Author: gabriellecohen

Battery Park Trip

https://twitter.com/GabiCohen6/status/931605159037284358

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My first thought while walking around the grounds surrounding the Solaire Building was “I want to live here.” At first, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be seeing, and then I understood that every part of constructing this building and the area around it was planned with green design. The area used rainwater collection and grey water reuse. Even the public restrooms use low-flow or dual-flush toilets. It’s bicycle friendly. Battery Park is one of the most desirable neighborhoods in NYC and the Solaire building sets a great example of what our future can look like.

I was a little more stumped when it came to the 9/11 memorial fountain and the balloon flower. I was thinking that the balloon flower has fountains on the floor and those drains can be used to drain rain water. However, I’m not sure how big of an impact this would make. Maybe it just draws attention to the fact that what we do to help the environment can go hand in hand with something beautiful. When it came to the 9/11 memorial, I assume many people think of the vast amounts of water it contains and collects, but I have a hard time trying to connect a memorial for such a tragedy to serving a different purpose.

Coney Island Sewershed

https://twitter.com/GabiCohen6/status/932331579317334017

One of the things I learned while doing my project on the Coney Island Sewershed is what dissolved oxygen is. Dissolved oxygen levels is one of the most important indicators of water quality; It’s essential for the survival of fish and other aquatic organisms. Tests done in 2015 in the Coney Island Sewershed show levels between 5.8-7.7 mg/L, while the current standard if 4mg/L. It was shocking to learn that I, like many other New Yorkers, have been swimming in waters that aren’t even fit for fish to survive in.

green design

I love those pictures of what a construction site will look like when it’s finished. It always looks like it’s so far in the future. My high school had a bunch of those hanging up … I always doubted it would ever get done. So, when I googled green design, I was automatically drawn to those photos. There were all different kinds: some with houses with green roofs, others were futuristic parks. I loved them all. It made me wonder about the people who think sustainability cannot go together with aesthetics. If anything, I think it will improve how our earth looks. More like it should be, with more nature and grass than bricks and cement.

https://twitter.com/GabiCohen6/status/927290691138572289

water sustainability

Last week I submitted a discussion question saying, do you think people don’t know much about protecting the earth or just don’t care? I recently asked my family if they turn off the faucet when they brush their teeth, and they all said of course!! But I know that they don’t really pay much attention to sustainability. I think it’s just something we do, because we’ve been told to do it forever. However, there are so many more things we can do, that are just as simple and easy, yet don’t do, because their importance isn’t stressed enough. If water-efficient shower heads, low-flow taps, and dual flush toilets have been invented, why do we still use the old ones?

climate change on a smaller scale

https://twitter.com/GabiCohen6/status/924732806063972352

When I hear climate change I immediately rematch the whole Day After Tomorrow movie in my head, or I picture Florida submerged under water. However, when I simply googled climate change, I learned that Europe’s irregular weather is causing problems with their olive production. In one part of Italy an untimely frost comes right when the trees should bear fruit, and in another it is extremely hot one day, followed by a week of fog and rain. Too much rain makes them grow too much, causing worms to invade them. Too little rain makes the leaves dry up. The owner had to literally buy shipments of water every day of the summer. While olives are not the most important thing in the world, I chose to tweet about this, because like the article says, “No one will go hungry if there’s not enough olive oil on the market. But the impact of climate change on such a hardy and high-end product is a measure of how global warming is beginning to challenge how we grow food.” If people don’t believe the drastic changes Earth will go through because of climate change, they might think it’s bizarre when they can’t get olive oil from its native country.

Portland reduces CSO

I shared a graph of Portland, Oregon’s CSO between the years 1990 and 2011. Between those years, it has been reduced from 6 billion gallons to about .3 billion gallons a year, because of work on the CSO control program, a set of cornerstone projects designed to remove millions of gallons of stormwater from the combined sewer system before construction started on large tunnel and other control facilities.

They constructed a pipeline that diverts Tanner Creek and smaller west hills streams from the combined sewer system to remove about 165-million gallons of stormwater annually from combined sewers, a tactic called stream diversion. About 3,000 stormwater sumps and sedimentation manholes in combined sewer areas throughout north, east and southeast Portland collect residential street runoff, trap sediment and pollutants, and allow water to soak into the ground. Residents in combined sewer areas disconnected roof drains from combined sewers removing more than 1.2-billion gallons of stormwater per year from the combined sewer system. Environmental Services eliminated combined sewers in key neighborhoods by installing new pipes to separate stormwater from sewage.

Seeing a successful project should give us hope that New York can accomplish this too. However, it took Portland almost 20 years to complete, so I think we should get a move on.

https://twitter.com/GabiCohen6/status/917050559865204737

Urban Sustainability

https://twitter.com/gabicohen6/status/909804813377994752

This article discusses Freshkills Park, which is a park built on what used to be a landfill in Staten Island. In PlaNYC 2030’s original 2007 urban sustainability plan, the Bloomberg administration set a goal that every city resident would live within a ten minute walk of a city park, showing how important parks are to urban life. While we know that they are an enjoyable place to spend time outdoors, there are also ecological benefits. Green space absorbs heat and carbon dioxide, assists in controlling storm water runoff, and can help preserve biodiversity.

In rural settings, people have their own outdoor land to enjoy alone. However, in cities, people depends on parks to enjoy the outdoors. Park design can vary by topography, climate, culture, public demand and capital investment. A lot of thought is put into placing a waterfall to drown out the noise of people or where to place a Pond so there aren’t too many people in one area. But not many times are parks placed on landfills. I think Staten Island is setting a great example of urban sustainability. If you can’t tell what used to be there, and you’re getting good use of the space, why not turn a garbage dump into a park?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spotted Salamander at Bio Blitz

The group I was in at Bio Blitz was tasked with searching for amphibians. Before we started, our instructor taught us a little bit about the organisms and their environment. What I found most interesting was that the spotted salamander breathes through its skin pores and does not have lungs. Therefore, their natural habitats are in moist places, for example, underneath logs.

Our instructor explained to us how important it is to handle them gently and for short periods of time, so that our hands won’t block their skin pores which would cause them to dry out. We also were told to make sure we put them and the log back exactly how we found it, so we wouldn’t disrupt their natural habitat. I thought this experience epitomized how science should be conducted: we have to be respectful to the wildlife we are observing, so that our learning does not come at a cost to them.