A report released by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts a 2011 Gulf dead zone of at least 8,500 square miles, which would make it the largest dead zone on record, due to increased stream flows from the flooding of the Mississippi River. "Stream flows were nearly double normal during May, delivering massive amounts of nutrients to the Gulf, and that's what drives the dead zone," said Don Scavia, Special Counsel to the U-M President for Sustainability, director of the Graham Sustainability Institute and SNRE professor and a member of NOAA's Gulf hypoxia research team.

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.

Developing sustainable societies is a major challenge for the 21st century. Policies developed by the United States and China will play an especially important role, since these two countries consume nearly one-third of the total world energy expenditure to power their economies and are the largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Both countries have major industrial complexes, large urban population centers, and large expansive rural areas that require extensive water management.