The Princeton Review has listed Arizona State University as one of “the best 377 colleges” in the United States and one of the best western colleges in its 2013 just-released guide.
For the fourth consecutive year, ASU was named as one of the nation’s “greenest universities.” The university also was ranked 71st for “best quality of life.”
Students say ASU’s “greatest strength is the great depth of its faculty and wealth of opportunities offered to students.” Many students say they chose ASU because it “offers a huge range of classes and majors at a reasonable cost,” and the university provides “the best of both worlds: a large research university and an honors program tailored for individual needs.”
ASU was noted for, among other things, having the largest collection of energy-producing solar panels at a public university; its School of Sustainability, which offers undergraduate and graduate degrees; its numerous LEED award-winning buildings; and its financial support of bus and light rail passes for students and employees.
CH2M HILL’s WaterMatch, a grassroots, goodwill initiative that promotes the reuse of municipal effluent for industrial and agricultural use, is expanding through collaborations with companies and universities around the world. Arizona State University and Intel are among the targets for this expansion in the U.S.
CH2M HILL, a program management, construction management, and design firm located in Denver, developed WaterMatch as a free website that uses social networking and geospatial mapping to connect water generators with water users.
ASU and Intel are working with local municipalities in Arizona and the U.S. Southwest to populate the WaterMatch map and associated wastewater treatment plant profiles. They also are conducting research into the uses and benefits of WaterMatch.
“Our students are eager to engage on the critical issue of water sustainability in Arizona and work on a grassroots project,” said John Sabo, director of Research Development at ASU’s Global Institute of Sustainability. “It’s great to see the program our students helped to pilot expand globally.”
New research by Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) finds that native vegetation supports native bird species better than popular grass lawns. The research published in PLOS ONE highlights work done by CAP LTER graduate students, visiting professors, and field assistants.
Hilary Gan and Eyal Shochat of ASU and Paige Warren and Susannah Lerman of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst studied the relationship between bird foraging behavior and residential yard types. The study found that desert-like yards, not exotic and moist yards, provides native birds mini-refuges and helps offset biodiversity loss in cities.
"With this study, we're starting to look at how different yards function--whether birds behave differently by yard type," says Lerman, a CAP LTER graduate student. "We're doing that by using behavioral indicators, especially foraging, as a way of assessing birds' perceptions of habitat quality between differing yard designs."
On August 24, 2012, ten ASU students working on an NSF-funded summer research, cultural and educational experience called the US-Mexico Border Water and Environmental Sustainability Training (UMB-WEST) program will give their final presentations on their experience.
Participating students from the School of Earth and Space Exploration, School of Sustainability, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, and the School of Life Sciences include: Dustin Pearce, Mariela Castaneda, Rudd Moe (WaterMatch/DCDC Sustainability Ambassador), Jill Brumand, Sarah Cronk, Jiachuan Yang, Kelsii Dana, Tiantian Xiang, Adam Schreiner-McGraw and Huntington Keith.
During the presentation, students will describe their research visits and field work in Sonora, Mexico, focused on water resources management and sustainability. This is a great way to find out about the program for folks interested in participating in summer 2013 or 2014.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded 12 winners for their 2012 Environmental Heroes in the Pacific Southwest. Among the winners, ASU's Sustainable Cities Network (SCN) received acknowledgement in the Green Government category.
The SCN works with local government agencies, communities, individuals, and organizations to explore sustainable solutions to local issues. ASU, city, county, and tribal leaders established the SCN to ensure sustainability across the region, share knowledge, and collaborate on sustainability efforts.
The annual award recognizes organizations, companies, individuals, and others for making significant contributions to protecting the environment.
“The winners, green heroes all, prove there are many ways to protect our air, water, and land,” said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA’s Regional Administrator for the Pacific Southwest. “Each one has taken up the challenge to improve our environment, and we all stand to benefit.”
Research by CAP scientists has found that native vegetation in urban areas supports native bird species better than grass lawns, thus preserving avian biodiversity in cities. This is detailed in a recently-published article, "Linking foraging decisions to residential yard bird composition," in PLOS ONE by Susannah Lerman (CAP graduate student), Paige Warren (currently a visiting professor with CAP from University of Massachusetts-Amherst), Hilary Gan (CAP field assistant), and Eyal Shochat (CAP research associate). The research made use of innovative techniques to quantify bird foraging behavior in both mesic (grass) yards and yards with desert-like landscaping. For more information, see the press release from the National Science Foundation.
A new analysis of complex interactions between humans and the environment preceding the 9th century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatán Peninsula points to a series of events – some natural, like climate change; some human-made, including large-scale landscape alterations and shifts in trade routes – that have lessons for contemporary decision-makers and sustainability scientists.
In their revised model of the collapse of the ancient Maya, social scientists B.L. “Billie” Turner and Jeremy “Jerry” A. Sabloff provide an up-to-date, human-environment systems theory in which they put together the degree of environmental and economic stress in the area that served as a trigger or tipping point for the Central Maya Lowlands.
“The theory acknowledges the role of climate change and anthropogenic environmental change, while also recognizing the role of commerce and choice,” says Turner.
“The Science of Water Art: A Citizen Science Project”—a collaborative research project that brings together professionals, community members, college students, and children to think about the role that water plays in each of our lives—will be on display Sept. 1-30 at ASU’s Deer Valley Rock Art Center.
The project is part of a larger global ethnohydrology study led by three Sustainability Scientists—Amber Wutich, Alexandra Brewis Slade, and Paul Westerhoff—along with two researchers outside the university. The study is starting its fifth year with a look at the role of water, climate change, and health in several communities worldwide. The study is sponsored by ASU's School of Human Evolution and Social Change (SHESC).
The art facet of this study allows for a look into how climate change and water insecurity are viewed by younger generations, and gives a voice to children so that they may share their outlooks on this vital resource.
AGU in Arizona. Our very own, David Sampson, is in the member highlight of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Enduring drought conditions in the Southwest and increasing water demands for future water supplies in Phoenix are worrisome for water managers. David works on a water management and planning model for Phoenix that simulates the current and projected water supply as influenced by population, climate change, and water availability. By allowing water managers to examine "what-if" scenarios they will be able to ensure long term availability for the growing Phoenix population.
Don’t Waste the Drought. We're in the worst drought in the United States since the 1950s, and we’re wasting it. Via The New York Times.
Children draw their feelings about future of water. "The Science of Water Art: A Citizen Science Project" – a collaborative research project, featuring research by DCDC researcher Amber Wutich, brings together professionals, community members, college students and children to think about the role that water plays in each of our lives – will be on display Sept. 1-30 at ASU’s Deer Valley Rock Art Center.
ASU research on climate impacts of urbanization gains widespread attention. A recently published study by ASU researchers and colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research has produced widespread interest in news media – from the Los Angeles Times to Terra Espana, the Spain internet outlet of a prominent Spanish-language media company. Via ASU News
Nine Straight Days of 110 or More: That’s Hot, Even for Phoenix. Hot is a relative term for people used to the scorching summer weather in this city built on land better suited for cactus than lawns. But nine straight days of excessive heat seem to have stretched even the most elastic tolerance levels to their limits. Via The New York Times
Global Water Sustainability Flows Through Natural And Human Challenges. Water’s fate in China mirrors problems across the world: fouled, pushed far from its natural origins, squandered and exploited. In this week’s Science magazine, Jianguo "Jack" Liu, director of Michigan State University’s Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, and doctoral student Wu Yang look at lessons learned in China and management strategies that hold solutions for China – and across the world. Via Science 360.
A new effort at Arizona State University to educate and train students in renewable and solar energy is receiving backing by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
Through its Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program, the NSF is providing $3 million to ASU to help develop a doctoral program in energy and to equip students with the skills needed to find solutions to the energy challenges of the future by establishing the IGERT Solar Utilization Network (SUN) program.
“At ASU, we are strong in three important areas: biological energy conversion, photovoltaics and solar thermal energy conversion,” says Willem Vermaas, the lead scientist in the program, Foundation Professor in ASU’s School of Life Sciences, and Senior Sustainability Scientist. “Because we have those three, we are in a unique position to say, ‘Now let’s train students so they are not only experts in those areas, but also so they can understand the pros and cons of the various ways of creating alternative energy.’ We also need to teach them about the social, environmental and economic contexts of emerging solar technologies so societal transformation can happen,” he says.
The IGERT Solar Utilization Network program begins this fall semester.
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Arizona State University
Deadline for Application: The position is open until filled; but materials should arrive by August 31, 2012 for full consideration.
We are seeking an outstanding postdoctoral research associate for a two-year position on NOAA-funded research evaluating drought risks and its impact on agricultural land and water use to support adaptive decision-making. The overall goals of this study are to undertake research to better understand how water use by crop type responds to drought conditions and to use this knowledge to support adaptive management in the agricultural sector and foster sustainable water use in an era of climate uncertainty and change. This project seeks to answer the underlying research questions: a) How does vulnerability to drought vary by crop types based on a large spatial scale analysis?; b) What is the impact of drought on agricultural water consumption at different spatial scales?; c) What adaptive options are available through changes in crop mixes and limited time market driven water transfers? and d) What are the economic cost-benefits of alternative adaptation strategies under different drought scenarios at the farm and watershed levels? To address the above research questions, the following objectives have been set: (1) Identify different agricultural crop types in two wet years (i.e., 2001, 2005) and two drought years (i.e., 2000, 2002) over the selected study area using advanced image processing techniques (e.g., spectral matching techniques, regression tree algorithms, space-time spiral curves - change vector analysis, Phenology analysis approach, image fusion with time series spectral indices, multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis) and remotely sensed data (e.g., MODIS, Landsat, ASTER, Hyperspectral); (2) Determine evapotranspiration (ET) or water demand by crop type for the selected years using satellite-based SEBAL/MATIRC; (3) Generate water demand per crop per pixel and integrate with selected drought indicators; (4) Examine statistical relations between water demand by individual crop types as well as agriculture land as a whole and drought index using spatial regression and analysis of variance tests; and (5) Estimate the economic impacts of drought at both farm and the watershed level and assess economic cost-benefits of alternative adaptation strategies under different drought scenarios using crop budget analysis.
A successful candidate should have a PhD in geography, agriculture, environmental science, ecology or a related field with a strong emphasis on remote sensing of agriculture mapping, geospatial analysis, multivariate statistics, and spatial modeling. Experience in the use of remote sensing and GIS software, such as ENVI, Imagine, eCognition/Definiens, IDRISI, ArcGIS, and Matlab is required. A substantive focus in urban agriculture ecosystems (e.g., water; evaporatranspiration; ecosystem services; plant ecology, drought) is also necessary. Demonstrated computer programming experience (e.g., ENVI/IDL, MATLAB, Python) is a plus. The applicant should have a good publication record and a demonstrated ability to work independently. This is a grant-funded position wherein employment is contingent upon the renewal of the grant.
Applicants should submit a CV, a brief statement detailing how their research interests align with the focus of the project, and the names and contact information for three references. Estimated start date is October 1, or as soon as the candidate is available. Please submit applications to: Soe W Myint (soe.myint@asu.edu).
Sustainability is a human decision — a responsibility that relies on good information and how we choose to use it — according to George Basile, a senior sustainability scientist at Arizona State University, who made that point in this month’s cover story in Sustainability: The Journal of Record.
Reframing sustainability as a human decision challenge, rather than “some version of people, planet and profit coming together,” was one of the subjects discussed by Basile in the “On the Record” feature with journal editor Jamie Devereaux.
“Sustainability is something that humans want. We want a future that is sustainable for us, so it is a human construct…. Therefore, humans to a certain extent are in charge of making that happen, or not,” said Basile, a professor of practice at ASU’s School of Sustainability.
The Science of Water Art, an initiative funded in part by CAP LTER, is on exhibit at the Deer Valley Rock Art Center during the month of September 2012. This initiative, part of the Global Ethnohydrology project, focuses on 4th graders' impressions of water usage in their neighborhoods in the present and in the future. The project is lead by CAP scientist, Amber Wutich. For more information, visit http://bit.ly/P0OgpD
By Judith Smith via ASU News featuring DCDC Researcher Amber Wutich, PhD.
"The Science of Water Art: A Citizen Science Project" will be on display at ASU's Deer Valley Rock Art Center Sept. 1-30"The Science of Water Art: A Citizen Science Project" – a collaborative research project that brings together professionals, community members, college students and children to think about the role that water plays in each of our lives – will be on display Sept. 1-30 at ASU’s Deer Valley Rock Art Center.
The project is part of a larger global ethnohydrology study that is starting its fifth year with a look at the role of water, climate change and health in several communities worldwide. The study is sponsored by ASU's School of Human Evolution and Social Change (SHESC).
The art facet of this study allows for a look into how climate change and water insecurity are viewed by younger generations, and gives a voice to children so that they may share their outlooks on this vital resource.
This study used a sample of fourth-grade classrooms across Arizona in collecting more than 3,000 drawings of children's perception of water today and in the future. The nine- to 11-year-olds were asked by their teachers to draw two pictures with the following prompts: 1) Please draw a picture showing water being used in your neighborhood; and 2) Please draw a picture showing how you imagine water will be used in your neighborhood 100 years from now.
The study was conceptualized in partnership with SRP and the Maricopa County Education Service Agency by Amber Wutich, associate professor in SHESC, and Alexandra Brewis Slade, professor in SHESC.
The exhibit is free with museum admission: $7 adults; $4 seniors, military and students; $3 children 6-12. Children 5 and younger are free.
Deer Valley Rock Art Center hours are 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. More information is available at dvrac.asu.edu or by calling 623-582-8007.
As the use of nanoscale materials in consumer goods increases – including in food, personal care products and medicine – researchers are exploring the possible health and environmental impacts of exposure to nanoparticles.
More and more products contain titanium, silver or zinc that is nano-sized by being burned or crushed into an extremely fine dust and then used as ingredients in products or as a coating.
Among those leading research on the effects of nanoparticles is Paul Westerhoff, associate dean of research in ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, senior sustainability scientist, and a professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment.
In our first Water/Climate Briefing for 2012-2013, DCDC sets the stage with a broad-based discussion of future topics related to this year’s theme: The dynamic role of water within urban ecosystems in relation to the management of cities and regions of Arizona. Our panelists will explore:
Effluent and Environmental Systems
Impact of Climate Change on Riparian Systems
Stormwater: Green Infrastructure Systems
Quantifying Water Use for Ecosystem Services
Water Use Within Public Features
The Impact of Environmental Stresses on Water Quality
We hope to provide opportunities for researchers, water resource managers, and the public to gain insight to the challenges of water within our urban places and ecosystems.
Panelists
Dan Childers, Moderator and Professor, ASU School of Sustainability
Juliet Stromberg, Associate Professor, ASU School of Life Sciences
Aimée Conroy, Deputy Water Services Director, City of Phoenix
An interview by Tom Curry with Nicholas Hild, Senior Sustainability Scientist in the Global Institute of Sustainability and Emeritus Professor in the College of Technology and Innovation, was featured in the Journal of Environmental Management Arizona, February/March 2012 issue.
Dr. Hild reflects on his move into retirement and the changes he has witnessed in Arizona's environmental regulations. Dr. Hild observes that Arizona's stance on the environment seems to match with who gets elected to the State legislature. Local businesses understand that environment regulation compliance is a positive step towards sustainability. Dr. Hild advises that university sustainability programs must have technical requirements that are combined with policy education, so that while entering the workforce, students can properly advise their employers with truly sustainable solutions.
A private children’s residential care home in Mesa, Ariz., that has been serving its local community for almost 60 years will be better prepared to expand, thanks in part to the expertise of a recent Arizona State University engineering graduate.
During his final semester of study this past spring to earn a professional science master’s degree in the Solar Energy Engineering and Commercialization program, Sage Lopez helped the Sunshine Acres Children’s Home take steps to develop a cost-saving renewable-energy system.
Working with Milt Laflen, a member of a volunteer committee charged with ensuring the home’s future energy needs can be met, Lopez assisted in devising a solar-energy master plan designed to help control energy costs as Sunshine Acres grows.
According to the United Nations’ 2011 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects, global urban population is expected to gain more than 2.5 billion new inhabitants through 2050. Such sharp increases in the number of urban dwellers will require considerable conversion of natural to urban landscapes, resulting in newly developing and expanding megapolitan areas.
Could climate impacts arising from built environment growth pose additional concerns for urban residents also expected to deal with impacts resulting from global climate change?
In the first study of its kind, attempting to quantify the impact of rapidly expanding megapolitan areas on regional climate, a team of researchers from Arizona State University and the National Center for Atmospheric Research has showed that local maximum summertime warming resulting from projected expansion of the urban Sun Corridor could approach 4 degrees Celsius.
The percentage of the earth’s land surface covered by extreme heat in the summer has soared in recent decades, from less than 1 percent in the years before 1980 to as much as 13 percent in recent years, according to a new scientific paper.
The change is so drastic, the paper says, that scientists can claim with near certainty that events like the Texas heat wave last year, the Russian heat wave of 2010 and the European heat wave of 2003 would not have happened without the planetary warming caused by the human release of greenhouse gases.
Those claims, which go beyond the established scientific consensus about the role of climate change in causing weather extremes, were advanced by James E. Hansen, a prominent NASA climate scientist, and two co-authors in a scientific paper published online on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The main thing is just to look at the statistics and see that the change is too large to be natural," Dr. Hansen said in an interview. The findings provoked an immediate split among his scientific colleagues, however.
Some experts said he had come up with a smart new way of understanding the magnitude of the heat extremes that people around the world are noticing. Others suggested that he had presented a weak statistical case for his boldest claims and that the rest of the paper contained little that had not been observed in the scientific literature for years.
The divide is characteristic of the strong reactions that Dr. Hansen has elicited playing dual roles in the debate over climate change and how to combat it. As the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, he is one of NASA’s principal climate scientists and the primary custodian of its records of the earth’s temperature. Yet he has also become an activist who marches in protests to demand new government policies on energy and climate.
The latter role — he has been arrested four times at demonstrations, always while on leave from his government job — has made him a hero to the political left, and particularly to college students involved in climate activism. But it has discomfited some of his fellow researchers, who fear that his political activities may be sowing unnecessary doubts about his scientific findings and climate science in general.
Climate-change skeptics routinely accuse Dr. Hansen of manipulating the temperature record to make global warming seem more serious, although there is no proof that he has done so and the warming trend has repeatedly been confirmed by other researchers.
Scientists have long believed that the warming — roughly 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit over land in the past century, with most of that occurring since 1980 — was caused largely by the human release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. Such emissions have increased the likelihood of heat waves and some other types of weather extremes, like heavy rains and snowstorms, they say.
But researchers have struggled with the question of whether any particular heat wave or storm can be definitively linked to human-induced climate change.
In the new paper, titled "Perception of Climate Change," Dr. Hansen and his co-authors compared the global climate of 1951 to 1980, before the bulk of global warming had occurred, with the climate of the years 1981 to 2011.
They computed how much of the earth’s land surface in each period was subjected in June, July and August to heat that would have been considered particularly extreme in the period from 1951 to 1980. In that era, they found, only 0.2 percent of the land surface was subjected to extreme summer heat. But from 2006 to 2011, extreme heat covered from 4 to 13 percent of the world, they found.
"It confirms people’s suspicions that things are happening" to the climate, Dr. Hansen said in the interview. "It’s just going to get worse."
The findings led his team to assert that the big heat waves and droughts of recent years were a direct consequence of climate change. The authors did not offer formal proof of the sort favored by many climate scientists, instead presenting what amounted to a circumstantial case that the background warming was the only plausible cause of those individual heat extremes.
Dr. Hansen said the heat wave and drought afflicting the country this year were also a likely consequence of climate change.
Some experts said they found the arguments persuasive. Andrew J. Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia who reviewed the paper before publication, compared the warming of recent years to a measles outbreak popping up in different places. As with a measles epidemic, he said, it makes sense to suspect a common cause.
"You can actually start to see these patterns emerging whereby in any given year more and more of the globe is covered by anomalously warm events," Dr. Weaver said.
But some other scientists described the Hansen paper as a muddle. Claudia Tebaldi, a scientist with an organization called Climate Central that seeks to make climate research accessible to the public, said she felt that the paper was on solid ground in asserting a greater overall likelihood of heat waves as a consequence of global warming, but that the finding was not new. The paper’s attribution of specific heat waves to climate change was not backed by persuasive evidence, she said.
Martin P. Hoerling, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who studies the causes of weather extremes, said he shared Dr. Hansen’s general concern about global warming. But he has in the past criticized Dr. Hansen for, in his view, exaggerating the connection between global warming and specific weather extremes. In an interview, he said he felt that Dr. Hansen had done so again.
Dr. Hoerling has published research suggesting that the 2010 Russian heat wave was largely a consequence of natural climate variability, and a forthcoming study he carried out on the Texas drought of 2011 also says natural factors were the main cause.
Dr. Hoerling contended that Dr. Hansen’s new paper confuses drought, caused primarily by a lack of rainfall, with heat waves.
"This isn’t a serious science paper," Dr. Hoerling said. "It’s mainly about perception, as indicated by the paper’s title. Perception is not a science."
The Princeton Review has listed Arizona State University as one of “the best 377 colleges” in the United States and one of the best western colleges in its 2013 just-released guide.
CH2M HILL’s 
New research by 
On August 24, 2012, ten ASU students working on an NSF-funded summer research, cultural and educational experience called the US-Mexico Border Water and Environmental Sustainability Training (UMB-WEST) program will give their final presentations on their experience.
A new analysis of complex interactions between humans and the environment preceding the 9th century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatán Peninsula points to a series of events – some natural, like climate change; some human-made, including large-scale landscape alterations and shifts in trade routes – that have lessons for contemporary decision-makers and sustainability scientists.
“The Science of Water Art: A Citizen Science Project”—a collaborative research project that brings together professionals, community members, college students, and children to think about the role that water plays in each of our lives—will be on display Sept. 1-30 at ASU’s Deer Valley Rock Art Center.
A new effort at Arizona State University to educate and train students in renewable and solar energy is receiving backing by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
As the use of nanoscale materials in consumer goods increases – including in food, personal care products and medicine – researchers are exploring the possible health and environmental impacts of exposure to nanoparticles.
An interview by Tom Curry with Nicholas Hild, Senior Sustainability Scientist in the Global Institute of Sustainability and Emeritus Professor in the College of Technology and Innovation, was featured in the 
A private children’s residential care home in Mesa, Ariz., that has been serving its local community for almost 60 years will be better prepared to expand, thanks in part to the expertise of a recent Arizona State University engineering graduate.
According to the 