The free public event will occur on Sunday, March 25 from 3-5 p.m. at the university’s Memorial Union in Room 230 (Pima). The event will also be live streamed. More details are available at the following link: http://links.asu.edu/VaquitaEvent
The ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes will be hosting three sessions this spring dedicated to highlight important biodiversity conservation research taking place at the university.
Each session will explore a different focal area: Stakeholder engagement; biodiversity evidence, metrics and monitoring; decision science.
Case statements will be presented, followed by an open Q&A session. Light refreshments will be served.
For additional information and to RSVP, please click here.
For its third year participating in the program, the center organized three activities designed to teach students about conservation. This included asking participants to put together a giant jigsaw puzzle of the Amazonian rainforest, matching animals and people to certain biospheres and letting children dig for (fake) insects in a tin of soil.
Prizes were handed out for completion, which included nature-themed bookmarks and stickers. For the first time, a TED-ED video was shown on loop at the table explaining biodiversity and its global importance.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to watch children, from babies to high-school students, learn about the natural world and have fun doing it,” Project Manager Amy Scoville-Weaver said. “I hope they all came away with a new interest in biodiversity and the role they can play in conserving it.”
Initial numbers estimate as many as 4,000 people participated in the event.
ASU student scholars who participated in the university’s Global Development Research program, a USAID fellowship, are grateful to the Board of Directors of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability for their encouragement and support in making this opportunity possible.
Top-tier master’s, doctoral and post-doctoral students are eligible to apply for research and innovation fellowships through the GDR program. GDR scholars find development projects that suit their interests by browsing an extensive international catalog, then leverage their own expertise to cultivate solutions to complex development challenges.
In this four-minute video, the 2017 GDR scholars express their gratitude and describe how their experiences abroad with this program have shaped the trajectory of their studies and future work in sustainable development.
In February, the NEPTUNE project – an Office of Naval Research funded project focused on energy research, dynamic learning and engagement with the military service – along with ASU LightWorks® coordinated the first-ever veteran-focused addition to ASU’s spring 2018 University-Wide Career & Internship Fair. This was an opportunity to get an inside look at faculty and NEPTUNE’s student veteran research in the areas of microgrids, cybersecurity, and technology. It provided an opportunity for corporations and NGOs to connect with the veteran population in the ASU community.
“Supporting research that targets key military and national energy challenges is a vital component of ONR’s mission, driving technology advancements...However, creating a culture of energy innovation requires a parallel professional development effort to implement such advancements." - Dr. Richard Carlin, head of ONR’s Sea Warfare and Weapons Department.
What is ‘green’ infrastructure? What can it do for my city? Why am I definitely way more excited to learn about it than I am more traditional forms of infrastructure? Stephen Elser and Jason Sauer answer all of these questions in this episode, and focus on green infrastructure in the form of wetlands in the city of Valdivia, Chile.
They talk to local sustainability consortium leader Cristóbal Lamarca of Activa Valdivia and local wetlands researcher Ignacio Rodríguez of the Centro de Humedales Río Cruces (translated: the Río Cruces Center of Wetlands) about how the wetlands imbue Valdivia with a unique urban character, increase the city’s biodiversity, provide recreational space, and are a form of infrastructure that people rally around.
Arizona State University hosted a group of faculty members and researchers from the Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada (CICESE) during the ‘Second Gathering ASU-CICESE’ (‘Segundo Encuentro ASU-CICESE’) in February 2018. This meeting was an opportunity to continue the interaction and ideas exchange on scientific topics of relevance to natural resources management in southwestern North America.
Participants included four faculty and one researcher from CICESE (Drs. Cuauhtémoc Turrent Thompson, Rodrigo Méndez Alonzo, Alejandro Hinojosa Corona, Steven Bullock and Alejandro Cueva), as well as 27 faculty members, researchers and graduate students from ASU. The activity consisted of scientific discussions organized in two breakout groups on topics of mutual institutional interest, presentations on cross-border scientific efforts at ASU, and discussions on alternative financing models for trans-border efforts.
The event – supported by the Global Drylands Center, School of Earth and Space Exploration, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and CICESE – demonstrates ASU’s international collaboration efforts in research, education and outreach. A press release by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Mexico (CONACYT) highlights the importance and bi-national interest in the event.
As many as 1.3 billion people lack access to electrical power, according to Senior Sustainability Scientist Nathan Johnson. That's why the ASU engineer – who directs the Laboratory for Energy And Power Solutions – is advancing technologies for electrical-grid modernization and off-grid electrification.
One of these solutions is the microgrid, which provides independent power generation and storage. Johnson and the LEAPS team are developing microgrids that are more technically and economically viable – easier to design, scale and transport. On top of providing the world's poorest and most remote communities with stable power, this technology can improve scenarios like disaster relief and medical care.
Johnson’s approach to military microgrids won a TechConnect Defense Innovation Award at the Defense Innovation Technology Acceleration Challenges Summit.
Major League Baseball has announced it will partner with ASU's School of Sustainability on a zero waste initiative during parts of the 2018 Cactus League schedule. ASU sustainability students will engage with baseball fans and help Salt River Fields – spring training home of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies – to minimize and manage their waste.
"We want do our part to ensure that future generations of D-backs fans can appreciate the beautiful Arizona landscape and will continue to focus on improving sustainability efforts throughout Spring Training and all season long at Chase Field," says Arizona Diamondbacks President and CEO Derrick Hall.
According to Christopher Boone, dean of the School of Sustainability, the partnership is a perfect fit for the school. "We are thrilled to be able to let our faculty and students apply their classroom knowledge in a real-world setting and help the Cactus League aim for the ambitious goal of zero waste," Boone said.
If cities in developing nations don’t address their burgeoning slums, poverty will increase, political instability will heighten and human misery will continue.
That's according to Senior Sustainability Scientist José Lobo, one of the authors of a 2018 report presented at the World Urban Forum. The report detailed the efforts of Know Your City, an initiative that organized slum residents in 103 cities to profile, enumerate and map their communities.
“The central premise of community data collection is that the data collected becomes an instrument to foster a dialogue among the many different parties (communities, public agencies, governments, NGOs, international funding agencies) about the design and implementation of effective solutions,” Lobo said.
Chris Wharton, director of the Food Systems Transformation Initiative, gives the latest KEDTalk hosted by ASU's Knowledge Enterprise Development. "We live in a world of wild, damaging, unsustainable excess," he says, and the solution requires a rapid, transformational response. By revealing what is hidden in plain sight, Wharton illuminates a path to health, wealth, happiness and sustainability through values-based behavior change.
Society needs better integration between what our city is or will be (science) with visions of what our city should be (design). Integrating these two elements is no easy task. Disconnects between science and design can lead to catastrophic infrastructure failures; as we’ve seen too many time this year with recent examples such as Hurricane Harvey in Houston. Part of the way we can move toward this integration goal is through co-design processes where we can learn and design together. Aligning researchers, who need more nuanced visions of urban futures, with design students, external partners, and residents provides a promising path that creates more societally impactful design processes. This will ultimately create a more socially-responsive and resilient infrastructure.
For urban resilience to extremes, these design processes may help us unearth more complete knowledge from diverse participants, and more importantly let us learn critical factors when designing cities for uncertainty together. We hope that this UREx-Design collaborative research-teaching-service pilot will provide meaningful feedback to inform future similar endeavors for UREx SRN, CAP LTER networks, and beyond. Design products from this course will serve as important inputs in the upcoming UREx SRN & CAP LTER participatory scenario workshops. Specifically, designs that feature adaptive reuse of public space, green infrastructure design and function, transportation alternatives, and urban form transformations will help stakeholders visualize and prioritize strategies they want to include in their scenarios. In addition, design students will be invited to participate in the actual workshop to sketch the visions that emerge from the table discussions.
Two PhD students working with the UREx, Melissa Davidson and Yuliya Dzyuban participated in the design course. Their final assignment for the course was a reflection piece on the process and what could be improved about the collaboration model. Yuliya noted, “Throughout the course of the semester it was evident that the interaction of sustainability students with the class has helped to raise awareness about sustainability, resilience and what it means to community. I have noticed that presentations and ideas that we shared during the semester were reflected in final students designs that evolved and became more sensitive to the community needs and to the unique project location.” While Melissa reflected on the challenges of such courses. “For me, the biggest challenge to this type of collaborative setting is time. Designers and interdisciplinary scholars spend time differently... This is not necessarily a negative; it just requires an acknowledgement that our presence in the course is more about quality of time rather than quantity of time… In addition to time constraints, the style of the course is a natural challenge. Most school of sustainability courses are between one and two and a half hours (at most) and are heavy on discussion. I really appreciated that we tried to incorporate this style of dialogue into the beginning of many Wednesday classes.”
Thinking about a pragmatic path forward for the UREx-Design collaboration model, Melissa suggested, “…it might be worth pitching a 3-credit course for non-design students who can play a stronger role in small groups. Rather than acting as a consultant, these students could help with things like project scoping and framing, research, storytelling, and generally provide a different perspective on the design process.” A second suggestion concerned the critical challenge of learning approaches to tackle social justice. Although students started the semester learning from a Latino climate justice organization and reading from social justice literature, for some students it was their first time confronting the issue. Yuliya recommended that, “[s]tudents need to improve understanding of social justice concepts and what it means in their work. It seemed that students who attempted to engage with communities on a more personal level, went for site visits several times, attended local festivities and coffee shops, and had a better understanding of the site and community. I suggest that students should be encouraged to attend community meetings and volunteer in the local events to gain better understanding of the local needs.“
Our intention is to keep pursuing a reflexive approach to this collaborative research-teaching-service model. Through URExSRN in collaboration with allied projects such as CAP LTER, we can create innovative models that not only advances our knowledge of resilience in urban systems, but also provides meaningful action pathways for society. Design can serve as that integrating process for society to match what cities are or will be (science) with visions of tomorrow (design).
La sociedad necesita una mejor integración entre lo que es o va ser nuestra ciudad (ciencia) con visiones en lo que nuestra ciudad debe ser (diseño). Integrar estos dos elementos no es fácil. Las desconexiones entre la ciencia y el diseño puede conducir a fallas catastróficas en la infraestructura; como lo hemos visto demasiadas veces este año con ejemplos recientes como el del Huracán Harvey en Houston. Un modo que en el que podemos acercarnos a esta meta de integración es a través de procesos de co-diseño con los que podemos aprender y diseñar juntos. Alinear investigadores, que necesitan visiones más matizadas de futuros urbanos, con estudiantes de diseño, participantes externos, y residentes proporciona un camino prometedor que crea procesos de diseño socialmente más impactantes. Esto creará, en última instancia, una infraestructura más flexible y con más capacidad para adaptarse.
Para la resiliencia urbana a eventos extremos, estos procesos de diseño tal vez pueden ayudarnos a desenterrar un conocimiento más completo de diversos participantes, y lo que es más importante, nos permiten conocer los factores críticos al diseñar juntos ciudades con incertidumbre. Esperamos que este proyecto piloto colaborativo de investigación-enseñanza-servicio de UREx-Design brinde retroalimentación significativa para informar futuros esfuerzos similares para las redes de UREx SRN, CAP LTER , y más allá. Los productos de diseño de este curso servirán como aportaciones importantes en los próximos talleres de escenarios participativos de UREx SRN y CAP LTER. Específicamente, los diseños que incluyen la reutilización adaptativa del espacio público, el diseño y la función de la infraestructura verde, las alternativas de transporte y las transformaciones de las formas urbanas ayudarán a los interesados a visualizar y priorizar las estrategias que desean incluir en sus escenarios. Además, los estudiantes de diseño serán invitados a participar en el taller real para esbozar las visiones que surgen de las discusiones de la mesa.
Dos estudiantes de doctorado que trabajan con la UREx, Melissa Davidson y Yuliya Dzyuban participaron en el curso de diseño. Su tarea final para el curso fue una reflexión sobre el proceso y qué podría mejorarse sobre el modelo de colaboración. Yuliya señaló, "A lo largo del semestre fue evidente que la interacción de los estudiantes de sustentabilidad con la clase ha ayudado a crear conciencia sobre la sustentabilidad, la resiliencia y lo que ésta significa para la comunidad. Me di cuenta de que las presentaciones e ideas que compartimos durante el semestre se reflejaron en los diseños finales de los estudiantes que evolucionaron y se hicieron más sensibles a las necesidades de la comunidad y a la ubicación única del proyecto ". Por otro lado, Melissa reflexionó sobre los desafíos de dichos cursos. "Para mí, el mayor desafío para este tipo de entorno colaborativo es el tiempo. Los diseñadores y académicos interdisciplinarios pasan el tiempo de manera diferente ... Esto no es necesariamente negativo; solo requiere un reconocimiento de que nuestra presencia en el curso se trata más de la calidad del tiempo que de la cantidad de tiempo ... Además de las limitaciones de tiempo, el estilo del curso es un desafío natural. La mayoría de los cursos de sustentabilidad de la escuela duran entre una y dos horas y media (como máximo) e involucran una discusión abundante. Realmente aprecié que tratamos de incorporar este estilo de diálogo al comienzo de muchas clases de los miércoles”.
Pensando en un camino pragmático para el modelo de colaboración UREx-Design, Melissa sugirió que "... podría valer la pena ofrecer cursos de 3 créditos para estudiantes que no son de diseño y que pueden jugar un papel más fuerte en grupos pequeños. En lugar de actuar como un consultor, estos estudiantes podrían ayudar con aspectos como el alcance del proyecto y el encuadre, la investigación, la narración de cuentos y en general proporcionar una perspectiva diferente sobre el proceso de diseño." Una segunda sugerencia se refería al desafío crítico de aprender enfoques para abordar la justicia social. Aunque los estudiantes comenzaron el semestre aprendiendo de una organización latina de justicia climática y leyendo literatura acerca de la justicia social, para algunos estudiantes fue la primera vez que enfrentaron el problema. Yuliya recomendó que, "los estudiantes necesitan mejorar la comprensión de los conceptos de justicia social y lo que significan en su trabajo. Al parecer los estudiantes que intentaron involucrarse con las comunidades a un nivel más personal, las visitaron varias veces, asistieron a festividades locales y cafeterías, y tuvieron una mejor comprensión del sitio y la comunidad. Sugiero que se anime a los estudiantes a asistir a las reuniones comunitarias y ser voluntarios en los eventos locales para comprender mejor las necesidades locales."
Nuestra intención es seguir aplicando un enfoque reflexivo a este modelo colaborativo de investigación-enseñanza-servicio. A través de URExSRN en colaboración con proyectos aliados como CAP LTER, podemos crear modelos innovadores que no solo mejoren nuestro conocimiento de la resiliencia en los sistemas urbanos, sino que también proporcionen vías de acción significativas para la sociedad. El diseño puede servir como ese proceso integrador para la sociedad para que coincida con lo que las ciudades son o serán (ciencia) con las visiones del mañana (diseño).
The UREx SRN Scenario team is conducting scenario planning workshops in Phoenix, Baltimore and Hermosillo this year. Phoenix is in a unique position given that it has already developed a suite of regional-scale scenarios. Building off of the Sustainable Future Scenarios project developed under the auspices of the CAP LTER (and in collaboration with that project), the Phoenix UREx scenario workshop will zoom in to the village level. Thus, the researcher-practitioner team decided to make South Mountain Village the focus of the scenario workshops. The choice seems timely as several research and planning initiatives are already underway in South Mountain Village, including Paul Coseo’s design course, the Nature Conservancy’s Nature’s Cooling Systems Project, Rio Salado 2.0, and the planned extension of the Light Rail into South Phoenix.
South Mountain Village stretches between two landmarks, the Salt River to the North and the South Mountain Preserve to the South. With a rich agricultural past, South Mountain is home to the largest proportional populations of Latinos and African Americans in the valley. Environmental and social challenges of South Mountain include air pollution, public health risks, brownfields, excessive heat, and food deserts that are the result of historical segregation (see Bolin et al. 2005). To better understand these issues and to identify the futures that stakeholders can envision for their community, the the UREx Phoenix scenario team organized a World Café event to reach out to a broader community of stakeholders that live, work, or in some way identify with the South Mountain Village.
Coffee details how disasters do discriminate between the rich and poor, contrary to popular belief, and what some communities are doing to fight the widening inequality caused by these disasters.
Arizona State University workforce development programs for solar PV and microgrid technicians highlighted the Mobile Microgrid Training Platform for hands-on training in deployment, component integration, system operation, troubleshooting and maintenance.
Sustainability Solutions Celebration
The Sustainability Solutions Celebration brought together the business and academic worlds to celebrate young innovators who have reimagined global challenges to make the world a better place.
Building a New Carbon Economy: Strategies for Turning Waste Carbon from Liability to Asset
This workshop focused on companies who are developing strategies for turning waste carbon into a valuable and sustainable asset throughout their supply chains.
ASU Green Game
A zero waste game, the excitement intensified with an 80 – 78 win for ASU Men’s Basketball over UCLA. #GreenGameASU
The members of the Ecological Society of America have elected Osvaldo Sala – founding director of Arizona State University's Global Drylands Center – to a three-year term on the ESA governing board. Sala will assume the role of president elect in August 2018, president in 2019 and past president in 2020.
Sala is a professor in the School of Life Sciences and the Julie A. Wrigley Chair in Life Sciences and Sustainability in the School of Sustainability. He founded the Global Drylands Center in 2017 to engage key stakeholders in dryland stewardship and develop solutions for arid ecosystems around the world. Of over 100 previous ESA presidents, Sala will be the first Hispanic person to hold the position.
Founded in 1915, the ESA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit community of more than 9,000 scientists, researchers, decision makers, policy managers and educators who are dedicated to understanding life on Earth. It is the largest community of ecologists in the world.
The workshop focused on the ways that humanities methodologies are contributing to interdisciplinary collaboration and participatory engagement on climate change and energy transition. Participants also explored how better assessment of impact might be piloted through modes of inquiry that include narrative, story, metaphor, imagery and representations that convey the cultural knowledge behind decision making.
Mike Hulme, Professor of Human Geography at the University of Cambridge, kicked off the workshop with a 2018 EHI lecture titled “The Cultural Functions of Climate.” Workshop sessions were keynoted by leading international cultural geographers, humanists and philosophers, including Giovanna Di Chiro of Swarthmore College and Kyle Powys Whyte of Michigan State University.
We followed up with Joni Adamson – English and Environmental Humanities Professor, Senior Sustainability Scholar & Director of the Environmental Humanities Initiative – to tell us more about the workshop and EHI:
ASU is part of a new coalition of 13 leading research universities committed to tackling climate change. The group – called the University Climate Change Coalition, or UC3 – includes distinguished universities from the United States, Canada and Mexico.
Each university has committed to mobilizing its resources and expertise to help businesses, cities and states achieve their climate goals. Specific UC3 goals include hosting cross-sector forums and producing a climate mitigation and adaptation report.
The formation of UC3 was announced at the Second Nature 2018 Higher Education Climate Leadership Summit.
Interns often wear many different hats, being responsible for or involved in a handful of different projects at any given time. This was certainly true in the case of Justyn Beach, who obtained a Pollution Prevention (P2) Internship for the Hospitality and Lodging Sector with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ).
Justyn is a Sustainability undergraduate studying Sustainability with a Policy and Governance concentration and a minor in Justice Studies. From August to November of 2017 he created a comprehensive checklist of sustainable business practices for hotels, lodges, and resorts. It served as the bridge between sustainability and hotels, lodges, and resorts across the entire state of Arizona, and it was very difficult to create a statewide program that is large enough to be effective yet not so large that it becomes unwieldy. The checklist is part of a larger Green Certification Program that is currently being developed by the Arizona Lodging and Tourism Association (AzLTA) in conjunction with Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It’s a step toward creating a more sustainable, functional business model.
The United States is currently at an infrastructural crossroads and the path taken at these crossroads will be determined by how cities, states, regions, and the federal government navigate key issues. The article also details failures in history and how most failures often resulted from an overconfidence in the ability to tightly control complex systems.
Arizona State University’s Center for Biodiversity Outcomes is pleased to collaborate with local partners Plea for the Sea and Lightkeepers Foundation to offer a special screening of the short documentary Souls of the Vermilion Sea.
ASU student scholars who participated in the university’s 
