Sustainability News

The Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems is pleased to announce the release of our report: The Critical To-Do List of Organic Agriculture: 46 Recommendations for the President.  

Thirty years ago, Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) as part of the 1990 Farm Bill. The law established strict national standards for organic food and a public-private enforcement program to ensure compliance with the law. Today, the organic industry still faces a number of challenges. This report seeks to address some of these and to provide policy recommendations to better support the growing organic industry and its positive impacts on human health, on the economy, and on climate. Organic agriculture protects consumers and farmworkers from dangerous pesticides. It also provides opportunities for young farmers and for a vibrant local economy. Lastly, organic agriculture is a critical component of a successful climate strategy, as it promotes healthy soil, protects biodiversity and reduce greenhouse gases emissions.

For printed copies, please send and email with your name, mailing address, and number of copies requested to foodsystems@asu.edu 

Shade is a term that residents of arid, hot environments learn to appreciate, especially during scalding summer months. But what makes for the best shade?

“Cities have started to plant trees as a means to shade the environment. But oftentimes you can’t really plant trees because of infrastructure challenges. There may be sewer lines underground, internet cables, or business signs that will be blocked,” said sustainability scientist Ariane Middel, assistant professor in ASU’s School of Arts, Media and Engineering and a HUE grantee. New research explores viable alternatives to trees for providing shade to keep people comfortable outdoors.

Using a special mobile lab named MaRTy, Middel and her team are assessing what makes for the best provider of shade. The findings may surprise you.

Learn more at ASU News.

Sustainability scientists Mikhail Chester and Brad Allenby and their faculty peers in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering believe broader perspectives need to be part of the current debate about improving America’s infrastructure systems.

Infrastructure has always been a target in warfare, according to Chester, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

"Think about military aircraft dropping bombs on bridges or railroad lines. But battles today are not just army versus army. They are society versus society, and this change means we need to change how we think about infrastructure.”

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Sustainability scientist Samuel Ariaratnam was recently named this year’s winner of the American Society of Civil Engineers, or ASCE, Stephen D. Bechtel Pipeline Engineering Award.

Ariaratnam will deliver the Bechtel Lecture at the 2021 ASCE Utility Engineering and Surveying Institute Pipelines Conference on Aug. 5, to be held virtually.

Ariaratnam is among the leading experts in the development of trenchless construction methods and technologies used in underground construction. He is particularly prominent in the area of horizontal directional drilling, which enables subterranean building and installation to be done with minimal disturbance to the surface.

Read more in ASU News.

The Earth Archive is an international, interdisciplinary initiative to create an open-access, high-resolution, digital archive of the earth's surface compiled from LiDAR scans. This can be used for a wide range of social and natural science, as well as environmental policy work.

Earth Archive is holding an international conference online 15-16 June. Sustainability scientist Michael Barton is among the presenters. The event will be held online. See the agenda and register.

An Arizona State University doctoral candidate has discovered that horses, donkeys and other equine species, which are seen as "invasive," actually help shape desert ecosystems, fulfilling the same function long-extinct species once did. The feral equines sniff out water and dig wells that are used by other wildlife.

Erick Lundgren, a doctoral candidate in the School of Life Sciences, led the study, Equids engineer desert water availability, recently published in the journal Science. Sustainability scientists Julie Stromberg, Jianguo Wu, as well as Karla Moeller of the Provost's office are the other authors from ASU.

Read the full story in ASU News.

Led by sustainability scientist Nathan Johnson and the Laboratory for Energy and Power Solutions, ASU's ATLAS Containerized Microgrid has won first place in the 2021 Microgrid Greater Good Awards. The system powers a 40-foot container that was converted by an ASU team into a medical clinic in Northern Uganda that provides primary care to over 200 Sudanese refugees per day. Before the microgrid was installed, medical practitioners struggled with unreliable power and difficult access to clean water.

The clinic uses 22 linear feet of the 40-foot container, with the remaining 18 feet used for the microgrid and water purification systems. The 10-kW solar microgrid also provides power for medical staff housing and is capable of offering additional power for expanded water supply and area lighting.

The containerized microgrid is replicable and can be used for other areas that require "last mile" distribution to remote off-grid locations, according to Johnson, who led development of the system as part of a $2 million, four-part research project funded by the US Office of Naval Research’s Defense University Research-to-Adoption Program.

Microgrid Knowledge launched the award program three years ago as a way to highlight the humanitarian and societal benefits of microgrids. The winners are chosen by a panel of independent judges.

Sustainability scientist Julianna Gwiszcz is co-facilitating two sessions at this year's SRI Congress, hosted June 12-15, 2021, online and in Brisbane, Australia. The Sustainability Research & Innovation Congress 2021 (SRI2021) is the world’s first transdisciplinary gathering in sustainability – it will be a space of fierce advocacy for sustainability scholarship, innovation, collaboration and action.

This annual event unites global sustainability leaders, experts, industry and innovators to inspire action and promote a sustainability transformation. For the first time, the Congress will launch as a live virtual event with a diverse and innovative online program. In addition to the 100+ sessions available throughout the day and night, thanks to the global reach of SRI and partners, the SRI2021 Online Package includes workshops, training and more.

Julianna Gwiszcz, will be co-facilitating two sessions on transforming narratives at this inaugural SRI Congress. Working with Narratives for Transformation is scheduled for Sunday, June 13, at 3:00 p.m. Arizona time. Exploring Dominant and Regenerative Narratives and the Worldviews they Reflect is set for Tuesday, June 15, 12:00 a.m. Arizona time.

Visit the congress website for more details and full agenda, and to register to participate.

Sustainability scientist and GIOSI deputy director Dave White and recent School of Sustainability PhD graduate J. Leah Jones published a paper, A social network analysis of collaborative governance for the food-energy-water nexus in Phoenix, AZ, USA, in the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences.

The authors conducted a social network analysis of food-energy-water nexus governance in the Phoenix metropolitan area, as part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation and led by Professor Ross Maciejewski from the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering. The social network analysis revealed challenges to collaborative governance of FEW nexus stakeholders, such as limited trust between actors. However, the research found that by leveraging bridging there are opportunities to increase collaborative governance between sectors. This study was a component of Jones’ dissertation.

The abstract follows.

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Registration for this year's virtual Global Conference on Sustainability in Higher Education (GCSHE) has officially opened.

Attendees can register today to reserve their spot for a virtual event that saw over 6,800 registrants last year bringing together more than 400 institutions from 36 countries.

Register today to explore this year's theme, "The Future Is...", and reflect with everyone on the uncertainty about the future that many feel while recommitting yourself to the urgent work of building a future that is sustainable, equitable and resilient. Ultimately, the future is ours to make.

Scientists and scholars are invited to join Project Cities and the City of Peoria to co-develop class projects for the 2021-2022 academic year. Peoria staff from 9 departments will join for a virtual workshop to develop proposed project scopes and discuss new ideas, with the aim of matching you and your students to a real project with real impacts. The program is designed to support most class formats and work across disciplines.

Project Cities is currently recruiting faculty to support the upcoming program cycle. Get in on the opportunity to meet our community partners early and secure an applied project for your students. This will be a virtual event with the freedom to move between round-table breakouts with city department staff, to discuss collaboration opportunities and learn more about their proposed projects.

Register for the virtual event, scheduled for June 24, 2021, from 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.

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Arizona State University faculty and staff are already members of AASHE, the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. AASHE is home to the STARS rating sytem, offers professional development including webinars on sustainability curriculum, and provides a number of faculty resources, including a faculty community, awards and the annual AASHE Conference & Expo. AASHE's Campus Sustainability Hub is home to thousands of resources related to curriculum, research, operations and more. In addition, webinar archives are available for free to all AASHE members.

Here's how to activate a new account.

1. Visit aashe.org.
2. Click New Account in upper right.
3. Enter your name, asu.edu email address, and campus zip code. Continue.
4. Select an existing account, if you've previously logged in, or click New Account.
5. I am affiliated with: Type or scroll to "Arizona State University" (ID: 4531).
6. Role: Employee.
7. Add your profile and contact information.
8. Choose your contact preferences. Most faculty would be most interested in "AASHE Conference & Expo" – click the right arrow to move all else to the "opt out" column.
9. Add your department, discipline and position.
10. Continue to complete your registration.

School of Sustainability assistant professor Tyler DesRoches, sustainability fellow Daniel Fischer and their co-authors have published a new paper, Sustainable consumption communication: A review of an emerging field of research, in the Journal of Cleaner Production.

According to Fischer, the paper provides a review of sustainable consumption communication (SCC) as a field of research. Analyzing 67 papers, the authors describe 4 types of SCC research that conceptualize and relate the terms very differently.

The abstract follows.

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The IASC 2021 Conference: Knowledge Commons aims to bring together scholars and practitioners to address problems defined by knowledge systems. Topics include: innovation spaces; digital resources like Wikipedia and Stack exchange; open-source software development; the future of science and education; the archival of existing knowledge; cultural commons; and citizen science. More information and registration.

Submit a scientific session or workshop proposal for the 2022 AAAS Annual Meeting. This year’s meeting theme, Empower With Evidence, aims to inspire sessions that illustrate the transformative power of evidence-based discoveries and that address the challenges of rebuilding the public trust in science and focuses on science literacy, evidence-based decision making, and the use of validated knowledge to drive public policy for the benefit of all.

The deadline to submit a proposal for Scientific Sessions and Workshops is June 17, 2021. If you would just like to attend a session or workshop, meeting registration will open in September. To submit a proposal or learn more, visit the AAAS website.

Competitive Intelligence is the ethical collection and analysis of information to provide actionable intelligence for informed decision-making. The Competitive Intelligence Working Group (CIWG) is open to anyone who is currently performing strategic and competitive intelligence activities, or interested in learning more about this growing area in research development. Our members are primarily professional staff in higher education who are advancing the research activities of their institutions.

The CIWG meets and discusses best practices, shares useful resources, and creates a network of academic professionals across the nation who seek to define how CI is used and is perceived in the academic environment. This group connects with colleagues from other universities to expand our understanding of how research development professionals are working with CI and to share common issues and interests.

Bring your questions to the year-end session, May 25, 10:00 a.m. AZ time. Learn more and register. ASUrite login required.

What do Indigenous futurisms and climate fiction have in common? To find out, listen to Indigenous Futurisms And Climate Fiction, a recent episode of "Word" — a KJZZ original podcast about the literary arts in Arizona and the region.

The May 11 episode included Joey Eschrich, editor and program manager for the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University and assistant director of Future Tense, a partnership of ASU, New America, and Slate that explores emerging technology, public policy, and society.

In collaboration with ASU’s Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Eschrich runs the Everything Change global climate fiction contest. A new anthology of climate fiction, Everything Change can be downloaded for free.

This year, undergraduate student William Walker had the privilege of executing one of his goals, which was to bring representation to overlooked identities in sustainability through a student-led course.

With support from the School of Sustainability, Walker developed a student-led, faculty-advised course named "Intersectional Environmentalism and Sustainability." The course, which included undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students, examined how identities such as race, class, and gender create different realities for different people and how those people navigate the world around them.

According to Walker, students in the class taught the class on topics such as Black representation in sustainability, ecofeminism, and Indigenous leadership in sustainability. Walker said, "This initiative was awe-inspiring because it broadened student's horizons on what inclusion really means."

A web page describing the course and all the students' topics was created by fellow students Tahiry Langrand and Jordan Sene.

University students will strengthen their mapping proficiency with a new online platform. The YouthMappers Academy is a new online learning platform for network members. The Academy will strengthen YouthMappers students’ knowledge and proficiency to work with the ecosystem of OpenStreetMap software and tools and the social and organizational skills related to creating open spatial data for humanitarian and development needs.

Sustainability scholar Patricia Solis is co-founder and director of YouthMappers, a rapidly-growing consortium of student-led chapters on more than 264 university campuses in 58 countries who create and use open spatial data for humanitarian and development needs in collaboration with the United States Agency for International Development, the main co-founding sponsor.

YouthMappers Academy course materials encourage YouthMappers to engage more confidently in open mapping communities and seek to stimulate critical thinking around research and mapping activities, leading to higher quality outputs. The added opportunity to earn micro-credentials will enhance YouthMappers’ job marketability by providing formal recognition of proficiency and achievement in targeted geospatial techniques and concepts.

Read more about the YouthMappers Academy in the May 17, 2021, press release.

Broadening access to higher education. Advancing research that helps people. Taking responsibility for the communities it serves. These are promises laid out in ASU’s charter, and now — to better fulfill those promises — they are the three “pillars” around which the university will organize its efforts going forward. Get a crash course in the Academic, Knowledge and Learning enterprises that will guide the university’s efforts going forward from ASU News.