Sustainability & Environment @ OWU

#OWUENVS

In the overwhelming crush of media about the COVID 19 pandemic we don’t want to lose sight of the profound importance of the environment.

#OWUENVS is a collective effort to push environmental news and ideas and advocacy and creative efforts out through social media and other media by students, faculty, and staff in the Environment & Sustainability Program at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Find or create relevant stuff. Anything having to do with the environment anywhere. Links, ideas, videos, maps, photos, music, data, artwork, etc. Focus on the stuff you care about.

Put it out there: use the hashtag or tag #OWUENVS so we can track the effort. Focus on the media you use. On social media, video sites, music sites, whatever. Be creative.

Please let Meg Edwards or John Krygier or Laurie Anderson know if you have any questions, ideas, or suggestions.

This effort is what we make it. It keeps us connected, and it matters.

Event: Maintaining Clean Water on A Consistent Basis: March 14, 2020

Maintaining Clean Water on A Consistent Basis and In the Aftermath of Natural Disasters

Please come to this event to learn about substances that can contaminate our water supply and what you can do to help keep our water sources clean. Also, learn about what measures can be taken in the event of a disaster or contamination event to restore access to clean water. Representatives from the City of Delaware, Watershed & Sustainability Public Utilities Department; the Delaware General Health District and the Delaware County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management will be in attendance to provide information.

3/14/2020 2-4pm

Location: Second Ward Community Center, 50A Ross Street, Delaware, Ohio

More information: https://www.swcidelaware.org

Facilitated by: Brionna Corder, Junior at Buckeye Valley High School and the Delaware Area Career Center. Email: corderpbd@gmail.com

Do Something! OWU Volunteers Needed for Spring Cleaning & Planting

Last year President Trump and President Macron of France planted a lovely oak tree on the White House lawn. Sadly, the tree is now dead.

Let’s do better!

Tree planting and spring clean up opportunities abound. No big commitment. Please sign up soon and often:

A Scioto River Clean-up March 15th organized by a Buckeye Valley H.S. Student: Register here

OWA’s Earth Day Program April 4th at Delaware State Park: Register here

Blue Limestone Park Stream Clean-up from 4:30-5:30, April 15^th: (weather back-up date is scheduled for April 16^th same time and place) registration can be completed by emailing Caroline Cicerchi (here).

City of Delaware’s Earth Day Program April 22nd: Register here

The Scioto River if we didn’t do the river clean up every year:

Actually, this is the Bahagia river in Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia.

Sustainability in Delaware, OH, February 2020

Community_Matters_February_2020

OWU Talk: The Beaver Hypothesis: Bluebirding Before the Seventeenth Century

SCIENCE LECTURE SERIES

Thursday, February 6 at 4:10 p.m.
Science Center 163

Richard Tuttle
Citizen Scientist & Former Middle School Biology Teacher

“The Beaver Hypothesis: Bluebirding Before the Seventeenth Century”

Dick Tuttle is a retired middle school life science teacher and lifelong conservationist with a particular interest in cavity nesting songbirds. Over the past 50 years, Dick has raised more than 55,000 native birds from 10 different species! In this seminar, he will discuss how birds were able to find suitable cavities for nesting before humans began building bird boxes and placing them in their backyards. Specifically, he will investigate the role of beavers as engineers of suitable nesting habitat and describe the effects of early fur traders on populations of beavers and songbirds. He will conclude by linking all of these ideas to modern conservation efforts by arguing that sometimes to move forward you need to look backward.

OWU Talk: “It’s Getting Hot In Here: Assessing Greenland’s Melt Behavior Driven by Wind Events”

SCIENCE LECTURE SERIES

Thursday, January 30 at 4:10 p.m.
Science Center 163

Dr. Nathan Amador Rowley
Assistant Professor of Geology & Geography, Ohio Wesleyan University

“It’s Getting Hot In Here: Assessing Greenland’s Melt Behavior Driven by Wind Events”

Over the past few decades, the acceleration of meltwater production along the periphery of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) is driving the observed increase in global sea level. During the summer months, surface meltwater is driven by air temperature above the melting point and solar radiation receipt at the surface – melting accumulated wintertime snow. The orographic nature of the GrIS has shown to significantly influence wind patterns at automated weather stations in the melt zone, near the fast-flowing Sermeq Kujalleq (formerly known as Jakobshavn Isbræ) Glacier. I have identified a particular set of synoptic conditions, known as piteraq events, that are surface winds that bring adiabatically-warmed air from the interior of the ice sheet. Piteraq winds, through compressional heating, warm the ablation (or melt) zone and thus enhance melt; beyond what would be done by solar radiation alone. Commonly mislabeled as katabatic winds, piteraq winds resemble the Föhn winds of the Alps, or Chinook winds of the Rockies. During the 2011 and 2012 summer months, a series of piteraq events in the Sermeq Kujalleq Ablation Region, or SKAR, lead surface temperature at nearby weather stations to be nearly 2°C higher than the 1980-2010 mean.

Sustainability in Delaware, OH, January 2020

Community_Matters_January_2020

Ohio Wesleyan Professor, Student, Entrepreneurial Center Businessman Earn 2019 Awards

(OWU News Source)

At the recent Keep Delaware County Beautiful Awards, Ohio Wesleyan professor Sean Kay, student Brianna Graber ’20, and entrepreneur-on-campus Steve Flaherty all were honored for their efforts to improve the environment.

The awards were handed out Dec. 4 by the Keep Delaware County Beautiful Coalition, which provides recycling and litter prevention programs and environmental education activities to county residents and businesses. The coalition is led by the Delaware General Health District.

Sean Kay, Ph.D.

Sean Kay, Ph.D., a politics and government professor, earned the group’s Garrison-Brown Award for his volunteer work at the 2019 Northern Olentangy Watershed Festival, Olentangy River Cleanup, and Scioto River Clean Sweep, where he used his kayaking expertise to keep volunteers safe and moving forward as they pulled debris from the water. According to the coalition, the Garrison-Brown Award “is given to recognize initiative and significant environmental contribution to the community.”

Although Kay is widely known as an expert in global security, he also is interested in environmental issues and currently is researching grassroots campaigns for river conservation in the United States and abroad.

In May and June, he will be traveling to Utah and Colorado with OWU students who completed his Travel-Learning Course, “Environmental Politics and Policy.” After a semester in class, the group will spend 10 days in the two western states, including a four-day river-rafting trip through Dinosaur National Monument. To prepare for the trip, Kay spent two weeks over the summer working as an assistant guide rafting down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.

As part of his hands-on research, Kay also has been working on the River Shannon, Ireland’s largest river, and exploring the Dublin Bay biosphere, a region recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for its environmental, economic, cultural, and tourism significance.

Brianna Graber ’20

Student Brianna Graber, a zoology major and Spanish minor from Noblesville, Indiana, was honored with the Keep Delaware County Beautiful’s 2019 Litter Prevention Award. She earned the award for spearheading a project to install a trash-collecting storm drain net in the Delaware Run, which flows through campus. The device collects trash and organic debris, which Graber and future OWU students will analyze to determine the net’s impact on the quality of the water.

Steve Flaherty

Entrepreneur Steve Flaherty earned the coalition’s 2019 Recycling Award for his work to develop technology that turns non-recyclable plastics into asphalt paving. His business, necoPlastics LLC, is headquartered at the Delaware Entrepreneurial Center at Ohio Wesleyan University.

The 6,000-square-foot entrepreneurial center is a collaboration of Ohio Wesleyan, Delaware County, and the City of Delaware. It is the first-of-its-kind liberal arts business accelerator and the first-of-its-kind city, county, and educational institute partnership.

The Keep Delaware County Beautiful coalition, led by the Delaware General Health District, provides recycling and litter prevention programs and environmental education activities to the residents and businesses of Delaware County. For a complete list of 2019 award winners, visit the health district news and events page.

OWU Student & Project Win Delaware County Award

Keep Delaware County Beautiful Recognizes Community Partners

DELAWARE, Oh. – Several community members, leaders, schools and groups received recognition at the annual Keep Delaware County Beautiful Awards that occurred on Dec. 4 at Stratford Ecological Center.

The Litter Prevention Award recognized Ohio Wesleyan University student Brianna Graber who coordinated with the City of Delaware on a project to install a storm drain net in Delaware Run on the OWU Campus. The 6-and-a-half ton device is the first of its kind installed in the United States and collects trash and organic debris. The collected waste will be analyzed and the water quality will be monitored giving the community a better picture of the health of our water resources.