Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

It's no secret lawns don’t provide the same environmental benefits as forests or meadows. But anyone who cares for a lawn can reduce the stormwater runoff and pollution it produces by using the "water-friendly" strategies covered in this session, including lawn downsizing, fine-tuned fertilizing, masterful mowing, circumventing soil compaction, and perfect pest management. Who is this for? This webinar series is for anyone who owns or manages residential property, including:

The goal of this conversation is to expose students to various themes of environmental justice that you may not have known about before, with the intention of self-reflection on the intersections of environmental justice in your own studies and fields. In hearing from impressive faculty from around campus, students and community members will develop tools and passions for identifying and addressing environmental injustices.

Water scarcity, defined as a lack of quantity and non-optimal water quality, is a reality worldwide. This global water crisis urges us to identify new water sources. The use of reclaimed water is not a vision but a reality. The use of reclaimed water presents us with the challenge of how to manage the water balance by calculating sources and uses and managing the quality of reclaimed water to meet needs.

Yanhong Jin estimates the impact of childhood obesity on intergenerational income and social mobility in the US. Utilizing the polygenic scores of Add Health participants, she proposes a novel instrument variable for childhood obesity based on genetic information related to weight status. Dr. Jin finds strong evidence that childhood obesity lowers intergenerational income and social mobility of adult children.

Our landscaping choices can provide us with recreational use and aesthetic enjoyment, but our choices can also have ecological benefits and impacts on stormwater runoff. Multi-acre meadows to quarter-acre mini-meadows full of native plants are recognized stormwater best management practices (BMPs), providing many benefits. Residential Stormwater Solutions: Backyard Meadows will cover some of the benefits and basics of installation and maintenance options to help you determine if a backyard meadow might work on your property, whether it be large or small.

Understanding the processes influencing the formation and maintenance of species is a central goal of evolutionary biology and crucial to species management in a rapidly changing environment. As such, hybridization and hybrid formation have long been of interest, and recent advances in population-scale genome sequencing have revolutionized our understanding of the frequency and pervasiveness of hybridization in nature.

Rain gardens are a stormwater best management practice (BMP) designed as shallow depressions that collect, absorb, and filter stormwater. A rain garden must be designed and installed with careful consideration, or more problems may arise. Participants will learn about the benefits, design, and maintenance of this important stormwater BMP. Who is this for? This webinar series is for anyone who owns or manages residential property, including:

Climate change is driving more frequent and severe hydroclimatic events that overlap with and exacerbate existing hazards. This workshop aims to engage multi-disciplinary researchers and practitioners in conversation about the future of interconnected hazards research. Special attention will be placed on the overlap of hydroclimatic change and earthquake hazard through the lens of the recent, unprecedented Cyclone Gabrielle, which caused ~NZ$8 billion in damage across Hawke’s Bay, Aotearoa New Zealand — a region with the largest seismic hazard in the country. Who should attend?

Flooding is the most prominent natural disaster in Pennsylvania, with trends that include increasing size and frequency of flash floods as well as increasing uncertainty and associated challenges in prediction and flood warning. These conditions put at risk millions of people living in small and moderate-sized communities across the Commonwealth.

Department of Geosciences Colloquium Series Fall 2023 Jamiat Nanteza ​UC Irvine Climate Risk and Decision Making Candidate

You are invited to the 12th annual edition of the Journalists’ Guide to Environment + Energy, where leading environmental journalists from major news outlets will predict the top stories of the year ahead. David Byrne, founder of the online news magazine Reasons to Be Cheerful, will discuss solutions journalism and environmental optimism. Indigenous student Shondiin Mayo will discuss the future of environmental journalism.

Gain insights into agrivoltaics, understanding its definition, implementation techniques, and the challenges and prospects associated with integrating solar panels into farmland and agricultural operations.

Stormwater continues to cause increasing problems as we urbanize and grow our population. Rain barrels are one tool that homeowners can use to help mitigate problems from stormwater. This webinar will cover the various uses and benefits of rain barrels for a homeowner. It will also cover a basic construction option for those interested in building a rain barrel on their property. Event Details The free webinar will review how to construct a rain barrel for your property. This event is being offered at no charge to participants.

Advances in different -omics technologies have revolutionized biological research by enabling high-throughput monitoring of biological processes at the molecular level and their responses to environmental perturbation. Metabolomics is a fast-emerging technology in systems biology that aims to profile small compounds within a biological system that are often end products of complex biochemical cascades. Thus, metabolomics can enable discovery of the genetic basis of metabolic variation by linking the genotype to the phenotype.

Catchment hydrology and water quality are closely related to our society, economic and environment. In the recent decades, our catchments are threatened by emerging issues such as climate change, population growth and urbanization, calling for improved understanding of catchment processes and responses under changes to inform effective management. My work spans multiple topics in surface water hydrology, focusing on understanding and modelling water quality and quantity via data-driven and large-sample approaches, such as the Bayesian space-time models.

Join Penn State Sustainability for its final fall screening in its Intersections film program and the first film in its 2023-24 Soundings water series. Flood Bound — Marion Abrams (2012, U.S., 57 min.) + additional short film + post-film discussion

This informal speaker series brings Penn State and University of Wyoming research communities together and provides opportunities for graduate students from both communities to learn about a wide range of research topics in the Quaternary. This month, four speakers will present their research including Kaitlyn Horisk, Penn State Geosciences, “Geochemical techniques reveal ecosystem change across the late Holocene in Dhofar, Oman.”

For the past 50 years, Dr. David Curtis has been on the leading edge of hydro-meteorological and flood risk management services. He has supported the design, development, and implementation of award-winning innovations in automated environmental and flood monitoring systems across the U.S., South and Central America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa. His efforts led to the Connecticut Statewide Flood Warning System, the nation’s first statewide system. He is currently supporting the development of a nationwide flood forecast system in Peru.

Join us on November 15 at 1:00 p.m. for College Connections, a monthly webinar series moderated by Interim Dean Laszlo Kulcsar to give you a unique, inside perspective of the programs, people, and partnerships of the Penn State College of Ag Sciences.

In order to create an inclusive and equitable environment in the water and science community, we, as leaders and professionals, need to understand what actionable steps we can take and systemic practices we can adopt now. By intentionally changing our behaviors and creating new pathways for participation in our organizations, we will not only make our own agencies stronger, but also create deeper meaning and connection with stakeholders impacted by the work that we do.