SUNY Senate Sustainability Research Webinar Summary from Sept. 14, 2012
R. Smardon SUNY/ESF started the webinar talking about the communication
processes by conference call and Adobe Communicator – future webinars will make
more use of the latter. The following are brief summaries for each of the
sustainability working groups.
Campus sustainability – Mark Bremer SUNY IT
They had a conference call August 1st with limited numbers. Goals include
developing a campus inventory database possibly using STARS that can be utilized
by both researchers and campus sustainability managers. They also would like to
develop an intercampus network and would like to develop a proposal for all of the
above by spring and research possible funding sources. Also need to expand
participants by possibly connecting to members of the energy work group.
Climate sustainability workgroup – Rick Smardon SUNY/ESF
This group had a conference call on July 13th and discussed the following four
research ideas:
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First area is to obtain better local climate data (avoid homogenization), define data
discontinuity and quality control issues and develop better continuous historical
databases.
Linked to the data issue is possible utilization of localized pale climate data sources
such as tree rings, lake sediment cores, and cave stalactites to build more
continuous climate change data.
R. Smardon brought forward the concept of using social survey approaches to
gather local climate change perceptions form climate dependent livelihoods such as
farmers, Native Americans, and outdoor recreation managers.
Finally we discussed in our meeting in May –developing means to better visualize
these climate change impacts for those most affected plus local decision makers.
R. Smardon has developed a problem statement for the third research area and
Peter Knuepfer (Binghamton), Michael Sperazza (Stonybrook) and Chris Walcek
(Albany) are in the process of developing problem statements for the first two
concepts.
Food Sustainability – Hannah Morgan SUNY Central
This group has been having conference calls every three weeks. They are working
on an urban gardening proposal to assess efficacy and cost effectiveness of urban
soil sampling methods to reduce soil hazard issues. They are preparing a three level
approach for gathering and testing urban soils for hazardous contaminants. They
would be doing both lay and professional soil sampling plus both academic and
professional lab testing to see if there are any significant differences in results plus
possible reduction in costs. They are looking for expanded membership possibly
from Cornell, USDA and NRCS and are looking for funding sources.
Materials Science and Waste reduction – Shadi Shahedipour-Sandivik SUNY
Albany (standing in for Lisa Cleckner of FLI)
This group has three specific areas in inquiry that they developed in the May
workshop:
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Topic: Water treatment as a closed loop system or “Tap to Toilet to Tap”
Possible projects include: New techniques for disinfection such as Ultra-violet
disinfection using a small, portable solid state system and catalyst(s); and replacing
activated carbon as treatment media; using algal bioreactors for removing nutrients;
and developing filtration using biomimicry principles to remove solids and
potentially as desalination plus addressing social acceptance of drinking treated
wastewater
Topic: Sustainable Energy Production
Possible projects include: Use waste on ship for energy production with biodigestion,
water splitting and linked UV system for water purification using titanium dioxide.
Topic: Materials and Smart Systems
Possible projects include: Use of sharkskin as a model to reduce drag and building
systems that respond automatically to changes in the environment.
All these topics would be applied to a “floating laboratory”, which would be
Maritime’s training vessel. The new chair of Engineering at SUNY Maritime Peter
Domalavage reports that there is support for moving forward on such a research
agenda by both the College administration and the Maritime faculty. The group
needs to shift leadership to move forward and Wei Xinchao of SUNY IT has
volunteered to do so.
Sustainable ecosystems – Philippe Vidon SUNY/ESF
They reported that they have developed a proposal to establish a network of
researchers throughout SUNY to focus on ecological engineering, agriculture and
human behavior adaption practices. The basic question is to improve understanding
social-ecological interactions better to determine the parts we can more effectively
manage as well as barriers to adoption of sustainability practices such as behavioral
aspects.
This has been submitted to the SUNY Research Foundation as a collaborative fund
proposal and is awaiting review. If funded the next step would be to submit a larger
networking proposal to the NSF.
Social Science and Human Behavior- Junaid Zubari SUNY Fredonia
The concept they have developed focuses on consumption of unhealthy food and
food wastage. There is a gap between food purchasing and food consumption. They
propose to close that gap as a way to address sustainability. This project proposes to
use feedback mechanisms to reduce the trends of food wastage and unhealthy food
consumption. So they would propose to explore behavioral feedback mechanisms.
They have added a new member Ken Wallace of SUNY Albany who does behavioral
research that could be utilized for this question. Gary Keppel of SUNY Albany also
mentioned the issue of food wastage in the farm fields to the psychological
aesthetics of what is perceived to be desirable from the consumer point of view.
Communication issues: R. Smardon mentioned the existing email networks plus
Google drop boxes that have been set up for each of the groups. Also if sustainability
researchers want to work on more than one group – this is fine or to recruit new
members.
Funding support: Ivar Strand of the Research Foundation reported that the
Collaborative Fund proposals would be reviewed with a target date of November 1st
for those that did apply – such as the Sustainable Ecosystems group. He also
mentioned that he could do specific funding source searches for each group once
they have defined specific areas of research.
Hannah Morgan stated that Deborah Howard’s sustainability program is awaiting
the SUNY capital facilities budget review.
Questions: and Comments:
Shadi Shahedipour-Sandivik (Chair of SUNY Graduate Studies and Research
Committee) asked if proposals would be developed by individual proposals, or
would they would be combined at some point. R. Smardon replied that this
depended on how the groups proceed, as it is possible that some topics might be
combined.
One of the Cornell faculty asked that the problem statements and/or preliminary
research proposals be available across the whole SUNY network to allow interested
faculty to join these projects.
Next Webinar will be scheduled for mid-October and will be in two parts:
1. Developing questions for NSF program office for the following webinar
2. Structuring multi-disciplinary NSF style research proposals
Announcements:
There is a “Leading Sustainability” program proposed at SUNY Farmingdale for May
17-June 14 with 3 webinars between dates – an announcement will be sent out to
whole network. This is really for campus sustainability coordinators or those
charged with sustainability planning on their campuses.