One of the nation' leading researchers in children's environmental health, Marie Lynn Miranda, will be the new dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE), effective Jan. 1, 2012, pending approval from the Board of Regents.
Three new faculty positions have been added to SNRE. The positions are in the areas of sustainable food systems, sustainable energy and climate change impacts, and sustainability and behavior. SNRE received the positions from U-M as part of President Coleman's 2007 Interdisciplinary Faculty Initiative, a plan to add 100 tenure-track positions in emerging research areas across the university; as of 2010, 72 had been approved in 17 cross-disciplinary clusters.
"I have followed a career path that did not exist when I graduated from the University of Michigan. But this great University gave me the skills to create it," Peter C. Mertz, Visiting Committee member and alumnus, delivered this year's Commencement address April 30. Mertz is chief executive officer and co-founder of Global Forest Partners (GFP), one of the largest timber investment management organizations in the world.
The second conference of the Initiative on Climate Adaptation Research and Understanding through the Social Sciences, or ICARUS, will take place at SNRE in the Dana Building May 5 to 8. The theme is Climate Vulnerability and Adaption: Marginal Peoples and Environment. More than 150 papers will be presented by scholars and researchers from around the world. ICARUS II is twice as large as the first conference, held at University of Illinois in 2010, in terms of papers submitted and registered attendees.
Ten students at the School of Natural Resources and Environment have been named Scholars and Fellows by two prestigious environmental organizations. Eight have been named Doris Duke Conservation Fellows as future leaders in nonprofit and public sector conservation. The Wyss Foundation awarded fellowships to two students as future leaders in Western land conservation issues.
Eight students at the School of Natural Resources and Environment have been named Doris Duke Conservation Fellows as future leaders in nonprofit and public sector conservation. "More Michigan fellows were named than was the case at any of our peer schools, a wonderful outcome that reflects the stellar qualities of our students and the commitment of the School to the program," said Steven L. Yaffee, an SNRE professor and director at the SNRE-based Ecosystem Management Initiative, which administers the Duke Fellows program at the University of Michigan.
Dec. 6, 2010
During the first week of the UN climate conference in Cancun, Erb Institute student Miguel Sossa helped a non-profit agency launch a sustainable-marketing campaign, ate lunch with like-minded students from across the world, observed as foreign dignitaries positioned their appeals, shook hands with a top UN official who replied "Go Blue!," and shared thoughts on the rice trade with an ambassador on his ride back to his hotel.
Two University of Michigan professors contributed to a White House report this week that calls for the United States to craft a government-wide federal energy policy and update it regularly with strategic reviews every four years. The report provides a roadmap for the federal role in transforming the U.S. energy system within one to two decades—a transformation that is necessary, the report concludes, for reasons of economic competitiveness, environmental stewardship and national security.
A postdoctoral research fellow at SNRE's International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research initiative, Lauren Persha, along with co-investigator and SNRE Professor Arun Agrawal, have received a nearly $400,000 grant from the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) to investigate the outcomes of Tanzania's ongoing forest management systems.
The report on national climate-change adaptation that was delivered yesterday to the White House science adviser is now available to the public. Dean Rosina M. Bierbaum, who co-chaired the D.C. climate adaptation summit last spring held by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) that formed the basis of the report, was one of the committee that introduced the report to Dr. John Holdren, the President' Science and Technology Adviser. The report identifies seven priorities:
Dean Rosina M. Bierbaum is joining science colleagues from around the nation today in delivering a National Climate Adaptation Summit Report to President Obama's science adviser. The report is based on last springí¢â‚¬â„¢s National Climate Adaptation Summit, of which Dean Bierbaum was co-chair. The report's release can be viewed as a live streamed webcast. The event begins at 3:30 p.m. EST, and takes places in the main auditorium of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Building in Washington, D.C. The report, as well as webcast instructions, can be found at http://www.joss.ucar.edu/events/2010/ncas/report_release_webcast.html.
SNRE students associated with two of the school's most prestigious fellowship programs convened at a retreat this weekend to discuss the organizational and political challenges facing leaders and NGOs this election season.
The Ecological Society of America (ESA) has recognized SNRE Dean Rosina M. Bierbaum for her "long and distinguished service" to the scientific community and her ecological work in the public interest. Dean Bierbaum will receive the Distinguished Service Citation at the ESA's 95th annual meeting in August in Pittsburgh.
Her theories on economic governance and common property earned Elinor Ostrom a share of this year's Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences. But since 2006, a major initiative she founded to grow and share applications of her research has been housed at the School of Natural Resources and Environment Professor Ostrom, who received an honorary degree from U-M in 2006, started the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research network in the early 1990s. Its focus then, as now, was on collecting and analyzing data at local levels related to forest governance.
Agrawal, colleague link land management, ownership and climate change in forests of developing world
Studying 80 forest "commons" in more than a dozen developing nations, a University of Michigan researcher and his University of Illinois colleague have found links between local ownership and control of those forests and the fight against climate change. They found that greater local ownership and input into forest management appear to keep these areas, also called forest commons, from being overharvested or otherwise misused, thereby increasing their ability to capture carbon and mitigate or slow the effects of climate change. Their findings, based on data collected on three continents, appear in a paper published online Oct. 5 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors are Arun Agrawal, a professor and associate dean of the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment, and Ashwini Chhatre of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.