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Environments & Sustainability
Taking the long view on infrastructure
HarvardScience
By: Colin Durrant/
May 10, 2012
New tool to battle illegal trade in animals
Harvard’s Center for Geographic Analysis will work with United Nations University on a system that will allow users to track and map wildlife crime, and how it is related to a host of socioeconomic factors.
‘Warming hole’ delayed climate change
Climate scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have discovered that particulate pollution in the late 20th century created a "warming hole" over the eastern United States — that is, a cold patch where the effects of global warming were temporarily obscured.
Executives from a leading debris-recovery firm, Phillips & Jordan Inc., were at Harvard on April 19 to discuss challenges and lessons learned in two decades of aiding the biggest cleanup efforts in the United States.
Illuminating carbon’s climate effects
Harvard researchers compiled ice and sedimentary core samples collected from dozens of locations around the world, and found evidence that while changes in Earth’s orbit may have touched off a warming trend, increases in CO2 played a far more important role in pushing the planet out of the ice age.
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Free water purification is needed to head off more than a million childhood deaths from diarrhea each year, says Gates Professor of Developing Societies Michael Kremer.
New research from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that seemingly small changes in summer temperature swings may shorten life expectancy for elderly people with chronic medical conditions, and could result in thousands of additional deaths each year.
Technology transforms energy outlook
The U.S. energy picture has changed dramatically in recent years, with a flood of shale gas making natural gas a more attractive fuel option and the opening of new supplies cutting U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil, an energy expert says.
The greenest lab, up and running
The renovation of Harvard’s Sherman Fairchild Building may have seemed inconsequential to the casual observer because the exterior barely changed. However, as a result of a two-year project to accommodate the Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology Department (SCRB), the interior has been transformed into one of the University’s greenest and most efficient laboratory spaces.
In a drying Amazon, change looms
If the Amazon becomes drier, as predicted by climate models, the forest will see a shift toward tree species that are drought tolerant and, in some cases, will lead to a savannah’s mix of trees and grasses, Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor Guillermo Goldstein says.
To help the environment, manufacture
An American manufacturing revival is needed if the United States is to transform its energy mix at the scale necessary to blunt coming climate change, the former chairman of the Sierra Club said in a Harvard University Center for the Environment discussion on the future of energy.
A team of researchers from Harvard, MIT, and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris have proposed a surprisingly simple explanation for magnetic anomalies that have baffled scientists since the mid-1960s, suggesting they are remnants of a massive asteroid. As described in a paper published in Science, the researchers believe an asteroid slammed into the moon 4 billion years ago, leaving behind an enormous crater and iron-rich, highly magnetic rock.
On climate issues, look to states
The head of California’s air pollution regulatory board said Feb. 27 that with climate change action stalled in Washington, D.C., the states are taking the lead in creating ways to reduce carbon emissions.
Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have shown that the primary explanation for the reduction in CO2 emissions from power generation that year was that a decrease in the price of natural gas reduced the industry's reliance on coal.
Trouble afloat: Ocean plastics
Plastic pollution in the oceans is a large and growing problem, but one that may be out of the reach of consumers to solve and instead may require cooperation from industry, said Max Liboiron, regional co-director of the Plastic Pollution Coalition.
In a paper published in the journal Nature, Harvard Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Peter Huybers confirms that changes in the orientation of the Earth’s spin axis have contributed to periods of major deglaciation in the past million years.
Large-scale increases in forest cover in North America and Eurasia — proposed by some analysts as a way to cut climate change — could hurt the environment by shifting rainfall patterns across the globe, Harvard study says.
Thinking green, and thinking big
At the first Harvard Thinks Green, six Harvard professors gathered at Sanders Theatre to seek big solutions for complex and potentially intractable problems such as climate change.
With half of U.S. trash still going into landfills, discussions are ongoing about how to handle the nation’s waste, with recycling, composting, incineration, and reuse all part of the mix, says Samantha MacBride, who studies such issues.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu says China has “Henry Ford-ed” the U.S. solar industry, building a global empire on advances made in the U.S.
James Hackett, chairman and chief executive officer of the Anadarko Petroleum Corp., described an energy future driven by new, abundant supplies of natural gas. He spoke during a Future of Energy talk sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
A new report by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs recommends transforming the U.S. energy picture by nearly doubling funding for U.S. energy technology research and instituting incentives for adopting cleaner technologies, such as a cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions.
A postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Center for the Environment, Christopher Golden, is the lead author of a paper. It says that in societies where people rely on bush meat for important micronutrients, people’s lost access to wildlife could hurt children’s health
Steven Wofsy and Andrew Richardson discuss New England’s still-growing forests and their role as a buffer against the effects of climate change.
The stunning regrowth of New England forests over the past century marks a conservation victory, but an Arnold Arboretum forest expert says there’s no turning back the clock to pre-colonial times. Today’s forests are a blend of native New England plants and invasive species, growing on a human-altered landscape.
Multimedia Features
Stem cells: Mending a broken heart?
Dr. Kenneth Chien speaks about a cardiac stem cell discovery that may be the first step on the path to regenerating healthy heart muscle.
Video
2:30 run time
October 30, 2011
At last, the edible science fair
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Harvard Medical School researchers crawl a neural network
Video / Mar 9, '11
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