Category: Climate Change

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Biodiversity Blog Climate Change Conservation Global Change Habitat Loss Pollution Research Water

Bye-bye mayfly: Can the burrowing mayfly’s decline serve as a warning system for the health of our environment?

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | February 6, 2020

Sally Entrekin Field
Sally Entrekin samples a stream in search of aquatic insects, including mayfly nymphs.

 

Mayflies have long been indicators of the ecological health of the lakes, rivers, and streams. The more mayflies present in water, the better the water quality.

But scientists from Virginia Tech and the University of Notre Dame recently discovered that a particular species — the burrowing mayfly — had a population decrease of nearly 84 percent from 2015 to 2019. The measurements, using radar, took place during the annual insect emergence events at Lake Erie, when the transition of almost 88 billion insects moving from the waterways to the air marks one of world’s largest annual insect emergence events.

Although it was previously impossible to analyze the emergence of the burrowing mayfly, researchers were finally able to do so by using meteorological radar data and new methods in tracking the presence of airborne creatures. By observing the swarms on a year-to-year basis, the data showed a shockingly simple trend: over the same timeframe and time of year, the mayfly swarms are growing smaller.

“This refined radar technology that allows for tracking and quantifying aquatic insect populations at such a large scale is instrumental in understanding land-water connections,” explained Sally Entrekin, an associate professor in the Department of Entomology in the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

The finding speaks to more than just the mayfly’s decline: It highlights the growing problem of insect decline and the cascading effects that has on ecosystems around the world.

“Radar technology — coupled with traditional field sampling — can start to address the scope and magnitude of insect declines from global change in aquatic ecosystems,” said Entrekin.

Entrekin and her colleagues, Phil Stepanian, Charlotte Wainwright, Djordje Mirkovic, Jennifer Tank, and Jeffrey Kelly, recently published their findings in the Proceedings in the National Academy of Sciences.

The emergence is visually spectacular (where the skies are darkened by the shear mass of flying insects), but this event also represents a new availability of food for many creatures throughout the food chain, providing more than 3,000 tons of insects for consumption by birds and other land-based plants and animals.

Adult_mayfly
An adult burrowing mayfly. Image credit (also header image): Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State University, Bugwood.org

 

Fish, birds, bats, and other animals consume the mayflies as a source of food and nutrients. Some insect-eating birds in these areas have synchronized breeding habits that coincide with mayfly emergence, and they rely on them as a high-quality food source for their young. These bird populations have also taken a downturn, which has been partially attributed to the lack of insects to eat, particularly aquatic insects.

Historically, negative human impacts on mayfly habitat has led to reductions and disappearances of the mayfly swarms. While conservation and habitat rehabilitation have helped to clean up the waterways and bring back the mayflies, in the Mississippi, Ohio, and Illinois rivers, as well as Lake Erie, efforts to bring back the mayfly swarms took nearly 20 years to reach their previous levels. As the research shows, it appears the swarms are once again declining.

Multiple stressors in these waterways attributed to human activity could be a reason for the reduction in mayfly populations. A warming climate puts more stress on certain aquatic environments, leading to decreased oxygen levels, which can result in fewer mayflies coming out of the water. Runoff from rivers into the warmer surface waters of Lake Erie, for instance, can cause algae blooms, which release toxins that these mayflies are especially susceptible to.

Another type of runoff from agricultural land carries commonly applied pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids, which can kill mayflies as immatures in the water. Even when these pesticides are present in nondeadly levels, they can negatively affect mayfly young by stunting their ability to reach adult stage. Many of these factors likely contribute to the decreasing mayfly populations, and policy and conservation efforts will be needed in order to change this trend.

Global insect population decline is an emerging topic that has sparked public awareness, however there are logistical challenges to analyzing these trends. Monitoring the life-cycle of the burrowing mayfly and other aquatic insects offers an early warning system for changes in our ecosystems.

This monitoring system is also applicable in other parts of the world where large aquatic emergence events occur, and it can be useful in pinpointing regions that would benefit from waterway conservation efforts or ecological rehabilitation efforts. With the impact the climate crisis is having on ecosystems, tracking the emergence of certain aquatic insects could serve to motivate and inform the public as to the effect humans are having on their local waterways.

 

Sally_Entrekin_and_lab
Sally Entrekin and her lab on a collecting trip

CONTACT:

James Mason
540-231-6826

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Categories
Blog Climate Change Conservation Disease Drinking water Evolution Faculty Spotlight Food & Agriculture Global Change Research

The GCC welcomes seven new faculty affiliates

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Meet our newest faculty affiliates:

 

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Dr. Cully Hession

Professor, Department of Biological Systems Engineering

Research focus: His lab focuses stream channel structure and sediment dynamics, influence of human activities on streams, techniques for measuring and improving in-stream habitat, and development of technologies and strategies for successful stream restoration.  Current research focuses on using drones and drone-based lidar to map riverscapes and tracer studies to better understand sediment transport and fate. Dr. Hession is also PI/co-Director of an interdisciplinary research and extension training program called “Training Future Leaders to Solve Resource Challenges at the Confluence of Water and Society.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47579″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. Florian Zach

Assistant Professor, Deparment of Hospitality & Tourism Management

Research interests:  Dr. Zach is interested in strategic issues that support the sustainable development of tourism destinations. He has investigated the inter-organizational collaboration and networks to understand how destination stakeholders collectively develop tourism innovations. Additionally, he works with colleagues to understand human-computer interaction issues stemming from the use of cutting-edge technologies in the context of tourism. Current projects include exploring the effects of summer adventure parks built by ski resorts in the Austrian Alps as a response to shorter winter and longer summer seasons and also the impacts of the 2018 Florida Red Tide on hotel & short-term rentals (Airbnb & similar).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47688″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. J. Leighton Reid

Assistant Professor, School of Plant & Environmental Sciences

Research interests: Dr. Reid’s research interests encompass tropical forest restoration in Latin America and Madagascar as well as temperate forest, woodland, and grassland restoration in the eastern United States. Specifically, he investigates how local restoration interventions interact with their surrounding landscape to affect biodiversity recovery, how keystone plant species can be used to catalyze ecological succession, why some restored ecosystems persist much longer than others, and what soil and environmental factors limit the recolonization of rare plants in regenerating ecosystems.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47595″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. Rachel Reid

Research Scientist, Department of Geosciences

Research interests: Dr. Reid is a paleoecologist interested in how disturbances, such as climate and environmental change, impact species, ecosystems, and their interactions over a range of timescales. As a Research Scientist at Virginia Tech, Dr. Reid runs the Stable Isotope Laboratory.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47396″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. Theo Lim

Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Affairs & Environmental Planning

Research interests: Dr. Lim’s research focuses on the environmental planning of linked land, water, infrastructure, and social systems. His interests include urban hydrology, distributed stormwater practices, community green infrastructure, energy planning in agricultural and rural settings, land development impacts on the hydrological cycle, and applications of data science in urban & environmental planning.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47637″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. Ben Gill

Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences

Research interests: Dr. Gill specializes in reconstructing the present and past chemical cycles on our planet. He leads the Biogeochemistry Laboratory Group at Virginia Tech. The main research focus of his group concerns understanding the connections between major changes in the environment (oxygenation/deoxygenation oceans, climatic warming and cooling, etc.) and major events in the history of life (originations, diversifications and mass extinctions).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”47465″ img_size=”275×355″ style=”vc_box_border”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Dr. James Weger-Lucarelli

Research Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences & Pathology

Research interests: Dr. Weger-Lucarelli’s research focuses on understanding viral and host determinants that mediate disease severity, transmission, evolution, and protection against mosquito-borne viruses. The Weger-Lucarelli lab uses molecular, virological, and computational methods to study these interactions, with the goal to recognize and study emerging viral threats before they product massive outbreaks.  He is also working to produce innovative vaccines to prevent mosquito-borne viral disease.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator style=”shadow” border_width=”5″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Categories
Blog Climate Change Faculty Spotlight Global Change Research Water

Helping coastal communities face the challenges posed by flooding and sea level rise

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | December 3, 2019

As coastal communities continue to be threatened by more frequent and severe storms and sea level rise, there is a demand to better understand the challenges these communities face and to develop effective resilience strategies to deal with those challenges.

Assistant Professor Anamaria Bukvic of the College of Natural Resources and Environment is using a fellowship from the National Center for Atmospheric Research to look into the issue of population mobility in the face of coastal vulnerability.

Bukvic, a faculty member in the Department of Geography and an affiliate of the Global Change Center at Virginia Tech, housed in the Fralin Life Sciences Institute, was selected as a Fellow of the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Early Career Faculty Innovator Program, which provides funding for Fellows to partake in convergence research that tackles a specific pressing issue and addresses both its physical and social dimensions. This year’s research theme was “Coastal Regions and Human Settlements.”

“Recurrent flooding and other hazards in coastal areas represent a very complex and unique challenge that can only be resolved by holistic problem-solving,” said Bukvic, a co-leader of the Coastal@VT initiative.

“We already know a lot about the physical risks but much less about the human aspects, such as risk perceptions, values, attitudes, and behaviors,” she continued. “We need to understand how social systems respond to coastal flooding and accelerated sea level rise so that we can develop more effective policies and programs for adaptation in coastal communities.”

Bukvic’s research focuses on the subject of coastal vulnerability to flooding and, more specifically, on flood-induced population displacement and relocation. During her summer residency at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) facility in Boulder, Colorado, she established new collaborations with NCAR scientists and other Fellows to study the issue from different disciplinary angles and by using novel methodologies.

“A great strength of this program is that it includes both social and physical scientists,” Bukvic said. “It’s not just STEM-based — there are strong elements of social science as well. We have the opportunity to not only work with unique data sets provided by NCAR but also to interact and collaborate with scientists from a diverse range of disciplines who are all working on the issue of coastal resilience.”

In addition to supporting early career faculty, NCAR’s Innovator Program provides funds for graduate students to participate. Aaron Whittemore, a master’s student in geography at Virginia Tech, accompanied Bukvic to NCAR.

“It was a great experience,” Whittemore said. “All of the professors involved were in the early stages of their careers, and they were really motivated. New ideas were constantly sparking up during meetings, and I learned a lot, even outside the science work, just by talking to these professors. It was exciting to see how they came together to create really collaborative work.”

Whittemore spent the summer researching the factors that affect how people feel about places where they live. Those factors will be used to develop a sense-of-place metric to help scientists better understand why some people prefer to relocate and others to stay in place despite the risks.

For Bukvic, a native of Croatia, the experience of living close to the sea is a familiar one, and she recognizes the challenges in speaking to communities about sea level rise.

“Growing up, I always looked forward to summers on the Adriatic Sea. It’s given me an appreciation for the coastal culture and lifestyle and the many ecosystem services coastal environments provide. I understand that any discussion about whether people should stay in place or move away from the coast is a difficult one. It’s important to think about climate processes within the context of adaptive adjustments that would help people cope with flooding as well as safely relocate when staying in place is no longer possible.”

As a part of the two-year long fellowship, Bukvic will spend another summer residency at the NCAR facility, where she and graduate student Jack Gonzales will work with NCAR collaborators and other Fellows on the new convergence research efforts. Some of these efforts will benefit from NCAR’s capacity to provide unique data and skill sets, as well as expertise in specific disciplinary domains.

Written by David Fleming

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CONTACT:

Krista Timney

540-231-6157

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Blog Climate Change Faculty Spotlight Global Change Grants Research Water

Researcher receives NSF grant to study the fate of terrestrial carbon in freshwater ecosystems

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | November 25, 2019

Carbon serves as the building block of life — it cycles through every organism, the environment, and the atmosphere to make Earth capable of sustaining life.

Freshwater ecosystems may cover less than one percent of the Earth’s surface, but they play an active role in the global carbon cycle through carbon respiration and sequestration.

Through photosynthesis, terrestrial trees and plants take in carbon dioxide (CO2) and water to produce carbohydrates and oxygen. When plants die, the organic carbon that makes up their leaves, stems, and roots decays in the soil. But landscapes are “leaky” — some carbon seeps into the groundwater and travels through streams and rivers before being cycled back into the atmosphere. How carbon moves through a landscape and across land-water boundaries has implications for water quality and freshwater food webs.

Erin Hotchkiss, an ecosystem ecologist and assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science, and her collaborators received a $1.12 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study how carbon moves across land-water boundaries and the multi-scale consequences of terrestrial carbon losses for freshwater ecosystems and global carbon budgets.

“Streams are the gutters and recycling centers of a landscape — what we see in terms of water quality and biology in streams reflects not only what’s happening in the waterway itself, but it is also an indicator of what is happening on the surrounding landscape,” said Hotchkiss, an affiliated member of the Global Change Center, housed within the Fralin Life Sciences Institute. “We can’t understand the fate of terrestrial carbon without linking landscapes with their waterways.”

Carbon cycling in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems are rarely studied together. Hotchkiss and her team are working to understand how materials and energy move across ecosystem boundaries and how that alters biological functions, such as metabolism, and greenhouse gas emissions in streams. Stream metabolism, the balance between photosynthesis and respiration, is a fundamental process that contributes to water quality and food web production.

Forests are carbon sinks, or natural carbon reservoirs, but streams play an opposite role in the carbon cycle — they are often carbon sources that emit CO2 and methane to the atmosphere. When co-located streams and forests are considered as a single unit, scientists can help fill in a critical knowledge gap in the global carbon budget by addressing a key question: What is the fate of terrestrial carbon? To address this, Hotchkiss’ research will link measurements of how much carbon is stored in forests after photosynthesis, how much leaks into streams, and how much is respired and emitted by streams.

“From global budgeting perspectives, we’re still missing this concept of landscapes leaking carbon across terrestrial-aquatic boundaries,” said Hotchkiss. “Being able to quantify and propose a framework for including how much carbon moves from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems and what that means for CO2 emissions is needed to improve future budgets of where carbon sources and sinks are located across the globe.”

Four images from the same NEON study site in Alaska’s Caribou Creek depict the various seasons of the Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. An instrument is located in the center of the stream. Courtesy of the PhenoCam Network.
Images taken throughout 2018 at the NEON study site in Alaska’s Caribou Creek. Courtesy of the PhenoCam Network.

The fate of carbon from terrestrial-aquatic exchanges is still a mystery. To investigate, Hotchkiss will use sites established by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a research effort focused on understanding how terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems across the United States change over time.

Hotchkiss and her team of professors, students, and postdocs will make use of NEON’s ongoing terrestrial and aquatic measurements while also installing new CO2 sensors produced by industry collaborators. These sensors will collect stream CO2 data throughout the day, season, and year. Integrating CO2 sensor and NEON data will allow them to compare carbon emissions with carbon cycling and movement across the landscape.

“To better understand the role of streams in the carbon cycle, we need long-term, high-frequency CO2 data. These sensors will provide information on the magnitude and variability of emissions and will allow us to test our understanding of the biological, geophysical, and climate drivers of CO2 emissions,” Hotchkiss said. “There are only five NEON sites with co-located terrestrial and aquatic measurements, but they’re all very different, ranging from boreal Arctic to temperate grasslands and even a small, forested watershed nearby in Tennessee.”

Outside of the project’s research objectives, Hotchkiss is planning to work with K-12 educators, who will be awarded fellowships to develop inquiry-based lesson plans that make use of publically available NEON data. Each lesson plan will be tailored to the grade level, curriculum, and educator’s goals. In some classes, students will build sensors that will be used to collect the same types of high-frequency data that informs Hotchkiss’ research.

“It is really important for us to get out of our lab space and communicate our science with other people. One of the greatest impacts we can have is by working with teachers to develop tools to share science and the scientific experience more widely,” Hotchkiss said.

Hotchkiss led this grant in collaboration with David Butman of the University of Washington, Wil Wollheim of the University of New Hampshire, Jay Jones of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Kaelin Cawley and Keli Goodman of NEON. Of the total $1.12 million, Hotchkiss will receive $490,000 at Virginia Tech.

—   Written by Rasha Aridi

CONTACT:

Kristin Rose
(540) 231-6614

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Categories
Blog Climate Change Conservation Faculty Spotlight Global Change Grants Habitat Loss

Scientists using collaborative NSF grant to understand hydrologic controls on carbon processes in wetlands

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | November 22, 2019

Wetlands play an important role in the carbon cycle, aiding in the storage and distribution of this crucial energy resource. Now a collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation will allow scientists to research the linkages between hydrological and carbon dynamics taking place in forested wetlands to better understand the role that these ecosystems plays in the export, storage, and emission of carbon.

“Wetlands are productive ecosystems, generating large amounts of vegetation biomass; at the same time, they also receive leaf fall and other carbon inputs from adjacent upland areas,” explained Daniel McLaughlin, assistant professor in Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment and principal investigator for the grant.

“They can then store that carbon in organic soil, emit it as carbon dioxide or methane, or export it as dissolved organic carbon to downstream waters, where it will contribute to aquatic food webs,” he continued. “While these wetland carbon processes are well recognized, less is known regarding how they are regulated by water storage and exchange within networks of multiple, interacting wetlands.”

With wetlands under threat from land use changes, it is crucial for scientists to understand how hydrology influences wetland carbon export and emissions in order to strengthen efforts to conserve and restore wetland ecosystems.

To that end, Virginia Tech scientists will be working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Maryland and the University of Alabama to study isolated wetlands in the Delmarva Peninsula area of Maryland.

“We’re focused on a particular type of wetland in the Delmarva Peninsula called Delmarva bays,” said McLaughlin, a faculty member in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation and an affiliate of the Virginia Water Resources Research Center. “These depressional wetlands are small and geographically isolated, dotting the Delmarva landscape.”

“This particular wetland-rich landscape is a good representation of other regions where small wetlands dominate, interact, and have a cumulative effect on landscape-scale water and carbon cycling. Our work hopes to broadly inform wetland management in Delmarva and in other wetland-rich regions,” he added.

Co-principal investigator Erin Hotchkiss, assistant professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in Virginia Tech’s College of Science, said that the project will use methods and knowledge from multiple disciplines to provide a comprehensive understanding of wetland dynamics.

“I’m excited this project includes collaborators whose strengths are in hydrology, ecology, and biogeochemistry,” said Hotchkiss, an affiliate of the Global Change Center housed in the Fralin Life Sciences Institute. “These fields have great potential to inform one another, but we don’t often collaborate across disciplines. This project is an exciting opportunity to understand how water and carbon move through wetland landscapes through multiple research angles.”

The project will use state-of-the-art sensors to collect data, making simultaneous measurements of water storage and water exchange, dissolved organic carbon, and CO2 and CH4 emissions. These sensors will allow researchers to gather high-frequency measurements that will capture the relationship between carbon processes and wetland hydrology in real time.

Co-principal investigator Durelle Scott, associate professor in Virginia Tech’s Department of Biological Systems Engineering, which is in both the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering, said that this effort has broader ramifications for reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

“When we restore wetlands, we’re often focused on restoring the hydrology and the habitat, but it’s important to also consider wetlands as a place for carbon sequestration,” said Scott, also an affiliate of the Global Change Center. “Our work will help inform the practice of restoration so these efforts can be strategic and holistic in terms of taking into account all of the variables we have to consider for successful outcomes.”

Grant funding from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Environmental Biology totaling almost $1 million is split between Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland.

— Written by David Fleming

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CONTACT:

Krista Timney
540-231-6157

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Categories
Blog Climate Change Conservation Faculty Spotlight Global Change Habitat Loss

Using data to predict the future of ecosystems

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | November 13, 2019

Through its Data + Decisions Destination Area, Virginia Tech inventively interweaves data science into its curriculum. Meet a faculty member using data in novel and world-changing ways.

During the 21st century, citizens around the world will continue to face grand environmental challenges, including climate change, land use, and invasive species. How we deal with and adapt to these ecological challenges will have global implications.

Associate Professor Quinn Thomas of the College of Natural Resources and Environment is a quantitative ecosystem ecologist using data to tackle these issues. His research focuses on understanding how forests and other ecosystems will respond to global environmental change. By harnessing the power of supercomputers, he is able to combine decades of field observations with mathematical models to forecast how forests will grow in the future.

He’s also leading a team of researchers who will be creating a new Ecological Forecasting Initiative Research Coordination Network, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, which will bring together scientists, government officials, and stakeholders working on environmental issues.

“The end goal is to think about ecological forecasting like weather forecasting. It’s a tool used in decision-making and we want people to be able to rely on it,” said Thomas, a faculty member in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation and a Global Change Center affiliate. “Unlike a long-range climate change model, ecological forecasting models are deliberately built on shorter time scales — daily to decadal, for instance — to help people understand changes and act now.”


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CONTACT:

Krista Timney
540-231-6157

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Categories
Blog Climate Change Global Change Interfaces of Global Change IGEP

A statement from President Tim Sands on the Climate Action Commitment

Torgersen Hall and bridge to Newman Library at Virginia Tech

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | November 8, 2019

To the Virginia Tech community:

The sense of urgency surrounding climate change is increasing throughout the world, the nation, and our community.  I believe climate change represents one of the world’s most pressing problems and as a global land-grant university, Virginia Tech has a duty to respond.  We have long been a leader in seeking a sustainable society, with the university’s original Climate Action Commitment endorsed by the Board of Visitors in 2009 and revised and reaffirmed in 2014.  It is time to update and renew our commitment with that same mindset of urgency and leadership.

I have asked Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer Dwayne Pinkney to assemble an ad hoc committee to review our progress and propose an updated climate action commitment.  The committee will include faculty experts engaged in teaching and research on climate change, energy policy, and energy economics, along with representatives from Facilities and Operations, the Energy and Sustainability Committee of the Commission on University Support, and students.  Student representatives will be encouraged to assemble a larger advisory group to provide information, concerns, and questions to the ad hoc committee. The committee’s recommendations will proceed through the university’s shared governance process, culminating in presentation to the Board of Visitors for final adoption.  I will ask the committee to complete its work this academic year, with final governance steps during fall 2020.

I encourage everyone in the Virginia Tech community to learn more about our Climate Action Commitment and the positive work we can accomplish when students, faculty, and administrators unite under a common goal. Sustainability is part of the fabric of this university as we pursue environmental quality and stewardship, economic stability and affordability, diversity and inclusion, expansion of knowledge, and the education of future leaders. The university’s new strategic plan reflects these values.  When we come together as a community to address common concerns, we can find a path to a bright and sustainable future.  The spirit of Ut Prosim (That I May Serve) will assure that our commitment is realized.

Sincerely,

 

 

Tim Sands
President, Virginia Tech

 

CONTACT:

Tracy Vosburgh
540-231-5396

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Categories
Accolades Climate Change Global Change Grants News Research

GCC faculty seed grants awarded for 2019-2020

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Each year, the Global Change Center (GCC), along with the Institute for Society, Creativity and the Environment (ISCE) at Virginia Tech, accept proposals from GCC faculty to support interdisciplinary research that will lead to collaborative proposals submitted to extramural funding sources. We seek projects that link multiple faculty programs and take advantage of unique combinations of expertise at VT, have societal implications and/or a policy component, deal with emerging global change issues that have regional significance, and have high potential to eventually leverage external resources.

Congratulations to the teams awarded GCC seed grants this fall![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_cta h2=”Red Tide Impacts” txt_align=”center” style=”outline” color=”pink” add_icon=”top” i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-building-o” i_color=”pink” i_background_style=”rounded” i_size=”lg” i_on_border=”true” i_link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.globalchange.vt.edu%2Fred-tide-impacts%2F|||”][hr_shadow]

Moeltner, Foroutan, Ross, Schmale

Measuring, modeling, and forecasting red tide aerosol dispersion along the Florida gulf coast to facilitate socio-economic adaptation

Joint funding by ISCE[/vc_cta][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_cta h2=”Harmful Algal Blooms” txt_align=”center” style=”outline” color=”turquoise” add_icon=”top” i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-tint” i_color=”turquoise” i_background_style=”rounded” i_size=”lg” i_on_border=”true” i_link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.globalchange.vt.edu%2Fharmful-algal-blooms%2F|title:Harmful%20Algal%20Blooms||”][hr_shadow]

Marr, Badgley, Schmale

Toxic cyanobacteria and other bacteria in air above freshwater harmful algal blooms

 

[/vc_cta][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_cta h2=”Sediment Transport Processes” txt_align=”center” style=”outline” color=”chino” add_icon=”top” i_icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-tree” i_color=”chino” i_background_style=”rounded” i_size=”lg” i_on_border=”true” i_link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.globalchange.vt.edu%2Fsoil-erosion%2F|||”][hr_shadow]

Stewart, McGuire, Hession, Polys

Innovative particle tracking to quantify soil erosion and sediment transport processes under global change

 

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Blog Climate Change Global Change Ideas Interfaces of Global Change IGEP Opinion Pollution

End of Expertise & Politicizing Science: IGC Seminar Reflection Series

by Suwei Wang & Abby Lewis

Between September 20th and 27th, 2019, at least 4 million people from over 150 countries stepped up to support young climate strikers and demand an end to the age of fossil fuels. Greta Thunberg, a 16 year old Swedish environment activist, hit the headlines again. 

Thunberg began striking for action on climate change last year leading up to the Swedish parliamentary election. Her solitary strike from school has since transformed into an international movement of students that leave school each Friday to fight for climate action. The Global Climate Strike from September 20th to 27th was the first event that specifically invited all generations to participate, and it brought the movement to the forefront of national and international news.

In the midst of all of this, our first year Interfaces of Global Change (IGC) seminar met to discuss politicization of science and the end of expertise.

What does it mean that the world’s most prominent climate activist is a 16-year-old child? What authority does she have? How does her work politicize science? What is the role of scientists in these public demonstrations? 

We drew from the week’s events to begin diving into the subject of politicization of science because the climate strikes were impossible to ignore, and because they helped to shed light on some of the complex and highly relevant issues surrounding the intersection between science and policy.

More broadly, our discussion focused on ideas of expertise and science politicization. Various studies and surveys have shown that there has been an alarming increase in the distrust of scientists and experts in Americans. In the seminar, we broke into small groups to discuss what makes a person an expert in a field and why the authority of experts has been undermined over time. We also discussed the politicization of science. While there is a consensus of scientists that climate change is real and human activities are causing it, the way this knowledge is disseminated to citizens by various powers, including politicians, can be selective or biased, creating a political distortion of the scientific facts. This is perpetuated by people’s desire to hear identity-confirming news from media outlets and politicians.

At the end of the discussion we came back to Greta Thunberg and the Global Climate Strike. 

According to an anonymous survey, the majority of students in the class (65%) went or would have gone to the strike if they were able to. In reality, three-fourths of the students did not go. 

Forms response chart. Question title: Did you intend to join the global climate strike on Sep 20th? Did you make it? . Number of responses: 20 responses.

We discussed some of the reasons students of global change would decide to participate or not participate. Some students argued that taking a visible political stance in this way may undermine their ability to talk about climate policy with others who disagree with their views. Some argued that their time is better spent doing research that could potentially contribute to the fight for environmental protection in the future. However, other students disagreed, arguing that this type of action is an important extension of the theoretical discussions we have our seminar, and scientists should use their authority as experts to support a movement that is advocating for evidence-based policy.

Ultimately, there probably cannot be a proscriptive answer to this question that works for every scientist, and having a diversity of approaches from different individuals is often helpful. However, it is often useful to revisit these issues on an individual level in order to ensure your actions are in agreement with your beliefs.

Suwei Wang is a third year PhD student from Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health Program, working in Dr. Julia Gohlke’s lab in Environmental Health. 

Abby Lewis is a first year PhD student in the Biological Sciences department. She works in Dr. Cayelan Carey’s lab studying freshwater ecology and biogeochemistry.

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Thirteenth Annual Sustainability Week kicks off

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]From VT News | September 13, 2019

The 13th annual Sustainability Week, an interactive partnership among Virginia Tech Office of Sustainability, the Town of Blacksburg, and local citizens group Sustainable Blacksburg that highlights sustainability efforts in the community and on campus, is underway.

Sustainability Week 2019 kicked off on campus on Sept. 14 with Green Tailgating at the Virginia Tech Furman University football game. More than 20 events are scheduled through Sept. 22.

As part of Virginia Tech’s commitment to sustainability, the Game Day Green Team recycling initiative hands out green recycling bags to tailgaters during home games and strives to build awareness around recycling, waste reduction, and sustainability.

Some of the other events being held during Sustainability Week 2019 on campus and in the community include:

  • Tech Sustainability Open Forum (Sept. 16, 1–2:30 p.m.): This event will provide a brief overview of Virginia Tech’s successful campus sustainability program and will seek audience ideas for continued improvement. Representatives from the Office of Sustainability, Student Affairs, and the Alternative Transportation Department will highlight current programs and initiatives and explore future opportunities. RSVP.
  • Active Commute Celebration (Sept. 19, 8 a.m.–1 p.m.): This event offers an opportunity for the Virginia Tech community to learn more about available alternative transportation options around campus. There will also be giveaways and snacks. RSVP.
  • Sustainable Eats Bike Tour – A Glimpse of Sustainable Practices at Virginia Tech’s Dining Halls (Sept. 17, 12:30–2:30 p.m.): Join the first-ever “Sustainable Eats Bike Tour.” Sample and learn more about our delicious, local, and sustainably sourced eats all while taking a scenic bike tour around campus.
  • Electric Car Display (Sept. 21, 1–3 p.m.): Join the nationwide celebration to heighten awareness of today’s widespread availability of plug-in vehicles and the benefits of all-electric and plug-in hybrid-electric cars, trucks, motorcycles, and more. RSVP.
  • And many more.

Click here to view the full schedule of Sustainability Week 2019 events.

Sustainability Week Blacksburg

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