SNRE Dean Rosina M. Bierbaum provided briefings to the top environmental staff members on Capitol Hill this week on a report that explores U.S. ecosystems and the social and economic value they provide. Dean Bierbaum co-authored the much anticipated report titled "Sustaining Environmental Capital: Protecting Society and the Economy." It was released July 22 and commissioned by President Obama through the Presidentí¢â‚¬â„¢s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). PCAST then assembled a Working Group of its members to conduct a study to identify research priorities, the supí‚ porting informatics development and related institutional arrangements necessary for protecting biodiversity and managing ecosystems to ensure their long-term sustainability and security.
In the (Aug. 4) edition of The New York Times, Landscape Architecture Professor Joan Nassauer discusses land-use strategies for urban areas dealing with too many vacant lots. The article, titled í¢â‚¬Å“Finding the Potential in Vacant Lots,í¢â‚¬ examines how American cities are rethinking the value of the thousands of vacant lots now reshaping their landscapes.
Researchers from the University of Michigan and Ford Motor Co. have assessed the global availability of lithium and compared it to the potential demand from large-scale global use of electric vehicles. The research findings, published in the current issue of the Journal of Industrial Ecology, conclude that sufficient resources of lithium exist for the next 90 years to supply a large-scale global fleet of electric vehicles through at least 2100. The study's main authors were Paul Gruber and Pablo Medina. They conducted the research as part of a graduate student research project before graduating in 2010 from the School of Natural Resources and Environment. The research partner was Ford Motor Co., the global automobile manufacturer based in Dearborn, Mich.
In the spring of 2011, Paul Mohai, SNRE professor, and Byoung-Suk Kweon, U-M research investigator, completed an extensive study that found that Michigan schools located in areas with the highest industrial air pollution levels had the lowest attendance rates—an indicator of poor health—as well as the highest proportions of students who failed to meet state educational testing standards even after controlling for factors such as school demographics, expenditures and location.That study, funded by the Kresge Foundation, was published in the journal Health Affairs and received wide media attention.
Assistant professor Maria Carmen Lemos is a co-PI on a new project lead by Purdue University to develop decision-support tools to help corn and soybean growers adapt their practices to changes in climate. Lemos will be focusing on understanding how farmers in Michigan, Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska use, or don't use, climate information and on the role of social networks—farmers, extension agents, and farmers' advisers—on knowledge dissemination and uptake.
NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco hailed the science partnerships between her agency and the University of Michigan as an important tool in addressing the nation's environmental challenges.
The federal government should launch a series of efforts to assess thoroughly the condition of U.S. ecosystems and the social and economic value of the services those ecosystems provide, according to a new report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
The federal government should launch a series of efforts to assess thoroughly the condition of U.S. ecosystems and the social and economic value of the services those ecosystems provide, according to a new report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), an independent council of the Nation's leading scientists and engineers. The report also recommends that the Nation apply modern informatics technologies to the vast stores of biodiversity data already collected by various Federal agencies in order to increase the usefulness of those data for decision- and policy-making.
SNRE Professor Dorceta Taylor has been named chair-elect of the Environment and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association. The Section on Environment and Technology provides a home for about 460 sociologists interested in a range of environmental issues. Section members recently voted on new officers. Next year, Professor Taylor will become chair of the Section.
SNRE Professor Ivette Perfecto is receiving this year's ERHC Diversity Award from the Ecological Society of America during its Annual Meeting next month.
The award recognizes her "outstanding contributions to increasing current and future diversity in the ecological community" and is given by the ESA's Education and Human Resources Committee (EHRC). The EHRC Diversity Award recognizes long-standing contributions to increasing the diversity of future ecologists through mentoring, teaching, or outreach.