Name of Meeting
Date
Summary
Summary of Conversation Topics
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Nitrogen Footprint
o Significant part of what this group will be involved with in support of the work Ali is
doing. Also would be useful to review the high-level land use on campus. State level
information as well as data collected by UNH to share.
o Footprint to be used as outreach to community and as management tool for decisions
from top down.
o Difficult to ID a sustainable footprint, carbon is global, nitrogen is very local
environmental issues.
o At UNH
 Align with carbon footprint
 Food, how much entering UNH, how was it produced?
o Could do a webinar with AASHE about this issue. Likewise with C40 and others working
with cities. Great to use as an opportunity to get UNH out front as working on this issue.
ACUPCC also.
 Ali giving a talk at Portland AASHE conference already
o
High level Land-use inventory
o Tom K: would be interesting to look at these and ask what can we do to increase
biodiversity etc.
o Core campus is almost 50% woods as far as these slides.
SITES methodology
o John, concept of the high level data is where projects need to work, when they’re for the
whole region. Info is fairly complete in that way. SITES sounds like it’s more the water
quality.
o Tom K. Want to establish some framework at the landscape scale that provides a way to
characterize and set management goals
 Have that at a very broad level with our landscape master plan.
o Doug: UNH Landscape plan:
 Recommendations:
 Preservation, restoration, enhancement, campus pathways and places
Key Agreements
 Ali and Jenn will work together to align carbon and nitrogen footprinting work, the ECTF will get
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an update at the next meeting
The group will learn more about SITES at a future ECTF meeting, and evaluate it as a tool we
may want to recommend the campus adopts (for planning and for O&M).
Ecosystem Task Force, Meeting Minutes, October 5, 2014
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We need to develop a framework of key indicators for tracking broad ecosystem health/vitality
and biodiversity on campus lands. Then collect baseline data, especially for the sites identified in
the plan developed last year (with Woodburn, Tighe and Bond, etc). After these projects are
completed (as funding is made available), we can re-measure and understand and communicate
the impacts/value of these projects.
Next Steps
The group identified the following next steps (or commitments) during the meeting:
What
Alison’s presentation on N. Footprint Oct 15th Rudman Hall
Rom G89 at 3:10
SITES analysis/presentation
Who
Alison
By When
John Hart
Doug’s slides on task force site
Identify lead/s and create a plan/timeline for developing a draft
of a framework that the Task Force can respond to.
Ask Jim Harney, Tom Lee, Bill McDowell and others if they
have any of this (baseline) data, and whether they would be
interested in working with ECTF to develop a framework of
indicators for a landscape-scale measurement of ecosystem
vitality.
Identify/recruit intern/s to collect baseline data.
Jackie
Jenn? Tom?
Next ECTF
meeting?
This week
Next ECTF
meeting
? end of
October?
Ecosystem Task Force, Meeting Minutes, October 5, 2014
Tom? Jenn?
TBD
TBD
Ecosystem Task Force
10/6/14
Detailed Notes
Participants
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John Aber,
Jennifer Andrews, UNHSI
Tom Ballestero, Civil Engineering
Doug Bencks, Campus Architect
Jackie Cullen, UNHSI
Jim Haney,
John Hart, Thompson School
Alison Leach, PhD student,
Nitrogen Footprint
Meeting chair or facilitator: Doug Bencks
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Tom Kelly, UNHSI
Discussion of 3 Initiatives
Nitrogen Footprint
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Significant part of what this group will be involved with in support of the work Ali is
doing. Also would be useful to review the high-level land use on campus. State level
information as well as data collected by UNH to share.
Nitrogen: Why nitrogen?
Talking about reactive nitrogen, nitrous oxide, nitrate,
o Benefits: Necessary for life, synthetic nitrogen provides unlimited food supply
o We consume ours as protein
o Drawbacks: excess reactive negatively affects environmental and human health.
Challenge: optimizing the use of nitrogen and minimizing negative impacts
Footprint to be used as outreach to community and as management tool for decisions
from top down.
2 sectors releasing nitrogen: food and energy
o UNH monitoring Nitrogen through energy in calculator
o Interesting to figure out in terms of landfill gas, will there be a credit?
 Perhaps a joint ETF meeting about landfill gas/nitrogen topic
Tom, question: what are you measuring, University proper? What is control volume for
control flux analysis.
o UVA considered the main geographic bounds of the campus
o Jen: a lot of work on that question
o Don’t want people to use a whole new language and framework for analysis
o Exports to water treatment, landfill, could that include atmospheric also?
Ecosystem Task Force, Meeting Minutes, October 5, 2014
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Footprint defined as activities releasing nitrogen, to include deposition would be double
counting
o In permits, understanding is nitrogen release is release, so wherever it comes out
is UNH’s responsibility.
o Other institutions don’t have agricultural process, fertilizer to farms, to dairy bar
and to waste treatment.
o Exception is looking at sewage treatment as a reduction. Not on campus, is the
town’s.
Transport fuel consumed by commuters and bus system, use same methods for
calculating miles as CACP
Might be interesting to take initial information and put it into ali’s model and then get
everyone together to check the process instead of before and getting a lot of redundant
information.
Food in calculator?
o Have food data because of RFC work we’re doing.
o Did a pilot with chefs, carbon foot-printing exercise
Food: big part to focus on. Two parts, consumption and production
o Consumption, nitrogen that ends up in wastewater and sewage
o Production, runoff, processing and food waste.
o Look at all the food entering university, looking at what’s served at UNH dining
halls. Have met with Ryley because he’s doing the same calculation.
o Tom K question: composting? Trying to calculate as a credit since it’s being used
here.
o Doug Q is there something that considers % of students who live/eat on campus.
Different for every campus and UNH is high.
o Looking just at levels of food being served.
o Common issues in terms of scoping, some campuses have more students on
campus, some have busses some don’t etc. etc. Will effect their energy
consumption.
o Student working at UVA on what impact off-campus student food consumption
would have.
Production
o How much released to environment per unit in the food product.
o Have for 10 major food categories, working on splitting those out and updating
data.
o Describe conventional production in the US.
o RFC will already be tracking organic food at UNH.
UVA reference – is home for EPA sponsored project. A few other universities
How could nitrogen footprint change?
o Looked at what would happen with different decisions.
Look at average. food miles, is a sector for local food (within 100 miles)
o Similar with carbon map, food miles are a smaller part.
Tom B, question: have there been estimates on cost per pound removed?
o Largely looking at cost to repair nitrogen losses, study from EPA and one on
Chesapeake bay
Ecosystem Task Force, Meeting Minutes, October 5, 2014
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Jenn, Question: broader question of where are we trying to get to? Do we have a way to
communicate that. What’s the impact of a metric ton of nitrogen, has there been work
done around those two?
o Goal: not feasible for zero because we use food production.
o Difficult to ID a sustainable footprint, carbon is global, nitrogen is very local
environmental issues.
Two ways of looking at it, can look at it as a local issue, different school can have a
different goal footprint. Some, because the nitrogren cycle is complex, impacts are
global. Nitrogen cascade, can convert to different types. More complicated than carbon.
o Cost would be one way of doing it, what is the cost in terms of lost fisheries or
whatever other issues.
o Cascade issue: can be air pollution then acid rain, water pollution. N. can impact
several steps along the whole cycle.
Tom K: if we get to an action plan, are there payback periods like there are with energy
investments? What’s the ROI?
Tom B: each strategy will have a unit cost, one strategy is not as much nitrogen on the
farms.
o If it goes in the groundwater, capturing is harder and it will show up in the bay as
nitrate.
Extending to other communities:
o UNH, Brown, Dickenson, Marine Lab in Woods Hole
 Lafayette, Stanford and Duke might join on.
 Want to expand to diverse group of schools.
o Next year working on developing tools, massive spreadsheets that go along with
it to share with other schools.
o Workshop at UVA to teach the tools to others
o Secondary schools, working with Earth Eco to extend to them.
o Chesapeake Bay foundation, working to give them a tool that will include food
production.
o Lastly working to expand this to work with cities.
At UNH
o Align with carbon footprint
o Food, how much entering UNH, how was it produced?
Could do a webinar with AASHE about this issue. Likewise with C40 and others working
with cities. Great to use as an opportunity to get UNH out front as working on this issue.
ACUPCC also.
o Ali giving a talk at Portland AASHE conference already
Going forward, continue conversations in this group, and expand the conversation on
what we’re going to do with this information and tools.
AASHE asked us in our STARS rating about biodiversity, have we done an assessment
of all campus owned/managed lands to look at critical habitat and do we have a
management plan. Right now our answer is vague and general, can we use this as one
example, would need very specific links about how nitrogen relates to biodiversity.
What’s the gap between what already exists and what a real assessment looks like?
High-level land use inventory
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State level information
Ecosystem Task Force, Meeting Minutes, October 5, 2014
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Have other lands in Carrol county, primarily for timber.
Categories ID’d by state, “idle/other/open” means it just doesn’t fit into the other
categories.
Wildlands and woodlands that John A was part of sets a regional goal of 70% of
woodland coverage.
Just looking at Madbury: mostly undeveloped forest/Ag lands, significant wetlands
State has done a fairly detailed effort. Slides from early 2000’s with some updating that
UNH has done
Tom K: would be interesting to look at these and ask what can we do to increase
biodiversity etc.
Core campus is almost 50% woods as far as these slides.
Always commented that the proximity of campus to college woods and farms is unique
A lot of talk about potential development pressures along the E/W route through campus.
Are a long a major transportation route but are current land uses we want to extends
Ravine: 2000 made a ravine master plan, how to rejuvenate/improve the ravine area of
campus. Had some very broad ideas in it.
o Last year had some funding available, just under $100k UNH had put in place for
improvements
o Developed a sequence of what would make the most sense. Before working with
the brook, need to deal with the water going into the brook.
Tom K: have we captured baseline data of overall ill health of the system?
o Data has been done, but not constructed into a constructive framework giving the
X number of indicators.
o Would be great to say as a result of interventions, x improvements have
happened.
o Have characteristics of the stream, not invertibrates or fish, Jim Haney might.
 Ask Jim haney
o Could be the case study of what the suite of indicators are that we want to have.
o Assess the system, has Tom Lee’s class ever done an assessment?
 Not Tom Lee but another class has done work out there.
SITES Methodology
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Getting back up to an integrated landscape scale we’re trying to get to here.
Jim H. is normally part of this
John, concept of the high level data is where projects need to work, when they’re for the
whole region. Info is fairly complete in that way. SITES sounds like it’s more the water
quality.
John H. LEED and building council origins. US arboretum, US botanic garden,
wildflower garden in Austin, American Soc. Of Landscape Architects put together their
own system.
o Talk about getting integrated into LEED system, might not, territorial wars
o Looks at water, BioD, soils, hardscape etc.
o Intended to be on a project, can certify sites
o LEED: as many points for a bike rack as you do for the whole water management
system.
John H ordered the scoring system about six months ago and still haven’t seen it
Ecosystem Task Force, Meeting Minutes, October 5, 2014
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Tom K. Want to establish some framework at the landscape scale that provides a way to
characterize and set management goals
o Have that at a very broad level with our landscape master plan.
Doug: UNH Landscape plan:
o Recommendations:
 Preservation, restoration, enhancement, campus pathways and places
o Laid out overall principles
o Plan has been adopted as the University’s landscape master plan. In terms of
implementation of this plan, Doug would say it’s weak, Tom K. would say it’s
non existent
o Money tends to be focused on building projects not site projects.
o Need a system that doesn’t just put the burden on facilities
o Tom B’s group has gotten grant funding for key areas and done a lot of work on
these issues.
o Interesting to see the alignment between student recruitment and fundraising
issues.
o For our rep. in sustainability, we manage our campus as an ecosystem, not just
studying it and doing research but actually practice it.
o Doug: on water side, we have a great resource, in terms of other issues of bioD
and habitats, we have resources but not focused and channeled in a way where it
can really help us.
How does planning/facilities decide a project will be LEED?
o Commitment to doing LEED-like, not convinced we have to do a score sheet for
a project because of issues with score sheets
o LEED doesn’t give value to some things we put at the very highest in terms of
buildings in terms of durability and long-lasting value.
o Follow energy areas
Ecosystem Task Force, Meeting Minutes, October 5, 2014