Cool Class: Blogging and Podcasting the Environment

ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION CLINIC: BLOGGING AND PODCASTING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT 11:374:493
9:15-12:15 Thursdays. Blake 131.

The goal of the environmental communication clinic is to give students problem-solving skills and hands-on experience to help them in the job market. Working in groups, students in the Spring 2009 class will develop audio and video podcasts to promote environmentally responsible behavior on campus. To do so, students will first determine their communication goals (Increase recycling at RU football games? Reduce bottled water use in the student centers? Reduce carbon footprint of the dorms? Or? Or? Or?). Next, they will identify appropriate target audiences (dorm residents, SEBS faculty, football fans, etc.) After drafting a storyboard outline, they will conduct interviews as the basis of episodes of an audio podcast, a visually enhanced audio podcast, and a video podcast. Although students will have the opportunity work on projects during class, they will also need to spend time outside of class developing ideas, conducting interviews, and editing.

Enrollment is limited and permission of professor is required. SEBS students of any major are welcome. Good visual, oral, and/or verbal communication skills required. Juniors are preferred so their senior year they can serve as resources for faculty, agricultural extension agents, and other students .

For permission contact Professor Caron Chess chess_c@aesop.rutgers.edu.

Princeton is underwhelmed by campus plan

The Princeton Packet reports that the town and gown relationship is being strained a bit by the latest proposals for Princeton's campus. In particular, PU wants to move the Wawa and Dinky station to make room for a transit neighborhood. As a minor note they mention the added sustainability features:

Other environmentally friendly university efforts call for a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. The university also plans on expand the number of “green roofs,” which entail covering the roofs of structures with energy saving plants.

Elsewhere in the watershed, Cranbury will make a cameo appearance on TV tonight.

Obama on the Fall Field Trip

On our DC Fall Field Trip in 2007 Barack Obama smiled and waved to our group.

So I'll ask it just one more time: Who runs the best LA field trips in America?

Future transit

Aside from personal hovercraft, it turns out that we aren't very good at imagining the future of transportation. Fortunately, other folks have figured out some better ideas about how transportation might look in the future. These images from BusinessWeek are pretty focused on examples that are already real, but that means it is in the future of our study area.

From dump to park

A neighborhood in Pittsburgh got a visit from the NYTimes when they took a lot that was an old trash dump and turned it into a park. As this quote shows, some of its value is as a participatory experience:

“We were just strangers before, and this made us neighbors,” said Doug Harper, a sociology professor, still a bit surprised that something as simple as planting crab apple trees, hydrangea bushes and day lilies could have such a profound impact.

Hiking the island of Manhattan

Starting around 2003, Jake Woland and I built a pseudo-tradition of hiking Manhattan tip-to-tip with the RUOC. In 2006 we tried something different and hiked Brooklyn from Coney Island to the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Interesting architectural stops may (or may not) include Tschumi's new blue tower and/or 40 Bond.

As the Times reported, To Walk a Landscape is To Know It. After this hike, you'll know it better than you can imagine (and will probably want to get it know it much more).

If you think you want to make the hike this Sunday, you should email me in the next day or so.

Grabosky talk on Friday

The Plant Biology Seminar Series is hosting a special performance this week,
Trees in parking lots from Windows XP-Vista: The same old seminar from
Windows 3.1-2000, but with some new data
Jason Grabosky, Ph.D.

Dept of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Friday, November 7, 2008
12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Foran Hall, Room 138A
59 Dudley Road, New Brunswick

A look at the Foran Hall parking lot illustrates the point; tree establishment in paved areas is hallmarked by reduced growth and management challenges. How we define success, and how we have approached designing soil volumes for urban trees in such situations has shifted in the past several years from mutually exclusive options, trees success versus pavement success or trees at the expense of parking stalls, to one of integrated design. This seminar will provide a brief overview, then discuss some recent work in designed soils for root growth under pavement. Studies tracking a working installation over ten years will suggest direction for ground penetrating radar work in progress. The results from three studies over the past 13 years will describe aspects of water relations in designed soils. Such data can provide context for stormwater management on parking lots. Vegetation stocking profiles to use captured and stored parking lot stormwater would compliment other canopy environmental services such as air quality. Finally, if the intention is to grow tree roots under pavement, then a method of modeling root growth for pavement section design is needed. A series of investigations defining the behavior and geometry of the system in relation to upward root growth will inform developing finite element models to design for tree roots without loss of pavement service life.

As the supply of coffee and time allows, video of simulated hurricanes on large oak trees, CT scan methods in tracking wood decay, and other strange images will provide humor and entertainment from other aspects of the urban forestry program.

West Windsor Redevelopment Plan

Meanwhile, West Windsor is working on its redevelopment plan.

The future of freeways

Could the future of freeways be to tear them down and replace them with boulevards and surface streets? Next American City suggests just that.

Forty years later, the lifespan of most freeways has come to an end. This leaves urban planners and local governments with a choice: Do they demolish the existing infrastructure to make way for surface roads and boulevards? Or do they invest in freeways yet again, when it makes even less sense to do so – given their crummy past and the ever-rising cost of gasoline?

In our region the CNU has encouraged tearing down Route 29 in Trenton and the Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx.

Sad policy

Thing about the complex nature of responses to Katrina is that they seem to be very effective at making the sadness of the overall situation linger. The Chronicle reports on how the New Orleans campus of Southern University, a historically black college or university (HBCU), is having a hard time getting FEMA to help them out. One of the problems is that they let students move back into a damaged building which FEMA sees as evidence that it isn't so bad.

(The photo is fromNOLA's French Quarter, far from the campus. But I wasn't sure when I would get to use it if I didn't pull it out today.)

Eagleton discussion of the election

The Morning After: A Discussion of Yesterday's Election

The Eagleton Institute of Politics is pleased to host "The Morning After: Election 2008 Edition" on Wednesday, November 5 at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Douglass Campus. Refreshments will be available at 9 a.m. followed by the program at 9:30 a.m. Panelists will include Herb Jackson of The Record; Steve Kornacki of The Observer and CNN; Keith Wailoo of Rutgers' Center for Race and Ethnicity; and Ruth B. Mandel and John Weingart of the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

TED looks ahead

As we try to look towards the future, I have tried to pick out a few TED Talks that say something about trends or changes worth watching. This should be a nice break as you try to sort out what you think will matter in looking forward to 2050.

Cameron Sinclair's Architecture for Humanity is a favorite of mine. While socially-responsible design isn't the same in Princeton as in Kosovo, but it is still a relevant and important consideration.


Majora Carter talks about her community-based work in greening the South Bronx. The watershed lacks a comparable landscape, but the ideas are still transferable. What are the greening challenges that will face the watershed over the next few decades? Who is available to address them?


Ray Kurzweil spoke about his expectations for technology changes that will change us.

Jaime Lerner talks about cities.

Robin Chase wants to change the way we drive.

Sociologist Barry Schwartz explains why too much choice is a problem for humans.

Edward Burtynsky won the TED Award for his photographs of industrial landscapes.

Carl Honore offers a quick synopsis of the slow movement. Does a regional design reinforce this behavioral pattern? What are the implications for our watershed?

Amy Smith shows how design can change lives.

Bald Eagle at Lake Carnegie

As we discuss/debate our visions for the future of the Stony Brook Millstone Watershed weread th data we are given and try to synthesize it. But the real experiences and anecdotal evidence sometimes seem more meaningful. So ,when we saw data about habitat for Bald Eagles it was harder to take it as a genuine issue until seeing this picture of a Bald Eagle on Lake Carnegie just last month.

Election maps

Well, you can be sure that you'll see an awful lot of election maps today. While the Google Map hacks continue, since the 50 states are a simple set of shapes, there should also be plenty of custom flash graphics. Although it is too early to see all of their details, here are a few that seem intriguing...

• The Washington Post's TimeSpace
• NPR has their Interactive Map
• USA Today has an election tracker
• It looks like the more partisan Talking Points Memo's Election Night 2008 Scorecard will allow some very specific results analysis
• And Google has an array of maps (including the one below) to keep you busy

It's a gas

It's A Gas: A Classic Early-American Scientific Experiment Is Re-created
Wednesday, November 5, 2008 4:30 PM
Millstone River, Delaware & Raritan Canal Park

Rocky Hill, NJ

A re-enactment of the famous experiment by General George Washington and Thomas Pain. Their discovery of the nature of the fiery Will-O'-Wisp of marshes and rivers. All are invited at twilight to watch the re-enactment, which can be viewed from Rt. 518 where it crosses over the Millstone River. A reception will follow, from 5:30 to 6:30 at the Delaware and Raritan Canal Park Headquarters, 142 Mapleton Rd., Kingston, NJ.

http://ruevents.rutgers.edu/events/displayEvent.html?eventId=58835

Advancing the ball slowly

We are at that point in the season when, for my teams at least, exciting wins and bye weeks all have about the same result. We just continue to inch towards the end with the rankings looking harder and harder to change. Last year's Sagarin rankings were more volatile in late October/Early November, but that might just be about the seasons these teams are having.

At Exit 15x

Squeezed in between the NorthEast Corridor and the NJ Turnpike, Xchange at Secaucus provides a new housing opportunity people who wanted to live closer to the Frank R. Lautenberg Rail Station.

Wordle makes art out of words

OK, so maybe it isn't truly art. But Wordle took the text of the last 2 months of Places and Spaces and turned it into this image. While it is completely automated, it is also pretty nice looking and most of the words make good sense. And, I really appreciate their use of the Creative Commons License as a basic tool for protecting their work while encouraging its use widely.

Lilypad 2100

Vincent Callebaut has gotten a fair amount of attention for their ideas about how Lilypads could be the land use solution of the future.

The future

This postcard, from RootsWeb's Penny postcards collection, offers a rich look at how some imagined the future of Boston. The transportation is transformed while the clothing and buildings are not. How much better is your imagination?