Environment and Sustainability

Student environmental activists from Western and Central New York are getting ready to teach, learn and discuss New York State's environmental future at Power Shift New York 2010 on the University at Buffalo North Campus on April 16-18.

A new University at Buffalo Web camera is capturing life in a peregrine falcon nest on the UB South Campus in Buffalo, where, for the second consecutive year, a female has laid her eggs.

An important 14-acre wetland and wildlife habitat that is being donated to the town of West Seneca this week is a unique and valuable ecosystem in an urban setting that should be preserved, according to University at Buffalo graduate students and researchers who have developed a restoration plan for it.

Alan J. Rabideau, PhD, professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering at the University at Buffalo, has been named to a National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council panel that will study hazardous waste sites with "recalcitrant" contamination that hinders their closure.

With most students headed off campus after final exams, the intersession between the fall and spring semesters provides the perfect opportunity to significantly reduce energy consumption, according to faculty and staff charged with creating and implementing the University at Buffalo's sustainability policies.

From rain barrels and locally roasted coffee to energy-efficient windows and cars you share instead of own, a broad range of environmentally friendly products for consumers will be on display at the University at Buffalo's "A Greener Shade of Blue and You Day," to be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today (Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009) in the atrium of the Center for the Arts on the UB North (Amherst) Campus.

Dead zones in critical waterways, accelerated loss of arable land and massive famines. They're all caused by the 24 billion tons of soil that are lost every year to erosion, a phenomenon that costs the world as much as $40 billion annually. But predicting where erosion occurs, and thus how to prevent it, is a serious challenge. That's why University at Buffalo geographer Sean Bennett has constructed various systems to model it.

After two years of planning, drafts, public presentations and feedback, the University at Buffalo today submitted a plan for achieving climate neutrality to the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC).

At the University at Buffalo, students are being trained in the interdisciplinary field of ecosystem restoration, in which they learn how to restore ecosystems damaged by natural or manmade influences. But communicating this new, multidisciplinary science to the outside world -- or even to one another -- has been a challenge.

Professional scientists and engineers interested in restoring and preserving stream and waterway resources are invited to participate in the University at Buffalo's summer 2010 "Engineering for Ecosystem Restoration" workshop to be held June 7-25.