This year, the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station and ESPP are bringing distinguished speakers to campus to talk about aspects of the bioeconomy and global climate change. More on this initiative can be found here.

The first talk, held October 15, featured Professor David Zilberman of UC Berkeley’s Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. His talk was titled, “Can we fill the car and feed the stomach without destroying the environment?”

Following the talk, ESPP sat down with Professor Zilberman to ask what Michigan can do to best position itself in the bioeconomy, how MSU should handle this type of research and what average citizens can do to help the transition move smoothly.

The next talk in the series, on November 12, will feature Edward Parson from the University of Michigan, who will be speaking on “Climate change policies and technological innovation.”

– Andy Balaskovitz

I’m in Madison, Wisconsin, along with my colleague Andy Balaskovitz, for the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists.  We knew it would be a great trip when we ran into this serendipitous sign early in the drive:

And so far, it’s been teriffic.  I spent yesterday morning on a Great Lakes research vessel, while Andy went birding in the country’s biggest freshwater cattail marsh. More on that later.

This morning the conference headed back indoors for an optimistic address from Al Gore about the upcoming United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen.  He likened the current political atmosphere to a moment in a football game when one team abruptly changes the game’s momentum, and ”the psychology of the contest changes dramatically.”

Gore cited recent defections from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the chamber’s stance on climate legislation, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency’s new reporting requirement for major emitters of greenhouse gases, as indicators that an agreement is likely at the U.N. meeting in December.

Gore admitted that his optimism was largely a result of a fear of what would happen should the negotiations prove fruitless.

“The consequences of failure in Copenhagen would, in my opinion, be catastrophic,” he said.

-Andy McGlashen

Students and professional chemists will convene in East Lansing in a month to discuss the opportunities and challenges of developing green technologies.

The National Organization of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers will host its Midwest regional conference at Michigan State Oct. 30 through Nov. 1. The meeting will include plenary sessions on green energy, chemistry and engineering, as well as a keynote address from Dr. Lealon L. Martin of Rensselaer University.  There will also be workshops designed specifically for undergraduates, grad students and professionals, with topics including the fastest growing jobs in the Midwest, and technical writing tips from an editor of Science.

The meeting is open not just to black chemists and engineers, but to “anyone who is interested in using their talent to save the planet,” said Fletcher Daniels, chair of the committee planning the conference.

“We want the conference to be an interdisciplinary experience, full of scientists, policy makers, economists and agriculture researchers,” he said.

The deadline for registration and for poster abstracts has been extended to Oct. 20.  To sign up or learn more about the conference, click here.

Mention green roofs around the MSU community and chances are Brad Rowe’s name will come up.

Rowe (Horticulture) has been studying green roofs ever since Ford Motor Co. asked MSU to help install a 10-acre green roof at the River Rouge plant in 2003.

Since then, Rowe has been researching what plants work best on rooftops in different regions, managing water stress levels and reductions in storm water runoff. Results have been promising.

Rowe draws inspiration from European countries, where modern green roofs have been commonplace for more than 50 years.

His latest project at MSU looks at the viability of growing vegetable gardens on rooftops – a practice most effective in urban areas.

“Why not grow [vegetables] on the roof?” Rowe asks in the video. “It’s wasted space.”

– Andy Balaskovitz

ESPP chatted with doctoral student Rich Grogan (Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies and ESPP), who is studying excessive car engine idling, a practice with potentially serious environmental, economic and health effects.

Prepare to have common engine idling myths debunked.

“If you’re going to have your car running for more than 10 seconds, if you turn it off and then turn it back on, you’re saving gas,” Grogan says in the video.

Oh yeah — idling is bad for your car too. When an engine idles, it isn’t as hot as when you’re driving. Hydrocarbons aren’t burned completely because of this, which causes sludge buildup.

Grogan’s project looks at how MSU can reduce idling on campus. He and colleagues came up with recommendations for the MSU environmental stewardship team, a campus-wide effort that reports to the Vice President for Finance and Operations on ways to reduce MSU’s environmental footprint.

Grogan said the research remained sensitive to issues like freezing temperatures in the winter and the police department’s need to keep engines running to prevent overheating from computers in the car.

The university is currently working up an awareness campaign.

– Andy Balaskovitz

Peter Kareiva, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy (TNC), visited East Lansing last week to discuss opportunities for collaboration between MSU and TNC scientists. Kareiva gave an open presentation to the MSU community at the Kellogg Center.

TNC is the world’s largest environmental NGO, with a mission of protecting natural places. Historically, it relied primarily on buying land; now, especially as it expands internationally, it uses “a richer array of strategies,” and emphasizes partnerships, Kareiva said.

Collaborations between universities and TNC can provide valuable synergies, Kareiva said. Most TNC scientists have “little time to analyze and publish, and it’s hard to stay cutting edge.” Few are specialists. Universities can provide valuable expertise; in turn, TNC provides sites for research. Partnerships are also often appealing to funders.

The best model so far, Kareiva said, is the Natural Capital Project, which is a partnership between TNC, Stanford University, and the World Wildlife Fund. Foundations and agencies have funded researchers to work on a topic of interest to the university and NGOs: clarifying the value of ecosystem services.

TNC is seeking to create more of these holistic partnerships, where TNC signs an agreement with whole university rather than individual scientists. After the seminar Kareiva and other TNC staff met with a group of MSU faculty and administrators, led by Jeff Armstrong, Dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, to discuss the potential to establish such an agreement at MSU. One possible focus is work related to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.

Kareiva is dedicated to “bringing the science of conservation to the people,” said Doug Schemske (Plant Biology) in an introduction. He gave an example: Kareiva once asked Schemske to write an article. Kareiva’s requirements were that Schemske write with “no puffery” and start the paper with a quote from a rock band. Schemske began with a quote from Nirvana, he said: “Take your time, hurry up – The choice is yours, don’t be late.”

-Maya Fischhoff

GreenBoard readers,

As part of our effort to share all of the great work our students, staff and faculty do, we’ve started an occasional series of short videos highlighting environmental work on and around MSU’s campus. We hope the videos will spread awareness of important issues by showing their reach into our own backyards, and that our researchers’ enthusiasm for science and nature will prove contagious.

We’ll post each new video here so that subscribers to our RSS feed will have the latest sent to them, but the entire series will be housed on a new page, available here.

In our first video, we head to MSU’s Tree Research Center, where forestry and ESPP doctoral student Sara Tanis talks about the emerald ash borer, and discusses her research into ways to halt the tree-killing beetle. She even shows us trees in downtown East Lansing that are dying from ash borer infestation.  For more information about the beetle from MSU, click here.

By Joe Arvai

8/14/2009

After a day off yesterday in the coastal village of Cahuita, we’re back in
San José .  One our way here, we stopped in for a final meeting with
colleagues at EARTH — really just to say good bye, and to offer a sincere
thanks, before continuing on our way back to MSU.

We’re treated exceptionally well by our colleagues here and I can only hope
that they enjoy our company as much as Robby and I enjoy theirs.  We’ll
return to Costa Rica in October to continue with our field work.  Between
now and then, there will be hundreds of emails, dozens of calls on Skype,
and a lot of exchanged ideas.

This is exactly the kind of work I imagined when I joined ESPP in 2005.  No
silly debates about the “true” connections between environment, science, and
policy.  Just an interdisciplinary group of researchers — economists,
agronomists, soil and weed scientists, decision researchers, and others –
pulling in the same direction on an important problem for the local people
of this breathtaking country.  Together.

As I am writing this, and before I sign off, the slogan printed on my duffel
bag catches my eye.  It says: “Never stop exploring”.  I couldn’t agree
more.

Thanks to all who followed this diary.  Maybe we’ll meet again, on this thin
slice of cyberspace, in October.

(photo courtesy Joe Arvai)

By Joe Arvai

8/12/2009

Pineapple, as far as the eye can see.

We drove east today, from the EARTH campus toward the coastal city of Puerto
Limón.

As one heads east, pineapple plantations dominate the landscape.  The size
of the plantations only underscores the magnitude of the problem facing
local communities.  Massive amounts of pesticides need to be used to keep the
plants free of insects, and to keep them growing quickly.  Monstrous storage
warehouses and packing facilitates, which consume energy like mad, dot the
sides of the main highway heading east.  Tractor trailers carrying the fruit
barrel down the narrow roads, often making the simple act of driving in a
car feel like a ride with the Blue Angels (or the Snowbirds for the
Canadians in the audience).

Often, the plantations are set back from the road (and nearby villages) and
are ‘hidden’ behind piled earth or tree-lined buffers.  The official
explanation for the buffers is to keep airborne pesticides from traveling
into populated or well-travelled areas.  This is no doubt true; moreover,
local residents have staked these buffers out as an important issue in any
policy reform regarding pineapple production.  On the other hand, could it
also be that the big producers — Dole and Del Monte — just want to hide
what are fairly unsightly and potentially dangerous monocultures from the
hundreds of tourist busses and vans that head for the Caribbean coast each
day?

This complex of issues is more than enough to fuel the scores of advocates
for what many researchers and practitioners are calling “alternative
agriculture.”  When I wander the aisles of the well-stocked but relatively
environmentally unfriendly grocery stores in the United States and Canada, I
too often find myself squarely in this camp.

But, as is always the case, environmental risks aren’t simple cases of good
guys versus the bad guys.  The plantations employ tens of thousands of often
poor, local villagers.  The producers play an important role maintaining
infrastructure — roads and bridges, and the delivery of water and
electricity — in places that look like they have been forgotten by time,
let alone the government.  And a significant share of pineapple revenue gets
plowed back into the country, supporting all kinds of national, provincial,
and local programs.  So while “organic” and “local” are hot topics these
days in North American agriculture, these agricultural systems — which do
exist in Costa Rica — would have great difficulty surviving, and in some
cases thriving,  without access to the warehouses, packing facilities, and
roads built and maintained by the corporate giants.

So for us, it’s the complex decisions — and importantly, the tradeoffs –
embedded in this tangled web of costs and benefits that brought us to Costa
Rica in the first place.  I have a feeling that they’ll keep us here for
quite some time…

By Joe Arvai

8/11/2009

I was in Costa Rica in February to do some location scouting with Lanie
for the NSF proposal that would eventually end up funding our work here.  On
that trip, we had a great meal at a small patio restaurant called Las
Palmas.  The place is in Pocora, a town just a short drive down the road
from EARTH University.  The rice with shellfish, arroz con mariscos, was
particularly good back in the winter.

The research team takes a break

Having eaten there again last night with Robby and Lanie, I can tell you the
seafood is still as good as ever.  However, something was different.  “Las
Palmas” is now “Mi Amor” and has an added feature that was not present
in February: a nudist club (and maybe more if you believe the locals).  I’m
very happy to report though that the restaurant is still “clothing
mandatory.”

But I digress.  Today was a day for more work with Ramón, Lanie, and Robby
on the different attributes of environmental policy options.  After another
long day, I think we have the basic attributes down and are ready to take
the next step, which is to model the estimated costs associated with the
different policy options we’ll be looking at.

León, Kellon and Richardson hard at work (photos courtesy Joe Arvai)

We also took a stab at determining the sample size for this first phase of
the research while also thinking about the initial project timeline.  We
need to do much more work on this but we’ve pretty much achieved what we
came here to work on with Ramón.  Tomorrow will be a day to visit some local
communities where the first phase of the research will take place…