Join mayors from around Arizona in celebrating Earth Day AZ 2023! This statewide collaboration campaign highlights the many ways Arizona communities support the Earth with the goal of inspiring residents to take action for Earth Day during the month of April and beyond.

As members of and in partnership with ASU’s Sustainable Cities Network, these Arizona mayors and communities are showing that there is power in unity and that we all have a role to play in ensuring our planet’s health now and in the future.

Collectively, we can protect our precious and diverse natural resources and secure a thriving future for our state and the world. Join us!

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 By: Tim Sullivan, ASU Sustainable Food Systems graduate student. 

Our ASU graduate cohort arrived at Hayden Flour Mills, our last stop of the second day on our Arizona food and farm immersion, as the sun was gently moving downwards towards the western horizon. It was peacefully quiet while we soaked in the ambiance and awaited our tour.

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SPRI Associate Director Shirley-Ann Augustin-Behravesh completed a series of five videos for UK based company, thinkfour. thinkfour takes complicated ideas and makes them accessible and easy to understand for classroom students. Augustin-Behravesh's series of videos on sustainable purchasing cover topics such as the importance of sustainable purchasing, impacts of both the government and private sector on sustainable purchasing, and how individual consumer purchasing habits impact global supply chains. The videos are currently in post production but we cannot wait to share them with you once they become available!

By: Jacob DeFant, ASU Sustainable Food Systems graduate student. 

In early December of 2022, two dozen students from the new Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership cohort piled out of large Suburban’s, peeling off their extra layers from the early morning as they adjusted to the warm, sunny, and welcoming weather of central Arizona. The students had just arrived at Queen Creek Olive Mill for their next stop during their weeklong course focused on immersing students in the agriculture industry of Arizona. Tired from long days of traveling, the students stretched and readied themselves for another deep dive into Arizona food systems. The students did not expect the unique perspective Queen Creek Olive Mill had to offer on its unique participation in Arizona agriculture.

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By: Copeland Vidal, ASU Sustainable Food Systems graduate student. 

The 2022 Sustainable Food Systems graduate cohort includes individuals from different states, professional backgrounds, and experiences. The program's administrators brought us to Arizona for a week to observe agricultural operations and meet with stakeholders. During our Immersive, the cohort met several industry stakeholders, including the Director of the Arizona Department of Agriculture (AZDA), Mark Killian, who had an engaging discussion with us early in the morning. He wowed the students with his extensive knowledge of Arizona's agriculture, geography, industries, climate, and challenges faced by farmers. In addition, Director Killian shared his optimism for the future through his experience as a farmer and the state's leading voice on agriculture.  

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Nicole Darnall (SPRI Director), Steve Schooner (SPRI Global Affiliate), and our friend Sarah O'Brien with the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council (SPLC), were interviewed by Jean Chemnick from E&E News ClimateWire regarding upcoming changes to federal acquisition regulations.

"When you consider the purchasing power of the federal government, it has the potential to radically shape supply chains globally... While the primary source of those contracts is going to be a U.S. company, they’re sourcing their product inputs from all over the world.” said Darnall. Click here to read the full article.

The Global Drylands Center is hosting the JRN Global Drylands Modeling Workshop 2023. At the workshop, we will discuss the important processes needed to represent drylands in a low-dimensional (i.e., “as simple as feasible”) process-inspired model, which will mainline Jornada insights while also representing global drylands. This process-inspired model includes at least wind and water connectivity, woody-herbaceous demographics and spatial-temporal impacts of soils, climate, herbivory and other disturbances, and how these can contribute to state-changes. Learn more and view the entire workshop agenda at sala.lab.asu.edu/jrn-modeling-workshop-2023/.

By: Chelsea Radford, ASU Sustainable Food Systems graduate student. 

Have you ever worked in a restaurant and noticed the amount of waste produced daily? The endless cycle of taking bag after bag of trash to a dumpster at the end of each night? Well, Steve Short noticed and decided he could do something about it. In December of 2022, the Sustainable Food Systems master’s students at ASU were lucky enough to taste Atlasta’s delicious creations when they catered an event during the Food and Farm Immersion course in Arizona.

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In this series, we’re sitting down with the Swette Center affiliated faculty to catch up on food systems, innovation, and what makes a good meal. See the rest of the series on our Food Systems Profiles page.

Read on for an interview with Elisabeth llboudo Nébié, assistant professor at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change.

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Since its start in 2017, Project Cities has partnered with four local communities, engaged 38 interdisciplinary faculty members, and facilitated over 75 high-impact projects with over 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students. As we look back on a transformative five years and celebrate our recent President’s Medal for Social Embeddedness, Project Cities is excited to announce the release of its first Impact Report.

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BioScience Talks podcast, hosted by James Verdier, produces a regular series entitled In Their Own Words, which chronicles the stories of scientists who have made great contributions to their fields. In their episode published on March 9, they featured Osvaldo Sala, who is the Julie A. Wrigley and Regents’ and Foundation Professor and the founding director of the Global Drylands Center as well as a Distinguished Global Futures Scientist with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at ASU.

These short histories provide our readers a way to learn from and share their experiences. The results of these conversations are published in the pages of BioScience and on their podcast, BioScience Talks.

By: Sarah Williams, ASU Sustainable Food Systems graduate student.

Nestled in between Buckeye and Goodyear, Arizona, is a 1,200-acre certified organic farm specializing in leafy greens and compost. This farm started in Arizona over 30 years ago with Arnott and Kathleen Duncan at the helm. Arnott, a 4th generation farmer, started Duncan Family Farms on just a few hundred acres of land, and has since grown it into a multi-state operation with the mission to responsibly manage and maintain the land.

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In this series, we’re sitting down with the Swette Center affiliated faculty to catch up on food systems, innovation, and what makes a good meal. See the rest of the series on our Food Systems Profiles page.

Read on for an interview with Jose-Benito Rosales Chavez, Assistant Professor at the School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning and Senior Global Futures Scientist. 

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By: Kaysey England, ASU Sustainable Food Systems graduate student.

Throughout the Sustainable Food Systems graduate program food and farm immersive opportunity in the Fall of 2022, an overwhelming topic was discussed at every stop along the way: water security. During this experience, our cohort got the opportunity to listen to Dr. Dave White share his knowledge about the Arizona water supply. With over 20 years at Arizona State University, he currently serves as the Director of the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation. Dr. White shared his belief that water is the lifeblood of the American West and is the foundation of all social, environmental, economic, and cultural amenities. He is right; with a rapidly growing Arizona population, time is of the essence to ensure a sustainable water supply is protected and used efficiently.

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The Center for Biodiversity Outcomes will be attending ASU Open Door 2023 as a part of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. Members of the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes invite you to learn more about ecology and biodiversity by visiting our table and engaging in the family-friendly, conservation-oriented activities we’ve curated! At our table, you’ll be able to explore the importance of keystone species conservation through a game of giant Jenga, test your knowledge of marine communities through our interactive guessing game, complete a wildlife puzzle, and more. Visitors will be able to learn: how can you contribute to conservation?

Meet the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes team February 25, 2023, from 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM in the Walton Center for Planetary Health (WCPH) Atrium.

Katie Cramer, the Program Lead for Coral Reef Conservation at the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, has a new paper published in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution titled “Historical declines in parrotfish on Belizean coral reefs linked to shifts in reef exploitation following European colonization.” Dr. Cramer and her co-authors have linked European colonization to parrotfish population declines in the Mesoamerican Reef. These parrotfish declines have resulted in a slowdown of coral growth in the region, which has had major ramifications for humans and wildlife living in this region. For more information, check out the article on Dr. Cramer’s research published by ASU News.

Leah Gerber, founding director of the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, has co-authored a new book alongside Nancy Grimm, founding director of the Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-term Ecological Research program. Titled “The Guidebook for the Engaged University,” this compelling book “highlights how universities can help solve defining problems of our age,” according to ASU News. Read the full article here.

In a compelling new research paper titled “An investment strategy to address biodiversity loss from agricultural expansion,” Colombia becomes the first case study on how to balance biodiversity goals with limited economic resources. Camila Guerrero-Pineda, a graduate student at ASU, led this exciting project alongside Dr. Leah Gerber and Dr. Gwen Iacona. Their results–published in the prestigious journal Nature Sustainability–suggest that significant investment into conservation must be made in Colombia in order to counteract and prevent further biodiversity loss. This approach can be applied to other countries and contexts, making it an invaluable scientific contribution. To read the full ASU News story, click here.

In this series, we’re sitting down with the Swette Center affiliated faculty to catch up on food systems, innovation, and what makes a good meal. See the rest of the series on our Food Systems Profiles page.

Read on for an interview with Robin DeWeese, Assistant Teaching Professor, College of Health Solutions.

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