Month: September 2012

Oct. 9: Water issues everywhere, a good-looking breakfast in front of you

The Environmental Professional Network’s second “2nd Tuesdays Breakfast Club” takes place on (yes) Tuesday, Oct. 9, in Columbus. Kieran Sikdar, technical advisor with the U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Development, Austin, Tex., will present “Water Challenges in the U.S. and a Pilot Sustainability Project for the Lower Mississippi River Region.” Plan to discuss and to network as well. Details, including on registration, payment, and the menu, are here.

EPN coordinator David Hanselmann said last month’s breakfast, the network’s first, brought “over 125 attendees and lots of interest and excitement.”

Oct. 3: Climate change webinar: ‘Glaciers, people, and options’

Lonnie Thompson, Distinguished University Professor in the School of Earth Sciences, senior research scientist with the Byrd Polar Research Center, both at Ohio State, and one of Time magazine’s “Heroes of the Environment,” will speak in the next webinar by Ohio State’s Climate Change Outreach Team. It’s this coming Wednesday, Oct. 3. Details and free signup.

Sign up by tomorrow for Stinner Summit

Free online registration ends tomorrow (Sept. 28) for the sixth annual Stinner Summit, which is Oct. 5 in Athens in southeast Ohio. Participants “work together to develop projects that will address healthy agroecosystems and/or sustainable communities,” the event’s website says. “At the end of the day, the Ben Stinner Endowment pledges $15,000 in support of one or more projects.” The Agroecosystems Management Program, which is part of our college, is the host. Register here. Details on the Ben Stinner Endowment for Healthy Agroecosystems and Sustainable Communities here.

EcoSummit preview: Take me to the river … but first filter and retain me in a rain garden

Two talks at EcoSummit 2012 will shine a light on rain gardens. Jay Martin, Department of Food, Agricultural, and Biological Engineering, et al, will present “Restoring Water Storage and Purification with Rain Gardens.” And B. Li of China’s X’ian University of Architecture and Technology, Martin, and colleagues will present “Nutrient Retention in Residential Retrofitted Rain Gardens.”

Both are part of session 1 of the symposium titled “Ecological Engineering: Designing and Restoring Ecosystem Services,” Oct. 4, 10:15 a.m.-12:35 p.m.

Among their benefits, rain gardens take out contaminants from stormwater runoff and slow down and limit that runoff, which leads to cleaner, healthier streams.

Urban coyotes are howlingly faithful

A new study of urban coyotes by Stan Gehrt, School of Environment and Natural Resources, and Cecilia Hennessy, a master’s degree advisee of his, has found that the animals never stray. They never “cheat.” Never “divorce.” Are 100 percent monogamous. “Even with all the opportunities for the coyotes to philander, they really don’t,” said Gehrt. See previous posts on his work here, here, and here. (Photo by marya (emdot) from San Luis Obispo, USA, via Wikimedia Commons.)

EcoSummit preview: ‘The science to grow more food exists’

The Columbus Dispatch’s Mary Vanac interviews Rattan Lal on global food, climate, and energy issues and EcoSummit 2012 (behind a paywall if you’re not a subscriber and have read more than 10 articles in the past month).

Lal is a Distinguished University Professor in the School of Environment and Natural Resources, is director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, and is one of EcoSummit 2012’s plenary speakers.