Posts
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Preparing for Seven Weeks at Sea
For our spring expedition, NBP1503, to the margin of East Antarctica we will live and work on board the United States icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer. Together we are eight scientists, 10 science support staff and 19 crew members of the ship’s crew.
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Salt Kilns and Landscape Change in the Sundarbans
Leaving Hiron Point, we headed east through the Sundarbans to Kotka. At Kotka the students had walks through the forest seeing deer, wild boar and monkeys, while a smaller group also sampled near a set of 300 year old salt making kilns for OSL dating. We managed to finish while the tide inundated the site.…
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Polder 32 and Hiron Point
We visited Polder 32, an embanked island in the delta that was flooded for almost two years when the embankment failed in several places during Cyclone Aila. In addition to the problem of increased subsidence due to the embankment, the area struggles for fresh water. Then we sailed to Hiron Point, a forest station in…
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Working in the Bangladeshi Countryside
After traveling by boat for two days, including crossing the Sundarban Mangrove Forest, we finally arrived in Khulna. We drove to the site of our compaction meter and separated into teams servicing the instruments, investigating agricultural practices, measuring arsenic in the well water and taking sediment samples for dating. We had finally started our work…
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Creating a ‘Safe Space’ for Iconic Ecosystems
Important global ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest and Great Barrier Reef are in danger of breaking down because of a combination of local pressures and climate change, but better local management could help make these areas more resilient.
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Waking up to America’s Water Challenges
“Will it take another Dustbowl for Americans to start paying attention to water issues?” asked Water Center Director Upmanu Lall. Or will it be the chance to create the “iPhone technology” of water? Whether the impetus is crisis or opportunity, according to Lall, the time to act is now.
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Sustainability Management Alum Directs Energy towards Renewables
Jason Prince (’14) now works at Karbone, an integrated renewable energy and environmental markets company, as the Director of Research. Before joining the program, he worked as a wilderness guide in his native Canada, taking young people on backcountry canoe trips, which emphasized leave-no-trace practices. Jason has also worked for a non-profit organization that focused…
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Remote Data Team Helped Put Haiti Back on the Map
Before the Haiti earthquake, few publicly available maps of the country existed. When the earthquake hit in 2010, some of the little data that existed was destroyed. Then a team at Tufts University went into action, and from afar, helped build updated maps of roads and earthquake damage to help humanitarian organizations deal with the…
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Intractable Conflict: Can We End ‘Endless’ Wars?
Intractable conflicts such as the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East or long-term civil wars in central Africa are among the world’s most destructive social ills, and the most difficult to solve. Over the past decade, Peter Coleman, director of the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University, has been…
