The Dirt, a publication of the American Society of Landscape Architects, on Tuesday published a long-form interview with Kristina Hill, who chairs the landscape architecture department at U.Va.’s School of Architecture, on her ideas about managing the effects of climate change. It’s an interesting read.
Hill notes that Americans — and by extension, their political leaders — seem to be less concerned about the effects of climate change than Canadians and Europeans, and suggest that preparations to mitigate those effects may be lacking.
The University of Virginia reduced its electric draw by up to seven megawatts Wednesday in response to a “load reduction emergency.”
Demands on the electric grid due to hot weather along the Eastern Seaboard stressed electric generation and transmission equipment. PJM Interconnection, Virginia’s electric grid operator, called for a load reduction emergency event to reduce the amount of demand on the system.
The University had pledged to reduce is electric draw by two megawatts.
Continue reading…
News,
Sustainability | Thursday, July 8th | By: Dan @3:48 pm |
The U.Va. Engineering School’s monthly E-News newsletter posed a question to alumni in June: How has your engineering background helped you to understand the recent oil spill in the Gulf, and what do you see as the most effective preventive and corrective measures?
A sample quote, from a 2007 mechanical engineering grad:
The experience of the Deepwater Horizon should be a reminder to all engineers that, while we may understand a great deal about the devices and technologies that we design and implement, these systems do not operate in the idealized conditions that often simplify our analyses and that they will often fail in ways that we had not foreseen. More pointedly, it is a reminder that the response to engineering disasters will often be governed not by what is technologically feasible, but within the constraints of governmental structures, financial realities, and environmental externalities. Most of us are fortunate to not have such public or catastrophic failures, but that does not mean that we should be any less professional in the exercise of our duties.
You can read many more responses here.
(Photo from the Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog.)
Alumni,
News,
People,
Science,
Sustainability,
engineering | Wednesday, June 30th | By: Dan @9:16 am |
UVA Today’s Matt Kelly reports:
With the heat index anticipated to hit 101 degrees at about 3 p.m., the sustainability team at the University of Virginia’s Department of Energy and Utilities is asking employees to reduce their energy draw wherever possible.
“We don’t want to impede anybody’s work,” said Armando deLeon, sustainability programs manager at Facilities Management. “But if people could turn off non-essential lights and equipment they would not only be helping the University, but the entire state.”
With increased temperatures, there is more demand on electrical generation and transmission equipment. No electrical emergency has yet been declared, deLeon said, but the University is anticipating the increased demand and is working to reduce its draw on the system. The greatest draw on the grid is anticipated between 1 and 5 p.m. today and tomorrow, when the heat index is anticipated to hit 104.
The University recently participated in an emergency drill to gauge its response to an emergency. It was able to reduce its electric draw from the grid by 2.96 megawatts during a one-hour period through conservation and use of its emergency generators.
“We will not be running our generators this time,” deLeon said. “We are just asking for voluntary cooperation. We don’t have a target figure, we are just going to do the best we can.”
On Grounds,
Sustainability | Wednesday, June 23rd | By: Dan @1:14 pm |
The U.Va. Community Garden is growing.
“Started by a student initiative, the University of Virginia’s Community Garden hopes to be a space for both Charlottesville and the University to learn more about organic gardening,” the web site says. “Keeping with the agricultural traditions of the University’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, the garden is a place to foster the growth of community as well as food.”
Of course, such a thing does not happen without money, so the garden’s organizers are holding an old-fashioned rummage sale on Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the corner of McCormick and Alderman roads (near their gardens). Among the items for sale are things collected in the “Chuck It for Charity” effort that were turned down by the charities, but are still suitable for use.
You can read more about the garden on the blog.
Community,
Sustainability | Thursday, June 17th | By: Dan @5:32 pm |
With so much talk these days about going green, eating local and just being more sustainable in general, it can be daunting trying to figure out where to start.
Nickie Knight, an enterprising 2002 graduate of the School of Nursing, has launched a new nationwide online directory of “verifiably green businesses” called TheGoGreenPages.com. Visitors can search by keyword or location, or browse by category. There are also articles like “How to Start and Urban Herb Garden” and “Traveling Green: Finding an Eco-Friendly Hotel.”
A quick search for Charlottesville turned up two business listings: for Savvy Rest, a home furnishings store that sells organic mattresses, and Sammy Snacks, a maker and retailer of “all-natural, holistic foods” for pets (and their humans).
Knight is listed as the founder and editor-in-chief of both TheGoGreenPages and Hip Moms Go Green, an online magazine.
According to her official bio:
Going ‘green’ has always been more than hobby, or buzzword, for Nickie. Having combined a nursing degree from The University of Virginia with an innate love of research, Nickie has minimized her children’s severe health issues through alterations to her family’s diet and environment, as well as started a successful consulting business. Her specialty is in simplifying the process of going green so that moms are undaunted by the task of creating a healthier world for themselves and their children. For over a decade, Nickie has tackled issues in the fields of homeopathy, naturopathy, and nutrition, in addition to drawing on her experience in interior design to assist in the management and elimination of home-based toxins.
Alumni,
Health and Safety,
Sustainability | Tuesday, June 15th | By: Dan @1:44 pm |
With final exams beginning yesterday, it won’t be long until U.Va. students begin trickling out of our fair city, heading home or (gulp) out into The Real World. The exodus begins sometime in the next week and will continue through the end of the month, when lots of leases expire.
Not surprisingly, students can accumulate a lot of stuff during the course of a school year — or four.
If you don’t want to haul it all out, but you have things that other folks might be able to use, the University offers two programs to get your still-useful household items into the hands of people who need them.
If you live on Grounds, the 11th annual Chuck It for Charity program has already begin accepting furniture, clothing, electronics, small household appliances, non-perishable food and school supplies at collection points inside University Housing facilities, and will continue through May 17. Charities that will benefit include Advancing Native Missions, Blue Ridge Area Food Bank Network, Central Virginia Baptist Association’s Clothing Center, Church of the Incarnation, Faith Point Christian Center, Goodwill Industries of the Valleys, The Habitat Store and Love INC.
If you’re off Grounds, there’s the Sofa Shuffle (website here, press release here). You can drop things off at one of seven different sites on two days: May 24 (the day after graduation) and May 29 (as those leases expire). Benefiting from this effort is the Salvation Army and The Habitat Store.
Community,
On Grounds,
Student Life,
Sustainability | Friday, May 7th | By: Dan @11:10 am |
This just in from UVA Today science correspondent Fariss Samarrai:
Last week more than 200 volunteers, organized by U.Va.’s environmental sciences department and the conservation organization Trout Unlimited, sampled about 458 stream sites in 34 Virginia counties, representing about 80 percent of the forested mountain headwater streams in the state that support reproducing brook trout.
This week, the samples are being organized and analyzed at U.Va. for pH, a stream’s ability to neutralize acidity, and for dissolved ions.
This information helps scientists determine the health of headwater streams throughout western Virginia. The data and findings are used by the EPA and other national and state agencies for resource management and to develop, evaluate and recommend national air pollution control policies.
This is the third regional survey conducted by U.Va. and Trout Unlimited. Previous surveys were done in 1987 and 2000. The current plan is to continue long-term monitoring by conducting surveys every 10 years.
For more, you can read the full UVA Today article here.
Arts & Sciences,
Science,
Sustainability | Thursday, May 6th | By: Dan @2:13 pm |
The Princeton Review and the U.S. Green Building Council have teamed up to produce “The Princeton Review’s Guide to 286 Green Colleges,” which includes U.Va. Here’s a link to the press release and one to the guide itself.
The schools are not ranked, just listed. The guide cites U.Va.’s commitment to LEED-certified building projects, water- and energy-saving efforts and ‘green dining’ initiatives, among several pro-sustainability efforts.
News,
Sustainability,
admission | Friday, April 23rd | By: Dan @12:34 pm |
Earth Day is April 22. The deadline for high school seniors to make their college choice is May 1.
Here’s something that links the two: WiseChoice, an online company that seeks to advise students about how to choose the best college for them, has named U.Va. one of the top 10 schools in the country for students seeking “green-collar” careers. The press release announcing the list notes that “Students majoring in Urban & Environmental Planning focus on the environmental impact of community development, to prepare for public, private and non-profit sector professions.”
The other top 10 schools: University of Kentucky, Arizona State University, University of Florida, University of California-Berkeley, Middlebury (Vt.) College, Aquinas (Mich.) College, Oregon Institute of Technology, Defiance (Ohio) College and Washington State University.
News,
School of Architecture,
Sustainability,
admission | Wednesday, April 14th | By: Dan @3:18 pm |
So when we returned to UVA Today World Headquarters after the winter break, we found a late, but very welcome, Christmas gift: the new University telephone directories.
Thanks to online directories, phone books may eventually go the way of phone booths, but there’s still something cool about a brand-new edition. And yes, I still use it.
As I was replacing last year’s tattered model with the shiny new one, I noticed that it had slimmed down a bit. A preliminary exam seemed to show that the faculty/staff section was thinner; a check of the page count confirmed that the faculty/staff section was indeed 73 pages shorter — about 82 percent the size of last year’s. The other sections were fairly comparable in size to last year.
Continue reading…
On Grounds,
Sustainability | Wednesday, January 6th | By: Dan @11:38 am |
Given that “sustainability” has been one of the University’s watchwords, what about the annual holiday Lighting of the Lawn? How sustainable is it to wrap all those pretty columns with all those sparkly lights?
As it turns out, we can relax a little. Sure, Lighting the Lawn sucks up some electricity. But since last year, it’s much less electricity than you might think. That’s because Dominion donated strings of LED lights, which use a fraction of the power needed to illuminate incandescents.
(Even before the switch to LEDs, one Facilities Management official estimated the old bulbs used the power equivalent of “three or four coffee pots.”)
Need verification? Here’s a piece in Sunday’s New York Times that looked into every aspect of the LED vs. compact fluorescent vs. incandescent comparison — including the total cost of manufacturing and transport — and declared that LEDs and compacts far outpaced incandescents in energy consumption. Plus, LEDs have the added benefit of not containing mercury.
So enjoy this year’s festivities, which are set to begin Dec. 8 at 7:30 p.m.
On Grounds,
Sustainability | Tuesday, December 1st | By: Dan @2:06 pm |
Check out the "Meet the Farmer TV" episode profiling the U.Va. Student Garden. The show airs on Charlottesville local TV station 10 at 7 p.m. each night this week. Or, you can view it on the Web . The student-motivated project, located across the street from Observatory Hill Dining Hall, builds on Jefferson’s agrarian traditions. The model project promotes organic gardening and sustainability. The film features three Urban and Environmental Planning folks: Ben Chrisinger, a fourth-year student: Dana Smith, a second-year graduate student; and professor Tim Beatley.
News,
School of Architecture,
Student Life,
Sustainability,
TV | Thursday, November 19th | By: Jane Ford @3:09 pm |
Another gem from the e-mail in-box today:
Yaogang Lian wrote with news of an iPhone application he developed called HoosBus that users of local public transportation should find invaluable. It maps UTS and CTS bus routes, shows the nearest stops and lets you know when the next bus is coming.
It even has a “secret feature”:
If you shake your iPhone or iPod Touch, HoosBus will turn itself into a flashing red light. Simply hold it up to the bus so that you can be easily seen in the darkness. Shake again to deactivate.
You can download it free from the iTunes store, or go to the iTunes store and search “hoosbus.”
Community,
On Grounds,
Sustainability | Thursday, November 12th | By: Dan @4:44 pm |
Lucia Phinney, who has lectured at the U.Va. School of Architecture since 1981 on the interplay between development and natural resources, has created a Web site called “Project Albemarle” that should be of great local interest.
It is mostly focused on the interplay between the various natural and man-made factors that influence the water quality in Albemarle County and the city of Charlottesville. The various elements can be overlaid upon a topographical map, toggled on and off as desired.
The site may provide a very valuable resource for the current debate over the community’s long-term water plan.
School of Architecture,
Sustainability | Thursday, October 22nd | By: Dan @11:31 am |
