Environment and Sustainability

In the name of raising environmental awareness, enterprising University at Buffalo students are turning their campus into a virtual -- and real -- playground this week as they conduct a final project for their class in "Pervasive Gaming," an emerging game genre in which virtual and real-life play come together.

Contrary to the unhappy experience of the first little pig, straw bale is a strong, cost-effective, exceptionally insulating, fire-resistant, sustainable, natural building system. University at Buffalo architecture students and community members -- cold, covered in mud and stuck with hay -- recently raised 130 50-pound "two-string" straw bales that will constitute the load-bearing walls of a community greenhouse on Buffalo's West Side.

A light bulb exchange program that encourages students to trade in their old incandescent bulbs for energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) is reaping economic and environmental benefits for the University at Buffalo only months after the initial launch.

University at Buffalo President John B. Simpson has committed the university to taking a leadership role in fighting global warming by signing the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment.

A researcher with the University at Buffalo's Great Lakes Program is leading a study focusing on how flow patterns impact the health of lakes Erie and Ontario with the goal of better understanding the relationship between physical forces in the lakes and their biological resources.

More than a decade ago, the University at Buffalo made a major investment in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through a $17 million comprehensive energy-conservation project. With the final payment made on the loan that partially funded the project, UB now will realize $4 million in annual energy-cost savings as a result of the work that was done.

This semester, the University at Buffalo will celebrate its decades-long commitment to environmental conservation while exploring the climate change crisis and other critical environmental issues through a series of speakers and activities under the theme "A Greener Shade of Blue."

How severe will global warming get? Jason P. Briner is looking for an answer buried deep in mud dozens of feet below the surface of lakes in the frigid Canadian Arctic. His group is gathering the first quantitative temperature data over the last millennium from areas in extreme northeastern sections of the Canadian Arctic, such as Baffin Island.

The freeze dates for many small- and intermediate-sized lakes in the Northeast and parts of the Midwest will come later than usual this year, in part as a reflection of continuing global warming, but also because of a stronger-than-expected El Nino phenomenon, says a University at Buffalo limnologist, a scientist who studies inland bodies of water.

Starting this month, a portion of the electrical power that illuminates classrooms, hallways and computer screens in the University at Buffalo's Norton Hall will be generated by a dramatically different source: the sun.