Environment and Sustainability

With energy costs throughout the nation hitting record highs and no relief in sight, the University at Buffalo is, for the second time in its history, embarking on a major, campus-wide, comprehensive energy-conservation project.

Days after Hurricane Katrina hit, research teams from the University at Buffalo's Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research were dispatched to the Mississippi coast to conduct structural analysis and remote sensing of damage to large structures. On Oct, 3, MCEER will send three teams of researchers to New Orleans, again with funding primarily from the National Science Foundation.

Effective mitigation of the drastic effects of extreme natural phenomena like hurricanes, floods, landslides and wildfires through integrated environmental management that includes the perspectives of geomorphologists and ecosystem scientists is the focus of the interdisciplinary 36th International Geomorphology Binghamton Symposium to be held Oct. 7-9 at the University at Buffalo.

The failure of levees in the wake of Hurricane Katrina points out the need for new technologies to strengthen levees and monitor their reliability, according to Deborah D. L. Chung, Ph.D., a University at Buffalo materials scientist and inventor of "smart concrete."

Reestablishment of wastewater and drinking-water treatment facilities is a critical step for rebuilding New Orleans, but it likely will take months to get those systems operational, according to wastewater treatment expert at the University at Buffalo.

"The most critical problems related to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina are related less to the lack of technological solutions than to the absence of a sound national policy for dealing with such events," says Shahin Vassigh, associate professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo.

The hundreds of thousands of refugees from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina join 25 million people worldwide displaced by environmental catastrophes, events and processes, according to Lynda Schneekloth, professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo.

Barry Boyer, professor in the University at Buffalo Law School, has been recognized by Buffalo Niagara WorldConnect, a local group that helps entrepreneurs and leaders make global connections.

The streams of Western New York are a workshop this summer for biologists, ecologists, engineers and environmental planners who want to learn techniques for restoring inland waterways to their natural state.

The development of geographic information science tools to help rangers and forest scientists determine whether logging or prescribed burning is the best way to reduce the fuel load to mitigate the risk of devastating wildfires is the goal of software-development work being done in conjunction with the U.S. Forest Service by Chris S. Renschler, Ph.D., of the University at Buffalo.