Sustainability News

One hundred years ago, on February 26, 1919, the Grand Canyon was established as a U.S. national park. To celebrate the park's 100-year anniversary, ASU Now interviewed several Arizona State University faculty across diverse departments to collect tales from the Grand Canyon.

Several sustainability scientists and scholars from the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability contributed their perspectives about Grand Canyon National Park, including: Steven Semken, Mark Klett, Paul Hirt, Hilairy Hartnett, Heather Throop, Megha Budruk, Christine Vogt and Dave White.

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The Oakland Athletics and Arizona State University's School of Sustainability announced a partnership to help Hohokam Stadium maximize sustainability efforts and move toward zero waste during the 2019 spring training season.

Hohokam Stadium, the spring training home of the Oakland A's, will be the focus of the "Recycle Rally" initiative that will test and implement zero waste strategies with the goals of reducing landfill impact, increasing operational efficiencies and improving the fan experience. The unique partnership launched on February 21, when the A's hosted the Seattle Mariners at Hohokam Stadium in Mesa, Arizona.

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Greener fields and bluer waters are in the cards thanks to a new project in development by the Sustainable Phosphorus Alliance at Arizona State University. Slated to launch in April, the Phosphorus Sustainability Challenge will encourage organizations to publicly commit to reducing their phosphorus footprint.

Phosphorus isn’t the first thing people think of when discussing sustainability, but it’s essential for global food security. Phosphorus is a key ingredient in crop fertilizers, as it is essential for plant growth and yield, and it’s also added to animal feed to grow their bodies and especially their bones.

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From the rise of artificial intelligence to the future of water, Arizona State University faculty and students discussed a slew of science topics at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). AAAS is the world’s largest science and technology society, and its annual meeting (held Feb. 14–17 in Washington, D.C.) draws thousands of scientists, engineers, educators, policymakers and journalists from around the world.

At the AAAS meeting, School of Sustainability researcher Veronica Horvath addressed the future of the American West’s most precious resource, water. Horvath, an Arizona State University Master of Science in sustainability student and Decision Center for a Desert City research assistant, is a first-place awardee of the 2018 Central Arizona Project Award for outstanding water research.

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Regents' Professor Sally Kitch launched the ASU Humanities Lab in 2017 to engage students of all disciplines with real-world problems.

Kitch, a distinguished sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, previously served as founding director of the faculty-oriented Institute for Humanities Research (IHR).

“I started the Humanities Lab because I realized that our students were not benefitting from the kind of interdisciplinary, exploratory experiences faculty were getting through the IHR,” she said. “So I wanted to see if we could establish a way for students to get that experience — to recognize the humanities as important for approaching and addressing today’s challenges, because the kinds of questions that really plague us are humanistic at their core."

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It isn’t every day the humanities and sciences combine their research, but when they do something new is created and explored. Such will be the case for a new research project, “Philosophy of Sustainability Science,” which will have Arizona State University’s C. Tyler DesRoches, a senior sustainability scholar, on the team of researchers.

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Outside of New York City, which has done the least of all U.S. cities to adapt to automobiles, Americans without cars are not able to access the economy as well as people with cars, according to ASU research in urban planning.

When the Marine Corps decided it needed to update its base in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, to be more resilient in the face of modern challenges and disasters, it came to Arizona State University for expertise. Some military infrastructure is built with codes and standards that are 30 years old, and base buildings can be 60 years old or more.

“They weren’t built to withstand the types of threats — increasing incidents of severe weather, cyberattacks — which weren’t present back then, or different types of advanced weaponry that can assault buildings or personnel,” said senior sustainability scientist Nathan Johnson, an assistant professor in the Polytechnic School of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU. Johnson is an expert on sustainable and resilient energy systems.

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation has announced the growth of its multistakeholder initiative, Beyond 34: Recycling and Recovery for a New Economy. The Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service at Arizona State University has been selected as a technical partner for the project, providing analysis and the development of tools to help communities increase and improve their recycling efforts.

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Climate change is complicating land conservation practices because of how it alters land over time. Among other things, climate change is raising new questions about perpetual conservation easements — a critical land preservation tool relied upon by government agencies and nonprofit land trusts. A six-author team that conducted an unprecedented analysis of the structuring of conservation easements in the face of rapid climate change has been awarded the 2019 Morrison Prize, an honor established in 2015 and administered through the program on Law and Sustainability at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.

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Ray Quay, a senior sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, was awarded the 2019 William R. and June Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning. This year's award theme was "From Blueprint to Resilience: Planning when Change is the Norm," and Quay was the practitioner prize winner in honor of his decades of work in the arena of urban and regional planning for a rapidly-changing world.

Quay is also the director of stakeholder relations and a research professional for ASU's Decision Center for a Desert City. Read more about his work on the prize website.

Originally studying to become a civil engineer, Matthew Waldman was so inspired by a sustainable neighborhoods urban development class that he changed his major to sustainability at Arizona State University.

As a School of Sustainability student, Waldman was able to participate in first-hand experiential learning opportunities that allowed him to serve the community while gaining real-world experience. He said his most meaningful opportunity was his internship at The Farm at South Mountain.

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It took 10 years for Nathan Gassmann to get his bachelor’s degree — the “scenic route,” as he called it. But finally getting that diploma in 2014 from the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University was the result of a lot of hard work, persistence, and balancing responsibilities as a parent, student and employee.

Gassmann recently landed a job as Subway’s manager of global sustainability, and he said he’s excited to enact change at a large scale. His advice for all Sun Devils is to challenge themselves.

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Osvaldo Sala, an ecologist and distinguished sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, was named a Regents' Professor at Arizona State University. To be awarded the distinction, scholars must be full professors, with outstanding achievements in their fields, who are nationally and internationally recognized by their peers.

Sala has spent more than 35 years studying the driest places on Earth: the Patagonian steppe, the annual grasslands of California, the Kalahari in southern Africa, the Loess Plateau in China and the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico. His publications are among the most cited in the fields of ecology, sustainability and biology. He has more than 200 publications and 40,000 citations. Sala is also the founding director of the Global Drylands Center.

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Arizona State University Professor Donald L. Fixico, a distinguished sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, was named a Regent's Professor for his work as a historian, particularly of American Indian cultures.

Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, a President’s Professor, director of the Center for Indian Education and ASU’s special adviser to the president on American Indian affairs, was quick to sing Fixico's praises.

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You could say Stewart Fotheringham, a distinguished sustainability scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability, is where he is now because of a dogged preoccupation with that perennial question of the human condition: Why?

“When I look at a map of disease rates across the country, for example, and I see there are clusters of high rates over here and low rates over here, what I want to know is why? What's causing that?” he said.

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The public lecture Oxford Professor Jonathan Bate delivered Tuesday night at Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix, cheekily titled "The End of the World As We Know It," made a connection between sustainability and the humanities.

“Past, present, future — a narrative structure,” Bate said. “One of my key arguments … about sustainability is that it needs the humanities because humanities give us narratives.”

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ASU Project Cities is proud to announce our 2019-2020 Community Partner: The City of Peoria!

Peoria is home to more than 171,000 residents and was ranked the number one place to live in Arizona by Money Magazine. With numerous recreational attractions, the city is well known as a family-oriented, active community with an exceptional quality of life. The city has demonstrated a strong commitment to sustainability, as evidenced by its directive to incorporate LEED building design standards, a council-adopted Sustainability Action Plan, and a dedicated full-time staff person to manage and coordinate organization-wide sustainability initiatives.

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In latest episode of FutureCities podcast, "Heat and Thermal Comfort," host Stephen Elser interviewed Yuliya Dzyuban, Arizona State University School of Sustainability PhD student and Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network fellow, about her research involving extreme heat and the ways that people perceive and cope with that heat.

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In preparation for its annual meeting, the American Association of Geographers has named its 2019 Fellows. Included in this year’s honors are two from Arizona State University’s School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning: sustainability scientists Anthony Brazel and Martin Pasqualetti.

In 2018, the American Association of Geographers created the Fellows to recognize geographers who have made significant contributions to advancing the field of geography. Beyond the recognition, those selected as Fellows serve the AAG in creating and contributing to key initiatives, advising on strategic directions and mentoring early and mid-career faculty.

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