We designed a board game about the future of New York City!

Richard Reiss, Hunter College

Rapid, human-induced climate change presents a crisis that involves everyone, yet few people feel they have any influence or ability to change seemingly unstoppable events. City Atlas developed a cooperative game, Energetic, to teach anyone in the US – or around the world – how to practice fixing climate change with accurate, updatable information, scaling from a 2.5 hour game to a month long workshop, matched to the region in which they live. The game for NYC is now used at Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Brown, Vanderbilt, and Bronx Science, and at Con Ed and the NYS Dept of Energy. City Atlas is working to scale it to all NYC public high schools and expand to other major cities. In this talk, Richard will describe the development of the game and how it opened up more ideas for him about how to help overcome the social barriers that have blocked a strong response to climate change. From Fall 2023, Energetic is also being used in classes at Montclair State University.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Inner workings of Milankovitch cycles

Linda A. Hinnov, George Mason University

Milankovitch cycles are incoming solar radiation (insolation) cycles forced by variations in Earth’s orbital eccentricity, axial obliquity and precession, and are recorded on Earth in cyclostratigraphy. Insolation undergoes major daily and annual cycles with weak modulation from the obliquity variation. Thresholds in the Earth’s climate response to insolation generate the strong precession signals commonly observed in cyclostratigraphy. Dr. Hinnov will demonstrate these and other features using the insolation equation, and will discuss the manifestation of these features in key cyclostratigraphic sections.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Virtual Impacts of Food Consumption and Opportunities for Closing Resource Loops

Vikas Khanna, University of Pittsburgh

Food supply chains have become increasingly complex and characterized by large distances between production and consumption. The first part of this talk will describe an optimization based-model to track the US beef supply chain with a focus on quantifying virtual water and nitrogen impacts. The second part of this presentation will discuss a novel AnMBR (anaerobic membrane bioreactor) platform for resource recovery from animal wastewater streams. Life cycle assessment and techno-economic analysis of the AnMBR platform will be discussed with implications for circular economy.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

The Effectiveness of Environmental Technologies in Combating Climate Change: A Cross-National Analysis

Jamie Sommer, University of South Florida

Are our technologies helping reduce environmental issues, or just allowing people to pollute more efficiently? What factors influence the ability of technologies to reduce environmental damage? In this presentation, Dr. Sommer will explain new research that links environment-related technologies to decreases in CO2 emissions in nations with lower levels corruption compared to nations with higher levels of corruption. Her findings suggest that the state can promote and support all of the pro-environmental technologies it wants, but if it has issues with corruption those solutions may not have any impact on reducing CO2 emissions.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

How Megatooth Sharks Ruled and Fell: Evidence from Stable Isotopes in Bioapatite

Michael Griffiths, William Paterson University

The evolution and extinction of megatooth sharks, especially Otodus megalodon, have long puzzled scientists. A growing body of evidence suggests that the evolution of gigantism in these sharks, perhaps driven by their ability to thermoregulate, played a crucial role in their ecological success and response to environmental changes. Yet, until recently, the question of whether O. megalodon was ectothermic or endothermic was based solely on nonempirical inferences. In this presentation, Dr. Griffiths will present new research that involves the geochemical analysis of both modern and fossil shark teeth to shed light on O. megalodon's thermoregulation, revealing it maintained a warmer body temperature than its surroundings and supporting the idea that endothermy contributed to its gigantism. He will also show the potential to reconstruct the trophic level of these extinct sharks across the Cenozoic using various biogeochemical tracers of paleodiet, finding evidence that O. megalodon occupied an exceptionally high trophic level.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Applications of Medico-legal Entomology: Using insects for Forensic and Environmental Investigations

Denise Gemmellaro, Kean University

Forensic entomology is the application of entomology (the study of insects and arthropods) to forensic investigations. Medico-legal entomology focuses on those groups of insects that are attracted to decomposing organic matter. Dr. Gemmellaro’s work is mainly focused on medico-legal entomology. Once a dead body is exposed to the elements, insects will shortly locate the body and will colonize it by laying eggs on it; one of the major groups of colonizers is the true fly family of blow flies (Diptera: Calliphoridae). Blow fly females need a decomposing body to lay their eggs; the eggs will hatch into maggots and the maggots will start feeding on the body until its full consumption. Maggots will then migrate away to pupate and once the pupation stage is complete, an adult fly will emerge from the puparium and the cycle will repeat. The developmental time of their life cycle depends on the specific species as well as on temperature, humidity, drugs and xenobiotics and other biological, physical and environmental variables. Knowing about the development and the behavior of these flies can provide forensic investigators with useful information for their case; considering that these necrophagous insects are attracted to. and will consume dead animals and humans (even when a crime has not been committed), and considering that they will accumulate potential toxin and toxicants present in those corpses, these insects can also play a very significant role even in environmental investigations. This talk will describe the field of forensic entomology in general and will discuss the practice, the potential and the limits of the field; it will also present the results of some of the research conducted by Dr. Gemmellaro and illustrate their practical applications in real case investigations.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Islands in the rain: Isolating the influence of rainfall on erosion on volcanic ocean islands

Kimberly Huppert, The City College of New York

Volcanic ocean islands are well suited for studying climatic controls on erosion because they typically have relatively homogeneous bedrock, dramatic rainfall gradients, and remnant surfaces that constrain their age, initial topography, and vertical motions relative to sea level. In this talk, I’ll examine the influence of rainfall and discharge variability on bedrock river incision on the Hawaiian Island of Kaua‘i. I’ll also present a new compilation of basin-averaged cosmogenic erosion rates measured on ocean islands worldwide, as well as >800 million year-scale basin-averaged erosion rates inferred from eroded canyon volumes and lava flow ages across the Azores, Hawaiian, Cape Verde, and Canary Islands. These erosion rates increase with mean annual rainfall over nearly the full range of rainfall rates experienced on Earth. Yet, the scalings between rainfall and erosion rates vary over millennial vs. million-year timescales and between island chains. I’ll discuss some possible explanations for these discrepancies in climatic control and consider the implications on couplings between orogeny and orography.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

The cold side of connectivity: A journey in the Southern Ocean with Antarctic fish

Chiara Papetti, University of Padova

Characterizing connectivity among populations and species differences provides information on distribution of fish biodiversity, dispersal and genetic variability. This information is essential to set conservation priorities, identify scarce management resources and to monitor effectiveness of protection. This information is urgently requested by policymakers evaluating proposals for marine protected areas (MPAs) in Antarctica where fish dominate marine communities and connectivity may be driven by multiple factors affected by climate change. In this talk, I will summarize some recent results on population connectivity of Antarctic fish by looking at hydrodynamics, genetic variability and various life history traits of some species which differ by ecological traits and are representative of the Antarctic fish community.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Gender Inequality in STEM education: A Longitudinal Study of Interdisciplinary Internships

Yasemin Besen-Cassino, Montclair State University

What are gender differences in STEM? The gender differences in STEM education and STEM careers are well-documented. This study explores to role of internships in increasing diversity in STEM. Through an NSF-funded, 5- year study, we explore the differential role of internships for women.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Environmental issues, conservation challenges, and sustainable solutions at the Villa of the Antonines

Deborah Chatr Aryamontri, Montclair State University
Gregory A. Pope, Montclair State University

The ‘Villa of the Antonines’ Project is an ongoing, long-term historical and archaeological interdisciplinary research effort and focuses on a largely neglected site that was for over a century one of the most important residences of the Roman imperial Antonine dynasty, located 18 miles southeast of Rome. Despite its historical importance, it is continuously exposed to human and natural risks. This paper will discuss the challenges faced by the research team at the site, such as climate change, environmental degradation and human damage and how these issues are monitored and studied in search of viable and sustainable solutions.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Livelihoods, Migration, and Adaptation to Climate Change in Southeast Asia

Timothy Gorman, Montclair State University

In this talk, I examine the complex, bi-directional relationship between migration and environmental change in Southeast Asia. Drawing first on research in Cambodia, I discuss the impacts of in-migration on environmental conditions in coastal regions. I then discuss the role of global climate change and sea-level rise as drivers of out-migration from Vietnam’s Mekong River Delta, drawing on data from the Vietnamese census.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Gondwana to Asia from Jurassic to Holocene: Tectonics, Marine Geology, Paleoclimatology, Petroleum Geology Sedimentology

Amila Sandaruwan Ratnayake, Uva Wellassa University

Sri Lanka records one of the longest and most complete tectonic evolution from the mid-latitude in the southern hemisphere (during the Jurassic) to the equatorial northern hemisphere. Therefore, onshore and offshore sedimentary basins in Sri Lanka provide the natural laboratory to reconstruct paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic during its northward voyage from Gondwana to Asia. Prof. Ratnayake will explain geological evidence for arid climate during the Early Campanian, the separation of the Laxmi Ridge-Seychelles and Seychelles from the Indian plate, sea-level regression during the Late Campanian to Late Maastrichtian, the mass extinction of coccolithophores/foraminifera at the Late Maastrichtian, Late Paleocene to the Early Oligocene weak oceanic circulation under a greenhouse climate, the development of the present- day South Asian monsoon system during the Middle-Upper Miocene, etc.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Climate Change Adaptations Across The Global South

Arnaud Kurze, Montclair State University
Tanzin Naher, Montclair State University

This research talk provides a preliminary project overview drawing from archival work on Guinea at the Library of Congress and fieldwork carried out in Summer 2023 in Bangladesh. Drawing on the 2023 International Joint Initiative for Research in Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation objectives, the project focuses on coastal and rural populations in Bangladesh and Guinea, who are not only physically exposed to the heightened risks for climate change, including floods, but also socioeconomically vulnerable, due to limited resources to respond to increased rainfall and the impact on agricultural production. The project design is based on an integral collaboration between local stakeholders, national institutions and consortium partners, including scholars, experts, and members of civil society. The participatory approach allows for a fully integrated research design that concentrates on local stakeholder needs and reciprocity in the development of best practices by drawing on consultations and workshops during the project period. Findings and lessons learned will help inform other cases and context.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Water Quality and Road Salt in New Jersey

Deborah Kratzer, NJ Department of Environmental Protection

Water quality monitoring data show a long-term trend of increasing chloride and total dissolved solids (TDS) concentrations in NJ surface waters and increasing exceedances of standards for aquatic life and drinking water. In this presentation, Debbie Kratzer will review the data linking road salt use with these trends, sustainability of winter deicing practices, and approaches to reverse these negative water quality trends.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM