Earth Sciences128
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18,000 Scientists–In One Place
This week marks the world’s largest annual gathering of earth and space scientists: the five-day December meeting of the American Geophysical Union. There will be about 18,000 of them, spread across two giant San Francisco convention halls giving talks and discussing the latest in their fields. Scores of researchers from the Earth Institute will be…
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Making Sense of Earth Data: A Guide
Charts, graphs and maps representing natural phenomena can be a challenge to anyone trying to extract something meaningful from them. A new book, Earth Science Puzzles: Making Meaning From Data, aims to help students of earth and environmental sciences decode images by presenting practice puzzles consisting of real-world scientific data. The authors are Kim A. Kastens and Margie Turrin of…
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Is Groundwater Depletion Causing Sea-level Rise?
A recent study from Yoshihide Wada and other researchers from Utrecht University attempted to assess the status of global groundwater depletion—that is, the amount of water that is being drawn out from underground reservoirs that is not being replaced by precipitation—and came up with some startling conclusions. Chief among them that depletion of groundwater may…
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Columbia Engineers an Impact on Water Sustainability
The most recent issue of the Columbia Engineering Magazine profiles many of the Columbia University Engineering faculty who are addressing the issues of sustainability in the water, climate and energy fields. Several of Columbia Water Center’s researchers and collaborators were featured. Here are some teasers that demonstrate the depth and breadth of the talent at…
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The New York DEP: A New Kind of Modeling Agency
Last Friday, Don Pierson of the NY DEP gave a lecture at the Columbia Water Center as part of our Fall Seminar Series. The talk, entitled “A Project to Evaluate the Effects of Climate Change on the NYC Drinking Water Supply,” detailed the process behind current DEP efforts to model the possible effects of climate…
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Can We Have Our Water and Drink It, Too? Exploring the Water Quality-Quantity Nexus
Water quantity and quality have generally been considered as separate problems and have usually been treated as such in policy-making and environmental restoration efforts. Increasingly, however, research and experience is beginning to show a strong link between water quantity and quality.
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Measuring Earthquakes in Western New York
Each year, dozens of small, mostly harmless earthquakes quakes rattle the northeastern United States and southern Canada, and one quite active area runs along the shores of lakes Erie and Ontario, in western New York. In order to learn more about what generates these, and the possible threat of something bigger, scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth…
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A Year of Progress Toward a Sustainable Earth
The Earth Institute’s annual donor report is now available in an interactive digital format. We remain committed to finding extraordinary solutions to unprecedented world challenges, and this report highlights some of our innovative projects in research, policy and education, and the partnerships that are helping to support them.
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‘Troubled Waters’ Wreaking Havoc, from Minnesota to Mexico
On October 5th, ‘Troubled Waters’, a documentary produced by the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum, was screened for the first time on the U’s main campus in St. Paul.
By studying thousands of buildings and analyzing their electricity use, Columbia Climate School Dean Alexis Abramson has been able to uncover ways to significantly cut energy consumption and emissions. Watch the Video: “Engineering a Cooler Future Through Smarter Buildings“