Author: Robert Nelson

“Urban Heat Island Mitigation Can Improve New York City’s Environment” Response

I feel that many people are aware that a significant urban heat island effect exists in New York City but do not necessarily know how serious it is, what causes it, or even what it is called. For example, whenever there are weather reports on the news, the meteorologists always have to give several sets or ranges of temperatures, those in the city and those in the suburbs and the countryside. The article states that “a difference of at least 1.8oF (1oC) already existed at the beginning of the 20th century between the mean temperature in NYC and its surrounding rural areas, and this difference increased over the 20th century” (2). If this pattern continues, we may soon be able to actually boil eggs or water on the sidewalk or on dark roofs, which just absorb tremendous amounts of heat and radiate it back at night.

Although the daytime temperatures may be the same or similar in both areas, here in the five boroughs, we are practically always warmer at night. This may not be such a bad thing in the winter for us, since that means that our crops do not freeze as much and we have a somewhat longer growing season, but in the summer, this can lead to unbearably stifling nights, especially for those without access to air conditioning or ventilation. In fact, the warmest day that we have endured so far in our lives was probably on July 22, 2011, when we hit 104oF (40oC) after a morning low temperature of just 84oF (29oC), the latter of which is actually our average high temperature for the month of July (sorry if this is a bit wordy!). Combined with the humidity and lack of a breeze, that day was truly hellish beyond comparison. Speaking about ventilation, while the urban heat island has definitely contributed to record power usage, it might also be simply caused by an increasing population and thus a larger consumer base, but then again, the two are related to each other.

On the other hand, I should not complain, since there are so many out there who did not have access to air conditioning to cool off at night, humans, animals, and trees alike. The article thankfully mentions many ways that the urban heat island effect can be mitigated. I think cool roofs are good at lowering surface temperatures because of their ability to reflect sunlight due to their materials and light colors, I think that green roofs make better use of a part of a building that is almost always auxiliary and seen as extra space. Their vegetation can be pleasing to the eye, absorb harmful chemicals and pollutants, and even enhance the process of evapotranspiration; just imagine how refreshing it is to be welcomed by cool rain after a hot day, and green roofs can multiply this effect. New York City, and just about any other large metropolis on the planet, will always have an urban heat island effect, but we can at least tame it to the point that we can drastically reduce pollution and temperature fluctuations, and make them more sustainable and livable for many generations to come.

“Missing the Dark: Health Effects of Light Pollution” Response

I think it’s amazing how light pollution is not as nearly as well-known as water or air pollution, yet it has had effects that are just as devastating or even more so than these other forms. We associate cities with awe-inspiring, bright lights and the countryside and suburbs with relative, monotonous darkness, but we neglect the fact that we are unable to see constellations, planets, or even stars in the night sky, which have their own inherent beauty. With increasing urbanization and an exponential increase in the human population, our descendants probably will not be able to see anything at all with their naked eyes; unfortunately, only those who have access to high-quality telescopes will.

Of course, the article specifically mentions that “artificial light has benefited society by, for instance, extending the length of the productive day, offering more time not just for working but also for recreational activities that require light” (A21). In fact, this may have also deterred crime to an extent since vandals will most likely commit acts where they cannot be easily seen. But I never knew that before industrialization, we had a sleep cycle that was divided in two roughly-equal parts instead of the standard eight hours during the night. Besides a disruption in the circadian rhythm and cyclical levels in hormones, light pollution has been positively correlated with several different forms of cancer, and even depression and mood disorders. Also, mating cycles and flight trajectories in animals and growth patterns in plants have been altered, so light pollution has far-reaching effects for all parts of the ecosystem.

The article mostly focused on the health effects of light pollution (hence, the title) and only briefly talked about solutions, which may actually be a bit more difficult to generate than other sources of pollution. Considering seasonal affective disorder, which causes many people to become more fatigued and groggy during the winter, which has less light, there must be a huge range in effects in people who live close to the equator, which has almost uniform sunlight year-round, and those by the poles, which have no sun at all in the winter and no darkness at all in the summer. Thus, new solutions will have to be adapted not just to demographics, but also latitude and geographical location. Also, shift workers are necessary; my uncle works for the MTA, and my aunt used to be a nurse, and both jobs experience emergencies at all hours of the day, so I’m not entirely sure if we can just change the hours that they work. However, I agree that we must eliminate all forms of unnecessary light, especially from streetlights that cause glare that radiates upward and outward instead of just downward on its intended targets, and even places that use lighting to show off instead of having any useful purposes. This issue still needs a lot of quantitative and qualitative research, but it is definitely a great thing that it is getting a lot of publicity in the present, so that its potential consequences can be eliminated for the future.

“Estimating Stormwater Runoff for Community Gardens in New York City” Response

Community gardens have so many social, environmental, physical, and psychological benefits, yet they are unfortunately not being utilized to their maximum potential. It is very strange that they have not been included in many environmental plans for New York City; even cities like Detroit, which are suffering from financial turmoil and violence have implemented these gardens, turning barren wastelands and abandoned houses into vibrant, diverse mini-farms. In addition to being aesthetically appealing, these community gardens can increase biodiversity by attracting decomposers, can promote healthier eating habits, and can even employ people or at least involve many volunteers in designing, funding, building, and maintaining them.

The article mentioned how, if the right materials are used, they can mitigate runoff by absorbing a great deal of rainwater. They discussed 1.5” and 5” rainfall events; I’m interested in meteorology, and if I’m not mistaken, the last day that we had over 5” of rain in one day here in New York City was not too long ago, on August 14, 2011, and in fact that month was the wettest month ever recorded for our area. While the amount of rain that falls is important in doing these studies, I think that the rate at which it falls is also crucial. Thunderstorms are great examples of this, where we may get less than an inch of rain, but this amount falls torrentially in just a few minutes, and this is enough to severely back up sewer systems, flood basements, and inundate highways, causing absolute chaos. Community gardens can only absorb water so fast, so future studies should definitely analyze rainfall rates to determine how they can be optimally installed.

I think that the word “community” should be emphasized a lot more in the term community garden. I was surprised when the discussion section mentioned how the “New York Restoration Project is a privately managed land trust and all of their sites are maintained by staff members, not the community” (73). Although I mentioned job opportunities in the first paragraph of my post, I should emphasize that community gardens are long-term interactive projects for everybody to take part in, not private property. Education and participation are the first steps in conservation, and they make people feel obligated to protect their environment for themselves, future generations, and for the general well-being of ecosystems.

Article for Monday, 11/30

Hi Guys:

I’m posting my article a bit early, and it’s called “Bicycle Guidelines and Crash Rates on Cycle Tracks in the United States.” It’s about seven pages and there’s a lot of charts and graphs so don’t worry. Here’s an online link:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3682599/pdf/AJPH.2012.301043.pdf

Happy Thanksgiving! 🙂

Robert

“World Trade Center – Preliminary Observations on EPA’s Second Program to Address Indoor Contamination” Response

While many of our past readings have shown that government policies and regulations to combat ecological issues have been largely successful and are expected to continue, this GAO report begs to differ, explaining how the EPA has been inadequate in protecting the public from air pollutants after the September 11th attacks and questioning the effectiveness of its future programs. The psychological and physical effects of the attacks still last today, more than fourteen years after they occurred; it is simply mind-boggling how much smoke and dust entered the air and clouded New York City’s bright skyline for days on end. Being interested in weather, I looked up the weather for September 11, 2001, and noticed that it was a beautifully sunny late-summer day with a wind blowing from the north; if the wind had instead come from the south or west, the entire metropolitan area would have been covered in the debris, but this should not draw attention away from what actually happened, which was still devastating beyond compare.

The winds blew the ash down towards Brooklyn, Staten Island, and parts of New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean, but it always seems that the government prefers Manhattan over the outer boroughs, as can be seen here in the cleanup efforts and even in snowstorms. Nevertheless, residents of Lower Manhattan still had to deal with the incompetence of the EPA, which “did not begin examining methods for differentiating between normal urban dust and WTC dust until May 2004 – nearly 3 years after the disaster” (5). Also, after stating that most of its samples did not exceed a high-risk level for asbestos, it was found that “this conclusion was to be expected because it took over 80% of the samples after residences were professionally cleaned” (5) and was “based on participation from only 20% of the eligible residences” (5).

By falsifying and contaminating their data, perhaps deliberately, the EPA consequently put thousands of people at risk. This may be one of the first readings where ethics and accountability play a large role. Even if they did not want to report the harsh truth that there were still harmful particulates in the air possibly to avoid causing mass hysteria, to save cleanup costs, or to garner support from the public for a “job well done”, the truth, as painful as it may have been, could have led to so much less suffering if it was told clearly and not covered up. Despite this controversy, people should remember that the government has still done a lot to mitigate pollution over the past few decades, but transparency is still important, and people always deserve to know the truth.

“Planning of Sustainable Cities in View of Green Architecture” Response

Implementing green architecture in cities large and small has a great deal of positive outcomes; even though each city has different needs and various ways of satisfying them, the overall effects remain the same. When people are indifferent and blasé about the environments that they live in, ecological problems will continue to be rampant, but if they feel personally attached to where they live, they will feel encouraged to promote change and make their cities more sustainable for all inhabitants, humans, animals, and plants alike. Thus, green cities can be psychologically beneficial; Huseynov stats that by increasing the number of public spaces, this “increases social interaction and cohesion between citizens” (536). While education is the most powerful force to invoke change, simply being exposed to nature in the form of public parks can lead to increased productivity, efficiency, and cooperation. Besides physical and mental health, economies can also prosper from green cities; using cleaner forms of transportation, heat, and electricity can reduce utility costs in the short-term, and carbon footprints and the effects of the urban heat island in the long-term.

Baku, Azerbaijan, which is the main focus of the article, is surrounded by the Caspian Sea to the east and the Caucasus Mountains to the west, and is almost 100 feet below sea level. Also the structure of the metropolitan area is described as the following, that throughout the twentieth century, “notable development began to take place in a concentric direction…with the Core City at the center, and seven metropolitan rings surrounding it” (536). Given that it has about two million people, Baku is in a very unlucky location meteorologically and geographically, and so it is in desperate need of green architecture, arguably even more so than we do in New York.

While green architecture may be expensive and involve great changes aesthetically and physically to the landscape, whether in the form of solar panels, green roofs, or even wind turbines, Huseynov correctly mentions that “instead of introducing external forms and transforming the site to accommodates those forms, these are ‘found’ and evolved out of systems already there” (540) and should “explore how systems have evolved and performed over time, questioning how and why the landscape arrived at its present state, in addition to registering what is already there” (540). Cities are all unique in terms of their history, climate, and demographics, and so there is no umbrella solution. Also, to reiterate, tearing everything down just to implement new architecture, green or not, will be costly and questionable in its effect. We have personally seen this in how the Dinosaur State Park was built around the dinosaur tracks rather than having them excavated and brought to some other museum far away, which was a very smart thing to do, but the same cannot be said for seaside developments around high-risk locations in the Jersey Shore. Nevertheless, taking small steps to increase green architecture will eventually add up in the end. If this has worked in Baku, there should be no reason why it cannot work in larger cities like New York or even greater metropolises like Shanghai or Tokyo; if one city does it, others will take the initiative and hundreds of millions of people will be able to lead more fulfilling lifestyles in more sustainable cities.

“Noise Pollution: A Modern Plague” Response

This journal article was a very good-follow up to the New Yorker article that graphed and plotted the noise complaints in all neighborhoods in the city; in other words, it was nice to combine the statistics with the hard, scientific facts about the damage that noise pollution can do to us. It even discussed noise in cities just a few centuries ago and empires that existed a few millennia in the past, so it is not as if noise is a new issue. However, with our increasing population and urbanization, it is important to note that deafening sound will become more frequent and unpleasant unless we do something about it now. In fact, cities have become synonymous with noise havens and the suburbs and countryside have been signified by peaceful, tranquil abodes. To be honest, cities will always be louder than these areas because of the sheer density of people and buildings, but the decibel levels that they reach are just obscene, and nobody should have to be subjected to them.

The “Adverse Health Effects of Noise” section was extremely detailed and perfectly outlined how humans are harmed by noise; as I mentioned in my last response, many animals have more sensitive ears than we do, so these effects are multiplied significantly for them. Other than the obvious effects of hearing impairment and sleep disturbances, and other physiological effects such as endocrine and circulatory system issues, noise pollution causes many psychological problems as well, impacting a person’s ability to speak, think sanely, perform simple tasks, and even interact with others. At first, I thought that these were too indirectly related to and thus extrapolated too far from noise pollution, but after a second glance, they are perfectly reasonable; a person’s health is holistic and made up of many components that must work together in unison, and so if one sense (such as hearing, in this case) is affected, everything else must be as well.

The authors conclude that “part of the solution may require federal or state legislation aimed at supporting local efforts or the restoration of federal funding for the Office of Noise Abatement and Control” (Goines and Hagler 293). However, the government can only pass so many laws to combat noise; personally, I have noticed buses and cars continue to blare their horns even though there is a $350 fine for doing so, and this probably means that enforcement of the pre-existing laws is just too lax. Excessive pessimism does not help either. As discussed in many of our other classes, education is the most powerful force, since people will develop personal connections to their environment, and they will then receive incentives to save it not just for them, but for their descendants and the rest of the ecosystems that they belong to.

“Mapping New York’s Noisiest Neighborhoods” Response

Noise pollution is not something that we can easily see, like air or water pollution, but its effects can still be very damaging, disrupting sleep cycles, causing deafness, and overall just being unpleasant and psychologically disturbing. We all deal with it to some extent on a daily basis, given the traffic on the streets and the screeching from the trains on the subways, and some of us (like me) are unlucky enough to live close to airports. Regardless of where we live, we have unfortunately become accustomed to the noise. Just taking a day trip to the suburbs or countryside shows how much quieter and peaceful it can be there, but the relative silence becomes uncomfortable, and we sometimes miss all of the honking and music that we loathe when we are in the city. But just as all cities have extraordinarily high levels of noise, they all differ in their sources, and this article showed how even small neighborhoods, some of which border each other, can have drastically different sources of noise pollution as well.

The most interesting statistic that I found was that “311 logged more than a hundred and forty thousand noise-related complaints between the winter of 2013 and the fall of 2014. That works out to one complaint every four minutes, day in and day out, all year”, and represents one call for every sixty people, assuming that nobody made multiple calls. The article’s graphs and charts were very helpful in terms of visualizing the geography and frequency of these complaints, and it came as no surprise that most were made during the late night hours; for the city that never sleeps, it seems that sleep is one of the most important things that a New Yorker can have. Even though highly commercialized neighborhoods, especially in parts of Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn, have the highest number of complaints, probably given the large amounts of taxis and construction going on, residential neighborhoods in eastern Queens near Long Island or parts of Staten Island have their own sources of noise, primarily since many have single-family houses that can afford to have dogs roaming outside instead of apartments.

While the article went extremely in depth in terms of mapping the loudest areas of the city and briefly mentioned solutions, it neglected to show that noise pollution can have devastating effects on animals. Common pets like dogs and cats have a much stronger sense of hearing than we do, so we can just imagine how stressed out they can become from noises that we disregard as minimal. Even heavy vibrations from bass subwoofers in cars can reverberate in the streets and damage the ground and any habitats for animals in those areas, and they may be forced to move to new locations that are very hard for them to adjust to. This just shows how noise pollution, despite not being as tangible as other ecological problems that our city battles, is just as destructive. After reading the article, it is definitely a very broad issue that will require many different solutions catered to specific neighborhoods, but any change, no matter how small, is better than no change at all.

“Draft Hudson River Estuary Action Agenda 2015-2020” Response

This paper seemed relatively optimistic compared to a lot of the other readings that we had. Also, since it focused on a single body of water (the Hudson River) as opposed to all rivers, streams, or lakes in the metropolitan area or large entities like the Atlantic Ocean or Long Island Sound made it easier for effects to be seen and conservation efforts to be planned for the future. The Hudson River is vital to New York City, as it provides a northern link between parts of Upstate New York and thus Canada and New England, and a southern link to the Atlantic Ocean and ports all along the Eastern Seaboard. We should commend ourselves for taking many steps to make it much cleaner and accessible not just for us, but for the countless other members of nearby ecosystems that benefit from it daily. Some of the results can be seen in the return of bald eagles, which were once rare in its vicinity (9), and the facts that “more than 220 species of fish now call the Hudson estuary home for some or all of their lives, including spawning populations of shad, striped bass and sturgeon, and, in New York harbor, oysters are returning” (5). Lastly, by conserving tens of thousands of acres and opening up parks and bike lanes, people are directly exposed to the breathtaking beauty of the Hudson River and will feel compelled to do something to protect it for future generations.

One area that I felt that the agenda did not mention (at least in the first twenty pages or so, which was what we were supposed to read) was increasing shoreline development. An increase in the populations of species that were once dwindling is crucial to conserving biodiversity, but an increase in the human population is a completely different story. To support it, many shoreline developments are being constructed, from high-rise apartment buildings and condominiums to shopping malls and businesses, and since space is running out quickly, millions of gallons of sand are being pumped to form artificial land. In Battery Park City, thousands of units of homes are located right along the Hudson River, and it does not even take a monstrous storm like Hurricane Sandy for them to be flooded. Disrupting the natural flow of the river is a major problem that needs to be addressed, but the reason why it is not getting much recognition is probably since its effects take decades to be seen, and no toxic waste is involved to concern people with bacteria and disease. Thus, water pollution has been greatly reduced, but greater encroachment and commercial and residential uses along the river continue to rise.

The common theme of this class is that humans are obsessed with immediate satisfaction and are only aware of short-term effects, not long-term consequences of their actions. The Hudson River shows many examples of this, and even if considerable progress has been made, a lot of work remains to be done not just for our sake, but for the sake of all other living and non-living things that rely on it just as much as we do.

“Resource Management as a Key Factor for Sustainable Urban Planning” Response

While most of the readings we have read have focused on New York City, specifically in terms of its ecological history from the Native Americans to the European colonists to the present times, this journal discussed civilizations and groups of people from thousands of years ago to mindsets that the authors hope will be adopted by future generations. This hope for change stems from the fact that cities use resources at monumental rates, but they have caused drastic changes in their surrounding environments. For example, New York City may have a land area of just over 300 square miles, but it has approximately 8.5 million people, and a lot of its water supply comes from the Catskills, part of which are not even in the metropolitan area. From a global perspective, the human population is growing exponentially, reaching seven billion just a few years ago, and it shows no signs of slowing down. We will torture nature to reveal its secrets just to support us and our insatiable needs, but we only look at short-term solutions and ways that we can personally benefit rather than how we have affected the natural cycles of organisms and non-living portions of ecosystems. Our resources are finite, and at this point, it looks like only a catastrophe of epic proportions will change our behaviors, even if it may be too late to reverse the damage that we have done.

The authors are a bit more optimistic than this, striving for the implementation of greater resource management into urban planning. Urban planning nowadays is only done for people, not the environment. We focus on building cities that are efficient for commuting, commerce, and social functions, and try to tackle issues such as racism, poverty, and gender inequality, but this is only one slice of the pie. We must include environmental factors as well for the sake of the organisms that we have symbiotic relationships with, since their extinction will ultimately lead to our own downfall as well. Interestingly, our distant ancestors were looked at in the most positive light, being described as “hunters and gatherers … [who] collected resources in different places, migrating when resources became scarce. The energetic metabolism of hunters and gatherers has been described as an ‘uncontrolled solar energy system’.” (2297). Now, with the advent of agriculture and industrialization, people have chosen to stay put and expect resources to come to them, and use them at faster rates than at any other time in the past; the inventions of the automobile, plane, and other forms of transportation may be the primary reasons behind this.

The journal is very well-organized, given the two diagrams describing the holistic relationship between urban planning, resource management, and sustainable development, and how all of them have changed dramatically over the past millennia. The recycling of waste and nutrients is alluded to, and a real-life example, even if it is a bit gruesome, is Bill Gate’s Omni Processor, which converts fecal matter and sewage into drinking water. However, environmentalists, businessmen, and politicians can only do so much to encourage change by giving thoughtful directions; people themselves have to take the wheel and drive.