The Nelson Institute Blog

David Zaks and Chad Monfreda

November 29, 2006 1:59 PM
Andrew C. Revkin is an award-winning science journalist for the New York Times covering environmental issues from pole to pole and ocean to atmosphere. Andy has recently completed his third book, The North Pole Was Here. Aside from his journalistic duties, Andy is a member of the band Uncle Wade who play ’simple music for complicated times.’ One of his songs, Liberated Carbon, is available at www.worldchanging.com.

David Zaks: You’ve been a science and environment writer for more than twenty years now, and a lot has happened in this realm in twenty years, whether it be with policy, new social and environmental phenomenon, or our growing knowledge base. How has your perspective changed during that time, and what do you think is the most important lesson to be learned from that?

Andy Revkin: The most important lesson I’ve learned in covering science since 1983 is that what matters the most in any individual question is the trajectory of understanding. If it’s the human influence on climate then you see a very steady-state trajectory with a lot of variability along the way. There are always certain studies that will be outliers and there’ll be these early stages kinds of research. Even Greenland. The trends on Greenland’s ice, you know, whether it’s an overall gain or loss of ice has been very variable just over the last year. But the idea that Greenland will be a much shrunken piece of ice in a warmer world is very solid, so the idea that that contributes to sea level rise is very solid.

Nuclear winter is a classic example where the initial flush of the idea was really powerful and strong and dramatic and made for a great page one story and front of magazine stories. I won my first AAAS award for my long piece on nuclear winter, which I reread recently and it’s nice and it stated the complexities and uncertainties very well, but then shortly afterward Steve Schneider and others reran the numbers and it came out nuclear autumn, and it hasn’t stuck.

Chad Monfreda: At times, does injecting more information actually confuse a policy issue?

AR: My sense with what happened to hurricanes is a lot of people, particularly within the environmental movement got a sense that here’s our chance. Katrina was the great wake up call we’ve been waiting for, the perfect icon, the perfect way to get the average person to recognize the potential hazards of humans warming the oceans on the climate. Scientists are people too, and there’re some who have a real tendency to want to shout out when they see a risk like that building. I think that colored how some of these studies were done. Some of them have been sort of rushed into print because the journals also are competitive. They’re just like the media. They are the media.

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Nelson Institute associate professor Nancy Mathews won praise in a Wisconsin State Journal editorial Tuesday (11/28) for providing a “shining example” of how UW-Madison educators and researchers help the state of Wisconsin in tangible ways. Read the editorial.

Entomologist Richard Lindroth, a Nelson Institute faculty member, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Lindroth was cited for his pioneering studies in the chemical ecology of plant-insect interactions, elucidating how genetics and resource availability modulate plant defense responses. AAAS is the world’s largest scientific society and publisher of the journal, Science.

by Dennis Chaptman

A digital trove brimming with cutting-edge maps, evocative photos, ecological information and the rich history of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Lakeshore Nature Preserve has been assembled on a Web site that debuted today [Nov. 20].

“One of the primary goals of the site is to get people to view the Preserve with new eyes, so they can experience it more deeply and enjoy it more richly,” says William Cronon, chair of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve Committee.

Donors Eleanor and Peter Blitzer, of Fort Myers, Fla., underwrote the project, which uses technology to assemble in one place a vast amount of information regarding the 300-acre Preserve that stretches along nearly two miles of shoreline where the campus meets Lake Mendota.

The site contains more than 325 Web pages illustrated by more than 2,400 photographs, video clips and maps. More than 300 information windows in the interactive map link back to the Web site.

“The preserve is a magnificent piece of the Madison and campus landscape, and we see the Web site as a way to increase public awareness of this spectacular natural asset,” says Cronon, a professor of history, geography and environmental studies.

One of the most innovative features of the site is an interactive map that was four months in the making. A team of graduate students, supervised by geography professor Mark Harrower, created the sophisticated, yet easy to use, map.

“I’m not aware of another natural area in the nation that has a map that is as rich and informative as this one,” Cronon says.

In addition to helping visitors find their way, the map allows for users to view a wide variety of different layers showing vegetation, hydrology, soils, topography, surviving and vanished historical sites and aerial photos. It also provides visitors with text and photos describing sites in the preserve.

One feature of the map allows viewers to animate historical aerial photos that reveal in time-lapse fashion how the area has changed since the first aerial photos were taken of the area in 1927.

The way-finding section of the map also offers users a feature called, “Have You Seen These?” which provides information on little known sites in the preserve.

Among them are foundations for a summertime tent colony near Frautschi Point that was used from 1912 to 1962 by graduate students; various American Indian mound sites; the Mason’s Stone Pile, where masons who helped build the university stored leftover stone for potential future use; and the brick walkway of a home once owned by Edward and Alice Young, which burned in 1933.

Other portions of the site show how to plan a visit to the preserve, how to notice and appreciate seasonal changes there, and how to recognize and enjoy the plants, insects, birds and mammals that are found in the area.

And the site is also rich in history, providing the original survey map and detailed human and natural histories of sites in the preserve and the cultural history of the area.

“We hope that the site encourages a culture of stewardship and help people experience this incredible place,” Cronon adds.

Chad Monfreda

There’s no denying modern medicine’s success. In wealthy countries, more people live longer, healthier lives than anytime in history. There’s been, however, plenty of denying its failures. Modern medicine’s obsession with the pathogen-in-the-patient does little about the conditions that make people sick in the first place. Fortunately, ecological approaches to health that treat both the patient and the ecosystem are taking off.Links between ecology and health exist wherever you look. We now know that SARS emerged from bats in China and that the terrifying H5N1 avian influenza virus hitchhikes on major flyways and poultry trade routes. At the same time, we’re waking up to the ecology of cities. Clean air and access to fresh water and sanitation are major ecological challenges on a rapidly urbanizing planet where one in two people already live in cities. These realizations gained critical mass at the EcoHealth ONE conference in October, when 400 experts on ecology and health from 30 countries convened in Madison, WI.Their refrain: cramped ideas about health must become spacious enough to encompass entire ecosystems. I heard this repeated over three days of talks covering topics like the effect of urban design on equity and health, the industrial livestock industry’s absurd cultivation of antibiotic resistance, and the ties between deforestation and malaria.

Rita Colwell, the banquet speaker and director of the US National Science Foundation from 1998 - 2004, made an especially compelling case for wedding ecology and health when she revealed surprising connections between climate and cholera (which we’ve covered before). In 1983, Colwell discovered that Vibrio cholerae, the bacterium that causes cholera, attaches itself to zooplankton, and in particular to tiny relatives of shrimp called copepods. Until her discovery, the vibrios’ hideout between cholera outbreaks was a mystery because the dormant bacteria are difficult to detect in the ocean. In the last few years, however, Colwell and her colleagues have used satellite remote-sensing to show that the warmer sea surface temperatures conducive to plankton blooms are tightly correlated with past cholera outbreaks in Peru and Bangladesh. The connection between climate and cholera is an ecohealth success made possible by collaboration between sociologists, statisticians, ecologists, geneticists, physicians, remote-sensing specialists, and field-extension agents. It also makes predicting epidemics a real possibility.

Unfortunately the ecology of disease is missing from mainstream medicine—but it’s far from a new idea. In one talk, historian Warwick Anderson outlined the field of disease ecology that flourished during the mid-twentieth century. René Dubos, the ardent environmentalist who coined ‘think globally and act locally’, was an early student of the ecology of infectious disease. Disease ecologists like Dubos somewhat pejoratively distinguished themselves from ‘microbe hunters’ and promoted a more dynamic, ecologically attuned perspective than the fields of medical geography or environmental health. The ecology of disease eventually faded with Dubos and its other founders, but it’s back in a big way.

Growing fears of global plagues and bioterrorism are reviving disease ecology—SARS and avian influenza being two of the more obvious examples. Topics like these are getting the academic attention they deserve in the journal EcoHealth (the namesake of the conference), where innovative approaches to ecology and health have a professional home. But are smart scientific connections enough?

If the EcoHealth ONE attendees are any indication, making professional connections between doctors and ecologists is as much of a challenge—and just as important—as making the scientific connections between disease and ecology. The conference had a good interdisciplinary showing, gathering veterinarians, social scientists, public health workers, and even organizations like NASA and Conservation International—although only a few physicians. The small group of physicians who were there described a medical community that was interested, open, and not at all hostile to ecohealth—but also overstretched, rigidly institutionalized, and missing the right incentives to become involved. Consider that none of the US National Institute for Health’s $28 billion budget funds ecological studies. It’s hard to do research on a budget of zero.

Physicians do get it though. And a few are even doing something about it. Physician John Howard of the University of Western Ontario described his work to introduce ecohealth into the medical school’s curriculum through the innovative Ecosystem Health Program. Unlike the disease-centered curriculum that dominates most medical schools, and even unlike the more inclusive idea of patient centered health, Howard’s ecohealth epiphany recognizes that “Big systems are going to be the problem for the 21st century.”

Students: If you are still looking for courses for Spring 2007 check out the Nelson Institute’s Special Topics, New Courses and Seminars web pages. We post courses from across campus that are environmentally related, but do not appear in the course catalogs. Instructors: If you are looking to announce your course, please use our submission form.

Additionally, the Global Studies program has a listing of internationally related courses.

The first part of my trip was to Wageningen, Netherlands (Holland), where I met with Marten Scheffer at the University of Wageningen both to work on research and to discuss partnerships in two new research institutes which he is involved in setting up, a Sustainability Science Institute which will be pan-European (see http://www.paralimes.org for more detail) and a new institute (SARAS) he is helping to create Uruguay with the University of Uruguay, which will focus on resilience thinking. He would like Nelson Institute participation in both projects.

I then went for one day to Tromso, Norway where (thanks to Ambassador Thomas Loftus) I met with a very interesting group about the possibilities of a new research incubator / institute / thinktank to look at the linked ecological-economic-social system of the Arctic, which is currently vulnerable and facing radical shifts on multiple fronts. This was an exciting meeting (I have attached the minutes separately) with I think promising possibilities for Nelson Institute faculty, students and researchers.

Lastly I went to Stockholm, Sweden, where I had a very interesting meeting with Carl Folke, Director of the new MISTRA Center (recently funded for 22M euros) and new co-director of the Beijer Institute. Folke is interested in signing an MOU with Nelson Institute to involve exchange of students and possible joint faculty, i.e. MISTRA to pay ½ salary of a NI position, with the faculty member based in NI but committed to spending time in Sweden. This is a particularly exciting proposal as it could complement the PVL we are developing for a new NI position. Folke is working on a first draft of the MOU. I will be returning to Stockholm and to Tromso in January to push both projects further.

While in Stockholm I gave two presentations, one to their CTM interdisciplinary Masters program on leadership and environmental policy and one to the Stockholm Seminars Series. Here I spoke on the Nelson Institute work on transdisciplinary competencies and program design. This generated considerable excitement as the MISTRA center is very focused on new programming.

As ever, let me know if you are interested in involvement with these new emerging projects.

–Frances

Here is more information on the MISTRA Center and its award, and also the minutes from the Tromso meeting.

Prospective students can get a quick look at the Nelson Institute’s graduate programs from a newly posted slide show on the institute’s Web site. The slides come from a PowerPoint presentation on our graduate programs produced last year for use in graduate student recruitment. If you’d like to be an ambassdor for the institute when you travel and help spread the word about our master’s and Ph.D. programs, ask Tom Sinclair for a copy of the presentation.

The WRM students of the Summer 2006 practicum were featured in an article on the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal today (11/15/06): Students develop plan to rehabilitate Monona Bay

They will be giving a presentation on their findings and recommendations on Thursday, November 16th at 6:30pm in 1106 Mechanical Engineering. For more information on the presentation check out the Nelson Institute Environmental Events Calendar.

Water Resources Research National Competitive Grants Program- FY 2007

The U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the National Institutes for Water Resources requests proposals for matching grants to support research on the topics of water supply and water availability, which are issues of importance nationwide. Proposals are requested on the topics of water supply and availability, including investigations of possible new sources of supply, improvement of impaired waters to usable quality, conservation of existing sources, and limiting growth in demand. Proposals are sought in not only the physical dimensions of supply and demand, but also quality trends in raw water supplies; the role of economics and institutions in water supply and demand; institutional arrangements for tracking and reporting water supply and availability; and institutional arrangements for coping with extreme hydrologic conditions. The amount available for research under this program is estimated to be $920,000 in federal funds. Any investigator at an institution of higher learning in the United States is eligible to apply for a grant through a Water Research Institute or Center established under the provisions of the Water Resources Research Act of 1984, as amended (http://water.usgs.gov/wrri/institutes.html).

Proposals involving substantial collaboration between the USGS and university scientists are encouraged. Proposals may be for projects of 1 to 3 years in duration and may request up to $250,000 in federal funds. Successful applicants must match each dollar of the federal grant with one dollar from non-federal sources.

Proposals must be filed on the Internet at https://niwr.net by 4:00 PM, Central Standard Time, February 16, 2007.

The Government’s obligation under this program is contingent upon the availability of funds. For a copy of the Request for Proposals (RFP) visit https://niwr.net/. The RFP is available through a link on that page at the end of the bullet “National Competitive Grants Program - 104G” under “The System” section.

Contributed by
Prof. Jon Foley, Director
Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE)