Environment and Sustainability

A robust, new geographic information systems (GIS) software tool developed by a University at Buffalo geographer is helping the U.S. Forest Service to more quickly and accurately assess and contain the devastation wrought by forest fires.

Research at the University at Buffalo is focusing on the residues of antibiotics used to promote growth in livestock and to treat their diseases that end up in the environment and could potentially alter microbial ecosystems in humans and animals, as well as in the environment.

When engineers conduct research on groundwater, the water that flows beneath Earth's surface, they usually think of "large-scale" as one watershed -- an area of land where all of the water on it or under it drains into the same place, such as a lake and its tributaries. Using a 300-node Dell high-performance computing cluster (HPCC) in the Center for Computational Research (CCR) at the University at Buffalo, researcjers are working to turn that definition on its head.

Women's exposure to environmental contaminants that mimic the activity of human sex hormones during prenatal development can affect the masculinity and femininity of their offspring, UB researchers have found.

Ecuador's El Reventador volcano awoke from a 35-year slumber last Sunday with an eruption that makes other volcano eruptions of recent years look "pale" in comparison, according to a University at Buffalo geologist.

Using non-invasive geophysical tools -- and without turning one shovel of soil -- a team of University at Buffalo scientists has discovered in the Jordanian desert an ancient Nabatean settlement buried beneath a 2nd-century Roman fort, which itself is buried a few feet below the desert surface.

Flying over a volcano that's sending plumes of smoke and ash several miles into the sky might sound like a risky proposition, but University at Buffalo volcanologist Michael Sheridan and his colleagues are doing just that this week with Ecuador's towering 5,000-meter-high Tungurahua volcano as they study how and where it next will do its damage.

The University at Buffalo announced today an agreement with Community Energy, Inc., that makes UB the first campus in the State University of New York system to buy a portion of its electrical power from a commercial supplier of wind-generated power.

Julia Butterfly Hill, the environmental activist who lived for more than two years in the canopy of a 1,000-year-old redwood tree in California to save it from loggers, will lecture at the University at Buffalo on Oct. 3 as part of a three-day campus "Ecofest."

A dramatic statistical correlation between the prevalence of diabetes and air pollution levels has been demonstrated by a University at Buffalo researcher who publishes his observations in the August issue of the journal, Diabetes Care.