Soil food webs play a key role in supporting grassland ecosystems, which cover about one-quarter of the land on Earth. Climate change poses a threat to these environments, partly because of the uncertainty of extremes in rainfall, which is projected to increase.

To learn more about the effects of these extreme events, a team of soil and plant ecologists, supported by funding from the National Science Foundation, studied nematodes, which play a key role in carbon and nutrient cycling and decomposition in soil.

Principal Investigator Osvaldo Sala is founding director of the Global Drylands Center at Arizona State University. We asked him about the study, out June 10, 2019, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Curt Truman, a 2016 alumnus of Arizona State University's Master of Sustainability Solutions, has been selected to receive the 2019 CMAA Graduate Student Scholarship Award from the Construction Management Association of America, Metro New York/New Jersey Chapter. He will be honored at the CMAA annual luncheon on June 14 at the Yale Club in New York City. Truman is completing his master of science degree in construction administration at another prestigious university and earned a 4.165 GPA.

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Researchers at Arizona State University are finding a particularly pervasive problem with the microplastics that originate from human everyday use. Senior Sustainability Scientist Rolf Halden, director of the Biodesign Center for Environmental Health Engineering and professor at ASU’s School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, and his team worked with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute to analyze oceanic samples collected from vast vertical depths of seawater by the MBARI team.

The results were published June 6 in a Scientific Reports journal article titled, "The vertical distribution and biological transport of marine microplastics across the epipelagic and mesopelagic water column."

ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes Faculty Affiliate Rolf Halden’s work on microplastics pollution in oceans was recently featured in an ASU Now article titled “Pervasive polymers of the deep blue sea.”

Halden and his team determined the concentration of microplastics, broken down pieces of plastic products, in various depths of the ocean. They discovered the most concentrated plastic was found between 600 and 2,000 feet below the water’s surface and mostly consisted of plastic resistant to further breakdown.

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Arizona State University Professors Heather Throop and Osvaldo Sala have been awarded an International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) grant from The National Science Foundation of approximately $294,000. The grant, initiated under the auspices of the Global Drylands Center (GDC), will fund ecological research projects led by the collaborative effort of GDC and the Gobabeb Training and Research Center in Namibia.

IRES supports research for U.S. students contributing to the development of a diverse and globally engaged workforce. Student-driven projects will explore how broad-scale climate patterns and local-scale factors (e.g. soil properties) interact to control dryland ecological processes.

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A group of 30 people who live in a refugee settlement in Uganda are the first to take the online Agribusiness 250 course through Education for Humanity, an initiative of Arizona State University that is offering higher education to refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Uganda and Rwanda. Education for Humanity is managed by EdPlus, the unit at ASU that creates technology and forges partnerships to develop new ways of teaching and learning.

More than 68 million people are displaced around the globe, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, and fewer than 1% have access to higher education. Education for Humanity is trying to address that need.

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The Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems focuses on innovative ideas and solutions to the many challenges of current food systems. 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 Lauren Chenarides, assistant professor at the Morrison School of Agribusiness  in the W. P. Carey School of Business.

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With a growing number of sustainability programs out there, how do you choose?

Samantha Zah, a spring 2019 graduate of the Master of Sustainability Solutions (MSUS) at Arizona State University, said she chose the program because of its applied approach. “I was concerned with getting wrapped up in academia and losing connection with the real world, so I appreciated the option to straddle both while advancing my career in the MSUS program,” she explained.

Even before graduating, Zah applied the skills she was learning in class to a project with the Navajo Nation Gaming Enterprise, a business owned by the tribe. As part of the Navajo Nation’s strategic plan to advance economically by expanding tourism, Navajo Gaming is developing a travel center near Flagstaff — and Zah worked with the business to ensure sustainability was embedded in the project.

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Marine biologist and engineer Shimrit Perkol-Finkel was in Hawaii May 28-June 2 en route to the Women Deliver conference in Vancouver, where Amanda Ellis and Perkol-Finkel are both speaking on the same panel.

Perkol-Finkel is an inaugural awardee for the WE Empower UN SDG Challenge headlined by the UN Secretary General and President of the World Bank last September. We are so pleased Hawai'i Green Growth is a dissemination partner. Perkol-Finkel is co-founder of a company creating "ECOncrete" as a positive response to marine climate change.

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Members of Arizona State University’s Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative team won the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council’s Outstanding Case Award for their case study “Environmental Purchasing in the City of Phoenix.”

The case study by Stuart Bretschneider, Justin Stritch, Lily Hsueh and Nicole Darnall, co-founder of the SPRI, pinpoints both the facilitators and challenges of implementing an environmental purchasing policy (EPP). It also offers eight recommendations for how cities like Phoenix can integrate an EPP more fully into their existing purchasing processes.

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School of Sustainability PhD student Leah Jones decided to run for 2019-2020 president of GPSA, Graduate and Professional Student Association at Arizona State University, because she wanted to make sure that all students’ voices would be heard and that minority students’ challenges would be addressed.

She won. Jones is now the first black president of GPSA, an accomplishment she called “bittersweet.”

“It’s encouraging to hold that title and to know that it is helping to increase the number of minority students in leadership positions, however at the same time I wish it hadn't taken nearly 15 years for a black president to be elected,” Jones said.

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This week the Global Locust Initiative facilitated a collaboration three years in the making. Dr. Britt Peterson, assistant professor of Biological Sciences at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE), visited the Cease lab at Arizona State University to jump start a project on gut microbiota of two Schistocerca species.

Peterson’s research focuses on insect-microbe associations and how these gut microbial communities impact host biology. With access to live hoppers at ASU, Peterson worked to culture normal flora and potential pathogens out of freshly dissected gut tissue.

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In recognition of Arizona Heat Awareness Week May 27 through May 31, ASU Now is highlighting a slew of projects and initiatives that are expanding our understanding and capabilities as they concern the inescapable environmental reality of scorching temperatures.

The article, "Summer in the City," highlights the work of several senior sustainability scientists and fellows: Mikhail Chester, Ariane Middel, David Hondula, Nancy Selover, Sharon Harlan and Matei Georgescu.

All of these faculty are affiliated with the Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research program, a unit of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability.

The Sustainability Education and Energy Knowledge-sharing (SEEK) Project catalyzes the values-driven leadership of cohesive social networks, such as congregations and nonprofits, to accelerate societal energy transitions through education, technical assistance and social innovation. An action research project of the Spirituality and Sustainability Initiative, SEEK relies on a novel model for leveraging existing assets and in-kind resources from multi-sectoral partners (including universities, congregations, commercial energy professionals, federal programs and local leaders) to provide tailored mentoring and technical assistance in various online and face-to-face formats that facilitate progressive knowledge development, knowledge sharing and mutual problem-solving.

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Nicole Kinsey grew up in Tempe, Arizona, so going to Arizona State University was a natural choice. The only big change she faced was the size of school; in contrast with the small Catholic schools she was used to, ASU seemed huge.

“I went from knowing everyone in my senior class to having classes bigger than my entire high school,” Kinsey said. “Communities like the School of Sustainability make ASU feel smaller and tight knit.”

Kinsey wasn’t always a sustainability student — she added it as a second major a couple years into her ASU experience. This month, she graduated with bachelor’s degrees in both sustainability and global health. In her Q&A, read why Kinsey felt her education wouldn’t have been complete without sustainability.

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Kaylin Ayotte is an Arizona native and a two-time Arizona State University graduate. After receiving a bachelor’s degree from the School of Sustainability and a minor in business, she went on to expand her education with the Master of Sustainability Solutions (MSUS), graduating in Spring 2019.

Along with fellow student Isabel Burdge, Ayotte developed a publication for sustainability professionals, Mindiac, that focuses on mindfulness. Read more about their culminating experience project, and Ayotte’s experience in the MSUS program, in her Q&A below.

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Rachael Granger is a soon-to-be senior at Arizona State University majoring in sustainability and pursuing a certificate in sustainable food systems. After switching majors a couple times, she landed in sustainability because she wanted to be a part of a field that is finding solutions to the world’s biggest challenges.

Read Granger’s Q&A for more about her experience as a School of Sustainability student.

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ASU Center for Biodiversity Outcomes Founding Director Leah Gerber was featured in an Arizona Republic article titled “ASU scientist crusades for action to help environment”.

In the article, Gerber shares her insights on contributing to a recent United Nations report – a global assessment of biodiversity and outlined actions to protect it.

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By Peter Schlosser, vice president and vice provost for Global Futures and the University Global Futures Professor with joint appointments in the School of Sustainability, School of Earth and Space Exploration, and School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment.

Kudos to Bob Litterman for his continuing work on a possible carbon tax or carbon price and the role it would play in getting the world to take responsibility for the planet’s environment. Litterman, a founding partner and chairman of the Risk Committee at Kepos Capital and a member of the board for GIOS, was recently cited by Bloomberg Business for his work in proposing that a carbon tax be established. He has also said it should be pushed by the Republicans in the U.S. as a way to curb future carbon emissions.

Litterman recently noted that such a carbon price is not part of the Green New Deal, the major climate policy proposed by some Democrats, and that is good for Republicans, who should now take up that mantle and push for it in Congress.

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The Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems focuses on innovative ideas and solutions to the many challenges of current food systems. 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 Joan McGregor professor in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

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