Learn about Sustainability Careers with the Chicago Wilderness Alliance (Fri 6/16)

Emerging and Intergenerational Thought Leaders: Introducing Professional Opportunities and Uplifting Your Voices on Topics Around Sustainability

Friday, June 16, 2023
2:00 PM CST Register for Zoom link

At this Chicago Wilderness online café we will introduce professionals and their pathways, opportunities in the industry, and talk about the current understanding of climate protection, sustainability, and equity. We will be challenging societal norms an aiming to redefine how we engage with society through this new narrative of sustainability solidarity.

This café session will introduce the concepts of our systematic approach to sustainability and then engage participants in a polling activity to identify regional key focus areas for an intergenerational sustainability action plan.We encourage registrants to complete a survey about your priorities as an emerging conservation professional.

For additional info, contact Laura Reilly (laura.reillycw@gmail.com)

Elevate Your Education & Beautify RU’s Campus this Summer 2023 in SUST 390 Rooftop Garden

Looking for an out-of-the-ordinary summer class? Get some fresh air and dirt under your nails in RU’s Sustainability Studies program innovative special topics course, SUST 390 Rooftop Garden, at the Chicago Campus! The class will utilize RU’s unique 5th-story rooftop garden on its LEED Gold-certified Wabash Building as a living classroom for a hands-on, place-based, get-your-hands-dirty learning experience. This hybrid / experiential learning class is quite flexible, so it can fit into your summer schedule!

  • Title/number: SUST 390 Rooftop Garden (section 10)
  • Semester offered: Summer 2023 (from May 30 thru Aug 14)
  • Location: Chicago Campus
  • Day/time: Online learning commences 5/30, with garden workdays and field trips to selected urban farms/green rooftops in the Chicago region scheduled by the instructor according to students’ availability
  • Pre-req: ENG 102

SUST majors and minors may take this class to fulfill an upper-level SUST 3xx requirement, but 390 also is open to students at large seeking an experiential learning course, needing a general education course, or desiring elective credit.

Celebrate Earth Month by Documenting the World’s Biodiversity! 4/13 through 4/16 online & @ the Field Museum

Dear community scientists!
 
You are receiving this email because you registered and/or kindly participated in a prior WeDigBio event, Meet a Scientist, Members Night, etc. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you will find instructions to unsubscribe after our signatures.
 
Be a part of a global effort to digitize centuries of data about life on Earth! Organisms may include ferns, fungi, mosses, lichens, insects, and mammals. Participants will have an opportunity to meet scientists and join in behind-the-scenes tours or talks about the significance of the scientific collections!
 
WeDigBio will be held online daily from Thursday, April 13th – Sunday, April 16th.
 
The Field Museum is kindly welcoming a small group of volunteers to work in-person to assist with the curation process of the botanical collections. This opportunity is on a first-come, first-served basis so please fill out the registration form below. NOTEThe Field Museum will not be offering free parking at this time, only free admission. If you are a docent/volunteer with the museum, you will still be able to use your badge for parking at the West Lot. We are sorry for the inconvenience!
 
To register for this event, please click here.
 
WeDigBio is ideal for teens aged 15+ and adults. However, families are welcome as it is a great opportunity for all age groups to work together.
 
For educators with classes, please contact us directly.
 
Details for all WeDigBio days:
  • A Zoom link will be emailed the day before each session starts regardless if you are participating online or in-person.
  • Check-in will start at 9:30am CDT (10:30am EDT/8:30am MDT/7:30am PDT) whether you are volunteering online or in-person.
  • For in-person volunteering at the Field Museum, volunteers will be checked in at the East Entrance of the museum and must be masked when behind-the-scenes – in compliance with Museum policy.
  • Each event will begin at 10:00am CDT until 1:00pm CDT (11:00am–2:00pm EDT/9:00am–1:00pm MDT/8:00am–12:00pm PDT).
    • Talks and behind-the-scenes tours will be scattered throughout.
Thank you everyone for considering participating in this event!
 
The WeDigBio Team
Matt, Jessica, Miranda, and Yarency

Questions? Reach out to:

Matt von Konrat, Ph.D., FLS

Head of Botanical Collections, Gantz Family Collections Center

Adjunct Curator & McCarter Collections Manager (Bryophytes & Pteridophytes)

pronouns: he/him/his

O: 312.665.7864

 

Field Museum

1400 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive

Chicago, IL 60605

fieldmuseum.org

 

Service Opportunity in Biodiversity: WeDigBio @ the Field Museum

Scientists from Field Museum and around the world need your help! Join us in transcribing scientific label data from our collections and from field notes books using online and computer tools. Activities may also include hands-on curation with specimens. This event will be held daily from this Thur 10/18 thru Sun 10/21, 2018 and is based at Field Museum.

* * To register please click here. * *

You will be part of a global effort to digitize centuries of data about life on Earth. Organisms may include ferns, fungi, mosses, insects, and mammals. Participants will have an opportunity to meet Field Museum scientists and join in behind-the-scenes tours or talks about the significance of the scientific collections!

WeDigBio is ideally for teens aged 15+ and adults. Refreshments will be available, but you should feel free to bring lunch. Space is limited; please register in advance.

Details:

  • For those attending on-site activities, free admission to the museum will be available after the event.
  • Each day there is one session, including registration, the event and tours. Registration will open at 9:30am and the event will be held from 10:00am to 2:00pm.
  • Free behind-the-scene tours after the event!

Chicago’s True Nature: Black History Month Event at RU on Tues 2/27

DATE & TIME:
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
4pm –6pm

LOCATION:
Roosevelt University
Sullivan Room
Auditorium Building 2nd Floor (AUD 232)
430 S. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605

RSVP:
Please register at:
forestpreserves_blackhistorymonth.eventbrite.com

You’re Invited to a Celebration of Black History Month!

The Chicago area is known as a crossroads of diverse cultural groups and ideas. Less commonly known, is the biological diversity of our region. Varied ecosystems are home to native plant and animal species thriving within the Forest Preserves of Cook County.

With nearly 70,000 sprawling acres of wild and wonderful wilderness, the Forest Preserves is a regional asset which improves our quality of life, but not everyone is aware of or has the opportunity to enjoy the benefits that come from spending time outside. The Forest Preserves and its partners recognize the challenge of ensuring that everyone has access to nature and are working to better engage communities of color and grow public stewardship of nature.

Please join us to hear about both the historical and contemporary connections between environmentalism and the African American experience and how we can work together to protect nature and ensure that it is welcoming and accessible to all.

A panel discussion will follow thought-provoking presentations by Brian McCammack, professor at Lake Forest College and author of the new book Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago, Veronica Kyle, Chicago Outreach Director with Faith in Place, and Arnold Randall, General Superintendent of the Forest Preserves of Cook County. Kimberly N. Ruffin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English at Roosevelt University, will act as moderator.

Light refreshments will be served. Hardback copies of Professor McCammack’s book Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago will be available for sale for $40 each (cash or check).

The event is free but space is limited, and registration is required. For directions and transportation information please visit www.roosevelt.edu/campuses/maps-directions

This event is co-sponsored by Roosevelt University and the Forest Preserves of Cook County.

Speaker Bios and Abstracts:

Veronica Kyle directs all of Faith in Place’s Chicago outreach programs, with a particular passion for those related to Sustainable Food and Land Use. She is responsible for the creation of the Migration & Me Program which came about as the result of the realized concern that there were not enough people of color, mainly brown and black people, who were visibly engaged in available extracurricular outdoor activities, stewardship, and Earth care.

Brian McCammack is the author of Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago (Harvard University Press, 2017) and Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Lake Forest College, where he teaches courses on environmental history and politics. Landscapes of Hope recently won the 2018 George Perkins Marsh Prize for best book in environmental history from the American Society for Environmental History. In Landscapes of Hope, he examines the deep connections to nature that black Chicagoans forged in the first half of the twentieth century. The Forest Preserves of Cook County were particularly notable in this regard because African Americans not only sought out leisure there despite racial segregation and intimidation, but the labor of young black men in the Civilian Conservation Corps also helped improve and even build areas like the Skokie Lagoons.

Arnold Randall is the General Superintendent of the Forest Preserves of Cook County. The Forest Preserves of Cook County, established over a century ago, is one of the oldest and largest urban conservation districts in the United States, managing nearly 70,000 acres of diverse habitat across Cook County and offering recreation and education programs for audiences of all ages and from all walks of life. But preserving nature today in the nation’s second largest county comes with its own particular challenges – a lack of funding, climate change, and an urban population often out of touch with nature. The Forest Preserves is actively working with partners to provide a variety of programs that link diverse and urban populations with nature, including a Conservation Corps job training program and robust camping program at five new campgrounds.

Kim Ruffin is an Associate Professor of English at Roosevelt University, author of Black on Earth: African-American Ecoliterary Traditions (U. of Georgia Press, 2010), and nature-loving Certified Forest Therapy Guide.

 

Water Stories: Narrative, Urban Sustainability, and the Fluid Future of the Otakaro-Avon River in Christchurch, New Zealand

Atop Observation Hill near McMurdo Station, Antarctica (Oct 1991)

Twenty-five years ago, I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel to Antarctica as part of a scientific research expedition from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Taking a semester’s leave from my graduate studies at SUNY Stony Brook, I worked for two months as a field technician and writer-in-residence on a team researching the biogeochemistry of Lake Fryxell, a permanently frozen-over lake in Antarctica’s Dry Valleys. This extraordinary experience was memorable in many ways, including a brief three-day stopover in New Zealand, where we made our final preparations at the US Antarctic Program’s headquarters in Christchurch before flying to McMurdo Station on the Ross Ice Shelf.

new-zealand-mapNow as a mid-career academic seeking new challenges and opportunities beyond my Midwestern home at the southern rim of the Great Lakes — and having traveled outside the US (to Canada) only twice during this time — I decided to apply for a Fulbright Scholar fellowship to explore a distant locale that has always resonated powerfully in my memory. But this time, instead of a mere fleeting taste of Christchurch and a brief fly-over of the North and South Islands, I hope to spend several months in 2018 researching, writing, and living in New Zealand, based at Lincoln University a few kilometers outside of Christchurch, in order to enrich my understanding of urban river ecosystems as well as gain a much-needed global perspective on my scholarship and teaching.

Objectives and Methodology: My proposed project focuses on the Otakaro-Avon River that flows through Christchurch, NZ, as a natural and human ecosystem undergoing stress and change. The Otakaro-Avon is an important focal point of urban sustainability planning and ecological restoration. Using the qualitative research framework of the environmental humanities, which blends insights and analytic methods from literary studies, environmental history, ecology, and other disciplines, I plan to undertake an ecocritical study of this urban river’s history, present condition, and future prospects in the context of urban redevelopment underway after the 2011 earthquake that devastated Christchurch and many of its suburbs. This place- and observation-based perspective on the Otakaro-Avon watershed merges humanistic scholarship with physical exploration of the river as a highly modified, impaired, yet still biologically rich ecosystem with great sociocultural significance.

Otakaro-Avon River, Christchurch NZ (photo: Ian McGregor, The Press, 15 July 2016)
Otakaro-Avon River, Christchurch NZ (photo: Ian McGregor, The Press, 15 July 2016)

I will examine a wide range of “water stories” focused on the river — from historical documents to scientific analyses to technical reports — as well as current representations of the river in post-earthquake planning documents and journalistic accounts; conservationist, community-based, and indigenous discourse; plans for memorials and sustainable redevelopment along the river; and works of literature, film, and online media. This research will influence the crafting of my own stories of the Otakaro-Avon River and its fluid future, based on my in-the-field observations and experiences, in both narrative forms suitable for general readers as well as in scholarly prose for academic audiences — much as I have done in my recent work on the Chicago River‘s history, ecology, and future sustainability.

Key questions to be addressed in this project include but are not limited to:

  • How has the Otakaro-Avon River been utilized, modified, polluted, exploited, abused, defended, etc. over time? How does the history, quality, and character of the river inform people’s relationship to its present state and future prospects?
  • In what ways is the river important, economically and culturally, to the Maori indigenous people (as mahinga kai, a food-gathering place) as well as New Zealanders of European descent? How do people in Otakaro-Avon River’s watershed connect to the waterway? What kinds of activities do they undertake in terms of recreation, industry, and conservation?
  • What role do the river’s conservation and restoration have in the ongoing redevelopment of Christchurch’s Red Zone and within the city’s future sustainability?
  • How do the above issues intersect with questions of environmental justice, especially with respect to toxic pollution, public access to water resources and open space, and iwi (indigenous people) living with the Otakaro-Avon River watershed?

As an interdisciplinary-minded scholar within the environmental humanities, I employ a qualitative research approach. Using the analytic tools of ecocriticism, I emphasize the close reading and analysis of individual texts, their relationships with one another, and their place in the broad contexts of scientific discourse, nature writing, environmental history, and sustainability. At root, my work starts from the premises that the urban environment (both built and natural) is a worthy object of study; that natural resources are imperiled and therefore in need of protection and conservation; and that humanistic inquiry about the myriad relationships between humanity and nature in cities can foster, in the long run, ecological awareness and environmental progress.

The LA River in 2010 (photo by Mark Boster of the LA Times)
The LA River in 2010 (photo by Mark Boster of the LA Times)

Academic and Professional Context: Urban rivers are many things simultaneously: corridors of biodiversity, green infrastructure for storm water retention, transportation arteries for commerce, waste sinks, places of human recreation, and sites of environmental restoration. This partial list illustrates their dual nature: waterways in cities are all too often heavily polluted, modified, and abused ecosystems that bear scant resemblance to their former selves. They function as receptacles of waste and servants of commerce/industry, at the expense of water quality and biodiversity; and in many cases, city dwellers are physically as well as culturally cut off from access to waterways.

RU students paddle the North Branch of the Chicago River, Fall 2013 (M. Bryson)

Yet urban rivers also harbor tremendous renrenga ropi (biodiversity) and exhibit a capacity to connect citizens to the natural world that exists cheek-by-jowl with the built environment as well as to their cities’ natural and cultural histories. In this sense, damaged urban water systems are pathways of connection that can foster a sense of place vital to building an environmental ethic of care among city dwellers.

Geographers, urban ecologists, environmental scientists, and sustainability scholars are assessing waterways as a critical component of urban ecosystems. Given that cities consume energy and resources from far beyond their geographic boundaries and produce high levels of waste as well as greenhouse gases, their future sustainability depends upon large-scale actions such as repairing water/wastewater infrastructure, conserving energy, improving transportation access and efficiency, enhancing biodiversity, and reducing material waste.

RNZAF aerial survey of damage, showing flooding due to soil liquefaction in Christchurch NZ (Royal NZ Defence Force)
RNZAF aerial survey of damage, showing flooding due to soil liquefaction in Christchurch NZ (Royal NZ Defence Force)

Such goals are complicated and made urgent by the destructiveness of natural disasters. The 2011 Christchurch earthquake provides a monumental challenge as well as golden opportunity for inclusive and socially just urban planning that embraces environmental sustainability as a central goal. Unsurprisingly, the Otakaro-Avon River is prominent within this planning and rebuilding process (and illustrative of its many challenges).

More broadly, urban rivers provide a specific context for assessing the impacts of global urbanization on human relationships to nature. As of 2015, over 50% of the world’s population is urban; in the US and NZ, that figure is 82% and 86%, respectively, according to the World Bank. A consequence of this is a pervasive (though hardly universal) alienation from the natural world of urban citizens. River systems constitute important natural resources where people can have direct and meaningful contact with nature close to where they live.

The stories we tell about cities and rivers are a means of grappling with the ideas and questions noted above. While the natural and social sciences generate vital empirical data on urban rivers, the role of the arts and humanities is uniquely critical to understanding urban waterways and our relationships to them. Our “water stories” are both a means of representing our values and history as well as a method of critique. The fundamental power of storytelling within human experience points to the impact of artistic expression and humanistic analysis on understanding the importance of waterways within urban ecosystems and human communities.

Significance of Study: Understanding the role of water in urban ecosystems is vital to improving the resilience of cities (e.g., protecting people and property from floods and other environmental disasters) and making them more sustainable (e.g., improving water retention and quality through expansion of green infrastructure). Cities are where most people in the world now live, a trend that will continue in coming decades as we grapple with the impacts of climate change, water quality degradation, toxic pollution, and environmental injustice. As a vital resource for all human communities, water is an important node of inquiry within environmental science and, more broadly, sustainability studies.

Urban rivers (and their watersheds, which include tributaries, wetlands, and estuaries) are ideal barometers of the ecological and socio-cultural health of our cities as well as our attitudes about and connections to the natural world. The Otakaro-Avon River is one of New Zealand’s most polluted waterways and, at the same time, one of its most important — both ecologically and symbolically — given the high number of people who live and work within its watershed and its centrality within the city’s earthquake recovery process.

Enhancing our knowledge, awareness, and appreciation of the river’s status and value is vital to its remediation and restoration as a living ecosystem that is not just an integral part of Christchurch’s green infrastructure, but also a significant thread within the city’s historical and cultural fabric. My research will explore how stories have defined the Otakaro-Avon River thus far, and how new ones might shape its sustainable future.

Why New Zealand? As an island country distinguished by highly diverse ecosystems, small and large cities, a vibrant indigenous culture, famously productive agricultural lands, longstanding conservation values, and threatened ecosystems and natural resources, New Zealand is a remarkable laboratory for exploring questions of environmental sustainability in the early 21st century.

Possessing a uniquely complex postcolonial mix of people from indigenous Maori (tangata whenua), European, and trans-Pacific Island cultures, New Zealand is progressive in its formal and structural recognition of indigenous rights, which has important implications for urban sustainable development and environmental conservation. More locally, Christchurch is a vitally important urban center: not only is it the biggest city on the South Island (pop. ~366,000), but its ongoing efforts to recover from the devastating earthquake in 2011 make it a test case for how cities can respond to natural disasters and seize opportunities to improve the sustainability of urban infrastructure, revitalize waterways, increase open space, enhance biodiversity, and involve the citizenry within the ongoing planning and reconstruction process.

Lincoln University: An incredible wealth of people and resources exist in and around Christchurch that would be invaluable to me as a scholar and writer. The Faculty of Environment, Society, and Design and its Department of Environmental Management at Lincoln University — a land-based institution located near Christchurch with a phenomenal array of environmental academic programs and research centres — offer an interdisciplinary community of scholars and teachers dedicated to environmental research and sustainability education.

LU’s Centre of Land, Environment, and People (LEaP), which is closely affiliated with the aforementioned Faculty, provides an intellectual home for research and collaboration with scholars and students from diverse disciplines spanning the natural/social sciences, the humanities, and various technical fields. Additionally, the Waterways Centre for Freshwater Management, a research collaboration between LU and the University of Canterbury, has published a wealth of technical reports on water resources throughout the Christchurch metro area and the Canterbury region, and would be an invaluable resource for advice and collaboration.

City Creatures: Wildlife in the City

City Creatures book coverTomorrow afternoon my SUST 340 Policy, Law, & Ethics class at Roosevelt University’s Chicago Campus proudly hosts a special presentation entitled “City Creatures: Urban Biodiversity in Chicago” at 3:30 p.m. in Roosevelt’s LEED-Gold Wabash Building, Room 1214. Dr. Gavin Van Horn of the Center for Humans and Nature will discuss his recent book, City Creatures: Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness (University of Chicago Press), published in November 2015; and then engage in dialogue with my students and the RU community about urban biodiversity from the perspective of the environmental humanities.

Dr. Gavin Van HornDr. Van Horn is the co-editor of City Creatures and is the Director of Cultures of Conservation at the Center for Humans and Nature, as well as editor of the widely-read City Creatures blog. His work focuses particularly on how place-based values are developed and strengthened in dialogue with local landscapes. He continues to explore cultural perceptions of wildlife; place-based ethics; endangered species recovery, ethics, and policy; and the values involved in ecological restoration projects, community gardening, and wildlife management.

This special event is free and open to the public, and is hosted by students in SUST 340 Policy, Law, & Ethics. A limited number of signed copies will be available for purchase ($30 cash) and discount order forms will be available.

Videoconference Option: For those who cannot attend in person, the City Creatures event will be video- and teleconferenced live via Zoom as well as recorded, so that you may watch and/or listen from anywhere in the world. Login information is here:

Topic: City Creatures at RU Presentation 11 Apr 2016
Time: Apr 12, 2016 3:30 PM (GMT-5:00) Central Time (US and Canada)

More on City Creatures from The University of Chicago Press website:

We usually think of cities as the domain of humans—but we are just one of thousands of species that call the urban landscape home. Chicago residents knowingly move among familiar creatures like squirrels, pigeons, and dogs, but might be surprised to learn about all the leafhoppers and water bears, black-crowned night herons and bison, beavers and massasauga rattlesnakes that are living alongside them. City Creatures introduces readers to an astonishing diversity of urban wildlife with a unique and accessible mix of essays, poetry, paintings, and photographs.

City Creatures image 3The contributors bring a story-based approach to this urban safari, taking readers on birding expeditions to the Magic Hedge at Montrose Harbor on the North Side, canoe trips down the South Fork of the Chicago River (better known as Bubbly Creek), and insect-collecting forays or restoration work days in the suburban forest preserves.

The book is organized into six sections, each highlighting one type of place in which people might encounter animals in the city and suburbs. For example, schoolyard chickens and warrior wasps populate “Backyard Diversity,” live giraffes loom at the zoo and taxidermy-in-progress pheasants fascinate museum-goers in “Animals on Display,” and a chorus of deep-freeze frogs awaits in “Water Worlds.”

City Creatures image 2Although the book is rooted in Chicago’s landscape, nature lovers from cities around the globe will find a wealth of urban animal encounters that will open their senses to a new world that has been there all along. Its powerful combination of insightful narratives, numinous poetry, and full-color art throughout will help readers see the city—and the creatures who share it with us—in an entirely new light.

Sustainability and Biodiversity at the Field Museum

Last Monday, as a warm 60+ degree (F) day enveloped downtown Chicago in a splendid preview of spring, my students and I hiked from Roosevelt’s Gage Building in the Loop to the lakefront, where we strolled southward to that great edifice of natural history and biodiversity, the Field Museum. Once there, we met up with Carter O’Brien, the Museum’s sustainability manager (who basically created the job over a number of years after spearheading the FMNH’s recycling program). Carter gave us a comprehensive walking tour of the museum’s grounds, community garden, and loading dock.

SUST 210 visits the FMNH with Carter O'Brien (front left), the museum's sustainability manager (aka "green guru")
SUST 210 visits the FMNH with Carter O’Brien (front left), the museum’s sustainability manager (aka “green guru”)

Along with many of staff and researchers at the FMNH, Carter has spearheaded the museum’s efforts to green its practices in energy consumption, waste management, food service, recycling, transportation, exhibit design, and gardening. Despite being an institution dedicated to studying and conserving the world’s rich trove of biodiversity, the Field Museum until recently was not at all sustainable in its own operations, an irony not lost on environmental advocates such as Carter and many of his museum colleagues. Now the FMNH is a recognized leader in transforming old buildings into sustainably-managed facilities, as it recently garnered a LEED Gold rating on its operations and maintenance from the US Green Building Council, only the 2nd existing museum building in the US to do so, and it has just received a $2 million grant to redevelop its grounds within Chicago’s famed Museum Campus in ways that enhance biodiversity, water conservation, and public education.

Carter brought us inside through the seemingly ancient (and surprisingly small) loading dock, thorough a phalanx of heavy doors, narrow passageways, and claustrophobic elevators (all part of the FM’s 19th Century charm), and to the Botany research division, one of the four major research/collections areas of the museum. There we met up with the equally ebullient Dr. Matt Von Konrat, who has many titles at the museum but is best known as an early land plant botanist (which means he studies mosses and liverworts both here and abroad) and the Head of Botanical Collections at the museum.

Dr. Matt Von Konrat in the Botany Collection at the FMNH (photo: M. Wasinka)
Dr. Matt Von Konrat in the Botany Collection at the FMNH (photo: M. Wasinka)

Dr. Von Konrat was kind enough to set up a sampling of preserved plant specimens from the Museum’s vast collection, which when arrayed on a huge wooden table represented a journey of 500 million years of land plant evolution. Many of these examples had special significance as type specimens, which are recognized as being archetypal examples of the species that are used for benchmarking certain key identifying characteristics.

Photo: M. Wasinka
Photo: M. Wasinka

One plant, a particularly tiny moss, held special significance in a recent court case about Burr Oak Cemetery scandal  in the far South Side Chicago neighborhood of Dunning. Cemetery caretakers dug up several hundred human remains and dumped them in a mass grave in order to sell additional plots in the cemetery over a several year period. The moss was part of forensic evidence analyzed by Dr. Von Konrat that proved the involvement of cemetery employees in this heinous crime. The story illustrates the profoundly important role that environmental evidence can play in forensics, and the potential value in aligning the study of botany (and sustainability) with that of criminal justice.

After both of these splendid tours, my students and I ventured forth into the public area of the museum — its exhibits, naturally! — where we inspected the notable (and LEED Gold certified) conservation exhibit, Restoring Earth, which documents FMNH efforts to conserve natural and human communities in South America as well as restore local prairie, woodland, and wetland ecosystems here in the Chicago region.

Photo: M. Wasinka
Photo: M. Wasinka

Biodiversity in the News: the Practice of Biology in Modern Times

Daniel Molloy working in Sleepy Hollow Lake, Athens NY (photo: L. Mann/APO)
Daniel Molloy working in Sleepy Hollow Lake, Athens NY (photo: L. Mann/APO)

This past week I’ve come across two fascinating and instructive news articles about biologists in NY and IL doing important research in different contexts, with instructive lessons for how we conserve biodiversity in the face of urbanization and invasive species. Today’s NY Times‘ Science Times section features this piece on Daniel P. Molloy, a biologist at the New York State Museum who has spent his career studying and developing environmentally-safe biological controls for invasive species, such as the notorious zebra and quagga mussels that plague the Great Lakes ecosystem.

David Bohlen in his office (photo: Tom Handy, IL Times)
David Bohlen in his office (photo: Tom Handy, IL Times)

The other story, from my own state of Illinois, appeared on Feb. 6th in Illinois Times (Springfield) — a long feature article on the work of H. David Bohlen, who has studied the bird populations of Sangamon County in Central IL for a continuous 40-year period and just released a massive two-volume report on his research. Bohlen is a biologist with the Illinois State Museum in Springfield. His 2013 report, “A Study of the Birds of Sangamon County, Illinois, 1970-2010,” can be found here as pdfs (Volume 1 and Volume 2).

The valuable work of these two scientists illustrates several points about the impact of biological research in conserving biodiversity and making ecosystems more sustainable. Molloy’s research strives to find and implement natural biological controls (such as a species of bacteria) for invasive species, not just to effectively mitigate their impacts on the food chain but also to avoid using chemical toxins and further polluting freshwater aquatic systems as a means of “saving” them. His work also demonstrates the increasing prominence of microbiology in sustainability science, which is also a key starting point for developing biofuels (itself a really hot topic!).

Bohlen’s field-based research method, by contrast, is a throwback to the organismal field studies of natural history that were common in the 19th century but have largely fallen out of favor with the biological mainstream’s emphasis on cellular- and molecular-level work. Yet Bohlen’s phenomenal 40-year record of avian biodiversity in a representative Midwestern farm county shows how the land use changes resulting from decades of urbanization and industrial agriculture have negatively impacted the diversity and abundance of bird species in the Illinois landscape. It also illustrates what you can accomplish by walking around, observing, and recording systematic phenological data over a long-term timeframe.

Job Opening: Assistant Volunteer Coordinator at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie

Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, located just north of Wilmington IL in Will County, is seeking a full-time Assistant Volunteer Coordinator.  This position is possible because of a partnership between the U.S. Forest Service and The Nature Conservancy.

Midewin signTo view this job posting and apply, please visit www.nature.org/careers.  You can search by using the job ID #41231.  All applicants must apply online; Midewin does not accept emailed resumes. Submit your resume and cover letter as one document.  All applications must be submitted in the system prior to 11:59 pm Eastern Time on July 16, 2013.

For more information, consult the Volunteer page on the Midewin website, and/or contact:

Allison Cisneros – Volunteer Coordinator
The Nature Conservancy @ U.S. Forest Service
Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
30239 South IL State Route 53, Wilmington IL 60481
Work: 815.423.2149    Cell: 815.474.3808
acisneros@tnc.org