The Nelson Institute Blog

Congratulations Recent M.S and Ph.D. Graduates

August 29th, 2007

As the 2006-2007 school year ends, we would like to congratulate our recent M.S. and Ph.D. graduates. A list of the recent graduates and their advisors can be found on our Recent M.S. and Ph.D. Graduates website.

Filed under: Of Student Interest by Sara Lorence | Comments (0)

Welcome, New Grad Students

August 27th, 2007

As the Fall 2007 semester begins, we would like to extend a special welcome to our new Nelson Institute graduate students. To see a list of the new students and their advisors, please go to our New Graduate Students web page.

Filed under: Of Student Interest by Sara Lorence | Comments (0)

Med school magazine profiles Jonathan Patz

August 24th, 2007

“As Temperatures Rise, Global Health Declines” declares the cover of the UW School of Medicine and Public Health’s latest Quarterly magazine, which profiles the work of Associate Professor Jonathan Patz in a feature article on ecology and public health. Patz has a joint faculty appointment in the Nelson Institute and the school’s Department of Population Health Sciences. Read the article (PDF).

Filed under: Environmental News, Faculty & Staff News, Of Student Interest by Tom Sinclair | Comments (0)

Sustainability visionary Roy Weston dies at age 96

August 21st, 2007

Roy F. Weston, a major benefactor of the Nelson Institute and an original member of its Board of Visitors, died Saturday at his home in Pennsylvania. He was 96.

Five years ago, Weston gave $1 million to the institute to help create two annual graduate fellowships, fund the Roy F. Weston Distinguished Global Sustainability Lecture Series, and support other sustainability initiatives. This gift established the Roy Weston Program in Sustainability, which is operated by the institute’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) in cooperation with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He also set aside another $1 million in a trust fund earmarked for the institute as part of his and his wife Madeleen’s estate.

A Wisconsin native and 1933 UW-Madison civil engineering graduate, Weston founded Weston Solutions, Inc., a leading international environmental and redevelopment consulting firm. He led the company for more than three decades until his retirement in 1991. (Read the company’s obituary.)

Described by his colleagues as a visionary, Weston was an early champion of the idea that environmental problems are complex and that their resolution requires multidisciplinary, rather than piecemeal, approaches. He also maintained that prevention of environmental problems is preferable to abatement or remediation and insisted that his company’s engineers place the public good ahead of the wishes of individual clients.

Weston was among the first engineers to use environmental sustainability as a central criterion to evaluate human activity. He also became a strong advocate for environmental thought and action from a global perspective.

“Mr. Weston was an intellectual giant who saw the need for sustainability decades before others,” says SAGE director Jonathan Foley. “Thanks to his support, we will continue to build upon Mr. Weston’s vision for years to come.”

Weston’s many awards and citations included an honorary doctorate from UW-Madison in 1995.

Filed under: Miscellany by Tom Sinclair | Comments (0)

Nelson Institute Fall 2007 Welcome Events

August 17th, 2007

There are three welcome events planned the week before classes begin. All Nelson Institute faculty, staff and students are invited to all of the events.

Student Commons Open House
Thursday, August 30th, 1:30-3:00 pm (with a brief tour starting at 2 pm)
Room 15 Science Hall
Welcome Picnic
Thursday, August 30th, 4:00 pm
Picnic Point Site #2
Meet behind Science Hall at 3:00 pm to walk to bike to Picnic Point
Brats, burgers, veggie burgers and drinks will be provided, returning students, faculty and staff are asked to bring a dish to pass.
Environmental Studies Fall Semester Orientation
Friday, August 31st, 2:00 pm
175 Science Hall

For more information, please see our Fall 2007 Welcome Packet. Hope to see you there!

Filed under: Faculty & Staff News, Of Student Interest by Sara Lorence | Comments (0)

Limnology society honors Steve Carpenter

August 16th, 2007

Limnologist Stephen Carpenter, a Nelson Institute faculty affiliate, joined the select ranks of the world’s most distinguished lake researchers this week, as he received the highest international honor in his field. See story.

Filed under: Faculty & Staff News by Tom Sinclair | Comments (0)

A Great Public University in a Changing World

August 15th, 2007

The 2009 Reaccreditation self-study project, led by Nelson Institute associate professor Nancy Mathews, is charged with answering the questions:

Now the conversation about greatness and change continues:

This past Spring, we asked more than 6,000 students, alumni, faculty, and staff to tell us their vision for the university over the next ten years. Based on these responses, we identified six narrower psp themes, related to the central questions, for further study this Fall.

More information, including a detailed presentation of the six themes, can be found at http://www.greatu.wisc.edu/.

Filed under: Faculty & Staff News, Miscellany, Of Student Interest by Andy Wetzel | Comments (0)

Local Food and Carbon Footprinting

August 6th, 2007

An OpEd in the New York Times this morning reports an interesting example of the importance of defining the boundaries of the systems we are trying to sustain and the importance of carefully choosing our indicators. In particular James E. McWilliams, a self-professed supporter of local foods, reports the following:

It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call “factor inputs and externalities” — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy cell phone applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.

Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.

McWilliams continues:

“Eat local” advocates — a passionate cohort of which I am one — are bound to interpret these findings as a threat. We shouldn’t. Not only do life cycle analyses offer genuine opportunities for environmentally efficient food production, but they also address several problems inherent in the eat-local philosophy.

Filed under: Business and Environment, Environmental News, Faculty & Staff News, Miscellany, Of Student Interest by Lewis Gilbert | Comments (0)

Images of data in a warming world

August 2nd, 2007

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/

Like all sciences, the study of climate change relies upon a thorough and comprehensive investigation of the data. It is the goal of Global Warming Art to make some of that data accessible to the public through a collection of figures and images that accurately highlight and describe key issues necessary to understanding our world’s changing climate.

Global Warming Art is the result of a dream that the public and educators should have easy access to the same data and results that have framed the scientific discussion of global warming and climate change. In the spirit of free content, this site strives to incorporate and develop materials that may be widely reused by the public at large.

Filed under: Environmental News, Miscellany, Of Student Interest by Andy Wetzel | Comments (1)

Our share of the planetary pie

August 1st, 2007

Researchers with the Nelson Institute’s Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE) react to the first geographically detailed analysis of human impacts on the Earth’s terrestrial net primary productivity in a commentary published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

SAGE director Jon Foley, research assistants Chad Monfreda and David Zaks, and Navin Ramankutty, a Nelson Institute/SAGE alumnus now at McGill University, discuss a PNAS article in their commentary, “Our share of the planetary pie.”

Read the lead article, Quantifying and mapping the human appropriation of net primary production in earth’s terrestrial ecosystems, by Helmut Haberl et al.

Note: On-line access to some of this information may be limited to PNAS subscribers.

Filed under: Alumni News, Environmental News, Faculty & Staff News, Of Student Interest by Tom Sinclair | Comments (0)