Posts
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Internships at Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment
The Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, a joint center of Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute, is accepting applications for internship positions for the spring 2017 semester as well as for summer 2017.
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The Risks and Impacts of Expropriating Community Lands
While a government might consider that a community’s lands can generate greater public benefits if used as the site of a large-scale project, such as for agriculture or forestry, that needs to be balanced with how taking the land will affect the people who lived there and depended on that land.
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Why Are Mines Still Polluting? The Money’s Not There
Across the nation, abandoned mine sites continue to pollute the environment for decades as acid mine drainage flows into rivers and streams. A 1980 law was supposed to fix that, but lack of funding and enforcement have left the public stuck with the bill.
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Students Advise County on Permeable Pavement
The biggest barrier to installation or permeable pavement is funding. But the positive outcomes include reduced flooding, less stormwater runoff, and recharging of aquifers.
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Will Trump Administration Remember Environment While Boosting Economy?
The year 1970 is the year that Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and the United States enacted the Clean Air Act, establishing national standards for clean air. Nearly half a century later, America’s population and economy are both much larger than they were back then, while our air pollution is lower. As Mr.…
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Looking at Climate from All the Angles
The Earth Institute digs into the past, tracks the present and models the future of climate. We explore the broader issues surrounding climate change, seek ways to apply our knowledge to real solutions, and nurture collaboration among faculty and researchers in the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, law, public health, engineering, architecture and urban…
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Creating Earthquake Heat Maps: Temperature Spikes Leave Clues in the Rock
When a fault slips, the temperature can spike by hundreds of degrees, high enough to alter organic compounds in the rocks and leave a signature. Lamont scientists have developed methods to use those organic signatures to reconstruct past earthquakes and better understand what controls them.
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Study Finds Oil Palm Certification Plays Limited Role in Curbing Fires
Oil palm is in everything from food to cosmetics to fuel and is consumed and used by most people without giving it a second thought. Yet oil palm cultivation is a large contributor to environmental and social problems, especially in places like Indonesia, where the business of oil palm cultivation has become the second largest…
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Learning from Slow-Slip Earthquakes
Off the coast of New Zealand, there is an area where earthquakes can happen in slow-motion as two tectonic plates grind past one another. These slow-slip events create an ideal lab for studying fault behavior along the shallow portion of subduction zones.
