The School of Natural Resources & Environment gathered experts and advocates for a conference this month to lay the groundwork toward developing policies to improve environmental quality around Michigan K-12 schools. SNRE Professor Paul Mohai, a noted scientist on environmental justice and the health-related aspects of school locations, co-organized the “Conference on Environmental Quality, Schools, and Health.”
About 80 students from Detroit’s Western International High School gathered to conduct a biodiversity survey on Belle Isle with the help of U-M students representing multiple schools and programs, including graduate students from the School of Natural Resources & Environment.
Mark Van Putten, a friend of SNRE with more than 30 years of experience in environmental policymaking and nonprofit organizational leadership at the international, national, regional, and local levels, delivered the Spring 2013 Commencement Address to graduating students Saturday, May 4.
Sustainability, once thought to be the province of scientists and environmentalists, is now a mainstream business strategy. But for people like Andrew Hoffman, professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, it's not cause for victory. He fought the early battles to get environmental responsibility into the C-suites, and the initiatives he's observed don't align with sustainability's original intentions.
Of the 160 projects announced since November 2012, 16 have at least one SNRE faculty member (19 total faculty). In addition to the Q-fever project, here are titles, project summaries and faculty role (with field of study) in the other 15 projects.
It's the kind of scientific question tailor-made for interdisciplinary research. How does Q-fever, a highly contagious and still largely untracked disease, move among people, livestock, and wild animals, and what are the long-term effects of its presence on human health and economic systems? Answers may be closer to emerging because of M-Cubed, a new University of Michigan program that is awarding nearly 200 grants to jump start interdisciplinary work. The two-year, $15 million effort encourages faculty to explore major issues facing the planet, from climate change and poverty to health and energy.
The largest harmful algae bloom in Lake Erie's recorded history was likely caused by the confluence of changing farming practices and weather conditions that are expected to become more common in the future due to climate change. Rather than an isolated, one-time occurrence, it was more likely a harbinger of things to come, according to U-M researchers and other.
SNRE Associate Professors Bradley Cardinale and Johannes Foufopoulos co-authored an op-ed piece that appears in today's Detroit News.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced on behalf of 16 federal agencies the membership of the first advisory board to support implementation of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. “Protecting the Great Lakes -- the largest surface freshwater system on Earth -- is important for the health and well being of millions of people," said EPA Acting Administrator and Acting Interagency Task Force Chair Bob Perciasepe. "Today I’m pleased to announce the membership of the first-ever Great Lakes Advisory Board.”
Strictly protected areas such as national parks and biological reserves have been more effective at reducing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest than so-called sustainable-use areas that allow for controlled resource extraction, two University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues have found. In addition, protected areas established primarily to safeguard the rights and livelihoods of indigenous people performed especially well in places where deforestation pressures are high. The U-M-led study, which found that all forms of protection successfully limit deforestation, is scheduled for online publication March 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.