Category: Students

Posts written by students

30 Day Waste Free Challenge

It was brought up in class that there was some youtuber or blogger that took it upon them self to not produce any waste. I became interested and decide to look into it. I was very surprised to find that it was not, in fact, as ingle person but rather a movement of people that have decided to take this lifestyle upon themselves. The video I posted is just one of hundreds in which a person attempted the “30 day challenge” of living without waste. It is inspiring to see just how easy, and healthy, such a lifestyle is, and I am even considering trying the 30 day challenge myself. This has certainly become a topic of interest amongst me and my friends, and I hope that one day more people will see this as a viable means of living.

 

invasive Species threaten the Great Lakes

The Great Lakes attract people all year round with the promise of swimming, fishing in, and hiking along the beautiful shores of the lakes. A much darker undercurrent flows beneath all of this lovely scenery, an environmental catastrophe that has been brewing for nearly 200 years. Due to the effects of retreating glaciers and a failed continental rift, lakes Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior are more like  smaller inland seas, holding about 20 percent of Earth’s freshwater. These lakes were generally isolated from larger international waters until a network of canals and seaways let in freighters from around the world. This resulted in new nonnative species now making a home in these lakes; alewives, sea lampreys, and zebra mussels being particularly dangerous to the gentle equilibrium that previously existed in the lakes. The lakes have also been introduced to the new burden of toxic algal blooms and extreme fluctuations in the lakes’ water levels connected to climate change. Despite all the bad news scientists are experimenting in the laboratory with gene drives to stop invasive Asian carp and with new ways to rid ships of stowaways lurking in ballast water.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/invasive-species-climate-change-threaten-great-lakes?mode=topic&context=60

 

Reconsidering the Role of Water in Our Daily Lives

As we move forward in an ever-industrializing and ever-globalizing world, we must take into account the importance of water in contributing to a more sustainable future. Due to the implications of climate change, water security has been a growing issue, especially in developing countries. Drought, flooding, and pollution has increased the threat of water-related risks. Water is a central aspect of carrying out the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and crafting a more peaceful and just international community.

 

The 26th Ward Sewer Shed

My project was for the Macaulay STEAM festival this year was based on the 26th Ward Sewer Shed located in the Jamaica Bay Area in Brooklyn, New York. The 26th Ward in Brooklyn serves  the communities of Starret City, Brownsville, East New York Cypress Hills, and Spring Creek, a community of a generally lower socioeconomic status that is often further economically depressed when storm surge from catastrophic events like superstorm Sandy damage property and create health hazards. A major issue challenging the 26th Ward is combined sewer overflow (CSO). CSO occurs when stormwater on roofs, streets, and sidewalks, in addition to wastewater from residential and commercial businesses, is carried through to treatment plants, causing an excess of water in the treatment system. This excess then spills into and pollutes the nearby Jamaica Bay.

Given the complexity of this issue, NYC can approach it from a two-fold stance through the implementation of grey and green infrastructure. In particular, the development of a  deeper storage tunnel-interception system would allow CSO to be contained through the construction of interceptor tunnels. These tunnels will release the excess water into the system once the system has the capacity to effectively process it. In addition, public green spaces (on rooftops and parks) can be made impervious so as to slow down the rate at which water flows into the system.

Due to their lower socioeconomic status, people in Jamaica Bay are often aided last after natural disasters – even though they face the brunt of the catastrophe. Some people that live here already do not have enough money to pay for everyday necessities, let alone all of the money they must now expend to pay for damaged property. A safer neighborhood due to well regulated runoff will attract contracters, real estate agents and more families to an area that has great potential to be a neighborhood and greenspace with a unique personality in the City of New York.

Last Blog Post

This seminar has allowed me another semester of strengthening my relationships with my Macaulay friends, as well as allowing me to get to know more people from the program. Our poster presentation was an interesting journey, both because I got to get to know the girls in my group better, but also due to the research we put into the project. It was fun to collaborate on ideas and explore the city together with my group, and to be able to do so in a new environmental perspective I might have not observed my surroundings in before. My town was pretty harshly affected by Hurricane Sandy so I was aware of the issues contributed to flooding, but it was eye-opening to realize how severe of an issues flooding was, especially in areas that are densely populated by low income families that cannot afford to pay for expensive reparations and have no other home to go to if theirs gets destroyed in flooding. I wish we got to further explore the health issues that concern flooding, but we had so many different areas to get into in this project that we needed to focus on the ones that most captured the attention of our audience and highlighted why infrastructure has to be implemented as soon as possible. I also want to highlight my experience working with my fellow Macaulay students. Julia was my first friend in college so it was so nice to be able to spend more time with her, even if it was working on a project. I have had classes with Johanna and Naveera before, but I really enjoyed getting to know them more through this project. I don’t know if you know, but Johanna is one of the funniest girls in our class and Naveera has an absolutely magical singing voice! EXPOSED! Ultimately, this semester was an interesting mix of getting to know my fellow Macaulay peers better and to be able to understand the current climate and environmental issues form a new perspective, as well as understand how they affect me and the world around me, and how easily they could be solved with more awareness and funding! THANK YOU FOR A GREAT SEMESTER!!

Visiting Red Hook

Throughout all the research for my sewer shed project, I had only read about how large a scale the problems in Red Hook are. After visiting the area, the problems began to feel real.  I now feel much more passionately that this area needs to be cleaned up. It would feel amazing if the area would actually use the ideas we came up with to make this sewer shed a safer and more beautiful place.

Tour of Battery Park City

When I went to battery park city I was lucky enough to get a tour of the Solaire. I was able to learn how the brown water system works through the pipes, on the green roof and all throughout the building. I was unaware of how intricate the system actually was and how useful the use of recycled water can be throughout the whole building. The surrounding areas were just as beautiful as the Solaire and it’s refreshing to know areas can be so beautiful using recycled water.

In the sewer shed I studied, Red Hook, many new buildings are planning on being built as the area gets cleaned up. It would be incredible if when these new housing developments are being built they would be able to implement brown water systems from the beginning.

Newtown Creek Sewer Shed

When my group and I were first assigned the Newtown Creek sewer shed, we were a bit unmotivated. We weren’t excited to have to go investigate how gross and polluted our environment is because we were already aware. However, I feel as though through the process of analyzing and investigating our assigned sewer shed, we as a group have learned a lot more about the environment as a whole as well as how exactly people and biodiversity is being affected with CSO’s (combined sewage overflow) and flooding. Being able to go to our location and have hands on experience was very beneficial to our group and it gave us more more information on what we should include in the ending of our project. Throughout this entire experience, I have become much more involved and conscious about the environment because I have come to the realization that as your environment gets worse, we are just as heavily affected if not more. I have also come to the realization that we need to take action before another natural disaster, like hurricane Sandy, happens because I do not think we will be able to withstand further damage if we do not make a change to infrastructure. In Rockaway Beach, where I live, there have been steps taken to prevent further damage in the event of another hurricane. For example, the once wooden boardwalk that did not withstand the power of Sandy has now been made into concrete, which would prevent the water from the ocean from hitting residents and their households harder. I think steps like these should be taken in Newtown Creek except with changes to internal infrastructures like pipes and etc. Im so grateful now for the experience I had in this class because it has made me more environmentally aware and conscious.

The Economic Damage of Climate Change in the United States(Repost/Review)

Episodes of severe weather in the United States, such as the present abundance of rainfall in California, are brandished as tangible evidence of the future costs of current climate trends. Hsiang et al. collected national data documenting the responses in six economic sectors to short-term weather fluctuations. These data were integrated with probabilistic distributions from a set of global climate models and used to estimate future costs during the remainder of this century across a range of scenarios. In terms of overall effects on gross domestic product, the authors predict negative impacts in the southern United States and positive impacts in some parts of the Pacific Northwest and New England.Climate change increases the unpredictability and between-county inequality of future economic outcomes, effects that may alter the valuation of climate damages beyond their nationally averaged expected costs (45).

Median damages are systematically larger in low-income counties, increasing by 0.93% of county income (95% confidence interval = 0.85 to 1.01%) on average for each reduction in current income decile. In the richest third of counties, the average very likely range (90% credible interval, determined as the average of 5th and 95th percentile values across counties) for damages is −1.2 to 6.8% of county income (negative damages are benefits), whereas for the poorest third of counties, the average range is 2.0 to 19.6% of county income. These differences are more extreme for the richest 5% and poorest 5% of counties, with average intervals for damage of −1.1 to 4.2% and 5.5 to 27.8%, respectively.Our market estimates are for a 1.0 to 3.0% loss of annual national average GDP under RCP8.5 at the end of the century. Previous top-down county-level analysis of productivity estimates that national output would decline 1.2 to 3.1% after 20 years of exposure to RCP8.5 temperatures at the end of the century.

Sustainability and Protecting Our Oceans!

Many countries have been becoming more and more proactive with their choices that impact the environment. Recently, Chile banned single-use plastic bags from 102 coastal villages and towns. Plastic bags are a serious issue because they are not being recycled, and most of them end up in landfills. They might seem light and like they do not take up much room, but 3.4 billion plastic bags were used last year in Chile alone! We need to promote a global initiative to recycle and reuse more. Globally only 14 percent of plastic is recycled! Our landfills cannot hold all the plastic we are dumping into them and 8 billion tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean a year! Scientists calculated that by the year 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. It is time for America to follow the lead of many other countries, such as Rwanda, Kenya, and Bangladesh, that have already instilled bans and charges on plastic bags, or at least begin to instill bans in coastal towns and begin to put charges in effect throughout the entire nation.