The Nelson Institute Blog

The Friends of the UW-Madison Arboretum annual Native Plant Sale is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, May 10, 2008, in a tent near the arboretum visitor center, 1207 Seminole Highway.

Anyone may order native plants (including a rain garden, butterfly/hummingbird garden, savanna garden, children’s prairie garden) and native shrubs, vines and trees, now through March 17. More than 100 varieties of woodland and prairie plants are available. All the species are native to the area, propagated plants (not dug from the wild). The pre-order brochure is available on line or by phone at 608-263-7760.

Members of Friends of the Arboretum receive a 10 percent discount on all orders. Proceeds from the sale benefit arboretum projects. For more information, contact:

Linda Bishop
Friends of the Arboretum, staff
608-263-7760

Wisconsin Public Radio’s Larry Meiller featured the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI) on his live, statewide call-in program today (Wednesday, February 27). His guests were WICCI science council co-chairs Richard Lathrop and John Magnuson.

Listen to a recording of the program (length: approx. 35 minutes).

We wish to extend our congratulations to� the� December 2007 graduates of our Environmental Studies Certificate program:

Hamid� Afsari
Lisa� Aldridge
Elizabeth� Appleby
Jessica� Barman
Alexander� Burnett
Benjamin� Creagh
Andrew� Davis
Christopher� Davit
Lauren� Fiedler
Lindsay� Focht
Nicole� Grapentine-Benton
Brandon� Helm
Stephanie� Hinman
Andrew� Jakubowski
Evan� Johnson
Matthew� Kurtz
Vanessa� Machen
Tyler� McCombs
Lindsay� Schaffner
Mark� Schroder
Ryan� Stuckey
Katrina Venhuizen
Andrea� Wiesner

We wish you� the best in� your future endeavors and we hope that some of those will include the Nelson Institute!

…from his car:

Two years ago, I approached the director of Community Car and told her that when the organization placed a car near my house, I would happily “divorce” my car and send it to those who could put it to use for a worthwhile cause. Friends, I am happy to say that time has come! Through my colleagues at Architecture for Humanity, I have partnered with the Lower 9th Ward Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association (NENA) in New Orleans. The donation of my car will help them facilitate their post-Katrina efforts and move people and materials between work sites in the Lower 9th Ward in the ongoing rebuilding and reconstruction efforts.

David Zaks, a Nelson Institute graduate student at the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, needs some help to get the car relocated to New Orleans. You can read his request for your support on his website.

And if you are interested in the post-Hurricane Katrina renewal of New Orleans, be sure to make time on Monday, March 3rd, 2008, for a workshop on the Sustainable Restoration of the Lower Ninth Ward, sponsored by the Water Resources Management New Orleans Practicum, the Katrina Action Network, Bring Back the Bayou, Slow Food UW, and the Nelson Institute. Starting with a brown bag presentation at noon, and ending with a Cajun crawfish boil in Science Hall, the day includes plenty of chances to learn and engage with the rebuilding of New Orleans and its vital ecosystems.

Here are the full details: (more…)

This morning as I re-read some of the writing I did yesterday, I realized that despite all of my admonitions to myself to always look forward and to imagine the best possible futures, echoes of the past were still shaping my paragraphs and limiting my imagination. Certainly the events of the past need to be acknowledged and learned from, but they should not reach into and limit our aspirations for the future.

I bring this up because I firmly believe that the Nelson Institute should be guided by hope for the future. As many of you know, my own working definition of sustainability is rooted in the notion that the aggregate quality of life on Earth should consistently improve. It is also my hope that the Nelson Institute can contribute to that improvement.

So I urge us all, not the least myself, to imagine the future we want to create and then to work hard toward realizing it.

An article from the BBC notes that strong voices from the UK are advocating for significant increases in support for measures aimed at adaptation to climate change in developing nations. The article notes that Lord Jay has made a call at the Global Legislators’ Organisation for a Balanced Environment conference in Brasilia to address the huge gap between the funds available and the funds that will be needed to address adaptation issues in the most vulnerable regions of the globe.

This rapidly growing attention on adaptation is an opportunity for the Nelson Institute to establish leadership. Our WICCI program is one example where we are acting on this front. And our Earth Day conference will highlight the complementary relationship between mitigation of GHG emissions and adaptation to changes that are already inevitable.

I would appreciate your thoughts regarding how the Institute can capitalize on the growing attention on climate change adaptation.

The new Spring 2008 student profiles have been posted on the Student Profiles web site. The site provides outstanding examples of some of the projects that our students are working on.

Graduate students interested in presenting at the Madison Ecology Group Spring Ecology Symposium- April 4th, should submit a 1-page abstract to the MEG Coordinator. The abstracts are due Due February 19th. This is a great opportunity to wrap up your graduate research. Presentations will be about 15 minutes each on Friday afternoon of the Spring Symposium. After the presentations, there will be a break with refreshments and time for the poster session followed by the lecture by keynote speaker Jim Clark (Duke University).

Also accepting abstracts for a poster session for the symposium- for both graduate and undergraduate poster session. Posters will be set up Friday afternoon (1-4) during the presentations and refreshment breaks.

Abstracts (1-page or less) for both the poster session and presentations are due February 19th.

Questions about MEG? Check out the website or email.

As we close in on an all-time record for snowfall, I have noticed that it is not just those of us from ocean moderated climates who are beginning to think about green and warmth. That said, it is nice that the very large piles of snow here do not immediately turn grey as they do following a blizzard in NYC (it is remarkable how much snow a very large number of people with small shovels can move in a short time!).

The big news of course is that the return visits for the NI Director candidates are upon us:

• 18-19 February - Jonathan Overpeck
• 21-22 February - Robert Costanza

Their CV’s are available as are their agendas (see links above, with the caveat that some details are likely to change.)

I just returned from a nice reception honoring winners of awards for exceptional TAs. I was there because our own Kathryn DeMaster was a winner for Innovative teaching. The competition for these awards is very strong and Kathryn is among only 4 winners in her category. Please extend congratulations to Kathryn when you see her.

The Governance Faculty meeting has been postponed from next monday until the 25 of February in order to accommodate the director candidate visits. An agenda will circulate soon.

Our undergraduate certificate students have organized an Environmental Studies Club with Mary Mercier as their adviser. I was invited to speak to them at their meeting last week and was very pleasd to find 175 full to standing room. The club is planning Earth Day events for the weekend of Earth Day. Those events will coincide with the all-campus party so there is possibility of good visibility for their efforts.

As part of the EAP capstone, Jeannette Leboyer and Damon Clark are laying the groundwork for quantification of the Nelson Institute’s carbon footprint. Over the next two months they will develop a series of memos to me that outline the challenges, suggest some processes / frameworks, and take a first pass at an estimate of what that footprint may be. They will also make recommendations for follow-on work that may be addressed by future EAP teams.

In my previous summary and buried the the mind map is an item called “greening events and operations“. The carbon footprint project is one step in that direction. I am interested in additional ideas for how to proceed toward that objective.

The Community Environmental Forum got off to a very good start on 1 Feb. Charles Hales gave a very nice overview of transportation options for medium size cities such as ours. The topic this Friday will be Transit-oriented Development by Kevin Pomeroy from 1000 Friends of Wisconsin. Remember: Seating is Limited - please register if you plan to attend.

Bill Bland has been working on revisions to the Nelson Institute Policies & Procedures. In particular he has been working to clarify elements that we currently have and to add sections where our NIPP are lacking wrt FP&P calls for. His suggestions are available here. We will be discussing these in the APC meeting coming up this Friday and will bring recommendations to the Governance Faculty soon.

It is my hope that we have now flipped the necessary switches so that this post will be pushed to you. My next challenge is to generate comments. Granted these posts are not so controversial, but my requests for input are genuine. (wandering now) I have now been interim director for 3/4 (0.75) of a year (9 months) and I have learned a lot in that time. In particular I have gained a much more nuanced understanding of leadership and service and I have learned that the better I am at listening to what people say, the easier it is to make decisions and to discern what I should do next. Sooo - keep those cards and letters coming.

We have received some great news! We won an additional Doris Duke Conservation Fellowship for the 2008-2009 year. The Doris Duke Conservation fund has four additional fellowships that are awarded to qualifying schools.

The additional fellowship has been awarded to Rebecca Zug (Conservation Biology & Sustainable Development MS with Adrian Treves). To see a list of the other eight fellows, go to the Doris Duke 2008-2009 Fellowships posting.

Congratulations Becky!