Joan Nassauer, SNRE Landscape Architecture professor, discusses the benefits and limitations of “blue infrastructure” in dealing with the city of Detroit’s stormwater overflow challenges.
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.
The SNRE community is encouraged to come see and vote on work by first-year Landscape Architecture students Wednesday in the Ford Commons.
SNRE's "Industrial Ecology" class recently toured the USS Steel Great Lakes Works on the Detroit River. The plant manufactures rolled and coated sheet steel. Students observed rolling mills, annealing furnaces and zinc-coating processes that galvanize the steel to prevent rust.
Research being conducted by SNRE Assistant Professor Beth Diamond in the Heidelberg Cultural Village area of Detroit is featured in a report on the Fox News Channel University Network. Diamond is the lead designer on the project, which is working to implement a vision for arts-based neighborhood redevelopment for Detroit.
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.
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.
SNRE students working with Professor of Landscape Architecture Beth Diamond on a master's project held a public art event at a street festival in Detroit last Saturday. The group—Sarah Alward, Fai Foen, Dana Petit and Christian Runge—set up a tent where visitors could paint tiles that will be incorporated in a future art installation at the Heidelberg Project.
Environmental Justice Professor Paul Mohai, along with Byoung-Suk Kweon, researcher and adjunct assistant professor; Sangyun Lee, research fellow; and doctoral student Kerry Joy Ard, used EPA data and a formula for measuring the impact of pollutants to evaluate the toxic burden of each zip code in Michigan.