Environmental Change and Adaptation
ECA
Jane Molofsky, Plant Biology, Chair
Nick Gotelli, Biology
Saleem Ali, RSENR and Gund Institute Fellow
Dennis Clougherty, Physics
William Keeton, RSENR
Beverley Wemple, Geography
Leon Walls, Education
Lisa Aultman-Hall, Transportation Research Center
Mary Watzin, Dean and Advisor
ECA SPIRE: Environmental Change and
Adaptation
 GOAL: Create a nationally recognized program that will build
UVM strength in the environment. Identify areas that are not
already being done elsewhere.
 CONSTRAINTS: resources are limited, faculty concern about
Spires hogging all the resources.
How can we reconcile the goals with
the constraints?
Identify what is being done at UVM
Identify what is not being done elsewhere
Defining the Spire:
 New technological tools for




forecasting and predicting
environmental change
Socioeconomic indicators of
environmental change
Ecological economics of
change
Novel adaptive management
of our existing resources.
Education and outreach
What is being done elsewhere?
Our research did
not turn up any
major US programs
specifically
examining
environmental
change and
adaptation
School
Program
Columbia
University
Massachusetts
Institute of Tech
Arizona State
University
The Earth
Institute
Center for Global
Change Science
The Global
Institute of
Sustainability
Environmental
Sustainability
Institute
Nicholas School
of the
Environment
Center for a
Sustainable
Future
University of
Michigan
Duke University
Cornell
University
Internationally, we turned up one Institute
that included adaptation in the title
Consortium of Australian Universities
Focus on pest management primarily so little overlap
Existing UVM strength in Environmental
Programs
 Sierra magazine ranks UVM fourth"Coolest School"
in country
 UVM named one of nation's most environmentally
responsible schools
 and over 160 faculty doing environmental research14, it's not
surprising that the Sustainable Endowments Institute ranked
UVM one of the six greenest schools15 in the country.
 17% of UVM undergraduates have majors identified with the
SPIRE
UVM already has top scholars in the
field of the environment
 Faculty from more than 10 Departments/Programs would
participate.
 These faculty have already produced top quality papers:
 53 SCIENCE,NATURE, Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences papers done by UVM faculty (excludes COM).
 These faculty already bring in competitive research dollars
 $35 million dollars in environmental grants last 5 years
UVM already has a PhD program in the
area of the SPIRE
 UVM currently has over 90 PhD students in the area of the
Spire
 These students are dispersed in small departments
 This makes it difficult to recruit
 Affects the NRC rankings because individual programs too
small
Components of the Spire
 Five inter-related components
 Modeling, forecasting, computational tools, new technology
 Develop socio-economic indicators
 Joint modeling of ecological/economic impacts
 Develop novel adaptive management
 Increase educational/society outreach
Forecasting environmental Change
• Modeling, forecasting, computational tools, new technology
 Examples:
 Institute long-term monitoring studies (Beckage et al 2008 PNAS)
 Use tools from complex systems
 Development of sensors for better environmental monitoring
Development of Socio-economic
indicators
 Faculty lead seminar in 2005 lead to several papers on socio-
economic indicators
 Vermont’s small size makes it possible for the development and
testing of indicators
Ecological and Economic impacts
 Joint consideration of ecological/economic indicators
(ecological economics)
 GUND institute world leader in ecological economics
 Models being developed at Transportation Research Center
(TRC).
 Large NSF project (run out of GUND) is considered cutting
edge of this field (aries project)
Adaptive management of ecosystems
 How to make decisions in the face of uncertainty
 Programs in place on Lake Champlain, forest carbon
sequestration
 Social networking can be considered a kind of adaptive
management where social/societal pressure is used to drive
decision making
 Focus will be on finding best solutions
What will the SPIRE do for the
undergraduate community at UVM?
 14 majors at the University are related to the environment
 17 % of students have majors identified by the SPIRE
 Greater coordination of programs, faculty offering cross-
disciplinary courses, greater research/intern opportunities.
What will the Spire do for education
and outreach
 Spire provides an opportunity to apply for GK-12 education
grant
 Faculty work with teachers to develop curriculum around area
of the Spire
 Sends PhD students into local schools to implement the
program (grade, middle, high).
 Multiple benefits
 PhD students paid by grant, not TA support
 Long-term changes in Curriculum
What will the Spire do for the
community?
 Vermont can be a test lab for many programs developed at
University
 Energy Minder program (Hines, Engineering and Bongard, Comp. Sci.)
 Paying farmers to not hay their fields (Strong, Donavon,RSENR)
 Enhanced outreach with ECHO and Shelburne Farms
 Greater grant money coming in to the University, greater and
higher tech jobs for the community
 Development of technology can lead to small business
opportunities VCET
Proposed activities
 Provide faculty release time for trans-discplinary proposal
development
 Why release time and not grants?
 Faculty associated with the Spire already have competitive grant
support
 NASA,DOE,DOD, EPA, NSF, AFRI, NOAA, DOT
 Faculty need time and incentive to develop these cross-
disciplinary proposals
Proposed Activities
 Four faculty hires are proposed
 Forecasting and Technology
 Ecological/evolutionary response of both human and natural systems (2 )
 Human decision making/adaptation
 Why not more?
 New faculty are expensive, especially in hard science where start-up
money is substantial
 New faculty can take up to 5-6 years to get important papers out in the
area of the SPIRE.
 Many UVM faculty already excellent in the areas proposed.
 Don’t be greedy. Other programs on campus deserve University support.
SPIRE should prove its worth before commanding so many resources
Proposed Activities
 Offer competitive graduate fellowships
 Develop named post-doctoral fellows
 Build a Spire community
 Offer a first year Spire experience for graduate students
 Bring in world-class researchers to interact with faculty and students
 Start a short-faculty run workshop on a Spire topic to facilitate
collaborations among faculty.
Many Spire activities are designed to
build the UVM Environment brand
Making ECA Spire Visible
 Initiate a summer institute
 10 day institute in areas of the Spire
 Taught by UVM scholars and bring in 1-2 other experts to lead
o Nano-sensors and the environment
o Environmental forecasting
o Development of Socio-economic indicators
o Offer fellowships but also charge tuition.
o Advertise in Science, Nature and other top journals etc.
Making ECA Spire Visible
• Develop a model of bringing working groups to campus (model
already exists on campus 4-day summer workshops for faculty
across campus).
 Bring top scholars to UVM
 Develop working relationship with these people that extends
beyond the period of working group
 At the end of each working group, one of the UVM faculty
involved will have the responsibility of producing a
review/opinion paper in the area of the topic.
 These review papers are highly cited and establish
policy/research guidelines for years to come.
Making ECA Spire Visible
 Named post-doctoral fellowships
 Why? Few post-doctoral awards available
 People at the beginning of their career often most creative and
productive
 Develop a life-long relationship with UVM.
 Excellent scholars will go on to other big Universities
 Will always be associated with UVM
 Will recommend UVM as a place to do graduate work
 Will establish long-term collaborative relationships with faculty on campus
 If they receive competitive grants while in residence, UVM will benefit.
 Advertising for the fellowships will put University on the map.
 Similar programs exist at Berkeley, Harvard, Michigan.
Why a UVM summer institute?
 UVM has groups of internationally recognized scholars that
could lead summer institutes that would be desirable for
graduate students
 Advertisement for the summer institute would create the
“buzz” factor
Some students may choose UVM
Bring in some scholars in the area to supplement UVM scholars
Topic would vary among groups
Potential avenue to establish collaborative relationships with
some of the other instructors
 Bring in some funding, may be self-sustaining.
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We can create the ECA Spire right now!
 We can create a Spire community by
 1. initiating a semester long faculty lead seminar series in Fall 2010
 2. initiating a prominent seminar speaker series in Spring 2011.
 3. Developing a faculty lead workshop for beginning (first, second
year graduate students) in May 2011.
 4. Advertising competitive graduate fellowships
 5. Plan for a summer institute in Summer 2011
Thank you for your attention