Catch Up With T-RUST

This is part of an ongoing collaborative, student-led seminar series hosted by T-RUST (Transformative Research in Urban Sustainability Training) at WSU and GLIER (Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research) at the University of Windsor. The seminar series is titled Transformative Change in Environmental Sustainability and occurs biweekly on Fridays at 10am.

Title: A clearer view through murky waters? Eutrophication risk, resilience and recovery

Speaker: Dr. Helen Jarvie, University of Waterloo

When: Friday, November 6, 10am

Where: Virtually on Zoom, register here: http://bit.ly/WindsortoWayne. The Zoom link will be sent to the email used for registration two days before the seminar.

Phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) are limiting nutrients for food production, yet we face an overabundance of P and N entering our rivers and lakes, from agricultural production and from wastewater discharges. This impairs water quality, undermines the health of aquatic ecosystems, and threatens water security. This seminar explores the challenges we face in eutrophication management. Changing patterns in nutrient use and management have led to a conundrum of simultaneous nutrient excesses and deficiencies, and the build-up of nutrient legacies in our watersheds, with varying residence times. The chronic release of P and N from these legacy stores may continue to impair river water quality for decades. Using the U.S. Western Lake Erie river tributaries as an example, we show how conservation measures designed to reduce nutrient losses from agricultural land may have inadvertently accelerated the accumulation of labile P at the soil surface and the losses of dissolved P, contributing to the ‘re-eutrophication’ of the western Lake Erie basin. In seeking solutions to eutrophication, there is a pressing need to better quantify nutrient sinks and sources in watersheds, and to ensure realistic expectations for mitigation strategies and timescales for recovery.

Helen Jarvie joined the Water Institute at the University of Waterloo, in January 2020, as Professor of Water and Global Environmental Change. Before relocating to Canada, Helen worked for the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology for 25 years. Helen’s research explores the drivers of eutrophication and water-quality impairment, from UK to global scales. She has particular interest in the sources and biogeochemical cycling of nutrients in rivers, and how safeguarding the functional integrity of rivers and watersheds can help build resilience in water-quality and water-resource security, within the context of climate variability and land-use change.

This is part of an ongoing collaborative, student-led seminar series hosted by T-RUST (Transformative Research in Urban Sustainability Training) at WSU and GLIER (Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research) at the University of Windsor. The seminar series is titled Transformative Change in Environmental Sustainability and occurs biweekly on Fridays at 10am.

Title: Re-shaping our thinking about urban forests as public health infrastructure

Speaker: Dr. Janani Sivarajah, Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, Brock University

When: Friday, October 23, 10am

Where: Virtually on Zoom, register here: http://bit.ly/WindsortoWayne. The Zoom link will be sent to the email used for registration two days before the seminar.

Urban trees provide many ecosystem services along with psycho-socio-cultural, health, and economic benefits to humans. Given the increases in urban development and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is timely to consider urban planning issues and equitable access to these greenspaces and the benefits they provide. Now more than ever, we are more dependent on urban trees and greenspaces for our well-being. The growing trend in current thinking about urban forests as public health infrastructure has elevated the importance of trees in public health and urban greening policies and standards. In this talk, I will draw upon my previous research, highlighting the importance of urban trees as a critical public health infrastructure that impacts academic performance to cancer prevention. I will give some insight on the transdisciplinary nature of my work, conveying it towards different audiences and how it is being applied in the real-world. I will touch upon some of my ongoing work building ecological and community resilience within urban and sub-urban developments. Overall, I will elaborate on how we can work with the health, social, and education sectors to incorporate landscape ecology approaches to aim for greater connectivity between people and nature.

Dr. Janani Sivarajah is an urban forestry and greening researcher, educator, and consultant. She is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre, Brock University and Vineland Research and Innovation Centre. She has a Master of Forest Conservation and Ph.D. in Forestry from the University of Toronto. Her transdisciplinary research explores the ecosystem services of urban trees and public greenspaces, and finds greening solutions to improve the socio-ecological resilience of cities. She is the President of the Ontario Urban Forest Council, Research Associate at the Department of Architectural Science, Ryerson University, and member of the Ontario Professional Foresters Association and the City of Toronto’s Shade Policy Steering Committee. She also lectures at Daniel’s Institute of Forestry and Conservation at the University of Toronto.

Please join us for the second installment of the Green Street virtual seminar series, hosted by the Wayne State University Office of Campus Sustainability. This week, Dr. Donna Kashian (Director of Environmental Science and T-RUST) will present an introduction to arctic amplification, and participate in a discussion with Sierra Club activist Justin Onwenu on climate change and environmental justice.

Register here: https://linktr.ee/sustainability_wsu

To learn more about Green Street and for information regarding other upcoming seminars, please visit the Green Street homepage: https://sustainability.wayne.edu/engagement/green-street.

This is part of an ongoing collaborative, student-led seminar series hosted by T-RUST (Transformative Research in Urban Sustainability Training) at WSU and GLIER (Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research) at the University of Windsor. The seminar series is titled Transformative Change in Environmental Sustainability and occurs biweekly on Fridays at 10am.

Title: Centering Public Scholarship for Transformative Environmental Studies Research: Ongoing Lessons from the Detroit Water Stories Project

Speaker: Dr. Rahul Mitra, Wayne State University

When: Friday, October 9, 10am

Where: Virtually on Zoom, register here: http://bit.ly/WindsortoWayne. The Zoom link will be sent to the email used for registration two days before the seminar.

Abstract: Perhaps in no other field of study is it more vital for scholars to engage and partner with local communities and lay audiences than in Environmental Studies. Nevertheless, public scholarship remains devalued or grossly misunderstood, or practiced as an after-thought to the “serious” work of research. Yet, research, I argue, can only be truly transformative and consequential when it takes into account the concerns and lived experiences of impacted stakeholders. In this talk, I draw from ongoing lessons from a multi-year collaborative ethnography and oral history project, to outline new ways of approaching public scholarship. The Detroit Water Stories project gathers, shares, and analyzes stories of water insecurity and resilience from key stakeholders involved in the city’s ongoing water affordability crisis. In this talk, I review three critical communicative principles—listen, collaborate and amplify—to actualize what Monica Lewis Patrick of We The People of Detroit terms “deputization.” The model of deputized scholarship I advance in this talk is especially geared toward “wicked problems” that demand our attention to complex and overlapping social, structural and environmental issues. It is a grassroots centered approach to scholarship that blends research, service learning and community engagement, blurring boundaries between public and “basic” scholarship.

Rahul Mitra (PhD, Purdue University) is an Associate Professor at Wayne State University, whose research is at the intersection of organizational and environmental communication, focusing on environmental organizing, sustainability and corporate social responsibility, and meaningful work discourses. He is a critical-interpretive scholar, and uses primarily qualitative methods, such as ethnography, interviews, focus groups, discourse analysis, and arts-based research. At WSU, he directs the Resilient Institutions & Sustainable Environments (RISE) Lab, and his research has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed publications such as Environmental Communication, Management Communication Quarterly, Human Relations, Communication Theory, Public Relations Review, and Journal of Business Ethics. Learn more about Dr. Mitra and his work on his website www.rahulmitraphd.com and at www.detroitwaterstories.com

This is the first installment of a collaborative, student-led seminar series hosted by T-RUST (Transformative Research in Urban Sustainability Training) at WSU and GLIER (Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research) at the University of Windsor. The seminar series is titled Transformative Change in Environmental Sustainability and occurs biweekly on Fridays at 10am.

Title: Bridging the gap between science and management: A decade of research, experience and reflection

Speaker: Dr. Vivian Nguyen, Carleton University

When: Friday, September 25, 10am

Where: Virtually on Zoom, register here: http://bit.ly/WindsortoWayne. The Zoom link will be sent to the email used for registration two days before the seminar.

Science has always been portrayed as molecules, beakers, lab coats and math symbols. We often don’t think about how people actually interact with scientific information, and where the ‘science’ goes after it’s done in the lab or field. Today, most research is funded by public money, so it is fair to expect that the work will eventually benefit society and people. Sadly, this is not always the case, and the reasons why are not always clear. This mystery is often called the ‘science-action’ or ‘knowledge-action’ gap. We know the traditional way of communicating science through peer-review and hoping it is picked up and used is not working. But, why is that? what has worked? how can researchers maximize the benefits of their work to relevant users? Dr. Nguyen will discuss some of these questions in the context of how new knowledge generated by fish telemetry technology (i.e. remote tracking of fish) has or has not informed fisheries management. Lessons learned will be discussed based on almost a decade of research, experience, observations and reflections.

Vivian Nguyen is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Environmental and Interdisciplinary Science and the Department of Biology at Carleton University. Her research focuses on the interface of science, society and policy within the themes of environmental change, natural resource management, and food insecurity. Dr. Nguyen also has expertise in the human dimensions of environmental issues and mobilizing ecological knowledge into decisions, policy, and practice. Learn more about Dr. Nguyen’s research here: https://viviannguyen18.wixsite.com/serac

Announcing our new seminar series in partnership with the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER) at the University of Windsor!

For the first time ever, two sister graduate programs – GLIER (University of Windsor) & Transformative Research in Urban Sustainability Training (T-RUST, Wayne State University) – are partnering to deliver a virtual seminar series entitled: Transformative Change in Environmental Sustainability. Seminars will be every 2 weeks starting on September 25th!

The seminar series will be co-run between the graduate student groups at the University of Windsor (GLIER, School of Environment) and Wayne State University T-RUST and will be focused on connecting our virtual graduate student and early-career research communities. Invited speakers reflect a shared commitment to amplifying diverse Black, Indigenous and People of Colour voices and perspectives, and to broaden perspectives through a range of traditional seminars, break out groups for graduate students, special topic panels and global examples of impactful science, practice and policy.

We are excited to announce our first five speakers:

Dr. Vivian Nguyen, Carleton University 

Dr. Rahul Mitra, Wayne State University

Dr. Janani Sivarajah, Brock University 

Dr. Helen Jarvie, University of Waterloo

Dr. Erin Dunlop, Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry

All are welcome! Please register to attend our first seminar here: http://bit.ly/WindsortoWayne

Kate Ekhator, a 2nd year T-RUST PhD student in Civil Engineering, was featured in the WSU Office of International Programs newsletter this month.

Hailing from Nigeria, Kate brings a wealth of knowledge to our program having worked in the oil and gas industry and bringing expertise in water management. Her interdisciplinary project with T-RUST focuses on characterizing stormwater contamination throughout Detroit, and she is working with an anthropologist and communication student to understand risk and mitigation strategies.

Check out the feature story here!