Tags: research

The New York Times documents a rise in university programs focused on sustainability, especially regarding the urban environment.  The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education lists nine universities with master’s and doctoral programs in urban sustainability studies.  Most of these programs are interdisciplinary in nature, like the new graduate program at the City College of New York that will focus on sustainability in the urban environment, incorporating the approaches of architecture, engineering and science. 

In 2002, a year after the Department of Sanitation and and the Municipal Arts Society announced the design competition for the reuse of the Fresh Kills landfill, the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) embarked on an investigative project called Garbage Problems aimed at understanding the processes behind waste management in New York City. 

As part of the Bureau of Land Management‘s Seeds of Success project, The Dixon National Tallgrass Prairie Seed Bank at the Chicago Botanic Garden is preserving the seeds of thousands of prairie species–1,500 by 2010 and 3,000 by 2020–that are native to the Midwest, as far west as the Rockies. 

MillionTreesNYC is hosting a research symposium on green infrastructure and urban ecology and is accepting submissions of papers to be presented at that symposium.

The purpose of this symposium is to showcase research and projects that contribute to knowledge on urban landscapes, green infrastructure, and public health in cities and urban areas.

The Open Source Live Solar Mapping Project, recently released by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, tracks private installations of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels  by location in the US and maps them in time.  The map-video, spanning from 1998 to the present day, highlights the spatial concentration of solar energy harvest with changing colors that indicate the number of PV installations in each state. 

Researchers at the University of Milan Bicocca in Monza, Italy are working to harvest energy offset by the mixture of fresh and salt water.  The process uses electrodes to draw apart positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chlorine ions in salt water, then forces those ions away from the electrodes by flooding them with fresh water. 

Greenmuseum interviews Terry Hazen, Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology and the Head of Ecology at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, about bioremediation, its benefits and its hazards.  Hazen is a well-spoken expert on the subject of remediating contaminated sites and the microorganisms that can be used to do so. 

Toward the Sentient City, an exhibit organized by The Architectural League of New York, examines the implications for architecture of the proliferation of sensor, mobile and other new technologies.  According to curator Mark Shepard:

The exhibition examines the relationship between ubiquitous computing, architecture and the city in terms of the active role its citizens might play – or neglect to play – as both designers and inhabitants, in the unfolding techno-social situations of near-future urban environments.

Habitat corridors are planted or wild strips of land between natural areas that encourage wildlife to migrate from place to place and, in turn, to help fertilize a broader range of places through the seeds they carry on them or digest.   

Researchers in Jerusalem are developing a new type of solar cell that can generate power from diffuse light. The cells form panels that transmit light to silicon solar receptors at their edges. GreenSun Energy of  Tel Aviv say their panels have achieved a 12% efficiency rate, much lower than the world’s most efficient cells, but hope to eventually reach a 20% efficiency.

Researchers at the University of Texas are developing solar photovoltaics 10,000 times thinner than human hair that can be spray-painted onto surfaces.   The ambition of the  project is to develop a solution of sunlight-absorbing nanoparticles that can be sprayed onto a surface to create a solar panel–a process similar to newspaper printing. 

Catalyx Nanotech is the first company to use methane for nanofiber production. Through a demonstration project at a California landfill, the company was able to split methane into pure hydrogen and carbon to produce nanofibers.  Carbon-based nanofibers can be applied to a number of  uses: medical, energy, protection, textile; in this case, they’ll be used for hydrogren fuel supply. 

The Trust for Public Land, a national, non-profit land conservation organization, has released its annual city park survey, revealing some interesting statistics about the nation’s urban parkland.  Some notable facts from the survey:

• New York City has the most parkland as a percentage of city land–19.6%–of high-density cities in the US. 

Plastic bags are an environmental bane: they take a really, really long time to decompose in landfills, they’re the largest pollutant in the world’s oceans, and the general the accumulation of plastics is “one of the most ubiquitous and long-lasting recent changes to the surface of our planet.”

It takes a lot of money to clean up damaged environments, and justifying the cost of expenditure with measurable results hasn’t always been possible.  A new study published in the recent “Restoration Ecology” issue of Science quantifies the impact of ecological restoration projects on levels of biodiversity and ecosystem services in order to provide substance to cost-benefit analysis.

Researchers in India have been able to turn solid textile mill sludge into nutrient-rich compost in a 6-month experiment using vermicomposting and manure, according to a report published in the International Journal of Environment and Pollution. The process resulted in increased nitrogen and phosphorous content, both important for plant growth.

We really enjoyed last Friday’s tour of the green roof atop the Parks Department’s Five Borough Technical Services Complex.  The roof is gorgeous and inspiring, and it’s worth checking out our flickr photos (and videos) of the tour if you weren’t able to make it. 

Researchers at MIT’s SENSEable City Lab have just launched Trash Track, a project that attaches tags to various pieces of garbage to electronically track their real-time movement through the city.  The goal is to “reveal the disposal process of our everyday objects and waste, as well as to highlight potential inefficiencies in today’s recycling and sanitation systems.” 

For our Freshkills Park Talk two weeks back, Dr. Steven Handel shared insights into the emerging field of urban restoration ecology, which focuses on the challenge of bringing ecological diversity back to degraded lands like brownfields and landfills.  He discussed his research at the Freshkills Park site and others in the region and went on to describe how his expertise has informed the design of Orange County, CA’s Great Park.

More on the mind-boggling Great Pacific Garbage Patch: it’s now the object of a grail quest across the ocean.  Scientists from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and videographer Drew Wheeler have set sail on a two month voyage to study and sample the Patch and document its impact on marine wildlife.