Dr. James Elsner participated in the Policy Pub in September 2019. To listen to his pub navigate here. Summer is here and it’s hot. I love it. I loved summer in Milwaukee as a kid but it was always way too short. Not here. Summer starts in May and runs through most of September. Perfect….
Category: Climate and Environment
Unexpected Impacts and Data Collection after Hurricane Michael
As much as we push to maintain objectivity and distance, we study what we do because it matters and we hope to have an impact through our research.
Hurricanes: A Growing Threat to an Endangered System
As part of my Ph.D. research, I surveyed longleaf pine habitats before and after Hurricane Michael. My goals were to assess baseline conditions in habitats that were considered to be in exemplary condition and the subsequent damage caused by the storm. This information should help land managers and policy-makers be better informed while making decisions about recovery plans. In total, 0.3-0.4 million acres of longleaf pine habitat within the Florida panhandle were impacted by hurricane force winds, while up to 2.6 million acres experienced tropical storm force winds. My detailed surveys at four sites showed that the site nearest to the storm center experienced catastrophic losses with an estimated tree mortality of 88.7%. At the other sites further away, mortality ranged from 1.3 – 8.4%.
Green New Deal’s Plan For Planes, Trains, And Automobiles Won’t Work
Economic forces are working against the Green New Deal’s infrastructure plan and its supporters don’t seem to understand this. Smaller local initiatives, such as reforming land-use regulations to encourage more density, the elimination of parking requirements and free parking, and congestion taxes, would reduce driving and carbon emissions and can be tailored to individual communities in a way that grandiose national plans can’t.
Faculty Book: Challenges Towards Ecological Sustainability in China
Our book is one of few English books focusing on the issue of ecological sustainability in China. It includes a selection of the best papers presented at the Jinan Forum on Geography and Ecological Sustainability held in Guangzhou, China, from 17 to 19 February 2017, as well as several invited papers.
A New Era in Collaborative Forest Restoration: Working Towards Long-Term, Large-Scale, and High-Capacity Collaboration
There are many lessons derived from this body of work, a few of which I’ve shared here. However, there is much more to be learned from research on large scale, long term, collaborative efforts. In a time when uncertainties are growing, divisiveness is the order of the day, and climate change is impacting ecological integrity throughout the world, the need for adaptive visions for resilience, collectively determined trajectories, and effective ways of working together over the long term could not be more important. Through the study of these long term landscape scale collaborative groups participating in CFLRP, we offer applicable lessons that can help shape a future in collaborative environmental management that is based on adaptive management, resilience, ecological integrity, learning, and collective action.
Remote Sensing of Sustainable Ecosystems
Remote sensing is the science of capturing images of the Earth from drones, airplanes, and satellites. It allows us to monitor changes in the Earth’s climate, seas, cities, and mountains. It also allows us to measure changes in the Earth’s ecosystems. A special issue of the Journal of Sensors out now. The issue is a collection of…
A Memorable Hurricane Season
Michael went through a prolonged period of intensification and we anticipate that these periods of intensification will get longer as the warmest waters expand in coverage due to anthropogenic climate change. Let’s hope for better luck next season, but I will not bet on it.
The Cultural Landscape of Thanksgiving
In the years to follow the first Thanksgiving, the holiday was only sporadically recognized. The early presidents proclaimed days of Thanksgiving, but the federal government stopped recognizing the holiday in the early nineteenth-century. It was only in amidst the national disunity of the Civil War that Lincoln re-established the holiday as a means to reaffirm a sense of national unity. In this context, the story of the original Thanksgiving garnered new meaning, representing an ideal of people sharing a land together in spite of their differences.
What’s Driven the Dramatic Technological Change in the US Wind Power Sector?
As the world’s major energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter, the United States is striving to increase the share of renewable energy in its electricity supply so as to address climate change and energy security concerns. Among all renewable energy sources, wind energy has great potential to provide a significant share of electricity generation. During the last two decades, the United States has experienced tremendous technological change in wind power both in terms of cumulative installed capacity and generation performance of wind farms.
