Aug
08
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Friday, 08 August 2008 |
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Brace yourself -- it is not too soon to be thinking about plans for Fall! And one great thing to do in the Fall is to learn something new. The RI Tree Council's Tree Stewards Course is a great place to do just that, and this program has gotten rave reviews from every graduate we've run across. You can sign up now at the RI Tree Web site. The course consists of six evening classes (2.5 hours each), plus two outdoor workshops, each about 3 or 4 hours long. At the end, you will be a Tree Steward with lots of ideas and tools for promoting and protecting a healthy forest in your community. Classes start Sept. 9, in Jamestown, and you get the full course for just $65. 
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May
21
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Wednesday, 21 May 2008 |
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While we worry here about our overflowing landfills, it seems our tendency to strew litter extends into outer space. These images from ESA, the European Space Agency, depict the space junk that has accumulated in near-Earth orbits. Click here for more images. The big picture.... 
And in detail...
 via: Subterranean Homepage News
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May
12
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Monday, 12 May 2008 |
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Could we finally be on the path to an oil-free future? Here are some reasons for hope. Today's projo features an opinion piece by Paul Sanroma, chairman of the Bristol Wind Power Group. Inspired by the municipal wind turbine in Hull, Mass., folks in Bristol want a wind turbine of their own. The Hull project saves money for the town and is popular with neighbors, a great example of how a small group of committed activists can not only change their own local place, but inspire others. We hope Bristol gets a turbine of its own, soon. Last week, the Worldwatch Institute published an update on the global solar power industry, noting that with global demand increasing and new technologies coming to market, costs are going down. "As a result, solar electricity could soon be a competitive alternative to conventional retail power in many regions, including California and southern Europe," says Worldwatch. And last Friday night, at the Chafee Awards Dinner hosted by the Environment Council of Rhode Island, we ran into Jim Malloy, of Malloy Fuels, who is working hard -- along with the folks at Newport BioDiesel and People's Power & Light -- to bring new options to Rhode Islanders to power our homes and vehicles. Things are changing, fast, and for the better. Of course, gas at $4 a gallon is a strong motivator. Let's hope our generation will be the one to relegate oil to the junkyard of old technology.
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Nov
06
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Tuesday, 06 November 2007 |
You'd think on the long plane ride down to Antarctica, NBC reporter Ann Curry would have time to brush up on climate science. But here is what she said on the evening news Monday night: "The big hole in the ozone is shrinking, potential proof that international limits on carbon dioxide emissions are working."
That's great, except that carbon-dioxide emissions have nothing to do with the ozone layer, and anyhow, there is no global decline in CO2 emissions. The big ozone hole resulted from chloroflourocarbons (CFCs), an industrial chemical that was pretty much banned in the 1980s by the Montreal Protocol. The ozone layer is found in the stratosphere and protects us from the Sun's ultraviolet rays.
Carbon dioxide emissions, on the other hand, are implicated in global warming, because they trap heat close to the surface. And despite efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, they continue to increase worldwide.
A reminder to take a grain of salt with any environmental news you get from the mainstream media!
Click here to view the video.
For a better informed take on our eco-situation, check out this video clip instead -- it features Chip Giller, one of the founders of Grist and a grad of Brown's environmental studies program, with easy tips for reducing your carbon footprint.
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Oct
25
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Thursday, 25 October 2007 |
NNN is all about our local environment here in Rhode Island... but we also keep in mind that whatever happens here, happens in a global context.
 Today, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) released a major new report about the state of the world environment. The report includes sobering assessments of the costs of environmental degradation in the developing world, and also shows some progress toward sustainability. But it strongly asserts that more must be done: "[Our] assault on the global environment risks undermining the many advances human society has made in recent decades," wrote UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in a foreword. "It is undercutting our fight against poverty. It could even come to jeopardise international peace and security."
So, a reminder, that the work we do here in little Rhode Island to nudge local folks onto the path to sustainability, is not really just all about us. It's about finding a better way to a future that will work for the whole planet, and all the people and plants and creatures and trees who live upon it.
To read more, go to this BBC story, which also includes links to the full UN report.
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Oct
18
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Thursday, 18 October 2007 |
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URI is offering a series of ecology seminars by eight visiting speakers, on Monday afternoons. The talks are open to the public. Topics range from wildlife management, to genetic modification of mosquitoes to fight malaria, to the impact of humans on desert ecosystems and food webs in the wild.
For more info, click on "Read more."
The Ecology Seminar Series, a set of ecologically-themed talks of general
interest to faculty, graduate students, professionals, and the general public,
will host the following eight distinguished speakers:
10/22/07: Doug Levey, University of Florida: "Do habitat corridors really
work?" (Host: Scott McWilliams, NRS)
11/19/07: Kevin McGarigal, UMass Amherst: "Metapopulations and their
application to wildlife conservation: A case study of the marbled salamander
in Massachusetts" (First Annual Ledermann Lecture) (Host, Peter Paton, NRS)
12/3/07: Doug Tallamy, University of Delaware: "Are Non-native Plants the
Ecological Equivalents of the Native Plants They Displace?" (Host, Lisa
Tewksbury, PLS)
2/4/08: Scott Collins, University of New Mexico: "Global change impacts
on chihuahuan desert ecosystems" (Host: Stephen Swallow, ENRE)
3/3/08: Fred Gould, North Carolina State University: "Can genetically
engineered mosquitoes eradicate malaria?" (Host: Marian Goldsmith, BIO)
3/24/08: Kristina Rothley, Kutztown University: "Disturbance and species
interactions: implications for species and food webs" (Host: Laura Meyerson,
NRS)
4/7/08: Nicholas Gotelli, University of Vermont: "Community assembly:
From small to large spatial scales" (Host: Jason Grear, US EPA).
4/21/08: Jason Link, NMFS: "Multiple modeling applications for
ecosystem-based management of living marine resources" (Host: Dave Bengston,
FAVS)
The seminars are free, open to the public, and take place 3 PM on Mondays
in Weaver Auditorium at the Coastal Institute in Kingston.
For more info, contact Evan Preisser, Assistant Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, 874-2120, or by email:
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Oct
16
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Tuesday, 16 October 2007 |
Our pals over at Save The Bay have revamped their Web site, with more interactive features and personalized access. It requires you to log in, but it's free. A new blog by STB exec Curt Spaulding joins the long-time blogs of Baykeeper John Torgan and educator Abby Wood. You can reach all three of those blogs with one click from the "Local Favorites" list of links in NNN's left sidebar! It's labeled "Bay Blogs (STB)".
Other features include access to tons of information about your local watershed and online discussion groups, and you'll get your own personalized "home page."
You can check it out at savebay.org.
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Oct
08
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Monday, 08 October 2007 |
 We tend to take for granted the presence of Brown University right here in Providence, but all of us who live in the area have a great opportunity to get educated for free, when Brown attracts world-class speakers to the campus. A series of seminars are scheduled this fall on topics relating to "Energy and the Environment," and all of them are free and open to everyone.
The seminars are targeted to a general audience, not academic specialists, and should be excellent. For more information on these events please contact 401-863-3032 or click here. For a quick listing of the dates and topics, click "read more."
Thursday, October 11, 7 pm
MacMillan Hall, Room 115
167 Thayer Street, Providence, RI
"Fire and Water: Energy Efficient Technologies for Poor Communities in the Developing World," with Ashok Gadgil, Senior Staff Scientist and Group Leader in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Gadgil is group leader in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and an inventor who also pursues technical, economic, and policy research on energy efficiency and its implementation. He has several patents and inventions to his credit, among them the "UV Waterworks," a technology to inexpensively disinfect drinking water in the developing countries, for which he received the Discover Award in 1996 for the most significant environmental invention of the year, as well as the Popular Science award for "Best of What is New - 1996"
Tuesday, October 30, 7 pm
MacMillan Hall Room 115
"Do Biofuels Make Sense? Their Impacts on Food, Energy and the Environment," with David Tilman, Regents' Professor and McKnight Presidential Chair in Ecology at the University of Minnesota.
Thursday, November 29, 7 pm
MacMillan Hall, Room 115
"The Emergence of a Bioeconomy," with Robert Brown, Director, Center for Sustainable Environmental Technologies (CSET), Iowa State University.
via: Apeiron
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Sep
27
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Thursday, 27 September 2007 |
Fresh fish are one of the delightful benefits we harvest from a clean Bay, but how those fish are harvested has long been an incredibly contentious and difficult issue.
 The problem is that fish are slippery creatures -- their populations fluctuate from year to year, they are hard to count and monitor, and they move from place to place for unknowable reasons. A fish that is abundant one year may be scarce the next. The reasons could be overfishing, environmental change, or just random chance. Regulators try to preserve a healthy stock and determine how many fish can be spared without decimating the species, but every tweak and twitch in the regulations affects the bottom line of fisher folk, many of whom operate on a financial knife edge.
So what can we do? Support efforts to preserve healthy bay and ocean ecosystems. Buy local fish when you shop. And if you want to learn more, you have one more chance to go to sea aboard URI's Cap'n Bert fishing vessel and see what the fishing life is like here in Narragansett Bay. Click here for our NNN video of a fishing trip and info on how you can go along -- and take a fresh fish home at the end of the day.
More info: A story in today's Jamestown Press. A 2005 projo multimedia report on the fishing industry in Galilee.
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Sep
11
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Tuesday, 11 September 2007 |
We have more forests today in Rhode Island than we did 100 years ago -- a fact that's surprising at first glance, but when you realize that much of the state was farmland back then, it makes sense. But that doesn't mean the forests we have now are safe. In fact, our forested acreage has been in decline since the 1960s, and we've lost about 75,000 acres of trees.
Projo reporter Paul Davis took an in-depth look at the state of our forests. The story ran back in mid-August, when a lot of us might have missed it, so here's the link for catching up. Well worthwhile!
Can you see the forest for the trees?
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Got a question about the greener life?
