Tag: weekly tweets and posts

Flood Protection Measures Finally Taken by Lower Manhattan

After Hurricane Sandy and the surfacing of the detrimental effects of how humans have changed the climate, it seems that New York City has finally understood the importance of taking precautions to one of its biggest storm water management problem: flooding. After Sandy had “absolutely devastated” Lower Manhattan, as described by the director of the Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency (Durkin), the city announced that it will be spending 100 million dollars to build a flood protection system, including levees, flood walls, and green spaces to soak up storm water through creation of parks. Similar measures are going to be carried out in the Lower East Side as well. The city is utilizing engineering firms and design teams to attempt to raise elevation levels along the coast and add the parks to not only help the flood issue but also to make it more neighborhood-friendly.

This project highlights the importance of understanding the mistakes humans have made by building their progress in industrialization without taking into account the effects it will have on the environment. The changes we have made in the climate are now becoming aware to us, especially in how it will negatively affect us. The rise in sea levels and stronger storms will exacerbate the flooding problem we already have in New York City Lower Manhattan, and now the city is making a stand to install precautions, even utilizing green infrastructure through the creation of extra parkland. Now that we are at the brink of actual catastrophe, we start to implement these changes and understand that the effects of the climate changes will be detrimental enough to “shut down the city” (Durkin).

Is it too late?

Throughout the entire semester we have learned about the dangerous effects of global warming and what it means for our future in sustainability. We know what the causes and effects are but how catastrophic are they now and later on? This article from ScienceDaily presents research of what is irreversible and what is not. It gives a hard truth and a bit of hope to overcome certain disasters. Sea levels are rising and that fact is undeniable and unfortunately unavoidable. However, with a reduction of greenhouse gases we are able to prevent temperatures from rising because, “A warmer atmosphere can hold more water, so rainfall would be more intense,” says Prof. Betts from the University of Exeter. Rising ocean levels can mean severe weather for coastal regions all around the world. However, we can limit flooding, droughts, and other extreme weather by reducing the increasing temperature. There is a case study in Bangladesh were climate change has too much of an impact. With more research and more action we can turn the tide and save millions of lives from the destructive effects of global warming.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171116105020.htm

Protecting AND Purifying

$300 Billion War Beneath the Street: Fighting to Replace America’s Water Pipes

In the past we have discussed how we can take the water that goes down the drain after we use it and find another purpose for it, such as black and grey water. However, we also have to evaluate and act upon what comes out of our pipes, before we use it. Places like Flint, Michigan have felt the destructive effects of faulty pipes. We might have learned from the mistakes of the passed, “though Congress banned lead water pipes three decades ago, more than 10 million older ones remain.” Although it seems that plastic might be a safe solution for our water pipes, there are some “toxic pollutants like benzene and toluene from spills and contaminated soil [that] can permeate certain types of plastic pipes as they age.” There is still the search for the best way to transport our water. This is a crucial because when water is not protected going in and not purified going out, we are contaminating ourselves and our environment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/climate/water-pipes-plastic-lead.html?smid=tw-share

 

Unsustainable Practices and Their Consequences

Most people do not realize the detrimental consequences of using unsustainable practices to obtain resources, nor do people view water as a resource to be protected and reused with care. Benoit Aquin’s photography series named “The Chinese Dust Bowl” emphasizes the importance of employing sustainable practices as well as to the scarcity of water as a resource. The pictures revolve around the widespread desertification in China, man-made deserts that are slowly expanding from over use of arable land, overgrazing, and increased drilling for water. Aquin presents shocking pictures of dry, cracked, and dusty land that highlight a lack of water through the haze and overall tan color present in all of the dusty, sandy pictures, especially since one of the reasons that the deserts were created was to find water by drilling into the ground. The dirt and heat of each picture can almost be felt by the viewer as they see the conditions that people are forced to walk, travel, and live in every day. People walk around with face masks, showing that the air itself is saturated with the dust from these man-made deserts that make it difficult to breathe normally. The desertification continues to spread and diffuse outward through wind and giant sandstorms, and it represents the most massive and rapid conversion of arable land into barren deserts.

The pictures that Aquin took push the viewers to focus on the importance of implementing sustainable practices into society, especially taking care of the environment as a necessary factor in the decisions made. They expose water as an important and scarce resource to certain places in the world, and implies the need to protect and preserve it. His pictures won the Prix Pictet, a global award dedicated to photography and sustainability, in 2008, a well-deserved reward for his presentation of the ecological damage humans inflict on nature through lack of sustainability and improper mindsets.

Bottom Up and Top Down

New Maps Show How Greenland’s Ice Sheet Is Melting from the Bottom Up

When we think of global warming, we usually think of unbearably hot summers, freezing winter along with super storms in between. We think this because generally the “warming” that earth receives comes from the sun, above us. However, global warming has effects that can come from deep underneath. Rising ocean levels can come from two distinct factors. Over time, the oceans rise in temperature from the greenhouse gases locked into our atmosphere. This means that the water expands because of the increase in heat. The increase in temperature can also cause ice sheets and glaciers to melt adding to the oceans’ rising levels. This article discusses how Greenland’s ice sheets are melting from the increasingly warmer ocean water surrounding it. In addition,”more ice in Greenland’s glaciers may be exposed to warming ocean waters than previously thought.” With more incoming knowledge of the immense size of these glaciers and ice sheets, the effects of them melting can be more damaging than previously thought. Even the topographical area can affect the melting of these glaciers. “A downward slope, for instance, might cause the glacier to retreat more quickly, while ridges or other topographical features might help to slow or halt the backward motion.” From the bottom up or the top down, ocean levels are rising because of the increasing temperatures of global warming. Awareness of the problems we face because of climate change is the first step to remedying it.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-maps-show-how-greenland-rsquo-s-ice-sheet-is-melting-from-the-bottom-up/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sa-editorial-social&utm_content=&utm_term=sustainability_partner_text_free&sf148235139=1

Using “Toxic Art” to Advocate Water Sustainability

Water sustainability can be carried out in multiple ways. John Sabraw is an artist that works with environmentalists and scientists to do research on streams polluted from abandoned coal mines in Ohio. He also works on making a fully sustainable art practice that produces eco-conscious art. His recent art pieces, called “Toxic Art”, were made from pigments created from the acid polluted mine runoff. These vibrant art pieces are not only beautiful to look at, but also brings awareness to the pollution of our world’s waters due to humans and industrialization.  Continue reading “Using “Toxic Art” to Advocate Water Sustainability”

Climate Change and Politics

Especially now, climate change has been an important and surprisingly controversial topic in today’s time, with large populations of people denying the existence of global warming and the harmful effects it will cause on our world. This issue has been an ongoing battle for years and years, since scientists noticed and began to understand the potential impacts of the alterations being imposed upon our Earth. However, politics and science do not always align in their opinions on what should be considered priority. Award-winning political cartoonist, Mike Keefe, created a cartoon for The Denver Post in 2010, one that continues to be relevant today, according to the decisions being made by our current political leaders.

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The Importance of Technology for Sustainability and the Environment

Cities around the world, including our own New York City, have been referred to as “concrete jungles,” one of the only real associations to nature given to cities, along with having to battle with pigeons as you commute to school or work. Despite having small designated areas reserved for nature in parks, the city itself remains largely grey. Naziha Mestaoui, a light artist, has created a powerful statement through her creation of the “One Beat, One Tree,” a technological light art piece, in which she projects virtual trees onto cityscapes and a new virtual tree will bloom with every heartbeat of the viewer. In her statement regarding this magnificent art piece, she said, “‘I wanted to create an art piece using technologies to connect us to this immaterial value of nature… If we want technologies to reconnect us to nature, we just need to create it’” (Frank). Her statement represents the need to use innovations and technology to reconnect us to nature and to remind the world of the importance of our environment.

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How NYC Gets Its Water

With gravity and many other complex systems, water from the Catskill/Delaware watershed is brought down to NYC to supply 9.5 million people. Protecting the tributaries is just as important as protecting the water source itself. All along the pathway to NYC, the water needs to be protected from pollution and sometimes leaks. The content of the water needs to be evaluated constantly to ensure what is coming out of our taps. This is not an easy task with climate change drastically shifts the water’s availability as well as the quality as it passes through forests that have also been altered from climate change. The water passes through ultraviolet lights to cleanse it from micro-organisms.  So much energy and time is needed to bring NYC it famous water. The entire process encompasses so much from the Urban Water Systems class. From watersheds to the water cycle, the power of runoff and gravity in tributaries, and the major effects of climate change, this article brings up the background of the big issues in order to protect our water.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/24/nyregion/how-nyc-gets-its-water-new-york-101.html

My BioBlitz Experience

Ecology is the study of the relationships between the organisms and the environment, how the roles of each part of nature, whether abiotic or biotic, work together efficiently. At the BioBlitz event, I was able to witness and experience, first-hand, how biotic and abiotic factors are related in nature, namely insects and the environments in which they are found. Insects are found all over nature and they represent a group that has some of the largest diversity, not only in species, but also in how they function in nature.

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