School of Natural Resources and Environment

Kevin Merrill's blog

Feb. 11, 201

Facing budget challenges and pressure to reduce costs, Michigan's cities and towns are seeking creative solutions. With Ford Motor Company's help, students from The Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan are helping create one solution for Michigan's poorest cities: an innovative financial model that will provide desperately needed capital to upgrade facilities, reduce energy consumption and save money.

Landscape Architecture students at SNRE present their portfolios for review by outside experts Tuesday during annual Portfolio Day activities. The day also includes a lecture by SNRE alumna Trish Beckjord, a landscape architect, who is giving a talk from 5-6 p.m. in Room 1028 titled "LEED and Green Design of Health Care Environments." Seven employers, including five represented by SNRE Landscape Architecture alumni, will be conducting one-on-one reviews with students in the Dana Building.

Jan. 18, 2011

Planet Blue conducted an open house Tuesday, Jan. 18, in the Dana Building's Ford Commons. The event included displays and information on energy conservation, recycling opportunities and other sustainability oriented efforts across the University of Michigan campus.

T-shirt giveaways took place for students and staff who signed up to be Planet Blue citizens, and water bottles were distributed to those who completed the Planet Blue Quiz/Tip card. A lunch was also offered as were tours of various mechanical rooms within the building.

On the heels of last week's federal recommendations to help prevent another BP oil spill disaster, a University of Michigan researcher says the tragedy has come close to acting as a catalyst for deeper change---but not quite. "The BP oil spill is, potentially, a 'cultural anomaly' for institutional changes in environmental management and fossil fuel production," said Andrew Hoffman, professor of management and organizations at the Ross School of Business and a professor at the School of Natural Resources and Environment. "But true change in our approach to handling issues related to oil drilling, oil consumption and environmental management have yet to occur."

To learn how to visually represent the experience of a specific place for the class Visualizing the Environment, a group of 12 first-year Landscape Architecture students walked a little over a mile, from the Dana Building through downtown Ann Arbor, stopping along the way to sketch for one minute. They then returned to each point they had sketched to look at a particular aspect of the area.

A group of students from the Erb Insitute for Sustainable Enterprise and the School of Engineering won first prize in the student division of a Michigan business-plan competition. ReGenerate, a company started by Erb students Paul Davis, Nolan Orfield and Hunt Briggs, along with chemical engineering PhD student Bobby Levine, won $25,000 in the Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition on December 10.

A wave of reptile extinctions on the Greek islands over the past 15,000 years may offer a preview of the way plants and animals will respond as the world rapidly warms due to human-caused climate change, according to SNRE Associate Professor Johannes Foufopoulos and his colleagues. As the climate warmed at the tail end of the last ice age, sea levels rose and formed scores of Aegean islands that had formerly been part of the Greek mainland. At the same time, cool and moist forested areas dwindled as aridity spread through the region.

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