Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

​Energy & Environmental Economics and Policy Seminar Jura Liaukonyte, Cornell University "Browsing the Aisles or Browsing the App? How Online Grocery Shopping is Changing What We Buy"

The COVID-19 pandemic and extension of business closures made many Americans re-examine their living and working conditions. Such re-examinations affected housing markets in Pennsylvania, which have seen an increase in rural home purchases and a decrease in urban home purchases in 2020. The Center for Rural Pennsylvania recently published a report "Welcome to Rural Pennsylvania: COVID-19 and Residential Property Sales" which analyzed the impact of COVID-19 on residential property sales throughout Pennsylvania.

Spring 2022 ESSC Brown Bag Series presents Dr. Nachiketa Acharya, ESMAD/Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences, Penn State

Machine learning methods are playing an increasing role in materials research, from predicting properties to accelerating characterization to extracting data from text. In this talk I will give a brief overview of recent activities and opportunities for machine learning in materials. Then I will discuss recent efforts in my group in three areas. The first is assessing model domains and uncertainties in materials property prediction, where I will share assessments of common Bayesian (Gaussian process regression) and ensemble methods.

The spring 2022 EESI EarthTalks series, "Energy and Climate Policy, Part 2: Strategies for Getting to Net Zero," will focus on policies and technologies that could help slow down global warming and reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions. The series will be held in conjunction with EARTH 400, a course for students who wish to pursue these topics in greater depth.

2022 Ashtekar Frontiers of Science The AI Revolution: Using artificial intelligence for socially responsible science Presented by Jinchao Xu Verne M. Willaman Professor of Mathematics at Penn State

Webinar will focus on exploring the recycled material markets within Pennsylvania and their increasing inclusion within construction projects as well as actions being taken to further grow the use of recyclables and recycling in facility construction. Presentation will also cover how to minimize the carbon footprint of building construction materials and why it’s important. Presenters: Tad Radzinski, President, Sustainable Solutions Corporation, and Robert J. Bylone, Executive Director, Penn State Recycling Markets Center  

Are you interested in how to ask a company for gifts of equipment or materials? Would you like to have a company donate software to support your students or research? Do you have questions about the approval process for these kinds of gifts? Do you know whom to contact with questions about wire transfers from corporations, foundations, or individuals?

The subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) predictive timescale, encompassing lead times ranging from 2 weeks to a season, is at the frontier of prediction science. However, the S2S climate predictions suffer from a significant lack of prediction skills. The probabilistic multi model ensemble (PMME) is a well-accepted approach to improve the skill of prediction from individual dynamical models.

Learn more about the second annual Earthshot Prize. Penn State can nominate people, projects, or organizations. Five prizes are awarded annually in the following categories: Protect and Restore Nature, Clean Our Air, Revive Our Oceans, Build a Waste-Free World, and Fix Our Climate. If you are interested in applying, upload your information to InfoReady (https://psu.infoready4.com/#competitionDetail/1861507) by February 24, 2022. Final submissions are due March 4, 2022.

Stormwater runoff is a growing non-point source pollution challenge that costs cities billions of dollars to fix. We investigate peer effects in a voluntary residential green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) program. Our identification strategy exploits households’ relative position in eligible sewer sheds as plausibly random variation in the number of potential peers. This exogenous variation in the number of eligible peers strongly impacts the number of peers that ultimately adopt.

Spring 2022 ESSC Brown Bag Series presents Dr. Ray Najjar, Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences, Penn State

During the Pennsylvania Forest Seminar: Tested Methods for Establishing Riparian Forested Buffers, David Wise and Lamonte Garber will present findings on stream ecology and forest buffer restoration, informed by fifty years of research by the Stroud Water Research Center.

Department of Geosciences Colloquium Series presents Ryan Mathur, Juniata College

During the Pennsylvania Forest Seminar: Tested Methods for Establishing Riparian Forested Buffers, David Wise and Lamonte Garber will present findings on stream ecology and forest buffer restoration, informed by fifty years of research by the Stroud Water Research Center.

The spring 2022 EESI EarthTalks series, "Energy and Climate Policy, Part 2: Strategies for Getting to Net Zero," will focus on policies and technologies that could help slow down global warming and reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions. The series will be held in conjunction with EARTH 400, a course for students who wish to pursue these topics in greater depth.

White mold in soybeans, caused by Sclerotinia sclerotium (S.s.), is the second most devastating disease of soybeans in the world. The disease causes an average of 2.5% yield loss in soybean production annually in Pennsylvania (PA), which equates to approximately $6,000,000. However, many growers still do not scout for white mold or have not been able to manage it well. My thesis aims to increase our understanding of the biology of S. s. at the field-scale, which will improve sampling strategies, crop loss estimations, and field experimental designs.

Development of the Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) is currently underway, with anticipated delivery in 2023. In support of this aim, the U.S. Global Change Research Program is holding workshops regularly through February 16, 2022. The workshops are online and open to the public. Each workshop focuses on a different topic. Some are focused on areas of the nation, and some are focused on research topics, such as water or human health.

Arthur Lupia, the Gerald R. Ford Distinguished University Professor at the University of Michigan, will discuss how to develop more effective communication strategies to reach and engage the public on the value of scientific research.

Agricultural landscapes in the United States (US) are becoming drastically simplified and commodified, causing concern for biodiversity loss, environmental degradation, and widening socioeconomic injustices upon which US agriculture has been built. Given that crop production is heavily concentrated in certain areas and crop diversity is declining, there is a critical need to understand pathways toward diversifying agricultural systems and increasing agrobiodiversity writ large.