Sustainability News

The Student Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) is an opportunity for undergraduate students to find a research fellow and gain substantive research on a faculty-supervised project. This year, School of Sustainability student Tahiry Langrand participated in a project on lithium mining with Datu Agusdinata.

“I was driven to work with Dr. Agusdinata on his research on the community impacts of lithium mining in Salar de Atacama because I was especially interested in the ethical considerations of natural resource extraction,” Langrand said. Read more from Langrand in his Q&A.

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Technology is an enabler. Applying it in the public interest means there is a use value for the common good. Creating an open and iterative feedback loop between stakeholders leads to building a better future together, and for everyone. A new master’s degree program at Arizona State University will explore this further by training leaders who will imagine, design and use technology for social good.

The School for the Future of Innovation in Society is launching the Master of Science in public interest technology this August. The online, cross-disciplinary program will help students develop the knowledge and skills that will allow them to understand the motivations for and challenges of public interest technology, assess new and emerging technologies for social impact, engage with users and deploy technologies responsibly.

In a statement on June 1, ASU President Michael M. Crow called on the university's academic communities to outline new efforts, new concepts, and new strategies to devise new models for protecting and defending the rights of individuals; new methods, new concepts, and new tools for policing; models for justice and the law that are, in fact, implementable throughout the process and not only after injustices have occurred.

The statement came on the heels of demonstrations across the country regarding abuse of power and the government's responsibilities to protect individual rights enshrined in our Constitution and articulated by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his "I Have A Dream" speech.

As the 2020 hurricane season begins, a new study published today by The Nature Conservancy and Arizona State University's Center for Biodiversity Outcomes shows that Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, flood hazard maps underpredicted the extent of recent hurricane-induced floods, their effect on vulnerable human communities and consequential environmental damage in the North Carolina region.

This study, titled “Repeated Hurricanes Reveal Risks and Opportunities for Social-Ecological Resilience to Flooding and Water Quality Problems” was published in Environmental Science and Technology.

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In an effort to make COVID-19 diagnostic testing easier and more readily available to Arizonans, researchers at Arizona State University have developed the state’s first saliva-based test. Diagnostic tests detect an active COVID-19 infection by measuring the amount of virus present in the body.

Biodesign Institute Executive Director Joshua LaBaer points out that saliva tests offer several benefits over nasopharyngeal swab tests while providing the same accuracy and sensitivity, including safety, less invasiveness, less PPE and less labour intensiveness.

“The goal is to rapidly increase statewide diagnostic testing to continue to protect first responders, get more Arizonans back to work, and students back to school again this fall,” LaBaer said. “Ultimately, we are going to need to continue the testing blitz underway and quickly ‘test, trace and isolate’ individuals to get society back up and running.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recognized Arizona State University as a winner of its eighth annual Campus RainWorks Challenge, a national competition that engages college students in the design of on-campus green infrastructure solutions to help address stormwater pollution.

The ASU team, led by sustainability scientist Chingwen Cheng, assistant professor of landscape architecture in The Design School, was recognized for their project, titled “Ready! Set! Activate!” The team worked with Paideia Academy, a K-8 public charter school located in south Phoenix, to reduce local flooding during Arizona’s monsoon season and create a resilient, multifunctional space that effectively manages stormwater runoff and yields educational and ecological benefits.

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A new PBS documentary about the lives and work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom has made its debut. Actual World, Possible Future explores the lives and work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom, who sought to address the enormous problems that plague human societies: climate change, endangered species, ocean pollution, deforestation.

Elinor "Lin" Ostrom (1933-2012) was a sustainability scientist at Arizona State University and the founding director of ASU's Center for Behavior, Institutions and the Environment, which emerged from a collaboration between Ostrom, Marty Anderies and Marco Janssen, who worked together since 2000, when they met at a workshop of the Resilience Alliance in Stockholm.

Change is often unexpected, sometimes painful and always transformative. In the midst of a world beset with unprecedented change, the Narrative Storytelling Initiative at ASU has launched its latest venture: an online magazine called Transformations, a collaboration with the Los Angeles Review of Books that features powerful, personal essays. The magazine is edited by sustainability scholar Steven Beschloss, director of ASU’s Narrative Storytelling Initiative.

Transformations features personal essays inspired by the belief that sharing transformative stories has the power to influence the trajectory of our lives. At launch time, Transformations features six essays, five of which were written by ASU professors, though Beschloss said the magazine welcomes submissions beyond professors and the university, expecting to publish one new essay each week.

Two new short films Holding on to the Corn and Plant the Rain, produced by students in the School of Sustainability and Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in a class taught by Peter Byck, highlight the benefits of a local regenerative food system.

Holding on to the Corn

Holding on to the Corn explores how Hopi spiritual beliefs, ceremonies and agricultural practices centered on corn are being re-established by tribe members. The original intent of the film’s proponents was to create sustainable agriculture and promote healthy access to food, only to discover that their tribal traditions and experiences provided all the knowledge they needed to succeed.

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From his experiences in the beverage business, Master of Sustainability Solutions student Nicholas Shivka was painfully aware of how hard it is for local businesses to compete with the global giants. He knew that local business start-ups lack the financial support cities provide to multinational corporations interested in establishing a local presence. Those companies promise the addition of new jobs in exchange for tax breaks and other “attraction” incentives offered by city officials enamored with Fortune 500 companies, while local businesses receive minimal support and suffer financial disadvantages in the local economy.

Shivka saw a need to encourage and support local entrepreneurs in their quest to build sustainable businesses by creating a sustainable business incubator program. Using the co-op ownership model, sustainability methods, and participatory practices, he partnered with MSUS students Hanna Layton and Huda Khalife, under the guidance of Professor Arnim Wiek from the Sustainable Food Economy Lab, to build an educational program for aspiring entrepreneurs interested in sustainable food production. To test the program, they began the incubation of “Together We Brew,” a sustainable beverage business, with a group of Phoenix entrepreneurs.

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Sustainability scientist James Collins, the Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and the Environment in the School of Life Sciences, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, along with Cheshire Calhoun, faculty head and professor of philosophy in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies.

Collins, an evolutionary ecologist, was chosen for his studies of the role of host-pathogen interactions in species decline and extinction. Collins uses amphibians, along with viral and fungal pathogens, as models for studying the factors that control population dynamics and has been one of the foremost leaders in addressing the global amphibian extinction crisis. He also studies the scientific, ethical and public policy issues surrounding the development and proposed environmental release of genetically modified organisms.

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Public universities are among the nation’s most vital and vibrant institutions, serving the educational needs of hundreds of thousands of students, advancing the full spectrum of human knowledge, and invigorating the cultural, social, and economic horizons of the regions they serve. And today, these universities are at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19, researching treatments, keeping their states and communities informed, and treating patients at academic medical centers.

How have our public universities responded to the COVID-19 pandemic? As university presidents look toward resuming in-person classes in the fall, what have they learned from the crisis, how will their institutions evolve as a result, and what might that mean for the future of higher education in America? How will public universities adapt to the serious financial challenges likely to arise in states and the nation in the months ahead? Could the response to the pandemic translate into an enhanced role for America’s public universities in the restoration of the nation’s public health and the recovery of its economic and social wellbeing?

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Scientists from the Urban Systems Lab, part of The New School located in New York City, is calling for survey responses in their study of public parks, open spaces and COVID-19. Their survey is open until May 31, and features English- and Spanish-Language versions, as well as a separate survey for NYC residents.

The survey will help the lab understand how these spaces are being used during the pandemic and how this may affect mental and physical wellbeing. Feedback will help inform future policy, design, and management of parks and open spaces. This survey may be shared with your networks, particularly to people living in and around cities.

A new webinar panel series, organized by Marco Janssen, Marty Anderies, and Mike Schoon is entitled Don’t Waste the COVID-19 Crisis: Reflections on Resilience and the Commons Revealed by COVID-19.

Launched on April 20, the series now features three videos and counting. You may view previous webinars in the series at the IASC Youtube channel. Contact Caren Burgermeister to be added to the invitation list.

Grasslands across the globe, which support the majority of the world’s grazing animals, have been transitioning to shrub lands in a process that scientists call “woody plant encroachment.”

Managed grazing of drylands is the most extensive form of land use on the planet, which has led to widespread efforts to reverse this trend and restore grass cover.

Until now, researchers have thought that because woody plants like trees and shrubs have deeper roots than grass, woody plant encroachment resulted in less water entering streams and groundwater aquifers. This was because scientists typically studied the effect the grassland shift toward shrubs has on water resources on flat ground.

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ASU Knowledge Enterprise hosted a May 18 conversation with KE employees to answer some of the questions they've received as they prepare and plan to resume in-person operations and classes. Topics included teleworking, building preparations, lab safety protocols, and a variety of other useful information.

A recording and slides will be made available to KE employees on the Knowledge Enterprise Electronic Portal at asu.edu/keep (ASUrite login required). Those who are not employed by KE will soon have access to a resource page for the broader research community.

ASU's Biodesign Institute has published a website that displays user-friendly graphs and visualizations of the spread of COVID-19 in Arizona and across the United States. "The idea behind the website... is to get data out there so people can look at it and they can follow trends," said Joshua LaBaer, executive director of ASU's Biodesign Institute.

In addition, ASU researchers have published a model projecting healthcare demand in Arizona due to COVID-19. The model can be viewed in preprint form at medRxiv. "I think (the model) helps us to understand where we are, so that we can think about where we want to go next," said mathematical epidemiologist Tim Lant, one of the model's authors.

In many parts of the U.S., the farming industry has been forced to waste food due to supply chain interruptions from COVID-19. But the Carbon Cowboys featured in Peter Byck's 10-part documentary series say sales are soaring.

In his series, Byck details the farming technique known as regenerative grazing, which involves quickly rotating cattle from pasture to pasture, before they can damage the land — similar to how bison herds move across The Great Plains. The practice, which does not use chemical fertilizers or pesticides, builds soils that are richer in carbon, which in turn boosts crop and livestock yields.

The series, directed by Peter Byck, was filmed over six years in various rural communities across the U.S., Canada and the U.K. View it online at CarbonCowboys.org.

A survey led by urban planning professor Deborah Salon probed 800 workers across the U.S., many of them concentrated in Arizona and other western states. Initial responses showed that workers anticiapte working more from home in the future, driving less and biking or walking more.

Salon's early results were shared, along with several other studies, in a May article published by CityLab entitled How Will Americans Commute After Lockdowns End? Salon is an assistant professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning.