News and Events

Our goal is to keep you updated on what is going on around our campus and community. Please help us do this by sharing information about news and events with us. Contact Bonnie Hallam at bhallam@brynmawr.edu if you have news or events you would like to share.

Environmental Studies Program Newsletter

Current Academic Year

                            April 2017

                

• March 2017
• February 2017
• December 2016
• October 2016
• September 2016

2015-2016 Academic Year

• May 2016
• April 2016
• March 2016
• February 2016
• January 2016

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News and Events

 

 Monday, July 25, 2017 Franziska Eller Seminar - Bad reeds grow tall – Potential utilization of invasive reed biomass for bioenergy purposes”

 Franziska Eller,a collaborator of Tom Mozdzer's from Denmark, works in the Hans Brix group.  She will be giving a seminar at 4 pm, Monday July 25 at Bryn Mawr College in Park 229.  This seminar is open to all, and please share this announcement with anyone that may be interested.  Please RSVP to Tom Mozdzer at tmozdzer@brynmawr.edu  

 

Franziska’s talk “Bad reeds grow tall – Potential utilization of invasive reed biomass for bioenergy purposes” will focus on paludiculture – the wet cultivation of marshland, a novel practice in Europe used to preserve peatland formerly drained for agricultural purposes.  In Europe, the concept of paludiculture (e.g. the cultivation of marshlands) is gaining attention as a sustainable alternative to conventional bioenergy crops such as sugar cane or maize. In marsh-cultivation, the above ground biomass of perennial grasses are sustainably harvested and utilized for several purposes, without affecting the belowground resources allowing for natural reestablishment and continued annual harvest without human intervention. Paludiculture offers a potential solution for a climate-friendly energy supply (e.g. insulation material, thatching, biogas production, pellets for biocombustion, etc).  Her project will help to identify alternate bioenergy plants (other than agricultural crops) to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels globally, and her trip to the USA is aimed at sampling North American introduced Phragmites australis. 

Dr. Tom Mozdzer, Biology, has been studying the reed, Phragmites, to try and determine its positive or negative influences on wetlands in the face of global change.  Read this blog article, highlighting Dr. Mozdzer's work,  "Jekyll or Hyde? The Many Faces of Phragmites" , to learn more about this confounding plant! 

 

 

Dr. Carol Hager, Environmental Studies Program Steering Committee Member, has co-edited a new book with Christoph Stefes of the University of Colorado, Denver, German's Energy Transition:  A Comparative Perspective.  In the first chapter, Dr. Hager references the Frieburg, Germany area, the destination for the 360^o course Climate Change: Science and Politics, she taught with Dr. Don Barber (Geology) and Dr. David Ross (Economics) in Fall 2015.  This course will again be offered in the fall 2017 semester.  To read more about Dr. Hager's work connecting political science to environmental studies, click here.

Looking for a Summer Environmentally Focused Internship?  

The Environmental Studies Program has funding to offer Green Grants for environmentally focused work.  To learn more about these and other funding for internships, visit the LILAC Summer Internship Funding page.  

You can also click on the Job Opportunity link on the Sidebar to be directed to LanternLink where you can find many environmentally focused internships.  One example of what you might find there is the opportunity to work for IMPACT, a project of Environment America and U.S. PIRG.  IMPACT is currently looking for summer interns to organize around a variety of issues.

 

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