Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

Climate Change and the Endangered Species Act: Are US Agencies Protecting Our Most Endangered Animals from Climate Change? by Jennie Miller Defenders of Wildlife */

Evolving effective collective behavior: lessons from social insects by Anna Dornhaus, University of Arizona

We invite you to attend a special topics research seminar to learn about Merck's efforts to discover new drugs aimed at fighting deadly, antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, better known as "superbugs." The featured presenter is Scott S. Walker, PhD, Principal Scientist at Merck Research Laboratories. Antibiotic resistant Gram-negative bacteria are a serious and growing threat to human health. To combat this crisis, novel agents that circumvent established resistance mechanisms are urgently needed.

Dr. Raymond Schmitt, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Carbon emissions are the major driver of climate change and the resulting changes in risk. Projecting future anthropogenic carbon emissions is complicated by the presence of deep uncertainties, including fossil fuel resource constraints and the rate of future decarbonization. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change addresses deep uncertainties through the use of discrete scenarios. However, risk assessments require probabilistic information.

Water Insights Seminar: Landscape Memory: The Legacy of Logging on Pennsylvania Streams and Implications for Adaptive Approaches by Benjamin Hayes, Director of the Watershed Sciences and Engineering Program, Bucknell University

Geosciences Colloquium: Petrologic Constraints on Rates of Orogenic Processes by Mark Caddick, Associate Professor of Metamorphic Processes, Virginia Polytechnic Institute

The Spring 2020 EarthTalks series titled "Societal Problems, EESI Science towards Solutions" features Richard Alley presenting “Collapsing ice sheets?”

Seminar: Reflections from an academic career focused on fostering cultures of sharing by Scott Isard, Ph.D., Professor, Penn State

Stephanie Klein, Penn State University

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) and the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) are hosting a Mentoring Summit to be held at the Big Ten Conference Center and on individual BTAA campuses via satellite meetings. Penn State faculty, administrators, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students are invited to attend the Penn State satellite meeting to discuss how to foster culture change in mentoring excellence.

Of Bible, Bees, and Babbage: A historical and socio-technical look at data-centric biodiversity research Dr. Sharif Islam (Data Architect, Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, The Netherlands)

Geochemistry Forum: Chemistry versus biology: Interpreting microbial signatures by Julie Cosmidis, Assistant Professor, Penn State

Many of the world’s greatest sustainability challenges require spatial data as part of the search for solutions. The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) is one of 12 NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs). Unlike most DAACs, which distribute data from NASA’s remote sensing instruments, SEDAC develops and disseminates spatial and tabular data on the distribution of population, settlements, infrastructure, human wellbeing, and variables related to environmental sustainability.

Tropical forests and their role in food security: mapping patterns and change by Sarah Gergel, University of British Columbia */

When you have thousands of variables that you can select from to describe and predict whether active fracking is occurring, how do you choose? Random forests are a learning method that uses an ensemble of decision trees to build a predictive model. We’ll discuss how to make a random forest and how we used one to tell what measures from the microbiome and the sample site best predicted active fracking status. The talk is geared towards undergraduates and assumes little prior background in either statistics or biology. Presented by Kim Roth, Ph.D., Juniata College

The Ecology Institute will hold 3 separate planning meetings to promote dialogue and community consensus around the Institute's priority themes and activities. We will share survey results and identify both "big" and "little" ideas we could promote uniquely through our Institute. All are welcome! Thursday, February 13 from 12:30-2 p.m. in 519 Wartik Lab Tuesday, February 18 from 12:30-2 p.m. in W201 Millennium Science Complex Thursday, February 20 from 12:30-2 p.m. in 519 Wartik Lab Pizza and drinks will be provided.

Join us for an open house at the Organics Lab to learn about newly acquired instrumentation and new applications and capabilities. The Organics Lab is a shared core facility managed by the Energy and Environmental Sustainability Laboratories (EESL), equipped with high-resolution mass spectrometers with a wide range of capabilities to screen, characterize and quantify organic compounds in diverse matrices. Additionally, meet and network with colleagues and the EESL team, including Odette Mina, EESL Managing Director, and Sara Lincoln, Organics Laboratory Manager.

A wide variety of atmospheric lidars exist and a rare species is the scanning aerosol lidar. This seminar will describe a few generations of scanning aerosol lidars and their vices and virtues. The largest merit of scanning aerosol lidars is the ability to provide spatial imagery of boundary layer structure and evolution especially in critical regions such as the surface layer and the entrainment zone. When the scan update rate is sufficiently large, it is possible to deduce the motion of small aerosol features and derive vector wind fields.

The webinar will describe the Sugar Creek Method used by a team of social and natural scientists at The Ohio State University who teamed up with three teams of local farmers (one non-Amish German descent, one Amish, and one combined) and the local SWCDs, Ohio EPA, and a cheese factory to improve water quality. The presentation is divided into six sections: 1). Theoretical threads woven to create the method; 2). How the research and farm teams were formed; 3). Farmer values influencing our approach; 4). Grants and BMPs; 5). The Alpine Nutrient Trading Program; 6).