Van Wagner is a 1998 graduate of PSU School of Forest Resources. He teaches Agriculture Science (including Forestry, Wildlife Management, and AP Environmental Science) at Danville High School. He is a certified forester with SAF and a certified arborist with ISA. He uses his music to celebrate Pennsylvania's forest heritage. His music has been featured on multiple movies and shows. He and his sons Luke and Calvin own and operate "Wagner and Sons Tree Service".
Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive
You're viewing an archived collection of past energy and environment events from around Penn State and beyond. Please visit our Event Calendar to view current and upcoming events.
Luke Plants, a third-generation owner of Plants and Goodwin, leads an oil and gas field service company operating in the Appalachian Basin. Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, new programs have been established to inventory and properly close orphaned wells. The law allocates $4.7 billion for plugging, remediation, and restoration activities on federal, Tribal, state, and private lands.
Join us for an engaging webinar that dives into the transformative role of Internet of Things (IoT) technology in agriculture. Discover how precision agriculture, automation, and advanced sensor solutions are revolutionizing farming practices, from specialty crop mechanization to drone-integrated dairy farming and blockchain-enabled sheep management. Hear from faculty experts, innovative farmers, and industry leaders as they share the latest research and real-world applications of IoT in agriculture.
The Food Decisions Research Laboratory in the Penn State School of Hospitality Management is hosting its 10th annual Online Interdisciplinary Research Symposium. This year’s virtual symposium will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 11, via Zoom. This online event is free and open to the public.
The symposium will feature two roundtable discussions detailing sustainable pathways and tech-driven transformation in foodservice, highlighting changes taking place and future issues that may affect the industry.
Climate researchers, especially modellers and scenario builders, are increasingly demanding justice, or at least an adequate understanding of what “justice” means. This presentation lays out an interdisciplinary account of some of the most important forms of justice: distributional, procedural, recognitional, corrective and transitional. Most of these take philosophical concepts and expand or adapt them for climate researchers (the key exception is transitional justice, which is a new meta-form of justice that we think especially important for just transition research).
In this special edition of the Millennium Café, we will have a moderated panel discussion with researchers from different disciplines to consider the scientific developments and corresponding ethical, legal, and social implications of bioprinting technologies. Could bioprinted organs be a solution to the transplant organ shortage? Who owns a bioprinted organ? Are “silent” clinical trials with personalized bioprinted tissues and organs ethical?
Join us for an interactive webinar designed for farmers and landowners applying biosolids. Penn State researchers will present recent updates on their projects concerning PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in agricultural systems, emphasizing new findings and implications for farming practices. This session offers participants the opportunity to engage in an open discussion, pose questions, and share perspectives on pressing needs and concerns—such as resources, education, monitoring, and management—related to PFAS in agriculture.
Event Details
In this talk, I will draw from my research contributions to emerging thoughts of restoration social science to offer evidence on the human well-being impacts forest restoration actions.
I will also articulate broader human dimensions that are important to account for in ecological recovery efforts, why it is important to consider them, and how to integrate them in restoration processes, so as to foster more people-centered ecosystem restoration.
Pennsylvania Geospatial Coordinating Board Services Delivery Task Force & Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access are sponsoring a seminar focusing on the Return on Environment (ROE)--Kittatinny Ridge Conservation Landscape project.
Impactful winter precipitation events are often heavily controlled by mesoscale airflow dynamics and small-scale physical processes. Consequently, effective numerical weather prediction (NWP) models for these events need to have high resolution and accurate representation of key parameterized processes.
Measuring the thermally emitted radiation of coatings, devices, and other materials has become an increasingly important topic as coatings are being applied to manage increasing heat loads on our infrastructure and as devices are pushed to higher limits. Characterizing the emissive property is relevant for developing technologies in energy conversion, imaging, and thermal management. The MCL has recently developed methods to quantify the wavelength and intensity of the thermally emitted radiation from various samples ranging in size from 10’s of microns to the macro-scale.
This project highlighted research at the intersection of building materials, nature-inspired materials design, and the social, environmental, and global impact of the built environment on the climate crisis. It brought together Penn State researchers and external speakers who are subject matter experts in the related areas of materials, architecture, engineering, social science, landscape architecture, and environmental science, with the goal of catalyzing research teams and charting a course towards a decarbonized, equitable, and sustainable built environment.
Understanding the tools available to environmental law and policy in a polarized era requires new mental models and tools. The remarkable framework of constitutional interpretations, statutes, regulations, policies, agencies, and courts that developed over the last half century still dominates how we think about environmental law and policy—but the political system that gave birth to it no longer exists. In its place is a political system characterized by polarization, sorting, and gridlock.
Dr. Jing Meng is a professor of ecological economics at the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, and a fellow of Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance. Her research focuses on technology innovation, climate change policies, and co-mitigation of climate change and air pollution. Read more about her work. As mentioned in her GEC Early Career Award nomination, "[Dr.
Professor Michael Vandenbergh is the David Daniels Allen Distinguished Chair in Law at Vanderbilt University Law School, Director of the Climate Change Research Network, and Co-Director of the Energy, Environment and Land Use Program. An award-winning teacher, Professor Vandenbergh has published widely on bypassing climate polarization, private environmental governance, and the opportunity to harness law and social science to achieve a behavioral wedge of carbon emissions reductions.
Multiple Isotope Approaches to the Geologic Carbon Cycle
As an undergraduate student, Elizabeth Crone had difficulty deciding whether to study biology/ecology or architecture/urban planning. Now, she is a population ecologist studying population ecology of butterflies, bees, and perennial wildflowers. She received a Ph.D.
Explore the opportunities available through the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture's (PDA) grant funding programs in an upcoming webinar presented by the Penn State Extension Energy Team and PDA. This session will highlight funding avenues designed to support energy innovation and business planning for agricultural operations. Participants will learn how to connect with technical assistance providers to enhance farm operations through the Agricultural Innovation Grant, which aims to implement new technologies, conservation, and renewable energy projects.
2024 Women Advancing River Research Seminar Series
All seminars will be presented online live at 11:00 a.m. ET on the third Thursday of each month. Seminar recordings will be posted later. Please register in advance for all talks.
Energy Fluxes in Streams and Rivers
Joanna Blaszczak, University of Nevada, Reno (U.S.)
Erin Hotchkiss, Virginia Tech (U.S.)
Given their impact on Earth's energy and water budgets, cloud and thunderstorm representations are among the most crucial components of climate models. Thus, this seminar will begin with an overview of how clouds and thunderstorms are broadly represented in climate models (with a focus on the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies [GISS] Earth System Model [ESM]).