Past Events: Penn State Energy and Environment Calendar Archive

The Transportation Engineering and Safety Conference (TESC) — an annual gathering of professionals from throughout Pennsylvania, the mid-Atlantic region, and the country — continues to deliver authoritative information on pressing issues from some of the foremost experts in transportation today. Vigorous interaction and discussion among presenters and attendees is built into the program format, and optional certification training allow for more in-depth probing of selected topics.

Bioenergy / Bioproducts and Society This session is part of the Penn State Future of Bioenergy and Biorenewables Workshop, presented by Penn State Center for Biorenewables

The Water Insights Seminar Series engages the University and broader community in collaborative learning and discussion about critical water challenges from local to global scales.   All seminars are scheduled for Tuesdays from 12:00 - 1:00 pm and will be held via Zoom. Zoom room open from 11:30 for setup and log-in. Meetings (video, audio, and chat) will be recorded. No waiting room, and no passcode. Participants will be muted automatically upon entry.

Tropospheric ozone is a damaging air pollutant with recognized deleterious effects on plant growth and development, resulting in a substantial loss of crop productivity and yield worldwide. C4 species include the world’s most productive food and bioenergy crops, although many of them have not been examined for ozone response. This talk will cover our research over the past 7 years investigating C4 food and bioenergy species responses to ozone pollution using Free Air Ozone Enrichment in the field.

Enthusiasm for black geographies has grown significantly since it was formalized in the edited volume, Black Geographies and the Politics of Place. With an increase in the interest and application of this framework has come an increased potential for the misapplication of the aims defined in its origins. The time has come to redefine Black geographies and delineate it from geographies of race. In this article, we argue that though within the purview of geographies of race, Black geographies provides insights beyond this unit of study.

Energy Law and Policy webinars: How RGGI fits into Pennsylvania’s evolving energy policy landscape by Daniel Mallinson, School of Public Affairs, Penn State, Harrisburg Registration is free but required. To register for this event and others in the Center for Energy Law and Policy RGGI series, please visit:https://psu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_U9kKrpPdS0Syohe68y_ErQ 

Finding Flowers: Examining the intersections of pollinator conservation research and social justice Insect Biodiversity Center Sheila Colla, York University December 4, 2020 @ 11:00 am to 12:00 pm Seminars will be hosted by Zoom. A link will be provided here the week of the seminar.

Energy for the Future Seminar: The Raw Materials in the Sustainable Production of Lithium-ion Batteries within the Framework of Energy Transition by Dr. Alexandre Chagnes, Full Professor, École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie (ENSG), France

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of man-made chemicals first manufactured in the 1940s. These chemicals, now in widespread use, have been found in the blood of humans and animals worldwide. PFAS have a range of human health impacts including cancers, immune system effects, and endocrine disruption.    In this webinar, a panel of three experts will explain the PFAS problem from the perspective of human health, the environment, governmental response, and solutions. A Q&A session will follow. 

Cities have been the crucibles for experimentation for centuries. In response to the 1793 yellow fever outbreak, garbage removal and sanitation departments took hold in cities. The 1850's cholera outbreak helped spur the development of public health and urban planning. Now here we are in 2020, a year that has thrown so much in the way of our municipal leaders. In addition to a pandemic, the US has seen a movement for racial justice that parallels that of the 1960's.

Meteorology and Atmospheric Science Colloquium: IBHS Research: a Multi-Faceted Approach to Natural Hazard Damage by Tanya Brown-Giammanco, Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS)

Urbanization has led to a rapid decline in open space in the U.S. If an individual’s preferences are affected by their early-life experiences with nature, then the value people place on conservation may decline as nature disappears and more people lack childhood engagement in natural settings. This paper uses a choice experiment study to quantify the values adults in the U.S. Midwest would gain from a large grassland restoration near them and how those values vary with their childhood experiences.

Earth System Science Center (ESSC) Brown Bag Series: Penn State Carbon Negative (PSUCan): Accelerating the Drawdown of Greenhouse-Gas Emissions at Our University by Charles Anderson, Institutes of Energy and the Environment; Robert Cooper, Office of the Physical Plant; and Timothy White, Institutes of Energy and the Environment, Penn State

Geosciences Colloquium: Complexities of olivine crystallographic preferred orientation and implications for mantle seismic anisotropy by Rachel Bernard, Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Geology, Amherst College

Emerging Concepts in Biomaterials This session is part of the Penn State Future of Bioenergy and Biorenewables Workshop, presented by Penn State Center for Biorenewables

Water Insights Seminar: Toilet to Field: Addressing Perceptions in the Age of Misinformation by Michael Mashtare, Assistant Professor, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Penn State

Part of the EESI EarthTalks series “Changemaking made EESI: Fostering inclusive research communities in the Earth and environmental sciences”

Central Park birder Christian Cooper. George Floyd. Removal of Confederate Statues. Renaming of institutions. Reparations. Systemic Racism. What's "environment" got to do with it? How do we meet this moment? Drawing from her book, Black Faces, White Spaces, her relationships "in the field" and lived experience, Dr. Finney explores the complexities and contradictions of our past, the realities of our present, and the possibilities of our future as it relates to green space, race, and the power to shape the places we live in our own image.

State-of-the-art performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) procedures, such as FEMA P-58, generally treat buildings as “islands” with respect to modeling regional impacts and post-earthquake recovery. This talk presents an overview of recent research to advance direct simulation of regional impacts and recovery within a PBEE framework. Specifically, Dr. Baker will demonstrate work to scale single-building performance-based assessments to a regional scale.

Meteorology and Atmospheric Science Colloquium: Tropical Weather and the Myth of ‘Diabatic Heating’ Kerry Emanuel, Lorenz Center, MIT