Nutrient Cycling, Storm water runoff, and Communicating Science to the Public, a conversation with Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson

Dr. Claudia Benitez-Nelson, professor in the Department of Earth Ocean and the Environment, University of South Carolina, presented Nutrient Cycling, Storm water runoff, and Communicating Science to the Public on Tuesday, March 1, 2022 via Zoom as part of SUNY ESF’s Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions Spring Seminar Series. This seminar was sponsored by ESF Women’s Caucus.

Dr. Claudia Benitez Nelson. Click for video.

Dr. Benitez-Nelson research focuses on the biogeochemical cycling of phosphorus and carbon, largely in marine environments, and how these elements are influenced by natural and anthropogenic processes. During the seminar she discussed her most recent research on inland and coastal nutrient cycling in relation to planning for stormwater surges.

Benitez-Nelson's team sought to establish the rate of sediment accumulation in stormwater ponds, determine the role these ponds play in the regional cycling of carbon and nutrients, and to identify the sources of organic matter to pond sediments in different growing urban areas in the Waccamaw watershed. “This was for us a real opportunity to truly connect more closely with the communities that we were working in” said Benitez-Nelson when explaining how their findings would benefit the homeowners close to the ponds. Her findings suggest that Particulate Organic Matter (POM) is a better proxy for liability than Dissolved Organic Matter (DOM) and may control Biological Organic Matter (BOD) loads. Her lab continues research on different topics related to aquatic organic matter.

Benitez-Nelson is often asked how she “starts to have these conversations about not just pollution, urbanization, sustainability, but talking about climate and how climate change is influencing where people are living their lives.” She shared that she is part of Science Moms, a non-partisan group of climate scientists, who also happen to be mothers, that “really talk about climate, the need collective action” as well as mitigation efforts, particularly in conversation with other mothers, for the benefit of all their children. 

Dr. Benitez-Nelson received B.S. in chemistry and oceanography from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in oceanography from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Joint Program. She has an extensive publication record which includes lead authored pieces in both Science and Nature. Dr. Benitez-Nelson also serves as Associate Dean, for Instruction, Community Engagement and Research.

For more information about the WiSE Professions Series, please visit http://www.esf.edu/womenscaucus.  For upcoming lectures, please visit ESF’s College Calendar at http://www.esf.edu/calendar.

As part of the course requirements for FOR797 Perspectives on Career and Gender, students share  responsibility of reporting on speakers in the campus-wide Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions Speaker Series.  The preceding was prepared by Natasha M. Torres Ríos, MSc student, Sustainable Resources Management Department.

Improving access through transit infrastructure: Conversation with Veronica O. Davis PE

As Director of Transportation and Drainage Operations for the City of Houston, Veronica O. Davis is responsible for maintaining and improving infrastructure across 671 square miles. She chatted with ESF on Earth Day about challenges in designing roadways for equitable transit through her lens as a civil engineer passionate about transportation and community development.

Veronica O. Davis.  Click for video

Houston is the 4th largest city. Its physically large, but is not contiguous because of its growth through annexation.  Houston's road system and bike lane are used to channel rainwater to prevent property drainage.  Both are swept to prevent debris blocking drains.  

Houston is seeking not just infrastructure, but "really good infrastructure" through better public transit and measures "to live with water.  Houston's highest point is only 100' above sea level.  So, biking is easy, but drainage is difficult."  The city has a big goal of 25 miles/yr of "High Comfort Bike Lanes" plus 50 miles of sidewalk.  These lanes are also called "protective bike lanes", which are bide, protected from traffic by a buffer, and have dedicated travel lanes.  Her office benefits from an "enterprise fund" from a drainage fee on water bills, sales tax on Metro, rather than on the general budget.  She also notes that they benefit from dedicated crews, working to expand their capacity.  Botanists are consulted to choose plants suitable for the ebbs and flows along drainage paths.

Half of roadways are concreate, rather than asphalt, which is cooler.  The city also uses cool pavements, which are gray and permeable, which helps with both heat retention and drainage. Other ways to make biking safer include reducing instances of speeding through better designed roads.   Coupling bike lanes with better public transit also improves bikability, as it helps address "what happens if I need to go far?"

For students nearing graduation, Davis notes that there are lots of opportunities in Houston. 

Ms Davis has 20 years of experience in engineering and transportation planning.  She co-founded Nspiregreen in Washington DC, which manages Community, Multimodal Transportation, and Environmental planning and consulting.  While at Nspiregreen, she led the Vision Zero Action Plans for Washington, DC and the City of Alexandria.  She also co-founded Black Women Bike, an organization and movement that builds community and interest in biking among black women.  She was named a Champion of Change  by the White House (2012) for these accomplishments and advocacy. Davis  earned a Bachelor of Science from University of Maryland College Park and a Master of Engineering and a Master of Regional and Urban Planning, Land Use and Environmental Planning from Cornell University.

This presentation was part of ESF's Earth Week Celebration, and an installment in the College's annual WiSE Professions Speaker Series.

"The Environmental Implications of Interstate 81: Past, Present and Future Plans for I-81"

ESF's Environmental & Social Justice Lecture Series continues Tuesday, Mar 3, at 11am in ESF's Gateway Center, with "The Environmental Implications of Interstate 81." 

Lanessa Chaplin, Project Counsel for the NY Civil Liberties Union will catch us up on "Past, Present and Future Plans for I-81" and facilitate the discussion.  

Lunch provided

Co-sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs, the President’s Office, the Undergraduate Student Association and the Department of Environmental Studies

Rochester Roots: Excellence in Community Sustainability Education

Jan McDonald, executive director of Rochester ROOTS, Inc., located in Rochester, New York, presented a seminar on March 9, 2016 titled “Bringing Science to Life: A collaborative Approach to Sustainability Education in Grades PreK-6th grade where Students, Teachers, Citizens, College Students, PhDs, and Businesses Learn Together” as part of SUNY ESF’s Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions Seminar Series. SUNY ESF Graduate Student Association, and the ESF Women’s Caucus jointly sponsored the seminar. Her inspiration for ROOTs now signature programs started with her childhood food allergies, and realization that when her diet improved, they bothered her less—while spending less at the farmer’s market

            ROOTS mission is “To empower citizens and communities, starting with youth, to create agency for their own sustainable wellbeing.” Ms. Donald presented the organization’s work which involves improving community health through and wellbeing through youth school programs and community gardens.  An example of this is local Montessori children working with RIT students to develop their imaginative ideas into tangible systems like classroom composters and robotic interfaces and gaming models.

            A central theme for ROOTS is creating diverse community gardens through learning environments, grassroots initiative, and the use of adaptable urban sustainable designs. Ms. McDonald discussed how to improve life enrichment and nutrition by developing gardens for low income communities by integrating sustainable agriculture, art, and healthy eating.

            By incorporating hands-on gardening experiences, students are able to learn the value of gardening and food preparation which empowers youth, family, and community. These community gardens - repurpose otherwise abandoned land which simultaneously approves aesthetics. In addition, the produce can be sold at market or used in product development, serving additional lessons in marketing and sales.

            For more information about this lecture and Rochester ROOTS visit www.rochesterroots.org. For more information about WiSE Professions Speaker Series, please visit www.esf.edu/womenscaucus. For upcoming lecture, please visit the College Calendar at www.esf.edu/calendar.
Students in FOR797 Env Career Strategies for Women share responsibilty for reporting on the WiSE Professions Speaker Series.  The preceding was prepared by Kelley Corbine, Nicolette Fruehan, Devin Hansen and Joel Ramtahal, all graduate students in the Department of Forest and Natural Resources Management.

ESF women take first and second place in the Slepecky Undergraduate Research Competition

The experimental green roof, located on
top of Con Edison's The Learning
Center.  Image credit: Tiziana Susca, Columbia University

Katy Austin, an EFB undergraduate honors student has won first prize in the Slepecky Undergraduate Research Prize.  She was awarded the prize for a manuscript based on her honor's thesis "Effects of Nitrogen Deposition on Nitrogen Acquisition by Sarracenia purpurea in the Adirondack Mountains, New York, USA".  The study is in review at the journal
Botany.  Austin is first author.  Her co-authors include Mark Teece, and Jesse Crandall from ESF's Chemistry Department, and Amy Sauer and Charley Driscoll, from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Syracuse University.

Cambria Ziemer, an ERE undergraduate honors student tied for second place honors.  Ziemer completed her honor's thesis the past summer on "Boundary Layer Conditions of a Shrub Willow Evapotranspiration Cover Syracuse, NY". She worked with Wendong Tao, in ESF's Department of Environmental and Resource Engineering, and Tony Eallonardo, a Scientist with O'Brien and Gere.

The award presentation followed a lecture by Dr. Patricia J. Culligan of  Columbia University, on Green Roofs and Urban Stormwater Management, which featured projects under evaluation at Columbia University and around New York City.  Dr.  Culligan is a leader in the field of water resources and urban sustainability.  In addition to being a Professor, she co-directs the Columbia University Earth Institute’s Urban Design Lab and is the director of an innovative, joint interdisciplinary Ph.D. program between Columbia Engineering and the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation that focuses on designs for future cites, including digital city scenarios.

The Slepecky Lectureship and Undergraduate Prize has been endowed by family, friends and colleagues to honor Syracuse University professor Norma Slepecky, who died in 2001. Dr. Slepecky was a distinguished auditory neuranatomist and member of the Institute for Sensory Research.  She was a passionate researcher and an advocate for undergraduate student research. Dr. Slepecky hoped that her legacy, with the support of the endowment, would continue to encourage young women to conduct research. As stewards of the Lectureship and Prize, SU WiSE annually coordinates the undergraduate award and lecture by a noted woman scholar and a celebration in Dr. Slepecky’s memory.

Dr. Paige Warren speaks about human influences on species interactions in urban communities

As part of the requirements of FOR 797, students share responsbility for reporting on speakers in the WiSE Professions Speaker Series. The following was prepared by Amanda Gray, Amanda Pachomski, Jennifer Potrikus, Emily Van Ness, and Qing Ren.

Dr. Paige Warren, Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Conservation at U Mass, Amherst, presented her research as well as the research of several collaborating scientists on human influences on species interactions in urban communities at ESF on Thursday, February 6, 2014. This presentation launched three spring SUNY College of Environmental Professions speaker series: Women in Scientific and Environmental (WiSE) Professions, GraduateStudent Association (GSA) Speaker Series, and Adaptive Peaks. The Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, GSA and the ESF Women’s Caucus jointly co-sponsored the seminar.

Dr. Warren discussed findings from five different cities (two in the Western US (Fresno,CA and Pheonix, AZ) and three in the Eastern US (Boston, MA, Baltimore, MD, and Raleigh, NC)) that looked at human influence as the dominant mechanism of species presence and interaction in urban communities. She determined that for the cities in the Western US, water use is the main driver of species presence and interaction; for the cities in the Eastern US, forest cover is a more important driver. Other human-driven factors are also at work in each city and so the actual role of species interaction in determining community structure is still unclear.

The most direct human influence on species presence and interactions in each city relates directly to the two driving factors mentioned previously. Landscaping decisions in each city has a huge affect on which species appear in urban areas and the species interactions within the urban areas. In the western city of Phoenix, AZ where water is the major driving factor, there is a stark contrast in types of yards, largely dictated by neighborhood. There are xeric yards which are drier and support native and non-native vegetation similar to the surrounding flora of the region, and then there are mesic yards which are wetter and more lush that support some native, but mostly non-native vegetation that is very dissimilar to the surrounding vegetation. These different vegetation types support different types of animal species and can therefore influence the presence and interactions of species in the city. In the eastern city of Baltimore, MD, where the primary driver is forest cover, a direct correlation was seen between the canopy cover and amount of dead branches in the area and the number of woodpeckers present.

Under these more direct human influences, there are a variety of human influences that are likely to be interacting with the primary driver in each city that affect species presence and interaction. For example, in Phoenix, there was a pattern seen between the income level of a household and the type of food being fed to birds. The higher income families often left nectar and thistle for birds, which attracted more specialist bird species, whereas lower income families often left bread crumbs, which attracted more generalist bird species. The resulting consequences of these different food types include differences in species richness, competition, and the giving up densities of the birds at each location. Dr. Warren’s research looks at wealth as well as many other social science factors such as policy, institutional investment, consumer tastes and lifestyles to try and untangle the complex association of humans and the unban ecosystem.

Dr. Warren received a B.A. in biology from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and a Ph.D. in Zoology, from the University of Texas-Austin. Before she joined the faculty at U Mass, Amherst, she served as a Research Scientist at Virginia Tech and a Post Doc in the Biology Department and Center for Environmental Studies at Arizona State University. Dr. Warren was also recently on sabbatical as a Visiting Scholar in the School of Sustainability and School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University.

For upcoming lectures at ESF, please visit the College Calendar at http://www.esf.edu/calendar. 

Revitalizing Baltimore: A better city through environmental discovery

As part of the course requirements for FOR496/797, students share responsibility for reporting on the WiSE Professions Speaker Series.  The following was prepared by Olga Shevtsova

Jackie Carrera, president and CEO of Parks & People Foundation in Baltimore, concluded ESF’s 2013 Women in Scientific and Environmental (WiSE) Professions Series with Revitalizing Baltimore: A better city through environmental discovery on Tuesday, April 23. The seminar was jointly sponsored by the Graduate Student Association and the ESF Women's Caucus.

Parks & People began with the idea that there is one park, a city within a park, that is, rather than many parks within a city as the greenspace and corridors provide a network for a healthy community.  Ms Carrera discussed problems in the city of Baltimore, including significant property abandonment as a result of suburban sprawl, lack of opportunities for young people, stream erosion and non-point source pollution, uncoordinated approaches to natural resource management. These examples demonstrated the urgent necessity of the Urban Resources Initiative which works towards sustainability through applied ecosystem management principles. This working group learned that “Urban greening programs influenced the health of the city—they bring people together in a way they are not used to working together.  This increases their social capital, enabling them to take on bigger community issues like schools and crime.  They also have an economic benefit by increasing property values.” 

Carrera also focused on the power of partnership between governments at all levels, nonprofits, academia, businesses, and communities. Defining the most important steps of planning process through discussion of how to meet the goals and how they’ve changed is a key to achieve urban ecological restoration. The Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES) has enhanced increased public support of scientific research. Parks & People Foundation affords opportunities for BES scientists to communicate their knowledge for practical application in community organizing and public policy. Initiating different workshops, annual meetings, trainings and science presentations all contributed to the project’s success.  It is imperative that on the ground management strategies use sound scientific approaches; and that science research is informed by practical needs. The process “is established, then fixed, then tweaked, in an iterative way” to assure that everyone at each level are at the same table.  

Watershed 263 is a classic example. "The city had an unfunded mandate to clean up pollutants flowing into the city.   This watershed featured lots of impervious surfaces, a lot of city owned land, and significant but dispersed open space. What, they wondered, would happen if they could reduce the asphalt?  The removal of back parking lot of Franklin Square Elementary School, coupled with other projects increased the area available for infiltration."

Good Science is the key, and a technology committee capable of communicating science with practitioners, is the tipping point.

About Jackie Carrera
Jackie Carrera has been instrumental in the development of a 15-mile urban greenway, community forestry and watershed restoration programs numerous youth sports and camp programs which continue to be integral to the revitalization efforts of some of that city’s most underserved communities. She also chaired Revitalizing Baltimore, a US Forest Service urban and community forestry project and is a co-principal investigator for the Baltimore EcosystemStudy, a National Science Foundation-funded, long term ecological research project.  Ms. Carrera represented the Chesapeake region in preparing for the Obama Administration’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative and the Urban Waters Initiative.  She served on a national task force initiated by the US Forest Service, Vibrant Cities and Urban Forests: A National Call for to Action. Ms. Carrera was voted one of the Daily Record’s Maryland’s Top 100 Women and 100 Most Influential Marylanders by The Maryland Daily Record and was named the 2008 University of Baltimore Distinguished Social Entrepreneur. Ms. Carrera is a graduate of the Greater Baltimore Committee Leadership Program and the Weinberg Fellows Program. She earned a BA, Business Administration degree in Finance from Loyola College in Maryland.

For more information about the WiSE Professions Series, please visit http://www.esf.edu/womenscaucus/speakers.htm

Dr. Lister Speaks on Landscape Ecology and Urbanism

As part of the course requirements of FOR 797 Women in Environmental Careers, students share responsibility for reporting on the Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions Speaker Series.  The following was prepared by Carrie Rose Levine (MS FNRM 2011) and Susan Smith (ES 2013).
            Dr. Nina-Marie Lister, Associate Professor of Urban and Regional  Planning at Ryerson University in Toronto and Visiting Professor at the  Harvard University Graduate School of Design, presented her research and
selected design projects in  “(Re)Claiming Ground: Landscape, Ecology and Urbanism” at SUNY-ESF on February 8, 2011 as part of the Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions Speaker Series. The talk was jointly sponsored
by the ESF Women’s Caucus, the Randolph G. Pack Environmental Institute, and the Department of Landscape Architecture. The lecture was very well attended, and the audience represented students and faculty from a variety
of ESF departments as well as a good turnout from the Syracuse University School of Architecture due to the cross-disciplinary nature of Dr. Lister’s research.
            Dr. Lister has a background in formal ecology, landscape architecture, and urban planning. This multi-disciplinary training has informed her research on the development and use of reclaimed urban spaces. The lecture addressed the key principles of ecological urbanism, the role that these principles have played in recent theory and practice of urban
design, and the direction in which these principles will continue to evolve in the future.
            In Dr. Lister’s lecture, she expanded on the basic scientific definition of ecology and demonstrated how the concept of ecology can be applied to highly modified and constructed systems such as dense urban areas. Essentially, Dr. Lister argued, the human environment and its relationship to nature can be distilled to the interplay between ecology and design. The pervasiveness of human intervention in the landscape has altered our paradigm of ecology. At the same time, our understanding of ecology has informed design and planning decisions in recent years to the point where both ecology and design are essential driving forces in the way that we experience the urban environment.
            The history of this movement toward and ecological understanding of urban landscape and design was discussed, which provided a solid theoretical foundation for Dr. Lister’s own work. She then showed examples of the kind of work that her firm plandform has done in the Toronto area in conjunction with her students at Ryerson University. This work included examples of restoration design within a highly modified urban landscape. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of her talk came at the very end, when she discussed future directions for the discipline, citing a recent example of a land bridge for migrating animals across a busy highway in the western US that combines principles of ecology, modern design, and human influence on the natural landscape.
            Dr. Lister is a Registered Professional Planner (MCIP, RPP), an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at Ryerson Univeristy, and the founding principal of the firm plandform, a creative studio that which explores the relationship between ecology, landscape, and urbanism. She is the author of several papers on ecology and urban design and is co-editor of the book The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and
Managing for Sustainability (Columbia University Press, 2008).