Posts
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MPA Students Present Initial Research Findings at Midterm Presentations
On Wednesday, June 27, students in the Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy (ESP) program presented their midterm Workshop briefings for fellow students, staff, and invited guests at the School of International and Public Affairs. This summer’s Workshop projects, intended for ESP students to gain experience tackling tough environmental problems by working…
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A Major Legal Victory for Climate Science
Though most attention last week focused on the Supreme Court ruling upholding federal reform of the health-care system, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued the most important judicial decision on climate change in five years. That decision upholds the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to regulate greenhouse gases, and it…
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Water Center, PepsiCo Foundation Present Sustainable Water Successes at Rio+20
The rural communities of Ceará, Brazil, had long been accustomed to drought and the problems that result: food insecurity, death of livestock, and conflict over scarce water resources. While Ceara’s problems may have been typical of a water scarce region in the developing world, the work of the Columbia Water Center and PepsiCo Foundation has…
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Studying Cutting-Edge Carbon Storage Technologies
This past June, PhD candidates from Earth Institute’s Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy Miriam Okun and Yinghuang Ji traveled to Alabama to attend Research Experience in Carbon Sequestration (RECS), an intensive 10-day program hosted by Southern Company and sponsored by the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory. The program allowed participants to study cutting-edge…
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A Celebration of Sustainability Innovation
The 2012 Equator Prizes were awarded to 25 local initiatives from Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Nicaragua, Swaziland and Brazil and elsewhere, for work by local groups toward the advancement of sustainable development solutions.
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When the World Ended in Ice
A mile or so of glacial ice covering much of North America and plowing down from the north once terminated in the New York metropolitan area, at a front stretching roughly from exit 13 on the New Jersey Turnpike (Rahway), on across southern Staten Island, the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, and northeastward through Long Island. But exactly when that ice started…
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MS Student Presents Sustainable Solutions for NYC Public High School
Prior to completing the MS in Sustainability Management program in December 2011, Sarah Bacon conducted a sustainability assessment of a public school in New York City for her independent capstone thesis. Bacon used the CO2 conversion factors of PlaNYC, the agenda created by Mayor Bloomberg to create a greener New York City and in doing…
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MPA Students Apply Classroom Knowledge at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
On Monday, June 25, the students in the Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy (MPA-ESP) program took a field trip to Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, NY. The trip was organized and led by Lamont Associate Research Professors Jason Smerdon and Juerg Matter, who teach Climatology and Environmental Chemistry respectively during…
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Mapping Water Circulation Within Cascadia Basin
Heading west from coastal Oregon we are able to make our initial seismic images beneath the seafloor continuously as we go. Where once our data would have been recorded on magnetic tapes only to be analyzed long after the expedition was over, thanks to the wonders of modern signal processing, we can now make images…
