SNRE Professor and Associate Dean Arun Agrawal was one of 180 recipients of the 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation supports scholars, artists and scientists selected from 3,000 applicants on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise. Professor Agrawal will use the fellowship support to complete a book called "Poverty and Adaptation."
Biologically diverse streams are better at cleaning up pollutants than less rich waterways, and a University of Michigan ecologist says he has uncovered the long-sought mechanism that explains why this is so. Bradley Cardinale used 150 miniature model streams, which use recirculating water in flumes to mimic the variety of flow conditions found in natural streams. He grew between one and eight species of algae in each of the mini-streams, then measured each algae community's ability to soak up nitrate, a nitrogen compound that is a nutrient pollutant of global concern.
Andy Winkelman, a doctoral student at the School of Natural Resources and Environment, has been named a Presidential Management Fellow finalist. Presidential Management Fellowships (PMFs) are highly competitive two-year post-graduate fellowships with a federal agency. Fellows are selected for their exceptional leadership qualities, and agencies groom them to be future leaders. Fellows have the opportunity to rotate to other agencies, are eligible for accelerated promotion potential, receive 160 hours of formal classroom training (on leadership, management, policy and other topics), and can receive an immediate appointment to a position in the competitive or excepted service.
Sara Hadavi, a Landscape Architecture doctoral student at the School of Natural Resources and Environment, and fellow U-M team members won the top $50,000 prize this week for a redevelopment plan for a Seattle neighborhood. More than 153 teams from 60 universities competed in the 2011 Urban Land Institute Gerald D. Hines Student Urban Design Competition. This year, the competition addressed Seattle's traffic congestion and network of auto-oriented neighborhoods and infrastructure.
When local residents are allowed to make rules about managing nearby forests, the forests are more likely to provide greater economic benefits to households and contain more biodiversity, two University of Michigan researchers and a colleague conclude from an analysis of forest practices in tropical developing countries of East Africa and South Asia. Lauren Persha and Arun Agrawal of the University of Michigan and Ashwini Chhatre of the University of Illinois used evidence from more than 80 forest sites in six tropical countries to test how local participation affects social and ecological benefits from forests.
Harlow O. Whittemore (1889-1986) was a nationally recognized leader in landscape architecture and community planning, and served as professor and chairman of the Department of Landscape Architecture and City Planning at the University of Michigan. He received his master's degree in Landscape Design from the University of Michigan in 1914 and was invited to join the landscape architecture faculty the very same year, serving until his retirement in 1958. In addition to his prominent role at U-M, Whittemore was instrumental in developing the concept for the Huron-Clinton Metropark Authority.
SNRE Dean Rosina M. Bierbaum co-chaired a Working Group on Biodiversity Preservation and Ecosystem Sustainability, which has submitted its report titled "Sustaining Environmental Capital: Protecting Society and the Economy." The report states that the grand challenge is in maintaining ecosystems to assure the continued flow of ecosystem services, while also meeting society's demands for those services. "We need to view ecosystems comprehensively if we are to sustain the ecosystems that sustain us," the report states.
March 17, 2011
By Kevin Merrill
Dr. Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist, technology entrepreneur, philanthropist and medical doctor, addressed responses to such global threats as climate change, epidemics, water scarcity and nuclear proliferation Wednesday in the 10th Annual Wege Lecture on Sustainability.
Brilliant, a U-M alumnus who also is president and chief executive officer of the Skoll Global Threats Fund, delivered the lecture titled "Sustainable Humanity" in Rackham Auditorium.
SNRE is housed in the Dana Building, the greenest building on U-M's campus.
Andy Hoffman, the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at SNRE, was one of 20 environmental researchers from across North America recently awarded Leopold Leadership Fellowships for 2011. Based at Stanford University's Woods Institute for the Environment, the Leopold Leadership Program was founded in 1998 to help academic scientists make their knowledge accessible to decision makers.