Olivia DrakeDuring the last 50 years, humans have degraded rivers and lakes through excessive water abstraction, pollution and by over-harvesting aquatic organisms. River flow has been impeded by dams, and floodplains have been converted for agriculture and urban areas. The human population has doubled to nearly 7 billion and, per capita water availability has declined on all continents. During the past 50 years, global climate change has further impacted water resources. On Nov. 7, three climate experts will speak on "Global Environmental Change And Freshwater Resources: Hope For The Best Or Change To Prepare For The Worst?" during the annual Where…
Eco-activist. filmmaker and reality television star Shalini Kantayya spoke about the global water crisis during Wesleyan’s Earth Day Celebration April 15. Her production company, 7th Empire Media, is committed to using media to give a powerful voice to the unheard. Kantayya captured the attention of the nation during the television series “On the Lot,” a reality show created by Steven Spielberg for the purpose of finding Hollywood’s next great director. Out of over 12,000 filmmakers, Kantayya was the only woman to finish in the top 10. (Photos by Alexandra Portis '09)
David PesciAbout 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, the ground around Mount Redoubt has begun to shake and a smell akin to rotten eggs tinges the air. The last time this happened the 10,197-foot volcano erupted for five months, venting hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide gas and spewing ash into the air. Professor Johan Varekamp remembers it well. He was among scientists who analyzed the direct effects of the 1989-1990 eruption. The ash he examined was ejected more than 40,000 feet into the sky; the resulting ashfall covered nearly 8,000 square miles of the surrounding landscape. “As is often quoted in…
Robert D. Bullard, a leading authority regarding environmental justice and the author of Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality, will lead the Celebration of the Life of Dr. Marin Luther King Jr. keynote address. The event begins at 4:30 p.m. Jan. 27 in Memorial Chapel. Bullard is the Ware Distinguished Professor of Sociology and director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University. Prior to joining the faculty at CAU in 1994, he served as a professor of sociology at the University of California, Riverside, as well as visiting professor in Center for Afro-American Studies at…
Thanks to NASA, two Earth and Environmental Science faculty are going to spend the better part of their next three summers on Venus looking at volcanoes and mountain ranges. Specifically, Martha Gilmore, associate professor of earth and environment science, and Phillip Resor, assistant professor of earth and environmental science, will be using a three-year NASA grant to examine an area of Venus called the Tellus Regio, which is contains some of the oldest rocks on the planet’s surface. “It’s an area of interest for two reasons, primarily,” says Gilmore, who has done work on Mars and Venus missions, among others…
Ellen Thomas, research professor of earth and environmental sciences, is a co-author of an article on the "long record of the Ca-isotope composition of seawater," published in Science Magazine Dec. 15.
A paper co-authored by Ellen Thomas, research professor of earth and enviornmental sciences, titled "Trends, rhythms, and aberrations in global climate 65 Ma to present," published in Science, 292, in 2001, has been identified by Thomson Reuters Scientific's Essential Science Indicators as one of the most highly cited papers in field of geosciences, and has been designated as a "Current Classic" for October 2008. For more information go to: http://sciencewatch.com/dr/cc/08-octcc/'Article.
Ellen Thomas, research professor of earth and enviornmental sciences, is the author of "Research Focus: Descent into the Icehouse," published in Geology, 36: 191-192, 2008. She is the co-author of "Depth-dependency of the Paleocene-Eocene Carbon Isotope Excursion: paired benthic and terrestrial biomarker records (ODP Leg 208, Walvis Ridge)," published in Geochem., Geophys., Geosyst, 9 (10): Q10008, 2008; and "Effects of Oligocene climatic events on the foraminiferal record from Fuente Caldera section (Spain, western Tethys)," published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 269: 94-102. doi: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2008.08.006, in press.
In January, Hannah Hastings '08 and Andrea Pain '08 collected seagrass from the ocean floor to study nutrient content in a dinoflagellate-rich ecosystem off the southwest coast of Puerto Rico. The seniors returned to Wesleyan and analyzed their samples for carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus levels. They discovered a high ratio of nitrogen to phosphorus compared to the normal ratio in the ocean. "We discovered that high dinoflagellate concentrations are directly associated with elevated nitrogen to phosphorus ratios," Pain said during Part I of the Earth and Environmental Science Departments Senior Seminar Research Project colloquium March 6. Part II of the…
Dana Royer, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, studies fossilized plants and plant physiology. He started at Wesleyan July 1. Posted 07/13/05 Dana Royer has joined the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department as an assistant professor on July 1.His professional interests include global change; paleoclimatology, paleoecology, carbon cycles, paleobotany; plant physiology and stable isotope geochemistry. I study fossil plants in order to infer something about the paleoclimates in which they lived, as well as their paleoecologies, he says. I also study modern systems to learn more about the biological basis of these plant-environment relationships. After spending a semester studying…