CT Green Scene

Scientists Seek New Disease Resistant American Elms

It could be called lending a helping branch.

Scientists from The Nature Conservancy are using small branches from large survivor American elms in a handful of locations throughout New England to try to develop new Dutch elm disease-resistant strains of the stately tree that, decades ago, was among the most prominent in city parks and streets throughout much of the United States.

In coming days, aided by Chesterfield arborist Jim McSweeney, Conservancy ecologist Christian Marks will visit several Western Massachusetts sites to take sample branches for large elms that survived the onslaught of Dutch elm disease that ravaged the American elm population in the Northeast from from the 1950s through the 1970s and continues into the present. Samples also are being taken from sites in Connecticut and Eastern New York.

“The disease has had a profound impact on trees that were treasured by so many people in city parks and streets,” Marks said. “It also had a dramatic impact on floodplain forests along New England’s rivers.”

Before Dutch elm disease, American elms, among New England’s largest trees, would grow to dominate the forest canopy, creating a unique ecological niche that combined flood tolerance with shade tolerance

The elm still is the second most abundant tree species in the floodplain forests of the Connecticut River watershed; however, today’s elms are typically much smaller than those that preceded the disease, and the unique niche the larger trees created has been mostly lost. Restoring it would benefit these crucial floodplains.

“An array of bird species and other plant life rely on these floodplains, but they also have important benefits for people,” Marks said. “Among other things, they absorb flood waters and blunt the impact of ice-buildup, protecting communities from potentially expensive and dangerous flooding.”

6th Annual Global Environmental Sustainability Symposium: Transportation, Human Mobility, and Sustainability at CCSU

April 4th, 2013

9:45 AM-7:15 PM 

FREE, Registration Required

Central Connecticut State University

New Britain, Connecticut

The CCSU Global Environmental Sustainability Action Coalition invites the public to learn and to teach one another about the actions that we, as human beings, must take to ensure that we live in such a way that we are able to satisfy our needs while ensuring that our children and grandchildren will be able to satisfy their own. The symposium will offer 3 classes, two performances, a panel discussion, a tour, and an optional attendance at the town meeting, as well as opening and closing notes from distinguished professionals in sustainability. This event is FREE: anyone can register online to show up. *Exhibitor tables are still open.

Schedule

9:45-10:00 AM: Symposium opening and welcome with Dr. Charles Button and Dr. Jack Miller (tentative) at Alumni Hall

10:00-10:45: Transportation, Migration, and Sustainability in Four Worlds Alumni Hall

Dr. John Kelmelis expands upon a possibility raised by the United States National Intelligence Council when they published Global Trends 2030: Alternative World. This work explores four very possible future worlds. Dr. Kelmelis will explain what each of these worlds might mean for our future as well as what strategies we might use to make the most of each circumstance at the local, regional, national, and global levels. 

11:00-11:45: Panel Discussion: Electric Cars and Alternative Vehicles Alumni Hall

The president of the New England Electric Auto Association (Dave Oliveria), an environmental writer and speaker (Jim Motavalli), the Senior Associates Autos Editor for Consumer Reports (Eric Evarts), and a natural gas car owner (Joe Booth) all come together in one place to talk about the real value that hybrid, extended hybrid, and electric vehicles hold. This is a special opportunity to discover what users and reviewers genuinely think about these alternative vehicles.

12:00-1:45 (*with second free registration): Water Wars Performance and Lunch Alumni Hall

While you enjoy your lunch, the Sonia Plumb Dance Company will be performing Water Wars. This is an emotionally charged piece of art that exposes the very important and very tenuous relationship that human beings have with one of our primary sources of life: water.

The Good News about Walnuts and Your Prostate

You just can't make this stuff up: walnuts shrink tumors. I know, right? Sounds incredible but it's true. Apparently, at least according to research at UC Davis on tumor-toting mice, their walnut-eating consumption actually reduced their tumor size significantly.

What makes it interesting for this site is how it falls into the category of how our environment affects our health. What we put into our bodies is part of that environment. Like climate change, it's a problem we can have some control over. 

See the excerpt below from Environmental News Network that was originally reported in the British Journal of Nutrition.

The Amazing Tumor-Fighting Walnut
David A Gabel, ENN 
Published January 25, 2012 09:38 AM

Recently, scientists from the University of California (UC) in Davis found out that, at least in mice, eating walnuts can actually slow down the growth of tumors. In fact, after 18 weeks of being on a walnut-rich diet, the mice had tumors half the size as mice on a similar diet. Further research will be upcoming to explore more beneficial effects of walnuts. Some believe that walnuts can be even used to prevent tumors from ever forming.

The unlucky subject mice in the experiment were genetically programmed to develop prostate cancer. UC Davis researchers assessed the size of their tumors at 9,18 and 24 weeks. Some mice were on the walnut diet, consuming the human equivalent of 2.4 ounces of walnut per day. The other subject group ate a soybean oil diet which was formulated to match the walnut diet in terms of nutrients, fat levels, and fatty acid profiles.

Amazingly, at 18 weeks, the tumors were half the size in the walnut group than the other group. Overall, the rate of tumor growth was 28 percent less for the walnut group.

To read more, click here.

Image courtesy of Phys.org. 

Environmentalist Céline Cousteau Speaks at Fairfield University’s Open VISIONS Forum April 4

People and the Natural World: An Exploration of Connections 
Monday, April 4 at 8 p.m.

$45
Celine Cousteau, 
Granddaughter of the legendary Jacques Cousteau, ambassador of the environment and native cultures

World explorer and environmentalist Céline Cousteau, closes the popular Fairfield University lecture series Open VISIONS Forum (OVF) on Monday, April 4 at 8 p.m. when she speaks at the Quick Center for the Arts. Tickets are $45. This OVF event is an Arts & Minds presentation.

The name Cousteau is familiar to legions and is synonymous with underwater exploration. The OVF speaker is Jacques Cousteau’s granddaughter and Jean-Michel Cousteau’s daughter. She has pursued the family passion and made it her own and for OVF, she will speak on “People and the Natural World: An Exploration of Connections.”

Wipe Out?

by Eileen Weber
 
Yesterday, The Huffington Post had an entry that caught my eye. It focused on the death of tens of thousands of bats this year due to a mysterious fungus. Called “white-nose syndrome”, the disease is wiping them out.
 
Why should we care? Because bats eat the insects that are harmful to us and our crops. Without them, there would be a massive overpopulation of insects.
 
Earlier this year, the same story was reported on National Public Radio. So why is it that no one seems to be paying attention? Is it just because bats aren’t fuzzy and cute? If this were a blight wiping out all domestic kittens, would we be more concerned? There has been little funding for the cause yet it could have catastrophic results if left unattended.

Green Gas

by Eileen Weber

For every car ride, bus trip, or vacation par avion, we expel greenhouse gases from fossil fuels into the air. We are heavily dependent on foreign oil. We still use coal as a source of power. We have irreparably changed our climate as a result.

But according to a Washington Post article dated October 20, 2008, there are some companies that are trying to make a difference. Alternative fuels such as ethanol derived from corn or diesel derived from algae are taking center stage.

But fuels based on crops like corn have their own environmental price tag. The farming process of those “macro-crops” uses fossil fuels to get the job done.

Companies like Florida-based PetroAlgae are working hard to find a sustainable solution to the problem. They produce “micro-crops” of algae that are broken down into a fuel source and a protein base. The product can be used to fire up a 747 or it can be extracted as a protein filler for animal feed. And who knows? Rich in amino acids, you may find these protein isolates in your next strawberry smoothie some day.

The crops are environmentally safe and sustainable. They are grown in raised pools with no toxic run-off. Almost all of the water that is used to irrigate the crops is recycled for the next crop. Nothing goes to waste.

According to the PetroAlgae web site, algae-based fuel is functionally identical to fossil fuels. And since the algae micro-crops consume twice their body weight in CO2, they’re carbon neutral as well.

Green Soil

by Eileen Weber

Composting. It’s a great idea. Lots of people do it. But these days, students eager to spread their environmental wings are taking the process of composting seriously.

Take these Staples High School students from Westport, for example. Casey Richardson, along with her friends Molly Pieper, Sasha Bern and Venetia Stanley, became environmental entrepreneurs founding the Soil Yourself Composting company. Richardson, the mastermind behind the project, focused her junior year research paper on the subject, which sparked the idea for their business.

“Even though what we are doing is on a very small, local scale, I know what we are doing is really making a difference,” said Pieper. “It's great knowing that I am doing my part to protect my earth.”

With a little financial help from their parents and an investment of $600, they bought composting tumblers to deposit food scraps and other organic waste. They turn the material over a few times a day to keep it aerated. Scraps like eggshells, tea bags, coffee grounds and corn cobs supply a nice ratio between carbon and nitrogen-rich elements to the soil.

While these young women have gotten phenomenal responses from the community in support of their project, they haven’t seen the fruit of their labors yet. “Our first food scrap pick-up was June 22,” said Pieper, “so about two months from then will be our first compost delivery.”

A Green FROG In Connecticut

by Eileen Weber

The Watkinson School in Hartford, the city’s only independent school founded in 1881, had a ground-breaking for their net-zero science facility on May 27th. San Francisco-based Project FROG designed the school’s Center for Science and Global Citizenship. This school building will be the first of its kind in New England. The construction date is scheduled for next week.

“The building [will be] as smart as the students and teachers in it,” said John Bracker, Watkinson’s Head of School. Some of the key elements in the design are a geothermal heating and cooling system as well as solar panels. Large glass windows will be incorporated into the design to trap in heat in the winter and block it out in the summer. The windows will also provide lots of natural light to cut down on electricity costs.

Bracker said that the school looked into updating its science building about five years ago. But conventional methods were too expensive. When the concept of going green for less money came up, the Board of Trustees gave the go-ahead.

“This will not only augment the way we teach but change the way we teach. The building will be as much a part of the curriculum as any other teaching tools,” said Bracker. In other words, in order for the school to teach about sustainability they have to be sustainable.

Global Whaling

by Eileen Weber

New York’s harbor got super-sized on Thursday. A humpback whale was spotted yesterday by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, not too far from Coney Island. The coast guard kept watch to make sure the 30-foot animal was safely out of water traffic.

A sighting like this isn’t exactly new. On March 2nd, Pilot whales were found on the shores of Tasmania. On March 18th, a Humpback whale was spotted off the coast of Hong Kong. On March 23rd, more than 60 Pilot whales and Bottlenose dolphins washed up on the shores of Hamelin Bay in Western Australia.

With each passing year, whales, dolphins, and porpoises, part of a group of mammals called cetaceans, beach themselves and no one quite knows why. According to a Science Daily article dated May 23, 2007, global warming may be the culprit. The warming waters around the polar regions are decreasing the ice cover. Their food supply, mainly krill, decreases or gets shifted to a different area. Simply following the food supply, the whales end up closer to shore and sometimes on shore.

“Whales, dolphins and porpoises have some capacity to adapt to their changing environment,” said Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society in a May 22, 2007 Live Science article. “But the climate is now changing at such a fast pace that it is unclear to what extent whales and dolphins will be able to adjust, and we believe many populations to be very vulnerable to predicted changes.”