The earth and our society face such “gi-normous” problems like climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, food security—what can a little person like me do about it? 

My labmate and good friend Dustin Kincaid (right) was doing an experimental draw-down of the Kellogg Forest pond last summer. Here, my dog, Bowie-wan Kenobi, and I are helping him install lysimeters, which allowed him to collect samples of the water within the pond muck at different depths. About 5 minutes after Steve Hamilton took this photo, Dustin and I were waist-deep in pond muck–so much fun!

Fatoumata B. Barry, PhD Student in the Geography

Department at MSU, made this presentation at the annual Association of American Geographers this April. Click here for his Powerpoint presentation.

Dr. Emilio Moran, Visiting Hannah Professor of Geography and member of the National Academy of Scientists, will teach ESP 802, “Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change.” It will be offered Tuesdays 9:10 a.m. to noon in 273 Giltner Hall.

The goals of the course include:
1. Introduce the major issues in global environmental change (GEC), focusing on the human dimensions of landscape change. This seminar investigates the human causes of global change, contextualizing the “driving forces” within the larger body of research on the impacts of global change on society and the environment.
2. Examine the statements by expert panels on global environmental change, and critique this agenda and explore how to link questions of local and regional interest within this global change agenda. Issues of sampling, criteria for site selection, and how to ensure comparability of data across highly diverse sites
3. The following thematic and methodological areas will be emphasized:
The socioeconomic and environmental causes and consequences of GEC; Land use and cover change (LUCC) as a predominant form of GEC; food security and climate change; Transformation of tropical forests, grasslands and urban areas as proximate sources of LUCC; Institutional dimensions of GEC; Spatially explicit methodologies in GEC research; Coupled human-environment systems;
Carbon markets and international environmental treaties; Mitigation/adaptation approaches; Climate change and food security

Earlier this year ESPP, with the support of MSU’s Office of Research Facilitation and Dissemination, provided travel support to MSU faculty to attend the National Science Foundation Grants Conference in Washington, D.C. on March 11-12, 2013. Travel grant recipients included faculty from 5 MSU colleges: Drs. Rafael Auras (Packaging; CANR), Bruno Basso (Geological Sciences; CNS), Sophan Chhin (Forestry; CANR), Hui Li (Crop and Soil Sciences, CANR), Peter Lillehoj (Mechanical Engineering; CEng), Robert Richardson (CARRS; CSS), Laura Schmitt Olabisi (CARRS; CSS/ESPP, CANR), Bruno Takahashi (Journalism, CAS), and Wei Zhang (Crop and Soil Sciences, CANR, CSS/ESPP). ESPP was also represented by Drs. canadian pharmacy no prescription Volodymyr Tarabara and Jon McDonagh-Dumler.

This two-day conference was designed especially for new faculty, researchers and administrators to gain key insights into a wide range of current issues at NSF. NSF administration representatives and directorate program officers provided up-to-date information about specific funding opportunities and were available to answer questions during breakout sessions. An overview of the conference and links to key presentations are provided below.

The Environmental Science and Policy Program is pleased to announce the awarding of a $ 199,000 National Science Foundation grant to continue the work of Dr. Arika Ligmann-Zielinska  for her project titled Collaborative Research: A Spatiotemporal Approach to Sensitivity Analysis in Human-Environment System Models. A summary of the project is below:

Collaborative Research: A Spatiotemporal Approach to Sensitivity Analysis in Human-Environment Systems Models

Arika Ligmann-Zielinska, Daniel Kramer, and Piotr Jankowski

Michigan State University has been named one of the nation’s top 16 schools in sustainability and environmental education. The school now goes on to compete with the other 15 “Sustainable 16″ finalists for places in the “Environmental Eight”, “Finest Four,” and “National Champion.”

The competition is sponsored by Enviance and judged by a panel of environmental and educational professionals. The National Champion receives a $5,000 prize and will be announced

April 8.

The Environmental March Madness Tournament was designed to evaluate colleges and universities on environmental degree programs and curriculum, environmental opportunities for students, and campus sustainability efforts. Each participating school completed a survey covering factors ranging from internship opportunities, environmental awareness campaigns, clean energy implementations, and a variety of other considerations. The submissions were then evaluated by a panel of distinguished judges to determine the “Sustainable 16.”

Ian Werkheiser (Philosophy) reports back from last spring’s first land use policy symposium in New York

From June first through third, I had the pleasure of attending the Inaugural Symposium on Land Use and Ethics, held by the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and buy cialis online delivering a panel talk and a separate paper. The symposium was meant to be an interdisciplinary look at the ethical implications of the way we as individuals, communities, and societies interact with the land. It was held in SUNY ESF’s Forestry Institute, which is a beautiful wildlife preserve in the Adirondacks in upstate New York on the shores of a lake, and which has miles of wonderful hiking trails throughout the grounds. Despite these temptations, all the talks were well attended and great discussions followed nearly all of them.

Thanks to generous funding from the Environmental Science and Policy Program, I was fortunate to attend the New York Pragmatist Forum on October 26th, 2012. The forum is coordinated by NY-based philosophers Judith Green and Hugh McDonald, both well recognized leaders in the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism.

I presented the paper “Growth and Autopoiesis: Environmental Pragmatism beyond Management,” which explores some of the exegetical foundations for my research in environmental philosophy.

Abby Lynch (Fisheries and Wildlife, ESPP) offers an entertaining report from the 6^th annual World Fisheries Congress, which was held in

Edinburgh.

Day 1: The Olympics of fisheries conferences and the Prince of Wales

Prince Charles at the World Fisheries Congress

The World Fisheries Congress is essentially the Olympics of fisheries conferences with more than 1,000 delegates from around the world here to present on topics related to sustainable fisheries.

It’s important to kick the meeting off with a bang so speakers today included myself (abstract),  Marielle Peschiera (abstract), and Ray Hilborn (a celebrity if ever there was one in our field).

And, oh, the Prince of Wales.

Anna Malavisi, a doctoral student buy cialis online in MSU’s Department of Philosophy, wrote the following account of her attendance this month at the Interdisciplinary Scholarship in Land Use and Ethics Symposium in upstate New York.

“A land ethic, then, reflects the existence of an ecological conscience, and this in turn reflects a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land,” Aldo Leopold, 1949

Anna Malavisi in the Adirondack Mountains

Hidden away in the beautiful Adirondacks is the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s Northern Forest Institute. This is where the college’s first annual symposium on interdisciplinary scholarship in land use and ethics was held. Approximately 40 people, predominantly from other parts of the U.S. and as far away as Nigeria, came together to ponder the “variety of approaches to land use, the moral implications of these approaches, as well as the ways that they influence the ongoing debate over  how to achieve social and environmental justice.”