Growing Impact is a podcast by the Institute of Energy and Environment (IEE) that explores cutting-edge projects of researchers and scientists who are solving some of the world's most challenging energy and environmental issues. Each project has been funded through the IEE Seed Grant Program.
Growing Impact: In pursuit of energy equity
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Cleveland, like many cities, aims to become greener in the coming decades by decarbonizing infrastructure and using renewable energy. However, implementing solutions has its challenges, from technological to financial. Add to this the challenges of ensuring equity, and the situation gets even more complex.
Growing Impact: Vanishing tree
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What happens to a community or a livelihood when a key resource disappears? In Southwest Madagascar, the farafatse tree, a tree of great importance in that region, appears to be vanishing, and where it is traditionally found seems to be shifting. A team of researchers is investigating this phenomenon in concert with Malagasy communities to identify causes and potential risks for plant life more broadly.
Growing Impact: Water's plastic problem
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Plastic of all shapes and sizes is showing up in bodies of water around the world, including microplastics, which are 5mm or less in size. But how these tiny pieces of plastic move through water and what impacts that movement is still a bit of a mystery. This includes biofilms, the thin layers of organisms that build up on material found in water.
Growing Impact: When the levee breaks
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A team of researchers seeks to better understand the social effects associated with flooding, such as whether racial and ethnic minorities, children, and those with low income suffer the most.
Growing Impact: Healthy habitat hurdles
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Melissa Bopp and her colleagues examine the role of the built and natural environments and their influence on physical activity, healthy eating, and air quality in the Mon Valley, an area that has seen steady economic decline since the departure of the steel industry in the late 20th century.
Growing Impact: One Health
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NameSona K. Jasani - Profile Photo
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A transdisciplinary team of Penn State researchers is exploring how One Health, an approach that recognizes the interconnectedness among human health, ecosystem health, and animal health, may be able to tackle complex health problems facing Pennsylvania.
Growing Impact: Visualizing history's future
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As sea-levels rise due to climate change, historical monuments and landscapes near bodies of water are at risk. A new research project will provide decision makers with information on what that could look like for their site. Specifically, the project is focused monuments and landscapes that are significant to African American, Indigenous, and other minority communities.
Growing Impact: Got methane?
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The latest episode of the Growing Impact podcast features Juliana Vasco-Correa, an assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering, who shares how biofiltration could reduce greenhouse gas emissions, specifically methane and carbon dioxide.
Growing Impact: Moving away from coal
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This episode of Growing Impact features Emily Pakhtigian, assistant professor of public policy and the Jeffrey L. and Sharon D. Hyde-McCourtney Career Development Professor. On the podcast, she discusses her seed grant project, titled “Assessing Distributional Effects of Coal-Fired Power Plant Operations on Pollution and Health,” through which she and her colleagues are investigating how the transition away from coal-fired power plants is impacting the environment and health of communities in Pennsylvania.
Growing Impact: A cache of coastal carbon
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In this episode of Growing Impact, Lisa Emili, an associate professor of physical geography and environmental studies at Penn State Altoona, discusses her project titled “Coastal Carbon Dynamics in a Riparian Buffer Ecosystem, Lake Erie Basin,” which is investigating carbon accumulation in freshwater wetlands around the Great Lakes area. She and her team are interested in better understanding how these wetlands fit into the carbon cycle and how these areas can help impact climate change.