to the implementation of the Montreal Protocol, which has limited, and is now probably reversing, the depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, only modest increases in solar UV-B radiation at the surface of the Earth have occurred. For many fair-skinned populations, changing behavior with regard to exposure to the sun has also contributed to lower the exposure to UV-B radiation. The skin and eyes are the organs exposed …
Thinking Creatively About Functional Diversity And Functional Traits (Bef), Shahid Naeem
Thinking Creatively About Functional Diversity And Functional Traits (Bef), Shahid Naeem
Sustainability Seminar Series
Understanding the impacts of biodiversity loss on ecosystem functions and services represents a major focus of contemporary environmental biology, but its progress hinges on advances in the study of functional diversity. Traditional approaches to functional diversity, however, have centered on taking virtually any measure of an organism’s biology, or an organism’s functional traits (OFTs), often assuming that variation in OFTs among species reflects ecological and evolutionary tradeoffs. Contemporary issues, however, require more creative approaches to the quantification and analysis of OFTs. Here, I present results from four of our group’s research that illustrate the value of more creative approaches to …
Sustainable Manufacturing And Recycling Approaches For Lithium Ion Battery, Amrita Sarkar
Sustainable Manufacturing And Recycling Approaches For Lithium Ion Battery, Amrita Sarkar
Sustainability Seminar Series
Li-ion batteries (LIBs) are known to be one of the primary power sources for energy storage andconversion devices, including portable electronics and electric vehicles. State-of-the-art LIBsmanufacturing process is largely seeking advanced electrode production method with minimumenvironmental concern. Current manufacturing method is based on slurry casting process where atoxic solvent N-methyl pyrrolidone (NMP) is used. NMP is declared as a priority substance in USAunder the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) for having “unreasonable risk” and requires immediateregulatory action. Thus, sustainable fabrication of slurry-based electrode involving greener alternativeof NMP is needed urgently to mitigate risks to both environment and workers. Likewise, wide …
Limits To Growth: Models And Theory, Gaya Herrington
Limits To Growth: Models And Theory, Gaya Herrington
Sustainability Seminar Series
Gaya will talk to us about her research on the Limits to Growth, based on the first system dynamics model of the world. Gaya will discuss what her research, covered extensively last year in the media, means for how we view economics, society, and ourselves.
Bioinorganic Chemistry Of Mineralized Titanium, Ann Valentine
Bioinorganic Chemistry Of Mineralized Titanium, Ann Valentine
Sustainability Seminar Series
Titanium is the ninth most abundant element in the earth’s crust, and titanium minerals are widespread, yet conventional wisdom holds that biology has very little to do with titanium. The element has a reputation for extreme inertness that is belied by data from several experimental systems. This talk will address interactions between titanium minerals and biology at the molecular level, and will examine cases in which organisms and/or biomolecules induce the formation of, bind to, or dissolve titanium minerals.
The Search For Earth's Oldest Ice, John Higgins
The Search For Earth's Oldest Ice, John Higgins
Sustainability Seminar Series
Over the past eight hundred thousand years, glacial–interglacial cycles oscillated with a period of one hundred thousand years (‘100k world’1). Ice core and ocean sediment data have shown that atmospheric carbon dioxide, Antarctic temperature, deep ocean temperature, and global ice volume correlated strongly with each other in the 100k world2–6. Between about 2.8 and 1.2 million years ago, glacial cycles were smaller in magnitude and shorter in duration (‘40k world’7). Proxy data from deep-sea sediments suggest that the variability of atmospheric carbon dioxide in the 40k world was also lower than in the 100k world8–10, but we do not have …
America's Urban Sustainability Agenda: Advancing A Climate Of Hope, H. James Quigley Jr.
America's Urban Sustainability Agenda: Advancing A Climate Of Hope, H. James Quigley Jr.
Sustainability Seminar Series
The 20th century in the USA was characterized, among other things, by historic national movements: feminism and women's suffrage; the labor movement; civil rights; the peace movement; and the environment. Indeed, the highly pronounced trends today in urban areas of all sizes around the country of a commitment to green our architecture while expanding public housing, conserve energy, further develop renewable energy resources, green public and private transportation, recover recyclable materials from the waste stream, expand parks and open space, advance public transportation, democratize food security, make public education and health care more comprehensive, improve urban air quality, and more …
Sustainable Land System Transformations In Shifting Cultivation Landscapes, Dominic Martin
Sustainable Land System Transformations In Shifting Cultivation Landscapes, Dominic Martin
Sustainability Seminar Series
During my talk, I will give a broad introduction on shifting cultivation, associated sustainability challenges, and the case of north‐eastern Madagascar. Thereafter I will focus on land system transformations in shifting cultivation landscapes – both in Madagascar and elsewhere – showing that their drivers and consequences are highly diverse and context‐dependent. This is calling for a critical and contextualized appraisal of the continuation of, as well as the transition away from shifting cultivation when designing land system
Witnessing Climate Change: What I Have Learned From My Expeditions To The Greenland Ice Sheet, Åsa Rennermalm
Witnessing Climate Change: What I Have Learned From My Expeditions To The Greenland Ice Sheet, Åsa Rennermalm
Sustainability Seminar Series
Greenland ice sheet and the Arctic region are experiencing some of the largest impacts of climate change on Earth. Since the 1990s, Greenland ice sheet surface melting has increased and is now one of the leading drivers of global sea‐level rise. For over a decade, my team and I have traveled to Greenland to study how climate change transforms the surface melting of the ice sheet. In this talk, I will share what we have learned from observing rivers on the ice sheet and tundra, and from extracting shallow ice cores high up on the ice sheet. Our ice cores …
Sustainable Pathways: Different Strategies (For Different Global Regions), Karim Ahmed
Sustainable Pathways: Different Strategies (For Different Global Regions), Karim Ahmed
Sustainability Seminar Series
Dr. Ahmed will discuss the state of Planet Earth in January 2022. At present, climate change, global water scarcity and biodiversity loss present both scientists and policy makers with an existential challenge in the near term that is unprecedented in human history. In addition, economic inequality between rich and poor countries continues to impede any progress being made in a socially-just context. Failure to address these globally looming issues in an integrated manner poses a crippling inability to address them with any sense of urgency. Although many “green” solutions and technological means are available to tackle these issues, it is …
Water Utility Services: Understanding The Tension Between Viability And Affordability, Daniel Van Abs
Water Utility Services: Understanding The Tension Between Viability And Affordability, Daniel Van Abs
Sustainability Seminar Series
Nationally, the cost of drinking water and sewer utility services has been increasing faster than the consumer price index (inflation) since 1980, propelled by more stringent environmental standards, service area expansion, and repairs for aging infrastructure. These pressures are not abating, and in many ways are increasing. The result is that utilities need more revenue, but an increasing number of households face utility costs that are unaffordable. Shutting off these customers is counterproductive for those low-income households (somewhat like a debtors prison, where you suffer for an inability to pay), society at large, and even the utilities (which face public …
Blue Crab In The New York Area As An Indicator For Climate Change, Adelle Molina
Blue Crab In The New York Area As An Indicator For Climate Change, Adelle Molina
Sustainability Seminar Series
In the northeast US, winters are getting warmer, shorter, and milder due to climate change. It is hypothesized that populations of some species near their northern range limit may experience elevated population growth rates owing to lower mortality in winter, higher growth rates in summer, and the synergistic relationship between these physiological processes. Blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) in New York estuaries are close to their northern range edge and are potentially climate “winners” in this region. To provide advice to managers, we monitored blue crab populations in a coastal, lagoonal estuary and used a combined modeling approach to simulate the …
Detecting Perturbations In Seawater Carbonate Chemistry With The Δ44/40ca-Δ88/86sr Multi-Proxy, Jiuyuan Wang
Detecting Perturbations In Seawater Carbonate Chemistry With The Δ44/40ca-Δ88/86sr Multi-Proxy, Jiuyuan Wang
Sustainability Seminar Series
Ocean acidification is one predictable consequence of rising atmospheric CO2. Understanding how the seawater carbonate chemistry changed during historical climate changes will help us better predict the ocean’s response to the present one. In this talk, I will introduce a novel means for tracking changes of seawater carbonate chemistry: the δ44/40Ca-δ88/86Sr multi-proxy. I will exploit emergent properties of δ44/40Ca and δ88/86Sr systems from two extreme climatic events: the Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Event 1a (OAE1a, ~120 Ma) and the Neoproterozoic Marinoan deglaciation (~635Ma).
Giving Beets A Chance: Heavy Metal Accumulation In Mycorrhizal And Non-Mycorrhizal Crops At An Urban Farm, Eric Vukicevich
Giving Beets A Chance: Heavy Metal Accumulation In Mycorrhizal And Non-Mycorrhizal Crops At An Urban Farm, Eric Vukicevich
Sustainability Seminar Series
Urban, community farming seeks to provide access to affordable, healthy, culturally-appropriate produce via cooperatively-run growing spaces. However, the threat of contaminated soils so common to older cities can limit the scale of production and/or necessitates costly remediation efforts. Although there are rough guidelines outlining at what level a soil is unsafe for growing food, there are many uncertainties as to which crops might be safe in soils with slightly elevated (but below guidelines) levels of contaminants and to what degree soil biology affects uptake. We grew mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal root, leafy green, and fruit crops representing five different plant families …
Mega-Herbivores, Plants And Soils, Jennifer Adams Krumins
Mega-Herbivores, Plants And Soils, Jennifer Adams Krumins
Sustainability Seminar Series
Ecosystem and plant ecologists understand that herbivory can have a profound influence on primary production and plant community structure. This can be seen in mass outbreaks of insect herbivores or the grazing activity of ungulate herds. Likewise, the same ecologists understand that plants interact closely in a bidirectional relationship with soil organisms and the ecosystem properties they moderate. Therefore, logically we hypothesize that herbivory will have either a direct effect on soil communities and their functioning, or at minimum, an indirect effect on the soils via the plants they support. My sabbatical research included participation in multiple programs studying the …
Systematic Over-Crediting In California’S Forest Carbon Offsets Program, Grayson Badgley
Systematic Over-Crediting In California’S Forest Carbon Offsets Program, Grayson Badgley
Sustainability Seminar Series
Forest carbon offsets are increasingly prominent in corporate and government “net zero” emission strategies, but face growing criticism about their efficacy. California’s forest offsets program is frequently promoted as a high-quality approach that improves on the failures of earlier efforts. I will demonstrate how ecological and statistical shortcomings in the design of California’s forest offset protocol generate offset credits that do not reflect real climate benefits. I will use these findings to discuss how protocol designs with easily exploitable rules can undermine policy objectives and highlight the need for stronger governance in carbon offset markets.
Lab On A Bit: 3d Printing Customized Hydrodynamic Electrochemical Devices, Glenn O'Neil
Lab On A Bit: 3d Printing Customized Hydrodynamic Electrochemical Devices, Glenn O'Neil
Sustainability Seminar Series
3D-printed electrochemical devices have gained tremendous attention because they are highly customizable platforms for analysis and energy storage that can be produced using simple, inexpensive components. A major advantage of 3D printing is that once a digital design file is produced, a designer can send the design file of a functioning device anywhere in the world over the internet, and the device can be made at the point of use. The power of this approach is that it enables non-expert users to fabricate real devices and make measurements to enable citizen science. Here I will discuss my group’s recent efforts …
Case Studies In Computing For Earth And Environmental Sciences, Shantenu Jha
Case Studies In Computing For Earth And Environmental Sciences, Shantenu Jha
Sustainability Seminar Series
In this talk, we will provide a non-specialists introduction to high-performance computing (HPC) and discusshow HPC has been applied to several important areas of earth and environmental sciences. The casestudies include seismic tomography, the IPCC AR6, and scalable high-resolution image analysis. Examples of HPC middleware and hardware platforms available to the community will be discussed.
Repurposing A Paradigm: Enhanced Chemical Weathering As An Emerging Negative Emission Technology, Grace Andrews
Repurposing A Paradigm: Enhanced Chemical Weathering As An Emerging Negative Emission Technology, Grace Andrews
Sustainability Seminar Series
Climate change is impacting humans and the environment around the world. To meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 2∘C by 2100, Negative Emission Technologies, which actively remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, are required. In this talk, Dr. Andrews will discuss Enhanced Weathering, a cutting-edge climate change mitigation technology developed from decades-long research into chemical weathering, the Earth’s natural process for regulating atmospheric CO2 levels. She will share results from experiments and pilot studies of Enhanced Weathering conducted in both agricultural and coastal settings.
Permian Dust And Its Relevance To Modern Climate Change, Lynn Soreghan
Permian Dust And Its Relevance To Modern Climate Change, Lynn Soreghan
Sustainability Seminar Series
Dust/loess is well known as both an archive of climate and agent of climate change for Earth’s recent record. But dust deposits are increasingly recognized in Earth’s deep-time record, especially from the Permian. Thick dust deposits occur in the U.S., and elsewhere (e.g. France) along the paleoequator. Dust deposition pulsed on a glacial-interglacial timescale, and was sourced from regions that included the equatorial Central Pangaean Mountains. Notably, the voluminous atmospheric dust stimulated productivity in the marine and terrestrial biosphere, thus affecting carbon cycling and source-rock development. Recent recognition of extraordinarily thick dust deposits in the Permian of Oklahoma have spawned …
Methane Discharge At High Northern Latitudes: Past And Present, Marta E. Torres
Methane Discharge At High Northern Latitudes: Past And Present, Marta E. Torres
Sustainability Seminar Series
Climate is intimately tied to Earth’s hydro- and cryo-spheres. To understand the consequences that predicted global warming can have on biogeochemical cycling and mass inventories in the Arctic Ocean, I will present results on two study sites: the Svalbard margin and the Chuchki sea, that provide information on present-day methane discharge and evidence for the likelihood that groundwater flow during the Early Holocene Thermal Maximum (EHTM). I will review how data collected in the water column and shallow sediment can be used to constrain sources, transport, transformation and timing of methane fluxes, including the potential role of gas hydrate dissociation. …
How Can Collaborative Engagement Improve Water Quality? An On-The-Ground Perspective From The Musconetcong River, Alan R. Hunt
How Can Collaborative Engagement Improve Water Quality? An On-The-Ground Perspective From The Musconetcong River, Alan R. Hunt
Sustainability Seminar Series
Partnerships are instrumental to improving water quality, especially difficult challenges like addressing non-point source pollution. Hear how over a thirty year timespan local residents worked to improve water quality, first through protecting the Musconetcong River as a National Wild and Scenic River, and then using that status to work collaboratively with federal and state agencies, non-governmental organizations, and local land owners to reduce pollution from farms and remove abandoned dams.
Compound Extreme Events, Radley Horton
Compound Extreme Events, Radley Horton
Sustainability Seminar Series
There is a growing realization among scientists and decision makers that extreme events should not be considered in isolation. Compound events of three types will be described: 1) multivariate (e.g. heat plus humidity), 2) sequential (e.g. a heat wave after a tropical cyclone), and 3) concurrent (e.g. simultaneous temperature extremes in multiple regions). Research results will be presented for these compound extremes. More research is needed on correlations and physical mechanisms that can link seemingly independent extreme events. This research is especially urgent now, since climate change may shift the correlation structures of extreme events, and because compound extreme events …