Climate change impacts and policy in the Dominican Republic
This Wintermester study abroad course uses the Dominican Republic as a case study to introduce students to the impacts of climate change on key ecosystems (e.g., coastal areas) and natural resources (e.g., forests, biodiversity) and related mitigation and adaptation strategies. Students will also learn about ongoing impacts on agricultural production and people’s livelihoods and strategies to decrease GHG emissions and reduce vulnerability to climate change. Students will meet with scientists, environmental NGOs, and government officials. Students will explore the effects of a changing climate through field trips, hands-on experience, meetings, lectures, and readings.
Course period: January 1st-13th, 2017
Registration closes: September 30, 2016
Interested students should contact:
Dr. Carol Franco (carol@vt.edu) Senior Research Associate Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation
Climate change threatens our local communities and built environments. Public officials and other stakeholders need to rapidly enhance their understanding of the risks and adopt adaptive strategies in response. If these efforts are to be effective, the myriad of public and private actors need to find ways to collaborate, particularly when the risks cross traditional sectoral and geographical boundaries.
Dr. Todd Schenk
A recent article in Nature Climate Change co-authored by School of Public and International Affairs Assistant Professor and Global Change Center Affiliate Todd Schenk, along with Assistant Professor Danya Rumore of the University of Utah and Professor Lawrence Susskind of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, examines the use of role-play simulation exercises as tools for education and engagement. This form of face-to-face ‘serious game’ in which participants take on roles and attempt to reach consensus on challenges that are fictitious but look much like those they might face in the real world has proven invaluable for enhancing ‘readiness to adapt’. This research suggests that RPS exercises can effectively illustrate new threats and opportunities, cultivate climate adaption literacy, enhance collaborative capacity, and encourage collective action.
Virginia Tech professor Fred Benfield has spent the better part of the past 45 years pursuing a variety of interests, from freshwater ecology research to performing live music.
Dr. Fred Benfield
Raised in rural North Carolina near the Blue Ridge Mountains, he spent many hours roaming the woods and creeks as a child. As an undergraduate student at Appalachian State University, he took several ecology courses, but said that his interest in freshwater ecology specifically developed as a graduate student in Virginia Tech’s Department of Biological Sciences, part of the College of Science.
“Working in the field with [my mentor] Dr. [Stuart] Neff and his graduate students really helped me focus my interests on freshwater ecology,” said Benfield.
He is one of seven Virginia Tech employees who are being honored for 45 years of service to Virginia Tech. He was recognized during the 2016 Service Recognition Program this spring.
Benfield began his career at Virginia Tech as a graduate teaching and research assistant and is now an ecology professor and the associate department head of biological sciences. His current research focuses on ecosystem level and biodiversity responses of aquatic systems to historical and contemporary changes in land-use.
Benfield is one of the founders of Virginia Tech’s Stream Team/Ecosystem Research Group, which is a collection of biology professors and students who study different aspects of ecosystem ecology. He is also a member of the Society for Freshwater Science, with his Stream Team co-founder, Jackson Webster.
“Fred is well known in his profession for his 45-plus years of research in stream ecology and for being one of the real movers and shakers in our professional society,” said Webster.
Benfield served the freshwater society in many roles, including as president from 1994 to 1995, and he received the society’s Distinguished Service Award in 2011.
Benfield’s teaching assignments have included general biology, zoology, ecology, and freshwater ecology at Virginia Tech. Benfield said he particularly enjoys advising undergraduate students.
Benfield’s other interests include basketball, hiking, and biking. He also enjoys spending time with his wife of 52 years and playing music with his two sons.
For nearly 30 years, Benfield has played guitar in a local band called “American Roots” with his eldest son, Jon. Benfield’s younger son moved to Los Angeles to perform music but joins the duo on stage when he returns home to visit.
The family band plays covers of Americana-style music, ranging from The Carter Family to George Gershwin. They have made appearances at various New River Valley locations, including Gillie’s and the Palisades. They have also performed at Blacksburg’s annual street festival, Steppin’ Out, the Floyd County Store, the Blue Ridge Parkway, and several local wineries.
“My favorite part of performing is the communication that occurs between us during gigs,” said Benfield. “We’ve played together for so long that we just somehow know where the other is going on tunes without saying anything or even looking at each other.”
Written by Mackenzie Nicely, a senior from Lexington, Virginia, majoring in public relations and political science.
When sea lions suffered seizures and birds and porpoises started dying on the California coast last year, scientists weren’t entirely surprised. Toxic algae is known to harm marine mammals.
But when researchers found enormous amounts of toxin in a pelican that had been slurping anchovies, they decided to sample fresh-caught fish. To their surprise, they found toxins at such dangerous levels in anchovy meat that the state urged people to immediately stop eating them.
The algae bloom that blanketed the West Coast in 2015 was the most toxic one ever recorded in that region. But from the fjords of South America to the waters of the Arabian Sea, harmful blooms, perhaps accelerated by ocean warming and other shifts linked to climate change, are wreaking more havoc on ocean life and people. And many scientists project they will get worse.
“What emerged from last year’s event is just how little we really know about what these things can do,” says Raphael Kudela, a toxic algae expert at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
It’s been understood for decades, for example, that nutrients, such as fertilizer and livestock waste that flush off farms and into the Mississippi River, can fuel harmful blooms in the ocean, driving low-oxygen dead zones like the one in the Gulf of Mexico. Such events have been on the rise around the world, as population centers boom and more nitrogen and other waste washes out to sea.
“There’s no question that we are seeing more harmful blooms in more places, that they are lasting longer, and we’re seeing new species in different areas,” says Pat Glibert, a phytoplankton expert at the University of Maryland. “These trends are real.”
But scientists also now see troubling evidence of harmful algae in places nearly devoid of people. They’re seeing blooms last longer and spread wider and become more toxic simply when waters warm. And some are finding that even in places overburdened by poor waste management, climate-related shifts in weather may already be exacerbating problems.
In the north, blooms are on the rise in places like Greenland, where some scientists suspect the shift is actually melting ice. Just this year, scientists showed that domoic acid from toxic algae was showing up in walrus, bowhead whales, beluga, and fur seals in Alaska’s Arctic, where such algae species weren’t believed to be common.
A California sea lion female with underweight pup. Photo NOAA Fisheries.
“We expect to see conditions that are conducive for harmful algal blooms to happen more and more often,” says Mark Wells, with the University of Maine. “We’ve got some pretty good ideas about what will happen, but there will be surprises, and those surprises can be quite radical.”
THE ALBINO MINE, Venezuela — The 12th time Reinaldo Balocha got malaria, he hardly rested at all. With the fever still rattling his body, he threw a pick ax over his shoulder and got back to work — smashing stones in an illegal gold mine.
As a computer technician from a big city, Mr. Balocha was ill-suited for the mines, his soft hands used to working keyboards, not the earth. But Venezuela’s economy collapsed on so many levels that inflation had obliterated his salary, along with his hopes of preserving a middle-class life.
So, like tens of thousands of other people from across the country, Mr. Balocha came to these open, swampy mines scattered across the jungle, looking for a future. Here, waiters, office workers, taxi drivers, college graduates and even civil servants on vacation from their government jobs are out panning for black-market gold, all under the watchful eyes of an armed group that taxes them and threatens to tie them to posts if they disobey.
It is a society turned upside down, a place where educated people abandon once-comfortable jobs in the city for dangerous, backbreaking work in muddy pits, desperate to make ends meet. And it comes with a steep price: Malaria, long driven to the fringes of the country, is festering in the mines and back with a vengeance.
Venezuela was the first nation in the world to be certified by the World Health Organization for eradicating malaria in its most populated areas, beating the United States and other developed countries to that milestone in 1961.
It was a huge accomplishment for a small nation, one that helped pave Venezuela’s development as an oil power and fueled hopes that a model to stamp out malaria across the globe was at hand. Since then, the world has dedicated enormous amounts of time and money to beating back the disease, with deaths plummeting by 60 percent in places with malaria in recent years, according to the W.H.O.
But in Venezuela, the clock is running backward.
The country’s economic turmoil has brought malaria back, sweeping the disease out of the remote jungle areas where it quietly persisted and spreading it around the nation at levels not seen in Venezuela for 75 years, medical experts say.
It all starts with the mines. With the economy in tatters, at least 70,000 people from all walks of life have been streaming into this mining region over the past year, said Jorge Moreno, a leading mosquito expert in Venezuela. As they hunt for gold in watery pits, the perfect breeding ground for the mosquitoes that spread the disease, they are catching malaria by the tens of thousands.
Then, with the disease in their blood, they return home to Venezuela’s cities. But because of the economic collapse, there is often no medicine and little fumigation to prevent mosquitoes there from biting them and passing malaria to others, sickening tens of thousands more people and leaving entire towns desperate for help.
And 2016 will almost definitely be the hottest year yet
July 2016 was the warmest month ever recorded, the latest in a slew of new temperature records set in the past several years, according to two new reports.
Scientists have recorded month after month of record-breaking temperatures this year, but July shattered all those records to become the hottest of any month in any year since record keeping began. The data was confirmed separately by NASA and the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA), and provides near certainty that 2016 will be the hottest year in recorded history.
July was 0.78°C (1.4°F) warmer than the 20th century average, according to the JMA. Locations across the globe experienced extreme heat in July, including a so-called heat dome that hit across the U.S. and record temperatures of 54°C (129.2°F) in Kuwait.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the primary body in the U.S. that tracks weather and climate data, is expected to release results Thursday.
Climate scientists attribute the spike in temperatures to man-made global warming along with a number of shorter-term climate patterns.
For the first time, two fall sections of GRAD 5144, Communicating Science, are being offered, and currently there is space in both sections (CRN 84376 and CRN 88914). To accommodate the cycle of work in grad students’ lives at the beginning and end of the semester, the course is compressed into ten sessions, beginning the week of September 12 and wrapping up the week of November 14.
This 2-credit participatory course uses theatre improv games and writing exercises to help students become more comfortable with and effective at communicating their research to non-scientist audiences. Participants also find that it helps them with lab meeting presentations, talks at conferences, and communication in committee meetings and collaborative research. GRAD 5144 is intended to promote understanding of science by training the next generation of scientists, engineers, and health professionals to communicate more effectively about their work in a variety of contexts.
Virginia Tech students have had the following to say about their experience:
“The class has been great fun, the high spot of every week and a real learning opportunity for me. I am extremely impressed at the progress we have all made.”
“This course is the best I have taken at Virginia Tech. It has helped me grow as a researcher and as a person.”
“I will take away numerous lifelong lessons from this class on my continuing quest to be an effective scientific communicator.”
“I will remember this course and what I have learned for the rest of my life. It has completely changed the way I feel when sharing information about my work.”
“Personal and professional development is at the core of this remarkable class.”
“I won first place in the poster competition and got $500! I could not have done it without this class.”
Please contact Carrie Kroehler (cjkroehl@vt.edu) if you have questions or need more information. Thanks for helping spread the word!
The historic and devastating floods in Louisiana are the latest in a series of heavy deluges that some climate scientists warn will become even more common as the world continues to warm.
On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) is set to classify the Louisiana disaster as the eighth flood considered to be a once in every 500-year event to have taken place in the US in little over 12 months.
Since May of last year, dozens of people have been killed and thousands of homes have been swamped with water in extreme events in Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, West Virginia and Maryland. Noaa considers these floods extreme because, based on historical rainfall records, they should be expected to occur only once every 500 years.
The Louisiana flooding has been so exceptional that some places in the state experienced storm conditions considered once-every-1,000-year events. Close to two feet of rain fell over a 48-hour period in parts of southern Louisiana, causing residents to scramble to safety from flooded homes and cars.
At least six people have died, with another 20,000 people having to be rescued. Even Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards had to evacuate after his governor’s mansion in Baton Rogue was swamped with chest-high water. A federal state of emergency has been declared, with 12,000 people crowding into shelters.
The National Weather Service balloon released in New Orleans on Friday showed near-record levels of atmospheric moisture, prompting the service to state that “we are in record territory”. Climate scientists have warned that the build-up of moisture in the atmosphere, driven by warming temperatures, is likely to cause a greater number of floods in the future.
“We have been on an upward trend in terms of heavy rainfall events over the past two decades, which is likely related to the amount of water vapor going up in the atmosphere,” said Dr Kenneth Kunkel, of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites.
“There’s a very tight loop – as surface temperatures of the oceans warm up, the immediate response is more water vapor in the atmosphere. We’re in a system inherently capable of producing more floods.”
The amount of heavy rainfall events in the US has risen well above the long-term average since the 1990s, with large regional variances. While the north-east, Midwest and upper Great Plains have experienced a 30% increase in heavy rainfall episodes – considered a once-in-every-five year downpours – parts of the west, particularly California, have been parched in drought.
Warmer air, influenced by heat-trapping gases released by human activity, can contain more water vapor than cooler air. With the extra heat helping nourish storms, scientists expect global warming to help produce more intense downpours.
“Assuming we don’t change our ways, warming is a virtual certainty and increased water vapor is virtual certainty,” Kunkel said. “That means increases in heavy rainfall is virtual certainty.”
Dr. Kaja Abbas, an Assistant Professor in Population Health Sciences, is offering this graduate course in fall semester 2016:
Modeling Infectious Diseases
PHS 5354 /3 credits/ Fall 2016
Course description
Mathematical modeling of infectious diseases in humans and animals. Topics include deterministic susceptibles-infectious-recovered (SIR) and related models, estimation of reproductive number, host heterogeneities, multi-pathogen/multi-host models, spatio-temporal models, stochastic dynamics, and modeling for public health policy.
Learning objectives
• Gain knowledge and understanding of concepts and methods in
mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
• Critically select the appropriate modeling methods to study infectious disease prevention and control programs at the population level.
• Develop computer models to simulate infectious disease epidemics and prevention interventions.
• Critically evaluate scientific articles in mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dr. Quinn Thomas will be teaching ECOSYSTEMS AND CLIMATE, FREC 5204, during fall semester 2016. This is a graduate-level course that explores the interactions between ecosystems and climate. Key focal areas will include:
Basics of climate science and climate change for graduate students in environmental and ecological sciences
Concepts for understanding how ecosystems influence climate with focus on greenhouse gas, water, and energy dynamics
Concepts for understanding how ecosystem dynamics are influenced by climate change
Applications of the R programing language for simple climate and ecosystem modeling
Skills in global scale, quantitative thinking
Dr. Quinn Thomas
Lecture and laboratory will be combined into a course that flows between lectures, discussions, debates, modeling exercises, and group projects.
Monday and Wednesdays: 9:00 – 9:55 a.m. (Cheatham Hall 218)
Computer Lab: Tuesdays 3:00 – 5:00 p.m. (Cheatham Hall 217)
For more information, please contact Dr. Quinn Thomas (rqthomas@vt.edu)
