Spring 2024

Addressing Environmental Challenges: A Focus on Sustainable and Innovative Engineering Solutions

Yang Deng, Montclair State University

My E-RISE group is dedicated to pioneering innovative engineering solutions to water and other environmental challenges. This presentation aims to overview my research with an focus on two intertwined themes. The first one explores technological innovations addressing emerging and persistent water contaminants, such as per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The second theme advances the adaptation of environmental systems to climate change, such as disaster resilience in water supply and the application of non-traditional water for water supply. Explore with me the innovative environmental engineering solutions for a sustainable future.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

What makes urban forests work?: solutions focused research in the Thain Family Forest

Brad Oberle, New York Botanical Garden

Forests provide essential services by regulating climate, provisioning resources and retaining biodiversity. Nowhere are these functions more valuable than in cities, where more people live today than at any other time or place in human history. Yet urban forests are both understudied and under threat. What makes urban forests work? By comparing how services change when either putting a forest together or taking one apart, my research provides complimentary perspectives on urban forest resilience. First, I show how ecosystem services emerge from collections of trees in a small-scale urban afforestation experiment. Second, I will describe past, ongoing and planned research in the Thain Family Forest at the New York Botanical Garden, the only uncut stand remaining in New York City.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

More than just a funky smell: fungal volatiles have physiological consequences

Joan Bennett, Rutgers University

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are low molecular weight molecules that easily evaporate at room temperature. Fungal VOCs are responsible for the musty odors we associate with damp indoor environments. It has been hypothesized that they contribute to “sick building syndrome.” The Bennett lab has developed several genetic model systems to test the toxicity of fungal VOCs and found that VOCs have a range of unexpected biological functions.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Women and Urban Flooding Vulnerability

Ravina Aggarwal
Ly Quoc Dang, Can Tho University
Neeraj Vedwan, Montclair State University

This research talk is bringing together several experts on climate change issues to discuss the impacts of environmental risks on vulnerable communities and society from a cross-regional perspective. Based on a research study by Ly Quoc Dang, the discussion centers on Can Tho City (Vietnam), identifying how women in Can Tho City experience the impacts of flooding on their health, income, household and personal finances. Participants discuss limitations to women's participation in flood-related planning activities. Drawing on a feminist framing, participants not only offer insight into the unique harms that women experience from floods, but also demonstrate that women have important knowledge and insights into flood-related planning. The discussion serves as an important reminder to governments to integrate a gender perspective in better understanding climate vulnerabilities, such as flooding in risk management strategy policies.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Fluorine beyond PFAS: Tracking fluorine during photolysis of fluorinated pesticides and pharmaceuticals

William Arnold, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Fluorine incorporation into organic chemicals is ubiquitous. There are many mass produced chemicals, including pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and medical contrast agents, containing one or more fluorine atoms that are released into the environment. Upon photolysis or oxidative treatment in aquatic systems, persistent fluorinated byproducts or fluoride from pesticides and pharmaceuticals are formed depending on the type and stability of the fluorine-containing functional group. Byproduct quantification was performed using 19F-NMR and high-resolution mass spectrometry. Some motifs are persistent, generating new PFAS, while others degrade to fluoride. These results will assist in the future optimization of water treatment methods and development of pharmaceutical/pesticide structures to reduce persistent byproduct formation.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Cool Genomics

Melody Clark, British Antarctic Survey

Remarkably, the marine life in the Southern Ocean is incredibly biodiverse and clearly thriving, although the organisms (fish and invertebrates) live for most of the year below 0°C. These freezing conditions have been present in the Antarctic for 10-15 Million Years and have resulted in the evolution of some bizarre adaptations to the cold. In this talk, I will discuss some of the adaptations to life below 0°C and how these animals respond to climate change. In particular, I will highlight the use of molecular tools to understand marine organisms responses to change.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Coastal Flooding under Climate Change: Can Machine Learning help?

Giovanni Coco, University of Auckland

Sea-level rise is a consequence of climate change and the main driver of increasing coastal flooding over the twenty-first century. This presentation describes recent developments in downscaled wave climate, storm surge and sea-level rise modelling for Aotearoa New Zealand to project extreme total water. We assume that future total water levels can be calculated through the summation of tides, storm surge, wave runup and sea-level rise, allowing to investigate future overwash potential. Additionally, the presentation will explore how 'machine learning' techniques can enhance our studies, leading to better predictions and reduced uncertainty in understanding coastal flooding.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Combining paleorecords and climate models to better understand past and future climate

Elizabeth Patterson, William Paterson University

Climate models and paleoclimate records are both essential tools for understanding climate variability of the past, present and future. However, both have their sources of uncertainty. Here I discuss how using climate models and paleorecords together can improve our understanding of climate. I first demonstrate how climate model simulations aid our interpretation of a complex speleothem record. Then, I discuss how large paleodata networks can refine climate models and projections of future climate change.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Downstream Leakage of Enhanced Rock Weathering

Shuang Zhang, Texas A&M University

ERW has garnered increasing interest as a promising technique for durable carbon dioxide removal, offering a range of potential co-benefits including increased soil pH and nutrient release. However, the impacts of ERW on river chemistry and the potential loss of initially captured CO2 during river transport remain poorly constrained. The current lack of tools for robustly predicting the effect of riverine degassing on the ERW life cycle undermines the use of this practice as a carbon mitigation strategy. I will present results from a dynamic river network model designed to quantify the downstream carbon leakage of ERW in the North American river network. This modeling framework can serve as a toolkit for quantifying the impacts of carbon cycling in downstream catchments on the overall ERW life cycle.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Climate Change, Migration, and Health: (Near-) Global Evidence

Brian Thiede, Penn State University

Climate change is expected to have widespread impacts on social and environmental systems, with implications for human health and wellbeing. The expansion of georeferenced data on population health and mobility provides new opportunities to measure these impacts. In this seminar, I will discuss new findings from analyses of climate effects on health and migration using “big microdata” from censuses and surveys around the world. I will also discuss the non- trivial limitations to these data and outline how they can be integrated with mixed-methods approaches to better-understand the social costs of climate change.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Forest Biomass with the NASA, JPL MISR: Validation with NASA Lidar-Derived Estimates

Mark Chopping, Montclair State University

As our planet heats up, tracking changes in forest aboveground biomass density (AGB, Mg ha-1) at large scales is an increasingly pressing concern and one addressed primarily using space-based remote sensing. The European Space Agency hosted its 4th Carbon from Space Workshop in October 2022; NASA launched the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar to the International Space Station in 2018; and the NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) and ESA BIOMASS radar missions will launch in 2024. However, the record from SAR and lidar is limited and sporadic. Here, AGB estimates obtained using 672 nm (red) band reflectance data from the Multiangle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR) and from the GEDI spaceborne lidar mission are compared with those from NASA Carbon Monitoring System airborne lidar surveys for sites in California. MISR and GEDI 1 km AGB estimates are highly compatible with those from the CMS surveys (all sites: both yield R2 = ~0.7, RMSE = 57 Mg ha-1; Sonoma Co: MISR, GEDI R2 = 0.87, 0.88, RMSE= 58, 40 Mg ha-1), so MISR performs almost as well as GEDI – but the annual wall-to-wall MISR 250 m map series extends across the southwestern U.S. and back to the year 2000.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Cash for Conservation: Payments for Ecosystem Service Programs and Forest Loss

John Shandra, Stony Brook University

According to the World Bank, 1.1 million square miles of tree cover were cleared from 2001 to 2020. Approximately 90% of forests were cleared in low- and middle-income nations. This loss is equivalent to a 7% reduction in tree cover and corresponds with 107 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions being released into the atmosphere. To limit forest loss, low and middle-income nations often implement payment for ecosystem service programs. By 2020, over 550 programs were active globally, accounting for an estimated $36–42 billion in annual transactions between users and providers. However, we not aware of any cross-national research that examines their impact on forests in low- and middle-income nations. We address this gap in the cross-national literature with our study.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM

Boron Isotopes in Plants and the Environment of Growth

Troy Rasbury, Stony Brook University

Work to be presented is a synthesis of a number of studies examining boron in waters, soils and plants. Our work demonstrates a preference for borate in aquatic plants and a high enrichment factor particularly in plants from fresh lakes. Additionally we will look at boron uptake in common garden plants such as tomatoes, spinach and carrots using natural fertilizers such as seaweed compared to more traditional fertilizers such as Miracle Grow. Boron is an essential nutrient and plants have been shown to have boron transport genes. Bioimaging data from Brookhaven National Laboratory shows that the amount of boron in a plants environment controls the uptake and distribution of other elements as well. This talk will be an overview of the work we have done on boron.

3:45 PM - 5:00 PM