PERSPECTIVES ON SUSTAINABILITY, FOOD ACCESS, HEALTH, ENERGY AND CLIMATE READINESS

Creating morelivable cities

For alumni and friends of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

SPRING/SUMMER 2014

Toward a more livable urban worldFor many people, nothing may seem less natural than a city. Cities are full of people; they’re noisy, dirty, and everywhere marked by artificial activities and materials. People who think about nature often deliberately choose not to think about cities. And yet… And yet cities are constructed from nature: sand, water, metal and stone. They typically teem with life, from insects and rac-coons to coyotes and eagles. Most importantly, the creation of cities always depends on the transformation of surrounding rural

areas, from which flow raw materials, food and energy. As writer Matthew Gandy famously noted in his book Concrete and Clay, “the design, use, and meaning of urban space involve the transformation of nature into a new synthesis.” In this sense, what could be more natural than a city? More than this, cities can even be the key to sustainability. Urban living is far more energy-efficient than life in sprawling suburbs or rural dwellings. The concentration of people allows remarkable innovations in infrastructure and transport. Smart urban design lowers the human footprint on the Earth, to say nothing of the cultural inflorescence and creativity made possible by cosmopolitan life. Finally, thinking about cities as environments is made all the more imperative by a simple reality. Before the end of the century, more than 75 percent of us worldwide will live in cities, compared to just over half of us now. This revolution means cities simply can’t be ignored. Visiting Shanghai on behalf of the Institute in March of this year, however, I couldn’t help but be concerned about what cities do to the environment and to the people who live there. Faced with snarled traffic, filthy air, and miles and miles of construction made me wonder if people couldn’t do a better job of crafting their urban environments. Fortunately, folks associated with the Nelson Institute have been thinking about the “nature of cities” for a long time, and we’re pleased to profile just a few of them in this issue of In Common. Our research centers, and countless individual faculty members, are investigating urban energy systems, air quality, food security, weather-readiness, health, social stability and other issues related to urban sustainability. The Nelson Institute, as an interdisciplinary engine of collaboration, is bringing together strengths across campus to wrestle with the challenges of understanding urban ecosystems, designing and building for extreme heat and rain events, and learning to live with the diverse species that share our streets, parks, golf courses and sewers. But we still have a long way to go. That’s why we’re prepared to double-down on urban ecol-ogy here at Nelson by organizing teams to apply for major funding in the area of urban ecosystem science, supporting service learning capstones that provide students with encounters with urban wildlife, and forging new partnerships with private industries and utilities at work in cities. The future of the Earth rests in what we do in cities, whether we like it or not. The Nelson Institute is ready to help answer the call of our inevitable, new urban natures.

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In Common is published by the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Funding for produc-tion and distribution is provided through the generosity of our alumni and friends. Contact us at incommon@nelson.wisc.edu.

Steve PomplunExecutive editor

Meghan LepistoManaging editor

Danielle Lamberson Philipp Designer

Donald RadcliffeWriter

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2 Message from the director

4 Around the Nelson Institute

26 Investing in Nelson

28 First person

30 Alumni notes

Paul RobbinsDirector, Nelson Institute

C O N T E N T S

Catching up with graduates; alumni awards recipients

Student Anna Meding has an energizing experience in Uganda

Gifts provide crucial source of student, program support

Before the end of the century, more than 75 percent of us worldwide will live in cities, compared to just over half of us now. This revolution means cities simply can’t be ignored.

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Livable citiesNelson alumni offer thoughts on urban futures

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SUSTAINABILITY

FOOD ACCESS

HEALTH

ENERGY

CLIMATE READINESS

A global view of urban growthAn interview with professor Harvey Jacobs

Growing food in forgotten spacesAmanda Fuller sees unearthed potential in vacant city lots

Hungry for moreUniversity-community partnership seeks healthy food for all

Movement as medicineInnovative research shows how critical activity is to health

Clearing the air Air quality research betters public health and policy

A livable city solution:The powerful potential of microgrids

Social networks boost heat wave resilience

Readying communities for rising seas

Extreme weather event powers simulation tool

Preparing for change

4 In Common Spring/Summer 2014 5

”“Adventures abroad

While studying abroad at the National University of Ireland, Galway, English and environmental studies major Peyton Sweeney shared eco-minded observations in a blog for the Nelson Institute. From a stop at the last port of call for the ship Titanic to a wondrous hike

through the pristine Swiss Alps, you can follow her experience at go.wisc.edu/lassinclass. Meanwhile, economics and environmental studies major Paul Davidson shared stunning snapshots from his study abroad in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. To see a selection of his photos: go.wisc.edu/paulstudyabroad

Farmers’ markets are widely praised as a way to bring fresh, locally grown food into urban communities. But what if you start one and nobody comes? That’s one of several questions Nelson Institute students tackled in the fall semester in South Madison to help guide sustainable community food systems. To learn more about their service-learning projects: go.wisc.edu/EScapstone

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SNAPSHO TS

Around the Nelson Institute

Save the date for Neil deGrasse Tyson Renowned astrophysicist and author Neil deGrasse Tyson will keynote the ninth annual Nelson Institute Earth Day Conference in Madison on April 20, 2015. Tyson is director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and host of the televi-sion series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. He is an accomplished communicator of science to general audiences and an outspoken advocate for science education and research. The conference will explore the intersection of science, society and the environment, with registration opening in the fall. For more information and updates: nelson.wisc.edu/earthday

Research by Nelson affiliates shapes national climate reportUW-Madison researchers, including many affiliated with the Nelson Institute, contributed to the third U.S. National Climate Assessment released by the White House in May. The report details how climate change is affecting different regions of the country and key sectors of the national economy, documenting links between climate change and more frequent and intense extreme weather events.  Jonathan Patz, a professor of environmental studies and popula-tion health sciences and director of the UW-Madison Global Health Institute, was a lead author on the Midwest section and his extensive work is referenced throughout the report. Work from the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research and Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment is also cited, as is the 2011 report of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts, a statewide project co-founded by the Nelson Institute and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Other contributors include a number of Nelson graduate students and alumni. To view the full report: nca2014.globalchange.gov

Nearly 800 participants from across the upper Midwest gathered at the eighth annual Nelson Institute Earth Day Conference in April to explore ideas and issues related to the Anthropocene — the age of humans — a term many scientists are using to describe the profound impact people are having on the global environment. To view photos and videos from the event: go.wisc.edu/earthdayrecap

Tales from Planet Earth travels to StockholmIn its first trip overseas, the Tales from Planet Earth film festival premiered in Stockholm in April with a series of films, lectures, workshops and panel discussions. The events were part of a longer-term collaboration between the Nelson Institute Center for Culture, History and Environment, the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. The festival will be followed by a three-day international workshop, “The Anthropocene: Cabinet of Curiosities Slam,” at UW-Madison Nov. 8-10 that will feature a keynote address by Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the recent New York Times bestseller The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History.

Tribal youth media project yields movies that matterHoping to spread Native American cultural practices within and between tribes and to the outside world, Nelson affiliate Patty Loew and her UW-Madison Life Sciences Communication colleague Don Stanley co-founded the Tribal Youth Media Project. Loew says the initiative aims to close the “digital divide” between Native Americans and their non-native peers by empowering native teens with the tools and skills to produce video stories. To learn more and see one of the films: go.wisc.edu/tribalyouthmedia

299 students earned degrees and certificates from the Nelson Institute in May, joining the 6,400-strong UW-Madison Class of 2014.

FIVE SEMI LOADS of Styrofoam have been diverted from the waste stream,

thanks to the student-led campus initiative Styrocycle. The pilot Styrofoam recycling and reuse network was recently awarded a $90,000 EPA grant to expand and prototype the program.

#23 MILLION INSECT SAMPLES, FROM PARASITES THE SIZE OF A PINHEAD TO BRIGHT GREEN GOLIATH BEETLES PROPORTIONED LIKE FAT MICE, RESIDE IN THE WORLD-CLASS WISCONSIN INSECT RESEARCH COLLECTION DIRECTED BY NELSON INSTITUTE AFFILIATE DAN YOUNG: GO.WISC.EDU/INSECTCOLLECTION

is the ranking Wisconsin received in a recent national survey of the number of resi-dents considered birders, bested only by Vermont. With the help

of “Birding to Change the World,” the Nelson Institute’s mentoring and outdoor education partnership with Madison’s Sherman Middle School, Wisconsin could some day jump to the top spot– the program’s become one of Sherman’s most popular after-school activities.

If you choose a career path and find it isn’t speaking to who you are, I think you should do whatever you need to do in terms of changing direction. -SUE MONTGOMERY, WHO AFTER A 20-YEAR CAREER PRACTICING FAMILY MEDICINE REMOVED HER DOC-

TOR’S COAT TO INSTEAD WORK TO CREATE A HEALTHIER ENVIRONMENT, EARNING HER MASTER’S DEGREE

IN WATER RESOURCES MANAGEMENT IN MAY.

40 BILLION TONS of carbon dioxide were emit-ted globally in 2013 from the burning of fossil fuels, driving the atmospheric concentration to a level not seen in human history and raising the stakes for adaptation: go.wisc.edu/carbon 

$30,000 was awarded to Nelson graduate student Valerie Stull and her teammate Rachel Bergmans in April in two student innova-tion competitions at UW-Madison. Their Mighty Mealworm startup will produce an edible mealworm protein powder to improve food security in parts of sub-Saharan Africa most affected by drought and climate change.

“December was the third warmest, globally, on record. January was the fourth warmest, globally, on record. The fact that we here in Wisconsin have been shivering for three months shows what an outlier we’ve been in the big picture.” -SENIOR SCIENTIST STEVE VAVRUS, PUTTING INTO PERSPECTIVE THE

STATE’S BRUTALLY COLD WINTER: GO.WISC.EDU/VAVRUSWINTER

Liberia, Madison and ‘A Film Never Made’A serendipitous meeting between Nelson Institute graduate student Emmanuel Urey and faculty affiliate Gregg Mitman has led the pair on a stirring journey to reconnect Liberia’s present with the past and share the story in a forthcoming documentary.  Urey, a child of Liberia’s civil war, journeyed from a rural upbringing in the West African Republic of Liberia to higher education at the Nelson Institute. In a chance meeting with Mitman, he learned of a rare cache of film shot in Liberia by a 1926 Harvard sci-entific expedition sponsored by Firestone Plantations Company. The unedited footage juxtaposes images of mythic chiefs, village life and tribal customs with uncomfort-able glimpses into forced labor, inequitable social practices, and clear-cutting on traditional land. Urey took the footage home, traveling the streets of Monrovia and remote rural villages. Follow the adven-ture in an inspiring video: go.wisc.edu/afilmnevermade

Workshop yields conservation solutions in ChinaNew, collaborative strategies for maintaining China’s rich biodiversity emerged from a workshop in March hosted in Sichuan by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Chengdu Institute of Biology and the Nelson Institute. The workshop was meant to build research collabora-tion between the institutes and to explore opportunities to help train conservation managers through innovative curriculum designs. Cooperative efforts between the institutes extend back to the 1970s.

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the bird’s eye view, you get a sense of how the connections of the world work and the ways that they do.-PROFESSOR BILL CRONON, ADDRESSING STUDENTS IN HIS AMERICAN

ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY CLASS. SEE VIDEO OF THE SEMESTER-ENDING

LECTURE: GO.WISC.EDU/CRONONVIDEO

6 In Common Spring/Summer 2014 7

NELSON IN THE NEWS

Assistant professor Dan Vimont joined Wisconsin Public Radio in February to discuss climate change in Wisconsin and how human actions, innovation and adaptation can help chart a new course forward. go.wisc.edu/vimontWPR

ClimateWire turned to professor Jonathan Patz for perspective on how the hallmarks of a warming climate – heavier rains, more severe droughts, rising sea levels and longer growing seasons – are spreading pathogens such as malaria, Lyme disease and cholera throughout the world: go.wisc.edu/climatesymptoms

With the Madison community captivated by a family of red foxes on campus, emeritus professor Stanley Temple spoke about the animals’ panache in urban environments: go.wisc.edu/foxesWPR

Recent alumna Monica Nigon (ESC ‘14) penned a column for The Capital Times about mentoring Sherman Middle School nature explorers in a Nelson capstone class. To save the planet, she suggests, we should start close to home: go.wisc.edu/nigon

Despite record ice on the Great Lakes in the winter of 2013, climate forecasts still suggest the trend is warming and ice cover is expected to decline over the coming years, Val Bennington and Michael Notaro told Wisconsin Public Radio in April: go.wisc.edu/lakeice

In Nature, associate professor Tracey Holloway shared her experience helping to found a network for female researchers that has grown into the 1,700-member Earth Science Women’s Network. go.wisc.edu/hollowaynature

Possible futures for Wisconsin’s Yahara Watershed were unveiled in May as part of the university’s Water Sustainability and

Climate project, a five-year, multimillion-dollar initiative funded by the National Science Foundation.  The initiative, called Yahara 2070, is a set of four scenarios – fictional yet plausible stories grounded in rigorous scientific methodology – about the watershed in the year 2070, each based on varying social and environmental trends. Numerous Nelson Institute affiliates and scientists are involved, including Chris Kucharik as lead principal investigator.

Research partnerships, projections explore environmental ‘what-ifs’Dozens of grant-supported projects are underway in the Nelson Institute at any time. Below are a few examples of the broad spectrum of research generated by our centers, faculty, staff and students.

Around the Nelson Institute

Professor Jonathan Patz chaired a 20-nation joint meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in November meant to build interdisciplinary bridges to address climate change in Africa, and will continue to help build environmental health collaborations there. Ahead of the meeting, he collaborated with the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research (CCR) to review the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report with a focus on the already vulnerable continent.

Research by CCR associate director Michael Notaro, utilizing high-resolution climate projection data from fellow CCR climate scientist David Lorenz, is helping to better illustrate what winters in the Midwest could look like later this century. The snow model projects a reduction in annual snowfall in the late 21st century by 24 percent (about 21 inches) for a low-carbon-emission scenario and 40 percent (about 35 inches) for a high-carbon-emission scenario. Yet total winter precipitation is expected to increase, with more rain as winters get warmer. And very heavy snow-storms in the region might also become more frequent. Notaro also studied how lake-effect snow in the Great Lakes Basin will change. His findings suggest the region will see a decrease in lake-effect snowstorms by the end of the century. An increase in temperatures might signal a switch to lake-effect freezing rain, creating unfavorable winter conditions and wetter, heavier snowpack. 

In a study published in November in PLOS ONE, a team of researchers used modeling tools to explore how switching land from growing an annual corn crop to growing perennial grasses for bioenergy would impact farmer income, energy production and environ-mental benefits. Planting perennial crops such as switchgrass near creeks increased greenhouse gas miti-gation, water quality, beneficial insects and energy production though it decreased total net income of farms in the study area by roughly $30 million. As follow-up, the team is devel-oping a web-based tool anyone can use to predict how land use decisions will impact outcomes including biofuel production, farmer income and environmen-tal services.

Research led by assistant profes-sor Erika Marin-Spiotta suggests that deep soils formed on the Earth’s surface thousands of years ago can contain long-buried stocks of organic carbon that could, through erosion, agriculture, deforestation, min-ing and other human activities, contribute to global climate change. The deep soil also serves as a time capsule, providing a snapshot of a past environment undergoing significant change due to a shifting climate. Former Nelson graduate stu-dent Nina Chaopricha (M.S. ‘07, Ph.D. ‘13 ER) also contributed to the research, reported in May in Nature Geoscience.

In a paper published in May in Science, Nelson Institute associate professor Adrian Treves and Ohio State University’s Jeremy Bruskotter provide insights to aid future wildlife recovery and restoration efforts. The analysis includes research by former graduate student Jamie Hogberg (M.S. CBSD ‘14) and others affiliated with the institute. The authors challenge the conventional view that intolerance and intention to kill wildlife predators result primarily from perceived

The industrial revolution is often cited as the trigger of human-caused climate change. However, preindustrial people may have influenced the global temperature about as much as their fossil-fuel burning successors, according to a study published in Geophysical Research Letters by CCR scientists Feng He, Steve Vavrus and John Kutzbach, in collaboration with researchers at the Universities of Virginia and Geneva. The team employed a new climate model to simulate historical land cover changes up to the year 1850. Before the first ounce of petroleum was ever burnt, deforestation and agriculture had raised the global temperature about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit above expected levels, their research shows.

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Professor Jack Kloppenburg provided much of the guiding vision for the UW-Madison-led Open Source Seed Initiative (OSSI) that in April released a novel seed ownership agree-ment. The group’s new Open Source Seed Pledge is designed to keep seeds free for all people to grow, breed and share for perpetuity, with the goal of pro-tecting plants from patents and other restrictions down the line. OSSI was established in 2011 around concern over the decreasing availability of plant seeds for public plant breeders and farmers.

CCR faculty associate Steve Vavrus has shown that strong Arctic cyclones are happen-ing more frequently and becoming more intense, and he suspects that loss of sea ice is to blame. Vavrus studied more than a century’s worth of barometric pressure readings as an indicator of increasing storms, and examined its relation to loss of sea ice. His find-ings, published in Geophysical Research Letters, show that as the record moved closer to the present, more days with abnormally low barometric pressure occurred. Sea ice reflects much more light energy than the dark open ocean, which captures and stores heat energy. It also acts as an insulator, isolating the cold atmosphere from the warmer ocean. Heat and moisture fuels storms and as sea ice retreats, a greater area of relatively warm open water is being exposed to the cold atmosphere, with more heat energy and moisture released into the system, Vavrus explains.

New knowledge of logger-head sea turtles’ first years of life, published in March in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, may provide better protection for threatened and endangered sea turtle species. So little is known about what happens between the ocean escape of infant turtles and the return, years later, of larger juveniles, the period is often called “the lost years.” Zoologist Warren Porter was part of a team that used satellite transmitters to track the move-ments of 17 neonate turtles across the Atlantic Ocean. The research showed that turtles choose a habitat of floating mats of sargassum, a species of seaweed. The tangles of sargas-sum are magnets for other small sea creatures, too, providing food for the turtles, and they also offer concealment and a blanket of warmth to super-charge the turtles’ growth.

A new study from UW-Madison researchers, including Steve Carpenter, sheds light on what climate change – specifically, changing precipitation patterns and more severe droughts – could mean for life in lakes. The team monitored a Wisconsin lake from 2001 to 2009 – a time when a prolonged drought greatly reduced lake levels throughout the region.

threats to livelihoods, and they recommend caution in legalizing the killing of preda-tors. Rather, they suggest that experimentally manipulating monetary and social incentives would help conservationists determine which factors influ-ence poaching and intolerant behavior toward predators, both individually and across cultures.

As a graduate student, Chris Uejio (Ph.D. ’11 ER), now a fac-ulty member at the University of Florida, led a study showing that when rainfall increased during summer and fall, there was a notable increase in gastrointes-tinal illness amongst children in places with untreated water. Municipalities with treated water and private wells did not see the same increase in illnesses.  In the results, published in April in the American Journal of Public Health, the research-ers recommend that protecting drinking water with treatment, and with delivery infrastructure in areas with untreated water, may be important measures for children’s health.

The researchers found that under normal water-level situ-ations, trees that have toppled into a lake’s near shore waters offer a refuge for fishes that would otherwise be lunch, and provide food for those fishes — serving as structure for algae and aquatic insects. When water levels drop, how-ever, species are forced to move into what’s called the foraging arena, where they’re directly interacting with predators.

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MARIA POWELL (M.S. ’00 PH.D. ’04 LR) PRESIDENT, MIDWEST ENVIRONMENTAL

JUSTICE ORGANIZATION

In my imagined environmentally just city of the future, all people — regard-less of race, gender, income or circumstances — live in an environment free of toxic pollution and have enough food and a home. Land, air, water and wildlife are healing from two centuries of abuse. To get there, our current destructive culture has ceased. Instead, permacul-ture principles guide all decisions. All food, ENERGY and resources are from this bioregion. Diverse government leaders prioritize human and environ-mental health over economic growth — honestly and transparently engaging citizens. And educational institutions, embracing multicultural perspectives, nurture diverse, healthy local communities and ecosystems.

MATT COVERT (M.S. ’12 ER) GREEN DOWNTOWN

PROGRAM MANAGER,

1000 FRIENDS OF WISCONSIN

Sustainable cities in thirty years will have several notable features. First, metro areas will be more polycentric, meaning that older, inner-ring suburbs will develop walkable urban centers and increased population densities to support them. Second, sustainable cities will look quite dif-ferent at a bird’s-eye view from current ones, as communities cope with CHANGING CLIMATES by painting rooftops white (or growing them green), choosing renewable energy, and divesting in costly automobile infrastructure. Most importantly, cities will take an active role in their broader surroundings, using and mimick-ing healthy ecosystems to revolutionize the waste stream, stormwater runoff, and the urban food system.

BETSY HAM (M.S. ’87 LR) DIRECTOR OF LAND PROTECTION,

MAINE COAST HERITAGE TRUST 

I think every city needs places where people can experience a little “country”: pocket parks, walking and biking trails, community gardens, accessible and clean ponds and lakes; all these amenities make cities livable. You don’t have to go to a national park to appreciate nature; a one-acre vacant lot transformed into a garden can achieve the same results.   

KIMBERLY BECKETT (ESC ’04) DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS

RELATIONS, DOWNTOWN AKRON

The livable city is comprised of vibrant, safe, diverse, HEALTHY neighbor-hoods close to employment centers and services. Neighbors have a variety of opportunities to be sociable and supportive of each other. There are ample green spaces where citizens can interact through physical activity and community gatherings. The center of the livable city is the downtown, which offers a variety of business, retail, residential, and arts, culture and entertainment opportu-nities. The downtown is the living room of the community; a place where the diversity of the community is displayed. Citizens believe in the city, believe they are important factors in its success and believe the city has something to offer them.

NINA MUKHERJI (M.S. ’09 CBSD)

DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMS,

REAL FOOD CHALLENGE

Politically stable societies have at least one thing in common: adequate ACCESS TO FOOD. To maintain this access in the face of climate change and increased transportation costs, cities will have to source most food from within or near their boundaries. Farmers will have to focus on growing soil (composting) and growing a diversity of crops, particularly those that are drought resistant. As more people find jobs as farmworkers and food service workers, it will be essential for those sectors to organize for better conditions. The most important ingredient for a sustainable city is a citizenry that stands together and is ready to organize when things go wrong.

As an ecologist and natural-ist, when I think of livable, SUSTAINABLE cities, the defini-tion of habitat comes to mind. Food, water, shelter and space, in the right arrangement.  I think cities of the future will play a larger role in securing the ecosystem services that sustain them. A great example of this is the New York City Watershed Protection Program. By preserv-ing the land, rivers and streams around its reservoirs, the city has avoided the cost of water filtration.

MICHAEL HEALY (M.S. ’09 ER)PRINCIPAL ECOLOGIST,

ADAPTIVE RESTORATION LLC

Nelson alumni offer

their thoughts on urban futures

What will the cities of the future be like? That question has been explored for centuries. It

drives the plot in countless works of fic-tion and film, with visions ranging from Ernest Callenbach’s optimistic Ecotopia to the dark and dysfunctional Los Angeles of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

Entertainment aside, the matter of our metropolitan future has grown in urgency as the world rapidly urbanizes. Researchers, planners, investors and advocates face a difficult question: How can we design and build interconnected physical and social systems that enable cities to provide clean air and water, nutrition and health, quality housing, access to nature, civic engagement, and personal and economic security for all citizens?

As part of this special issue of In Common, we asked several Nelson Institute alumni to look 30 years down the road and imagine more livable, sustainable urban communities.

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WHAT DO YOU SEE AS KEYS TO A LIVABLE CITY? AND HOW MIGHT THAT CHANGE AS YOU GO FROM A CITY LIKE MADISON TO A MEGACITY OF MILLIONS?

We’ve been urban in the developed parts of the world for roughly a century, so we know how to think about what it means to be predominantly urban in the United States and Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan. But we really don’t know what it means when much of that urban popula-tion is in global megacities. On top of that, a very significant portion of that population is living in slums or informal settlements. When I’m teaching, I show my students videos and data-bases that estimate that more than a million people a week are migrating to cities in the

A global view of urban growth

sustainability

IN THINKING ABOUT THE MANY PLACES YOU’VE TRAVELED, IS THERE ONE AREA THAT STICKS OUT AS GETTING IT PARTICULARLY RIGHT WITH REGARD TO FOSTERING SUSTAINABLE CITIES?

People from all over the world go to the Netherlands to look at how the Dutch do what they do. Issues of water, transportation and energy use are three of the elements the Dutch have long paid attention to. However, is the Dutch model a good one for Mumbai or Nairobi? The Netherlands is a developed country with a multicentury history of social cooperation in the management of land and natural resources; they’re a very small nation, much of which is technically below sea level; and they devel-oped a set of ways of thinking about and acting on what we today would call sustainabil-ity. These elements are deeply ingrained in Dutch culture. One of the themes a lot of us are grappling with globally is this question of how do you create a consciousness, a culture and modes of interaction which will lead people both to be happy with their own lives, but to also gather to create environ-ments which work for everyone, including their children and their grandchildren. For me, the bottom line issue of environ-mental studies, no matter where you are in the spectrum, is that we all think about several generations into the future. The challenge is how we begin to move people in that direction. I’ll go back to the poverty issue. It’s very difficult when people are struggling on a day-to-day basis. It’s not impossible;

There are multiple case studies around the world that seem to come out with different answers and there are strong advocates on both sides. My part of it is, what do you do with the millions of people living in places like Nairobi, Johannesburg and Mumbai who have tremendous insecurity in the day to day? People go to work in the morning and don’t know when they come home at night if the place they call home will be there. Even in the poor-est of the poorest neighborhoods of a city in the United States, few people have to live in the conditions these people live in. I show my students a movie about informal settlements in India, which makes the point that in one of these settlements in Mumbai, there’s one work-ing toilet for every 800 people. Afterwards, you see the shock on the students’ faces; they can’t get their minds around this.

10 In Common

Harvey Jacobs

Urbanization is one of the most profound trends reshaping the human presence on the planet. More than half of the global population now lives in cities, a figure expected to grow to at least 75 percent by the end of this century. In the developing world – and especially its megacities – this migration and growth poses enormous and interconnected social and environmental challenges, according to Harvey Jacobs, a professor of urban and regional planning and environ-mental studies. Jacobs is a widely recognized expert on property rights, land use and social con-flict, and he is studying how these issues intersect and escalate. He has worked and lectured on these topics in locations ranging from Albania to Italy to Zimbabwe, and recently shared his thoughts on global urban sustainability.

we have wonderful examples that pop up of people living in circumstances of great pov-erty who yet somehow begin to act and motivate others to understand that sustainability isn’t just about someone else, that it can be about me, and it can help me. But unfortu-nately, those can be quite the exception.

HOW DOES CLIMATE CHANGE FACTOR INTO OR COMPLICATE THESE ISSUES, FOR EXAMPLE IN A COASTAL LOCATION LIKE BANGLADESH WHERE PEOPLE ARE HAVING TO MIGRATE DUE TO EXTREME WEATHER AND RISING WATERS?

It factors into it very directly and it complicates it tremen-dously. I regularly interact with ministry officials from a variety of countries, including many of the Pacific Islands, who say that in 20 years their country won’t exist. There are multiple questions that flow from that. Where do they go? Whose responsibility is it that they have to go, and who bears the burden of the transi-tion? Some of the people in the Bangladesh parts of the world are beginning to say, “This is not our fault this happened; why do we have to bear this burden?” Right away we bump up against culture and very old social prejudices. This is where we need a global conversation, but we don’t have global insti-tutions that have the authority to make decisions about this. They can air the issues and get us talking with each other, but when you have a nation like the United States who says we won’t sign the Kyoto Protocol, and in fact you have a media

conversation in the United States that says climate change isn’t real, it further complicates this. For me it’s fascinating to be in other parts of the world and have people look at me and say “Are there really people in the U.S. who think climate change isn’t real?” They just can’t believe that the scientific evidence isn’t compelling and that there may be hundreds of thousands of people who from their point of view are like ostriches sticking their heads in the sand. That’s just going to further complicate the problem, because it delays until later and later the ability to act. And at some point it really will be too late. If you look back in history, these kinds of very significant climate changes have led to major national and inter-national conflict and we see everything moving in that direc-tion, whether it’s about poverty, assigning of blame, or about where refugees will go – there are big issues staring at us.

AS YOU LOOK TO THE GLOBAL URBAN FUTURE, IS THERE ONE IDEA OR SOLUTION THAT YOU THINK COULD BE IMPLEMENTED ALMOST ANYWHERE TO HELP MAKE A MODERN CITY MORE LIVABLE OR SUSTAINABLE?

There is actually a lot of global discussion about urban food systems and the fact that, regardless of the size, density or tenure situation of the city, there are often places where food could be grown. And there’s often high motivation for people to want to grow food. A second important part of it, but a much more difficult one, is

transportation. Transportation is a very big contributor to non-sustainability. The issue in China with the growth in the number of cars, smog, and the consumption of oil and gas… there’s an obvious solution and it’s about mass transit. It doesn’t have to be investment in trains, which can be wonderful if done right; it can be invest-ment in bus systems and other forms of public transit. If you’re going to have cities and they’re going to work, people have to get around them. Nobody likes sitting in a traffic jam. And who suffers the most when transportation doesn’t work? The poorest of the poor. They tend to live the farthest from work and spend the most time in transportation, in uncomfortable and unsafe scenarios. Then an issue which comes right back to urban plan-ning, which has been a much harder one to implement, is the question of where job oppor-tunities are and where people live, and trying to think about the growth, development and management of the city so those two things – where people live and where they work – are not so separated. In Madison, what do we like to do? We like to get on our bicycles or the bus and it’s very easy to get around and do what we need to do. People everywhere would like that opportunity.

ARE YOU EXPLORING THESE CHALLENGES?

I’m exploring one aspect of it: the security of people in slums and informal settlements. The familiar images are the bulldoz-ers that come in and destroy shacks overnight, leaving tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people homeless. There’s a very rich global discussion from the United Nations, the World Bank and a global network of scholars ask-ing the question of, what do you do? Do you give these people ownership of land in some fashion? And in giving them ownership of land, will their lives be improved? If their lives are improved, will the sustain-ability of the city be improved? Or, is giving them ownership of land in some way not really an answer?

INTERVIEW BY MEGHAN LEPISTO

world. That’s four times the size of Madison in a single week; it’s hard for most of us to wrap our heads around that notion. The challenge to me is not how do you make a city like Madison sustainable, because in many ways it’s easy when you’ve got a city of 250,000 and a very educated and involved citizenry. What’s hard is what you do when the world is domi-nated by the Mexico Cities, the Johannesburgs, the Nairobis, the Mumbais or the Bejings. Urban sustainability is really about figuring out how to engage resources, people and infrastructure in these megaci-ties. What do you do when you have high rates of poverty and people struggling day to day to be alive, who therefore have less motivation to think about or care about sustainability in terms of a multigenerational frame?

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What can $50 buy you these days? In Louisville, Kentucky, five parcels of land and a world of

opportunity. After learning of a 16-page city inventory of foreclosed vacant property that in some cases was being released for free or at low cost, Amanda Fuller jumped at the chance to farm one small portion. In 2013, she and her friend and colleague Peter Thiong founded Lots of Food, purchas-ing five adjoining lots from Louisville’s Land Bank Authority and becoming the first to do so for the purpose of growing food. Fuller says she drew inspiration for the idea from fellow Nelson Institute alumna Janet Parker, a driving force behind the grass-roots effort Madison Fruits and Nuts, which encourages the planting and harvesting of edible plants in public spaces (the two were graduate school classmates, both receiv-ing master’s degrees in Land Resources in 2002). Lots of Food has since established a market garden and almond and hazelnut orchard on their third of an acre, raised nearly $7,000 from 132 supporters through the online funding platform Kickstarter, and established links to distribute their produce to local restaurants, farmers’ markets, grocers and food-insecure neighborhoods. “Where others see overgrown lots, we see fertile soil, and we say, ‘farm it!’” their web-site reads. Shortly after an open house where friends, neighbors and supporters helped to plant 13 of the 26 nut trees on the property, Fuller shared more about this new venture.

down the street that is very supportive. Not too many people give much of an objection to some-body wanting to start a garden on a vacant lot; it’s not the kind of thing people can really com-plain about. We are definitely trying to be good neighbors and we’re placing some things in the front, outside of our fence, like flow-ers and berries, specifically for neighbors to share.

DO YOU SEE YOURSELF EXPANDING BEYOND THIS AREA?

Well, we’re still sufficiently busy with this third of an acre. There’s all sorts of space, so our heads are full of things that we could grow. I have my own vegetable gardens and job [Fuller serves as executive director of the Kentucky Academy of Science], and Peter has a job, so we aren’t necessarily planning to buy more property. But we’re hoping that other people take the cue and think about doing some-thing similar. The city has now seen us go through this process and we’ve had great support from city government, so our hope is that other people will now be look-ing at vacant lots and thinking about what they can do.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU SHARE WITH OTHERS WHO MIGHT LIKE TO DO SOMETHING SIMILAR?

A lot of cities have a land bank of some kind. Different cities have different jurisdic-tions that handle properties, but there may be similar kinds of inventories. Buying a property outright

food accessis one way to do it, but last year as a preliminary effort we approached neighbors who owned side lots and vacant lots, asking, “What are you doing with that vacant lot? Do you think I could grow some food on it?” I got a variety of responses, but eventually found a neighbor who let me plant a garden on his lot next to his business and I shared some of the produce back with him. You know, a lot of property owners would rather not mow their side lots and they would be happy to let somebody else do something on it if it meant it was reduced mainte-nance for them. There are many different models. I think we just need to be creative and think about where there are spaces that could be adopted and put to better use. And think about your allies – who in your community would have an interest in doing these things? There are lots of ways to make an impact, from guerilla gardening to being an owner of a property to things in between.

ARE THERE OTHER BENEFITS TO THE COMMUNITY BESIDES THE PRODUCTION OF FRESH FOOD?

Since we started this, our city has under-taken a broad sustainabil-ity planning initiative that includes things like storm water infiltration, planting

AMANDA FULLER SEES UNEARTHED POTENTIAL IN VACANT CITY LOTS

of this inventory and aware of the possibility of alternative kinds of redevelopment. At the time, really nobody that I talked to even knew it was available. Another goal was to beau-tify and improve some small parcel in the only way that we know how, which is to grow things, make good soil, and share a little bit of that with the neighbors – to make one small, visible impact in a neighbor-hood that needs a little TLC.

WHAT HAS THE RESPONSE BEEN LIKE SO FAR?

The neighbors have been very friendly. The neighbor across the street is fixing up an old building and the very first day he saw me working here, he was so excited he ran across the street and said “I’ve been want-ing to start a garden there ever since I bought this building; I’m so excited you’re doing this.” The neighbors next door are letting us catch rainwater off their roof for our irrigation, so we don’t have to install water systems. The neighborhood association actually wrote a letter of support to the Land Bank Authority when we were requesting this property, and there’s a local museum

growing F O O D I N F O R G O T T E N S P A C E S

more trees for air quality, and climate mitigation. It’s helped me frame the way I’m thinking about my stewardship of this property, too. For me it’s not just taking a vacant lot, growing some food and feeding some people, but it’s really about thinking about all the different ecosystem functions. I’m trying to model some ways on this tiny property that we can actually put some of those functions back, in the middle of downtown, so we can have birds and pollinators and cleaner air and water. It’s really been interesting to think about how this fits in with the bigger picture of what’s hap-pening around me. My training is in ecological restoration, so it’s nice to come back around to that.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF AMANDA FULLER.

IN COMMON: WHAT INSPIRED THIS EFFORT?

FULLER: One of the first things I noticed when I moved to Louisville was how much vacant land there is in the city. It’s like a lot of other cities in this region; there are questions of underutilized urban property. There have been city committees and task forces to bring more attention to solutions to the issue, and I was keenly aware of that. Then when my employer, Breaking New Grounds, shut its doors, Peter [Thiong] and I wanted to continue working together. We had spent the last three years looking across the street at parcels of land that were exactly emblematic of the kinds of problems we were aware of in the city with vacant and abandoned properties. That put in our heads the idea that people really should be putting those parcels to produc-tive use. The city had put vague calls out over and over again about needing citizens to help solve this problem and buy some of

the properties for redevelopment. Peter and I, having the knowledge and expertise to grow food, thought, well, we don’t have a million dollars to start a business or build a building, but we can buy land and grow food on it.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR GOALS WITH LOTS OF FOOD; WHAT DID YOU SET OUT TO ACCOMPLISH?

One of our major goals was to bring attention to the issue and show one simple effort – like an off-the-shelf solution – that anybody can potentially pursue. To learn about and go through it and share what we learned, so other people could do similar things. By our own initiative, by giving presen-tations and through other mechanisms in the city, and through our networks, we’ve brought that to light and made the Land Bank more aware of and open to these kinds of proposals. We’ve cracked that door open and made more people aware

Inspired to try your hand at urban agriculture? Visit Amanda’s “You Can Do It” page at louisvillelotsoffood.com for how-to tips on researching land, growing food or developing a business plan, as well as links to other urban farming efforts.

12 In Common

MEGHAN LEPISTO

Friends and colleagues Peter Thiong and Amanda Fuller founded Lots of Food in 2013.

The first almond tree is planted on the vacant lots, which today house an orchard and market garden.

hungry for more

such as Growing Power,” Steve Ventura, the project’s co-leader and a professor of environmental studies and soil science, said at the time of the project’s launch. Efforts are focused initially on Milwaukee, Chicago and Detroit, three cities where food insecurity is considered extensive. “The overall goal is to integrate research, outreach, education and advocacy,” Ventura explains, “leading to improved understand-ing of how to build and maintain successful community and regional food systems, and enhance implementation in communities at risk.”

change agents “So often, the question is, if we believe that access to healthy food is a human right, whose responsibility is it?” says Monica White, a professor of environmental justice with a shared appointment in the Nelson Institute and Department of Community and Environmental Sociology. “Some might argue it’s the market, some might argue it’s politicians, and some might argue it’s the community.” White is specifically interested in the

food access

BY MEGHAN LEPISTO

The majority of food consumed in American cities is transported from at least 1,500 miles away. And yet, in urban areas like Detroit, more than half of the population is out of reach of fresh food, shopping for meals at the corner liquor store or convenience mart. As you digest such numbers, it quickly becomes clear: in meeting the nation’s food needs, our performance is wanting, with implications for nutrition and health, com-munity stability, and local economies. An interdisciplinary team of UW-Madison scientists is working toward solutions, supported by a $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They’ve teamed with UW-Extension, the nonprofit organization Growing Power, Wayne State University, Michael Fields Agricultural Institute and a range of community-based organizations to study ways to boost the availability and consump-tion of healthy food in urban communities. “This is an exciting project that brings together the research and educational capacity of the university with on-the-ground knowledge of community groups

tion’s urban agricultural initiatives have not only helped build community self-reliance and activity around local food security; they’ve also drawn visitors from across the country and the world as an environmental and agricultural tourism destination. “Urban agriculture is a way in which communities are intervening in the food system and coming up with very creative ways to do so,” says White. “This cuts across race, class, age and ability. The Detroit model says those who can afford healthy food should not be the only ones to have it.” In Detroit, large portions of the popula-tion lack access to healthy food due to either geographic or economic boundar-ies, with African American, Hispanic and impoverished communities disproportion-ately affected. These communities tend to purchase food from so-called fringe markets – stores that draw the majority of their sales from lottery tickets, alcohol and tobacco, and offer little by way of fresh food. “They sell the types of food which we know have typically been associated with diet-related illnesses,” says White. “If you’re talking about people who do not have access to transportation, or limited access, and these are the places where they access food, this is scary. How do you feed your family in a place where these are the options closest to you?”

food insecure Alfonso Morales, who is working on a forthcoming book on urban agriculture, says this lack of access to nutritious food

options – and a

correlated increase in obesity, type 2 diabetes and a range of other public health concerns – crept into urban American com-munities in the 1970s. “In the 70s, there were two trends: One, middle class folks started going to farmers’ markets, and two, grocers started seeing increased costs of doing business in low income communities and communities of color,” says Morales, a professor of urban and regional planning and a participant in the food systems project. “They started abandoning those communities, basi-cally redlining them in the same way that neighborhoods got redlined for real estate purposes. That leaves behind few options for food.” Applying an ecological metaphor, Morales says a strong food system requires speciation, or the creation of new “spe-cies” of food distribution, incorporating everything from street vendors and pushcart vendors to food delivery services such as Peapod and Schwan’s, and from street markets, farmers’ markets and typical storefront retail to gardens and self production. “A robust food system that produces food security is one where there’s not a reli-ance on a single approach to food access,” he explains. “We have to be willing to make available regulatory and economic incen-tives to permit the repopulation of our food retail environment.” However, he says, efforts can’t stop at simply making fresh food available to consumers. For example, marketplaces that incorporate the option of nutrition assistance program payments can improve access for low- and no-income populations, but a person may not know how to – or have the equipment necessary to – prepare the market items. “One of the problems is a lot of the folks we target have diminished their capacity to process that food in their homes,” Morales explains. “Their capacity to cook it, to store it, to serve it has all been eroded.” “Because of this generational absence

of grocery stores from their communities, because of the proliferation of fast food and microwave food, and because of poverty, where they just can’t pay their bills to have

refrigeration, or their refrigerator breaks and they don’t have the money to replace it, they live literally hand to mouth,” he continues. White says organizations in Detroit are leading a series of conversations around similar issues: “Once you grow food, how do people access it, and then once people access it, what do they do with it?” She’s seen that community dinners and local cooking demonstrations, especially those connected to a community’s cultural heritage, can provide a springboard for action. “Food preparation and preservation is an important element of the work we do, making sure it’s not just that I have access to healthy food, but also that my neighbors have access to healthy food.” Ventura points to a successful commu-nity engagement project on the south side of Milwaukee that enlisted local grocers to sponsor cooking classes and feature healthy new products appropriate for the predomi-nantly Latino community. Now, two local community-based organizations continue these activities. Morales says such skills are being revived in youth, as well, for example through once-abandoned home economics courses or Future Farmers of America activities. “These kinds of clubs and classes are making a comeback in response in part to the public health disaster we invited on ourselves, and in part in a proactive way, to enrich people’s lives and to revalue that knowledge and those abilities,” he says.

growing in teres t Will Allen, founder and CEO of Growing Power and co-director with Steve Ventura of the food systems research project, says in addition to engaging and empowering at-risk communities, a sustainable food

community aspect of the equation, studying the creative approaches grassroots orga-nizations and communities of color have adopted in response to issues of hunger and food inaccessibility. Her past research has focused on African American resistance to food insecurity and on documenting the history of black farmers’ collectives, coop-eratives and experiences in the American Midwest and South.  “My interests are the novel, creative ideas that people engage in order to increase access to healthy foods,” White explains. “Citizens of Detroit are not sitting around waiting to see what’s going to happen. They’ve done a number of things to engage and challenge the food system.” Take, for example, the Peaches & Greens mobile produce market, a converted ice cream truck that delivers fresh fruits and vegetables – some of it grown on commu-nity farms with volunteer assistance – to residents of inner city Detroit who wouldn’t otherwise have access to such items. In addition to her teaching and research at UW-Madison, White serves as president of the board of directors of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. From mini-farms to market gardens, the organiza-

14 In Common Spring/Summer 2014 15

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university-community partnership seeks healthy food for all

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16 In Common

BY DONALD RADCLIFFE

The more you move, the healthier you’ll be. Jeff Sledge, a faculty associate of the Nelson Institute, lives by that code. He studies how people move around the cities in which they live, and how that affects their health. “Going to a gym to get exercise is one option for some people. But for many they don’t have the opportunity, they are busy with work and family, or they feel their time is best spent elsewhere,” says Sledge. “Regardless, the healthiest thing you can do is to arrange your life so you have the energy expenditures you need to preserve good health. It becomes a part of who you are.” Sledge studies movement and health in urban settings. He outfits people with GPS trackers, accelerometers and various health monitors. These provide data on where peo-ple travel, how much energy they expend, and other information that is downloaded into a digital map. The data reveals patterns of movement and whether a person was walking, running, cycling or driving. Sledge was introduced to the power of

dynamic GPS data as a graduate student in the Nelson Institute, earning his doctorate in Environment and Resources in 2011. As he began to explore the interface between urban environments and public health, he arrived at a novel idea: Could researchers find ways to use the environment people live in to help treat disease? And could health practitioners use environments to increase a patient’s energy expenditures and help them reach desired outcomes? “The answer is hypothetically yes, but it depends,” says Sledge, who has studied the

TMOVEMENT AS MEDICINE

Innovative research ties urban design to better health

subject for more than a decade. “This is a conversation in mid-stride.” In his current research, Sledge uses real-time assessments to study how che-motherapy, radiation or hormonal therapy impact breast cancer patients’ ability to produce energy and engage in daily activi-ties and exercise. He is working as part of a team led by Dr. Kathy Miller of Indiana University’s Bren Simon Cancer Center and professor Steve Ventura of the Nelson Institute. Using a stationary bicycle made by Saris Cycle with a special protocol built into its computer, the researchers monitor and record a patient’s energy expenditures, heart rate and pedaling cadence at precise intervals. Study participants are measured on the bike before they begin cancer treatment to assess their energy output and fitness level, and again six, 12 and 18 months down the road. When outside the lab, the women wear GPS trackers and accelerometers to document how much energy they expend and where.

Sledge says one surprise finding is an order-of-magnitude loss of energy production for women as they receive cancer therapy. For example, a patient who was previously able to sustain 200 watts of energy on the bicycle might only be able to sustain 20 watts

six months following treatment. “That has dramatic consequences for how you think about where you’re going to live and how you’re going to be able to engage in an active life,” Sledge explains. Sledge and his collaborators plan to use their findings to help breast cancer survivors plan lifestyles that mitigate the negative effects of therapy and improve their health and quality of life. The more active a breast cancer survivor is, the more energy production capacity she can rebuild, he says. And survivors with higher energy

levels are thought to have a smaller chance of relapse. “If we understand how much energy a woman was nor-mally expending, the deficit caused by her therapy, and her patterns of movement at home and work, we now look at our data differently. This has the capability to become a tool of direct, individualized intervention.” he says. The team’s second phase of research,with support from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, will focus on building patient-centered tools. The goal is to create custom exercise plans to help women recover to their pre-treatment fitness or better while hopefully reducing the number of breast cancer recurrences. “We want to provide physicians, recov-ery nursing teams and physical therapy teams with the tools to help breast cancer survivors more fully re-engage in their envi-ronments with an improved quality of life,” Sledge says. Equipped with such data during regular checkups, breast cancer survivors could review with their doctors their movement patterns and discuss strategies to increase daily energy use.

Caloric imbalance Certain genes that protect health are switched off by inactivity, Sledge explains, but they can be switched back on by the right kinds of movement. This “epigenetic” effect compounds the benefits of exercise, and the cumulative effect can be strong. In separate studies, Sledge has been trying to understand how much energy a person must expend to make health transi-tions, specifically for metabolic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, which today overwhelm all other diseases in the United States.

“With metabolic diseases, the primary common threat is taking in too many calories for how you live and where you live,” he says. “These are diseases of energy-rich environments. They are diseases of place – of industrialized countries and urbanization.” Sledge and a team of UW-Madison researchers studied the health and energy expenditures of school-aged children in a Milwaukee community, examining how food systems, social structures, transporta-tion and access to exercise might influence the rate of metabolic disease. “This environment had a terrific culture and terrific people that were incredibly supportive and concerned about the health of their children,” says Sledge, but for a variety of reasons the children, who wore monitors during the study to track their physical activity, weren’t getting the mini-mum amount of recommended exercise. Among the factors limiting their activity: Parents worried about the safety of their neighborhoods and about having their chil-dren walk or bike to school. Parks, open spaces and pathways weren’t being used. The biggest surprise came when the GPS data revealed a clustering of student fami-lies in locations distant from school. The families, primarily of Hispanic heritage, felt strongly about the quality of their school and the cultural values instilled there, and would drive the students considerable distances to attend. “Here there were cultural overlays, issues of health and security, and socioeco-nomic conditions that weren’t our focus at first.” Sledge explains. “But as we became sensitive to the community, they emerged.” So Sledge changed tactics. His team began to teach an eighth-grade science course that deviated from the typical textbook-style approach to instead teach research methods first-hand. “We said to the kids, ‘We want you to approach some of these issues of health in the built environment, and we want you to be the primary organizers of the research, the data collection and the analysis,” Sledge recalls.

The children responded with enthusi-asm, designing and executing experiments in how to increase daily energy use. Their physical activity increased and there were additional benefits: In standardized science tests, the students who participated in the citizen-science model of inquiry improved a full grade level across the board.

Reducing convenience The potential applications of this research go beyond understanding the health of children and cancer survivors. “Any time you can change habituated patterns of movement, you will impact health,” says Sledge. “As a society, we’ve done everything we can to make life comfortable – from the shoes you walk in to the chairs you sit on, to our reli-ance on motorized transportation and the growing amount of ‘screen time’ in our lives. That’s really detrimental, so removing a little convenience goes a long way to improve health.” “The idea is to eventually have a cultural sea change in the way we design our built environments, how we interact with the greater biosphere through invitations to nature, and what we are willing to accept in the way that we live,” he continues. Sledge says this will involve designing urban environments around a range of human energy outputs. For example, the layout of city centers and sidewalks, the location of parking structures, and the orienting of urban development around accessible public transit can all contribute

to more exercise. “If I were to design a city today, from scratch, I would want to have a place that invites relatively high constant energy demand – a place that has impact to it, that makes you expend energy,” Sledge says. But, he emphasizes, accommodations in design must also be understood and considered for those people who are going through disease processes and who have disabilities. “The problems and challenges are far reaching, but they are not out of reach,” he concludes.

health

The healthiest thing you can do is to arrange your life so you have the energy expenditures you need to preserve good health. It becomes a part of who you are.

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Jeff Sledge

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If I were to design a city today, from scratch, I would want to have a place that invites relatively high constant energy demand – a place that has impact to it.

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Donald Radcliffe is a forest science and life sciences communication double major pursu-ing the environmental studies certificate.

18 In Common Spring/Summer 2014 19

tive ‘bang for your buck,’” says Holloway, who also serves as deputy leader of the NASA Air Quality Applied Sciences Team, which works to connect science data and tools with policy needs for air quality control. “For example, coal and diesel are both relatively dirty fuels,” she continues. “Coal is dirtier, but power plant emissions are often happening far from where people are living, whereas diesel trucks are driving through the cities, so there is direct exposure.” Holloway’s team is investigating changes in emission levels when power plants and trucks are converted to natural gas, and the resulting impact on air quality. Policy mak-ers can use this information to make the most effective decisions.

When planning a cleaner future, though, Holloway says the biggest challenges are often artifacts of the past. “There are a lot of different parameters that can be adjusted if we’re thinking about how to build a city that has healthy com-munities, healthy air and other desirables,”

health

CLEARING

Air pollutants have concerned scientists and politicians since 1881, when the cities of Chicago and Cincinnati passed the first laws

aimed at reducing smoke pollution caused by the proliferation of coal power. Since then, air quality has generally been improving due to policy decisions and improvements in energy efficiency. Progress largely began with the Clean Air Act of 1970, which gave the federal government power to regulate air pollution from cars and industries. “In some ways, air quality in the United States is a real success story,” says Holloway. “Since the 1970s, we have made reductions in most pollutants that damage human health, and even over the past five years, we have seen improvements.” But there’s still a lot of work to do. Moreover, efforts to improve air quality often have unintended consequences. As the United States moves to regulate carbon dioxide along with traditional air pollutants, some control strategies may change. For example, scrubbers – devices placed in the stacks of coal-fired power plants to remove gases or particulates – reduce the emission of sulfur dioxide, a byproduct of burning coal that can cause lung disease and acid rain.   However, Holloway says that these scrubbers require a lot of energy to operate. So a power plant running scrubbers needs to generate more energy, thus emitting more carbon dioxide and contributing to global climate change. But there are also win-win solutions, Holloway says. Switching from coal to natural gas improves power plant efficiency by moving to a fuel that emits less carbon dioxide and fewer pollutants harmful to humans. The same holds true when conserv-ing energy, or replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy alternatives. Because of the multiple options for improving air quality, policy makers need to be able to determine where to concen-trate limited resources and political capital. Modeling developed by Holloway and other researchers can help set priorities. “We want to know, from an air quality perspective, where you get the most figura-

says Holloway. “But sometimes it’s hard to go back in time.” Cities like Los Angeles were built in the era of the automobile, so they are spread out and residents must do a lot of driving to get anywhere. Salt Lake City was built in a basin, which often traps pollutants. Cities like Madison are hot in the summer, creating issues with ozone, a chemical that results from reactions between automobile or industrial pollutants, such as nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds, and sunlight. Holloway says these challenges are dif-ficult but they can be addressed, not only by policy makers but by everyone. “Individuals play a big role here when thinking about how they use electricity, how they heat and cool their home, how they get around town, and even paying atten-tion to when there are dirty air days and clean air days,” she explains. “If it’s a bad air day in your community, you can take steps like trying to drive less, or avoiding mowing your lawn in the middle of the day, and avoiding using cleaning products with volatile compounds.” Because of policies such as the Clean Air Act as well as growing awareness, Americans have made great strides in improving air quality. For example, when Holloway first arrived at UW-Madison in 2003, every Wisconsin county along the Lake Michigan coast violated the federal ozone standard. Today, every Wisconsin county but one now complies with that standard, even though it has toughened. These changes not only improve air quality; they also save money. Studies have shown that for every dollar spent on improving air quality, $2 to $22 is saved on health care. And clean air means more than just savings. “I would say that, as citizens, we’ve decided that we value clean air. It means that we can walk out of our door and not be coughing, and not have to wear masks,” says Holloway.

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About half of the U.S. population lives in counties that are failing air quality stan-dards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. And globally, air pollution has been identified as the world’s biggest environmental health risk. It causes 7 mil-lion deaths per year, according to a recent World Health Organization report. “Even though air pollution is getting better, it is still posing major health risks, even within the United States,” says Tracey Holloway, an associate professor of envi-ronmental studies at UW-Madison and faculty affiliate of the Nelson Institute Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment. Holloway studies air quality, not only because of its critical impacts on global health, but because it offers a dynamic per-spective of various sustainability factors. “Because air quality cuts across energy, transportation, land use, weather and climate, it’s a nice lens to see how all the pieces fit together,” she says. “I enjoy that part of the problem solving.”

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These images show nitrogen dioxide (NO2) across the United States, as seen from the NASA Aura satellite in 2005 and 2010. NO2 is emitted through fossil fuel burning and poses direct risks to human health. Major reductions in NO2 over the U.S. have occurred since 2005 due to regulations on transportation and electricity emissions.

Spring/Summer 2014 21

ties throughout the developing world, where there is neither a grid system nor a backup plan, microgrids provide an opportunity for people to develop energy systems structured to their own needs. In Uganda, a team of UW–Madison researchers hopes to help curb reliance on traditional energy sources that can be harmful to human health and the envi-ronment by developing a system that Venkataramanan describes as a wireless microgrid. The project brings together collaborators from the Nelson Institute and the College of Engineering to expand from existing biogas systems and create electricity in a way that is accessible and useful for community members. Their system captures and uses biogas from an anaerobic digester to fuel a generator that charges batteries. The bat-teries can then be used to power lights and charge cellphones in homes throughout the community, without a grid. The problems associated with growing cities will challenge how we build, plan, support and improve this uniquely human environment. The study of microgrids and other micro-scale energy systems is just one part of a broadening spectrum of UW-Madison research meant to help urban populations adjust and react with solutions right for them.

Eric Anderson is a writer for the Wisconsin

Energy Institute.

In developing countries, however, electrification systems are often weak or nonexistent and the focus tends to lie elsewhere. In Uganda, where less than nine percent of the population has access to electricity, communities prioritize the devel-opment of individual off-grid solutions that have the flexibility to grow and meet future needs. What’s certain is that worldwide growth of urban centers will continue to pose energy challenges. And these challenges carry with them an opportunity to amplify the impact of livable-solutions planning and policy. By improving the places people already reside and preparing early for where they will live in the future, we can improve how we interact with the environment on a very large scale. Microgrid researchers in the UW-Madison College of Engineering and the Wisconsin Energy Institute are taking up this challenge by developing an energy solution with the

20 In Common

A livable city solution the powerful potential of microgridsBY ERIC ANDERSON

potential to strengthen all three critical factors of energy in a livable city: resiliency, reliability and accessibility. The microgrid, in other words, may offer a powerful, versa-tile and wide-ranging solution to a variety of energy challenges at different scales and under a range of conditions.

resiliency A microgrid is a small, self-contained electric-power system with the capability to seamlessly connect to and disconnect from the traditional grid, the network of power lines that move electricity from generating stations to users. It includes all of the components of the traditional energy infrastructure (generation, distribution and consumption) consolidated to accommo-date smaller consumer base loads such as individual buildings, hospitals or campuses. Many cities consume their energy predominantly from fossil fuel sources

energy

distributed through centralized generation systems. But this type of expansive infra-structure also comes with some risk. “It’s unlikely that, particularly in the United States, we’ll completely replace the bulk power system,” says Paul Meier, a Wisconsin Energy Institute scientist and Nelson Institute alumnus (Ph.D. Land Resources and Energy Analysis and Policy ‘02). “It’s a vast infrastructure and, right now, there is little in the way of incentives to change it.” “But, there are opportunities to improve how the system operates or where our energy comes from that could benefit cities,” adds Meier, whose research focuses on the economic feasibility and impacts of resource planning models. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that power outages and grid failures cost American businesses $100 billion annu-ally. But when these interruptions occur, microgrid consumers can switch to electric-ity generated or stored locally, creating a more resilient and stable energy supply. In the case of hospitals, where the system can be designed to be even more robust and self-sustaining, key health services can be maintained throughout an outage. Microgrids also create the flexibility to integrate energy from rooftop solar instal-lations, nearby wind turbines or other distributed sources. These small-scale renewables have struggled to become cost-competitive with energy-dense fossil fuels at a utility scale. The microgrid can thus serve as a more immediate conduit between alternative energy resources and consumers.

reliability In India, rolling blackouts – an inten-tional shutdown of electricity distribution in certain areas to avoid overstressing the grid and creating a total system blackout – affect both rural and urban populations. In 2012, India experienced a massive electricity outage that affected more than 600 million people for many days. The outage crippled much of the country, bringing trains to a halt and leaving hospitals in the dark. “At night you might see the factories shut down, so that power plants can divert electricity to people’s homes. They’re trying

to be as equitable as possible,” says Giri Venkataramanan, a UW-Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering. “For example, during irrigation season, more power will be transmitted to rural regions for pumping water out of the ground for the crops. At those times cities suffer, but people have adapted.” In many Indian cities where households or businesses have grid access but are forced to live “off-grid” throughout the day, a home energy system combining their own generation and storage capacity fills in for

the prescheduled gaps. This system is essen-tially an incomplete microgrid, and provides a particularly possibility-rich opportunity for improvement in the future. “Currently there is no interconnectiv-ity among these makeshift microgrids,” Venkataramanan says. “We know it can be done. The challenge is in figuring out how to use the assets that people have already invested in to help the grid during peak demand times.”

accessibility Microgrids can complement a grid system by providing backup power for planned or unplanned outages. But in rural communi-

A MAJORITY OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION NOW LIVES IN CITIES, WHICH CONSUME 75 PERCENT OF THE WORLD’S RESOURCES AND EMIT MOST OF ITS GREENHOUSE GASES. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, an additional three billion people will move into these dense, resource-intense urban environments. “Projecting from current trends, you realize that we should have a plan for how this change unfolds,” says Mike Corradini, director of the Wisconsin Energy Institute and professor of engineering physics. As urban growth increases stress on global systems, Corradini is among a team of UW-Madison researchers working to develop solutions that contribute to the livability of future cities. When it comes to urban energy – and its ever-increasing consumption – Corradini believes resiliency, reliability and accessibility will be critical factors in ensuring a sustainable supply. “When you’re talking about a livable city, you’re not just talking about energy or energy use,” he says. “It’s a combination of how we use water, create food, con-struct buildings, and transport people or goods. These are all largely connected and interdependent.” Of course, different cities have different energy needs, which means that livable city solutions tend to vary according to local need. In the United States, for example, where infrastructure and utility support have made access to electricity nearly ubiquitous, plans for the future tend to focus on creat-ing energy systems with greater efficiency and reliability. The focus in cities like New York or New Orleans is on building infrastructure to make cities more resilient when faced with extreme weather or natural disasters – by providing backup power during outages, as well as helping to ease systems back online as outages end.

“When you’re talking about a livable city,

you’re not just talking about energy or energy

use. It’s a combination of how we use water, create food, construct buildings,

and transport people or goods. These are all largely connected and

interdependent.”

Experts from around the world will gather to discuss developing issues and possible solutions surrounding energy, urbanization and growth at the Wisconsin Energy Institute’s Global Energy Outlook Summit on October 29, 2014. To learn more about this event, go.wisc.edu/energyoutlook.

- Mike Corradini

Professor Tom Jahns works in the Wisconsin Energy Institute’s high-bay lab. Machines in the facil-ity can emulate renewable sources, storage capabilities and energy consumption patterns, giving researchers a better understanding of how microgrid systems will interact with the grid.

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22 In Common

been rebuilt after they were bulldozed. And there were distinct demographic differences. The people in the traditional neighborhood were more financially secure, suggesting they would be less vulnerable to heat waves. But they were also gener-ally older, which would make them more vulnerable. When the heat wave of 2003 hit, people in the newer neighborhood – who were younger on average — died at much higher rates than people in the older neighborhood. Why? Keller suspects that the breakdown of social infrastructure may be at fault. “The loss of neighborhood, through the loss of the social networks that are embed-ded in bakeries and cafes, indicates to me a powerful degree of vulnerability,” says Keller. “There is something lost in the transi-tion to modern housing.” While it can be a challenge to manufac-ture a sense of community, Keller suggests that neighborhoods can be designed with

sociability in mind. The best solutions increase face-to-face encounters with neighbors, he says. That includes simple things like sidewalks, retail stores within neigh-borhoods, or more cafes. Limiting parking can even increase sociability, because it forces people to spend time outside of their cars. The bottom line: Finding ways to enable social networks through community planning may save lives. When extreme events such as heat waves occur, neighborhoods with more social interaction are likely to be more resilient.

isolation dramatically increases the danger for the elderly, poor, or mentally or physi-cally disabled. Of those groups, the elderly are the most at risk, according to Keller. People become less able to regulate body heat as they grow older and thus are less resilient under heat stress. Their sensory systems don’t work as well; older people often don’t feel as thirsty as they should, and they might feel cold when they are truly too hot. These factors are particularly dangerous because seniors often live alone. NEIGHBORHOOD NETWORKS

One morning in Paris, at a local café, Keller saw an example of a social safety net in action as an older neighbor stepped through the door. “He walked into the cafe and checked in with the bartender, then handed the bartender something and leaned over,” says Keller. “The bartender put eye drops in the man’s eyes and helped him take his medication. That suggested to me that the elderly man was plugged into a social network.” At the time, Keller was comparing two neighborhoods – one that was older, and one that had been renovated in the 1970s. The older neighborhood was full of traditional cafes and bakeries, mainstays of Parisian social life. The newer neighbor-hood consisted of high-rise apartment buildings, and the traditional cafes hadn’t

Spring/Summer 2014 23

climate readinessREADYING COMMUNITIES FOR RISING SEASBY DONALD RADCLIFFE

Global sea levels have risen almost nine inches since 1870, driven by the thermal expansion of ocean

water and the melting of glaciers as the planet warms. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this climate-related trend is accelerating, with enormous implications for coastal communities. Much of the research on this subject has focused on broad patterns, such as how much land and how many people are at risk of being flooded out. These analyses typi-cally focus on regional, national or global scales. “When you examine large geographic scales, you are masking a lot of important heterogeneity in the population,” says Katherine Curtis, an associate professor of community and environmental sociology. “Social, economic and political vulnerability are masked.” Curtis teamed with Annemarie Schneider, an associate professor of environmental studies and fellow scientist in the Nelson Institute Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment, to model sea level rise and population dynamics at a county scale. That allowed them to consider demographic factors such as age, sex and racial composi-tion of communities. “We know that some populations,

because of political, social, economic and environmental conditions, have greater vulnerability than others,” Curtis explains. Their study highlighted four areas: southern Florida, coastal South Carolina, northern New Jersey and the Sacramento Valley of California. They looked at the social dynamics of these places, including who was moving where, because past disas-ters had shown these to be critical factors. For example, Hurricane Katrina high-lighted the social inequalities of disaster prevention and recovery. Affluent people could afford to evacuate and later rebuild; poorer people could not. The researchers are trying to predict where similar problems will occur with rising waters. “People who are vulnerable and dis-placed tend to move to equally vulnerable places,” says Curtis. “Think about it: What is affordable and what is accessible? And what determines affordability and accessibility?” Affordable neighborhoods are often potentially in harm’s way, she explains. So it may be a challenge for these climate refugees to afford housing outside the reach of future sea level rise. But wherever these climate refugees end up, whether temporarily or permanently, more problems are likely to follow. “The thing that is most interesting to me is migration,” says Curtis. “What happens in one place doesn’t just affect that loca-

tion. Migration moves us into a conversation about not just the places that are hit, but how environmental events affect society at large.” Southern Florida is one of the areas expected to be most socially and environ-mentally vulnerable to sea level rise. Today, when people leave the Miami area, many of them move to either New York or Los Angeles. Based on those patterns, New York and Los Angeles can expect a big influx of people as rising seas encroach on Miami. That can overwhelm labor markets in their new locations, driving down wages. Housing, food supplies and education might be strained, along with other urban resources, for people who are already going through a very rough time. “These are people that are likely to be exposed to traumatic losses,” says Curtis, “not only of property, but of friends and family. So you’re dealing with mental health issues and vulnerability. Then, if you’re talking about people that are economically disadvantaged, you’re putting trauma on top of distress.” Such factors are only made worse if people aren’t accepted into their new com-munities, so Curtis is also studying how hospitable these destinations may be to new residents. “The worst-case scenario is an unpre-pared community receiving a new population that is unlike them and per-ceived as a threat,” she says. “Then there’s the potential for a lot of inequality, tension and turmoil.” Curtis’s ultimate goal is to identify and communicate these potential challenges and provide cities with the data they need to create contingency plans before sea level rise brings these problems. “You want to know where your geography is in relation to other geographies and their vulnerability,” says Curtis. “Communities can be planning, so they don’t get caught off guard and become a bed of turmoil, social injustice and social vulnerability.”

SOCIAL NETWORKS BOOST HEAT WAVE RESILIENCEBY DONALD RADCLIFFE

Heat waves are the most deadly form of natural disaster, taking far more human lives than dramatic events such as hurri-canes and floods. “There tends to be very little awareness about the dangers of extreme heat,” says Richard Keller, a medical historian and affiliate of the Nelson Institute Center for Culture, History and Environment. “It’s the sort of thing that we often think of as an inconvenience rather than a true danger.” Such ambivalence can be fatal. When a heat wave struck Europe in the summer of 2003, 70,000 people died. By comparison, Hurricane Katrina – one of the five deadli-est hurricanes in the history of the United States – caused 1,836 deaths in 2005. Keller set out to learn more about those lost in the European heat wave, to deter-mine who had died and why. After reading every document he could access from his computer in Madison, he traveled to Paris, where more than 1,000 people had perished during the 2003 event. He dug through French archives, and then he hit the streets. Keller interviewed the neigh-bors of a group known as the “forgotten bodies” of the heat wave – people whose remains had not been claimed and were subse-quently buried by the government – by tracking down the addresses of these victims. He was interested in these “forgotten” people because social isolation correlates with heat wave mortality. People living alone don’t have anyone to check on them, to tell them if they are looking unwell, or to call an ambulance if they collapse. This

There tends to be very little awareness about the dangers of extreme heat. It’s the sort of thing that we often think of as an inconvenience rather than a true danger.

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24 In Common Spring/Summer 2014 25

climate readiness

Helping communities prepare for changeBY DONALD RADCLIFFE

Kefer. “I think that’s very effective for helping a community to think through the impacts. It shows that we aren’t only projecting fancy models.” La Crosse is a city of 50,000 people sandwiched between a series of bluffs and the Mississippi River. Its geography makes it vulnerable to flooding, so more and larger storm events, combined with a projected increase in winter rainfall, means that La Crosse will see increasing risk as the climate warms. The community has already experi-enced flooding in new areas. At the 2012 workshop, Kefer and her team directed the conversation toward how

to proactively address flooding risks, rather than dealing with destruction of property and infrastructure after the fact. Due to limitations in the city’s stormwater system, the cheapest option appeared to be increas-ing infiltration of rainwater. Because cities are so heavily paved, the rate at which water can trickle into the soil is limited. Planners use small planted areas (called bioretention cells), openings for trees, rain gardens, and boulevard-style green strips between road lanes to help absorb stormwater. Permeable pavement is another solution that can be used in parking lots, alleyways and residential streets to boost infiltration and reduce runoff. The Environmental Protection Agency ran a model of perme-

able pavement use in La Crosse and showed that installation in key locations could mean the difference between a post-storm disaster, with three weeks of standing water in the streets, and an inconvenience, with a few inches of standing water remaining for less than two days. Flooding isn’t the only issue brought on by climate change. Kefer says adaptation involves a number of infrastructure deci-sions, including which street trees to plant. The tree species that thrive today won’t necessarily survive 50 years from now. The spread of the emerald ash borer, an invasive insect expected to wipe out most of La Crosse’s ash trees, makes this a press-ing issue. As foresters plan to replace the ash trees, they’ll need to consider climate change. “Ecologically, we’ll start looking more like Tennessee and Kentucky,” Kefer explains, noting that tulip poplar and other warmer-climate trees are likely to be more common in Wisconsin’s future. As extreme weather events and the resulting risks to public health increase, city leaders will also need to map out their most vulnerable populations and make constitu-ents aware of locations that can serve as tornado shelters or heat refuges. After the WICCI workshop in La Crosse, community leaders have been following through. The city has implemented more green infrastructure and a green streets ordinance that calls for more boulevard-type roadways, newly planted trees and shaded bike lanes, more places for people to gather, and, as a result, increased safety. Kefer hopes LaCrosse and other Wisconsin communities will continue implementing climate change adaptation measures, providing safety and stability for residents across the state.

Extreme weather event powers simulation tool BY MEG GORDON

Record-shattering rainstorms that hit west-central Wisconsin in June 2008 caused catastrophic damage, including the televised failure of an earthen dam containing Lake Delton. The week-long rain barrage flooded 810 square miles, swamped sewage treat-ment plants and contaminated wells. These events prompted UW-Madison researchers to ask: What if that same downpour had happened in Eau Claire, Madison, or any other location? Answering that question becomes more crucial each year. Heavy rainstorms are on the rise in Wisconsin, according to scientists at the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research. To enable communities to understand their vulnerabilities, Kenneth Potter, a UW-Madison professor of civil and environmen-tal engineering and affiliate of the Nelson Institute, and David Liebl, a stormwater specialist with UW Cooperative Extension, have developed a new tool to help local decision makers see how their stormwater management systems would handle an enormous rain event. The computer simulation program can be used in con-

junction with hydrologic models to determine what would happen if the 2008 storm had been centered over any region. Potter and Liebl, who co-chair a stormwater working group for the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts, say this exer-cise can help infrastructure designers and managers understand the increasing risk of extreme events in a changing climate. It can also help update design and management tools, which currently rely on rainfall scenarios that do not account for rising tempera-tures, seasonal shifts and amounts of rainfall, and impacts to ecosystems and property. The innovative program allows local municipalities to test their stormwater management systems and infrastructure through simu-lation, using the real numbers of the Baraboo storm system. “Being able to test our infrastructure against known damaging storms is very beneficial, especially since we can move the most intense point wherever we want to test,” says Jeremy Balousek, an engineer with Dane County’s Land and Water Resources Conservation Department, which is using the program.

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Over the last several decades, Wisconsin has seen an increase in extreme weather and variability, and these conditions are likely to

become more common in the years ahead. Scientists in the Nelson Institute Center for Climatic Research (CCR) project a sharp rise in average annual temperatures in coming decades – somewhere between 4 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit – spawning more frequent and intense storms, droughts and heat waves. These trends will challenge cities throughout the state. Sally Kefer, a land use specialist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR), is helping Wisconsin communities adapt. “Climate change adaptation is really about sustainability and building com-munity resiliency,” says Kefer, a member of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI), a collaborative effort between DNR, the Nelson Institute and a number of affiliate organizations. “We’ve already seen extreme weather changes cause damage to expensive infrastructure and homes.” A few communities have moved forward with adaptation efforts. One example is La Crosse, where Kefer led a recent study funded by the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. The project began in 2012, when more than 50 La Crosse community leaders met with CCR scientists and WICCI staff for a daylong workshop to discuss climate change science, potential changes and risks associated with climate change, and strate-gies to prepare for those changes. “We asked people to share their experi-ences of extreme weather events,” says

A flood damaged aerial view of downtown Gays Mills, Wisconsin in 2008.

24 In Common

“Climate change adaptation is really about sustainability and building community resiliency.”

-Sally Kefer

26 In Common Spring/Summer 2014 27

system must build the infrastructure for future generations of entrepreneurs and agriculturalists. His farm and community food center, based in Milwaukee, has become the largest urban agriculture organization in the world, with 300 acres of outside production, 25 acres of greenhouses and a large-scale aqua-ponics system. His team recently completed the largest farm-to-school procurement in USDA history, selling 40,000 pounds of car-rots to schools in Chicago and Wisconsin. “I didn’t set out to be [the world’s largest]; along the continuum it just happened,” Allen says. “And part of that was to prove that this can be done. To prove that you can change the dynamics of a city by being able to grow enough food like we do.” But organizations alone can’t solve the world’s challenges, he says. He sees his role as bolstering the next generation with the skills and drive required. “Are nonprofits going to build the food system that we need? No,” he says. “This will be done by entrepreneurs that we train and help to develop. We have to grow a lot of farmers.” Ventura readily admits that we will never grow enough food within cities to feed the entire urban population, but he contends that “building just and sustainable food systems that include local production will benefit consumers and communities. And universities can help identify and enhance these benefits.” Research is needed on land access, production methods, food preparation and processing, distribution and marketing, waste recycling, and the policies and eco-nomics that surround the food supply chain. “This challenge, worthy of a great land grant university, can be met through col-laboration with community organizations,” he concludes.

Gift to support political ecology student research A new Nelson Institute fellowship to support graduate students whose research focuses on political ecology was established in March with a $250,000 gift from an anonymous graduate of the institute. The fellowship will fund students working at the intersection of policy, politics and the environment in the United States and Canada. Political ecology, which connects politics and economics to problems of environmental control and ecological change, is a major area of study for Nelson Institute Director Paul Robbins. As a researcher and educator, he specializes in the politics of natural resource management and is author of the foundational textbook on the burgeoning field, Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction. Additional matching gifts to this fellowship fund and others will allow for more frequent and long-term awards for graduate students. To discuss opportunities to support Nelson Institute student funding, or for more information about the political ecology fellowship, please contact Robbins at director@nelson.wisc.edu or (608) 265-5296.

Investing in Nelson

Wodder joins board of visitors; Nelson transitions to emeritus member Nelson Institute alumna and conservation leader Rebecca Wodder has joined the institute’s Board of Visitors, the 10-member board that advises and assists the director in accomplishing the institute’s mission and vision. In 2010, Wodder was recognized as one of the Top 25 Outstanding Conservationists by Outdoor Life Magazine. She most recently served as senior advisor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Interior, leading a major river initiative for President Obama’s signature conservation program, America’s Great Outdoors, and advising Interior Secretary Ken Salazar on matters related to river restora-tion, recreation and accessibility, and large-scale watershed protection. For 16 years prior, Wodder was president and chief executive officer of American Rivers, the nation’s oldest and most respected river conservation organization. During her tenure, Wodder led efforts to help dozens of communities restore the health of their rivers through innovative conservation measures. She also led collaborations with federal, state, tribal and local governments, busi-ness and industry, and grassroots groups. She has also served in several capacities at The Wilderness Society and was a legisla-tive assistant to U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson on environmental and energy issues from 1978-1980. “I am honored to join the Nelson Institute Board of Visitors,” says Wodder, who attended the institute as a graduate student, earning a master’s degree in Water Resources Management in 1978. “Senator Nelson has been a lifelong inspiration to me, beginning with

the first Earth Day in 1970, through to this upcoming 44th Earth Day as I begin my service to the institute. I hope to make a meaningful contribution in my time on the board.” In April, John Nelson, past chair of the Board of Visitors and managing director of Global Infrastructure Asset Management LLC, was awarded the title of Emeritus Board Member in honor of his years of dedicated service to and on behalf of the Nelson Institute. He is the second person to hold this honorary title, joining inaugural recipient Jay Carlson.

Rebecca Wodder

John Nelson

Bradshaw Knight Fund for the Center for Culture, History and EnvironmentJames A. Knight

Cal DeWitt Scholarship FundWilliam A. and Jacqueline S.

BuehringCornelia A. BurrAbby L. HickcoxMelissa A. HornungBethany K. LaursenJennifer C. LynesVanessa I. B. MachenTina A. MuruaDaniel J. O’LearyStephen C. RozgaBrent A. Sieling

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2014 Earth Day Conference FundAlliant EnergyAmerican Family Insurance

CompanyAmerican Transmission

CompanyClean Lakes Alliance Inc.Laurie Carlson Progressive

Ideas Forum/Jay & Carlyn Carlson

Dan and Pat CornwellLaurie K. ElwellGlobal Health InstituteGroup Health CooperativeInternational Crane FoundationLands’ End Inc.Madison Gas & Electric Co.Morgridge Center for Public

ServiceNelson Institute Center for

Climatic ResearchNelson Institute Center for

Sustainability and the Global Environment

Douglas A. and Jeanan Y. MoeOffice of SustainabilityKaren O. PopeSusan D. RotterSal A. and Judith L. TroiaWisconsin Energy Institute

We extend deep thanks to the hundreds of individuals, families and organizations that have made financial contributions to the Nelson Institute. These gracious alumni, friends and program sponsors contributed between Nov. 14, 2013 and June 11, 2014.

Gaylord A. Nelson Distinguished ChairRoman and Svetlana KanivetskyRobert H. and Vivian E. MillerDavid L. Morell

Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies FundMarian B. AshmanCraig H. BensonSteven J. BerkowitzThomas BickfordLynn Broaddus and Marc

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MalletteChad M. and Jennifer L. CookWilliam J. CrononAllan R. CzecholinskiMolly R. DubowSonnet C. and Christopher S.

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William H. Meadows and Sally Brooks Meadows

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Sr.Doris K. NagelCarrie L. NelsonJohn S. and Linda L. NelsonTia L. NelsonElizabeth G. NeversErin L. O’BrienBurke O’NealDavid M. OlszykGari-Anne PatzwaldJohn E. PeckLewis A., Jr. and Vicki M.

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MooreJean A. RobinsonMarc RosenBrent A. SielingJayne M. SomersSherman StockBenjamin J. SwartzendruberElizabeth C. TreacyLinda D. VanDyneStephen J. Ventura and Margaret

L. KromeMary F. Whiteford-VerrilliDonald B. WichertRebecca WodderPaul H. and Joy B. ZedlerDavid T. ZiemannNancy R. and Michael J. Zolidis

Jordahl Lecture FundHarald E. JordahlPatricia A. Prime and Richard

W. LinsterNatural Resources Foundation

of Wisconsin

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Land Tenure Center FundJane A. DennisMargaret L. Krome and Stephen

J. Ventura

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Hussey

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Water Resources Management FundSteven B. GelbLee M. Brown and Pixie A. B.

NewmanRoland W. Wang

THANK YOU TO ALL WHO SUPPORT THE NELSON INSTITUTE

continued from page 15

COMMUNITY AND REGIONAL FOOD SYSTEMS PROJECT

28 In Common Spring/Summer 2014 29

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Anna Meding, a junior majoring in environmental studies and German, was among a team of UW-Madison students who traveled to Uganda in January, helping to construct a biogas system at the Lweza Primary School.

Their trip, funded by the Ira and Ineva Reilly Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment, was an extension of an undergraduate environmental studies service-learning course examining domestic and international dimen-sions of renewable energy technologies.

UW students partnered with peers from Uganda’s Makerere University to design and build a biogas sys-tem that will convert a mixture of latrine, food and animal wastes into a clean-burning source of cooking fuel and organic fertilizer – providing the school’s 700 children and 20 teachers with improved public hygiene and a reliable source of renewable energy.

Drawing on her experiences, Meding prepared this journal report.

January 9, 2014

“Keep Up!” Dorothy calls over her shoulder. I am briskly walking through the stalls of the main market in Kampala, Uganda, each space crowded with clothing, jewelry, electronics, and most of all, people. Due to lost luggage, I am still in my sweaty travel clothing and am drawing countless stares from market-goers. Dorothy ducks into a small store and I follow. My head lifts and my eyes travel around the small room. It is stacked so high with jeans that I do not notice the store owner standing right in front of me. Surprised, I break my upward stare. He is short and stylish, wearing jeans, a printed T-shirt, and a thin gold chain around his neck. I feel his eyes appraising me as I look questioningly at Dorothy. In that instant, numerous pairs of jeans begin to be stacked in my hands without having said a word. I try them on and they fit perfectly. I walk out of the dressing room in a form-fitting pair of skinny jeans and Dorothy declares in her Ugandan accent, “You are getting those.” I had only met Dorothy that morning at breakfast, my first breakfast in Uganda. Four other UW-Madison under-graduates and I had arrived in Uganda the previous evening. Four months earlier, my travel companions had been

what we were working on in Uganda. It was being installed at Lweza Primary School in Mukono, Uganda, to replace their pit latrines, which would eliminate the need to repeatedly build new latrines when they become full, as well as provide methane gas instead of firewood for cooking school lunches. A few weeks before departure, each of the UW-Madison undergraduates were given a task for

What do you say?

In Common welcomes engaging first-person essays from Nelson Institute alumni on topics related to your lives, professions or perspectives. The tone can range from serious to humorous, from sad to uplifting. Any alumnus or alumna may send an idea for an essay, or a draft to be considered for publication, to incommon@nelson.wisc.edu.

unknown faces in a Nelson Institute environmental studies capstone class on anaerobic digestion, a renewable energy technology. The class was instructed by two Nelson Institute Ph.D. students, Aleia McCord and Sarah Stefanos, who conduct most of their research on small-scale anaerobic digestion in Uganda. Together they had received the Baldwin grant and selected five Nelson under-graduate students from the capstone to accompany them on their research trip over winter break. Walking into the class on that first day, I knew very little about anaero-bic digestion. Academic articles, field trips and guest lectures guided our studies as we learned the process of placing organic matter, such as cow manure, human waste and food waste, into oxygen-free conditions, allowing microorganisms to digest it, and creat-ing biogas, a gas largely composed of methane. We researched the differences in the technology across the world, from systems that take the manure of thou-sands of cows in the United States and produce electricity with the biogas, to small-scale systems in the developing world, where the biogas is typically used for cooking or lighting. This type of micro-scale system is

A winter break of building and learning across the world BY ANNA MEDING

January 16, 2014

My body feels lighter knowing I have completed the educational biogas workshop. In the hot Ugandan sun, I have a chain of children grasping my hands as I try to move over to a bench. We had spent the past hour dancing in the courtyard of Lweza, and I honestly just need to sit down and rest. I find a seat along the side of the school and instantly have young girls on either side of me and one in my lap. They chatter away, mostly in Luganda, of which I understand none. Their speech and their continu-ous smiles keep me more than preoccupied. The past week and a half had been spent planning presentations, creating visual games, encouraging our fellow university students to participate in skits, compiling a packet of information for the Lweza teachers, and orga-nizing a fantastic lunch. During the course of the same week, my undergraduate colleagues worked on multiple projects that brought other aspects of our semester-long capstone to life, from engineering a solid and liquid sepa-

January 25, 2014

I am sitting in the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, completing homework. I decide to take an email break, and I find a message from my Ugandan partner in this project, Gideon. We have kept in close contact since my return to Madison. His email says that the Lweza digester construction will soon be completed and they hope to have their first gas generated within the month. Gideon is now working on another feasibility study for an anaerobic digester, just as the UW-Madison students continue to work on independent study projects with Sarah and Aleia concerning anaerobic digestion.

I lean back in my comfy red chair and reflect on my entire Ugandan experience. I would never have believed that one class could take me so far beyond the borders of the classroom, so greatly influence the areas in which I hope to continue my education, and create such a strong network of global connections. I found all that and more in my Nelson Institute capstone. I read the last line of Gideon’s email: “…otherwise, you can’t imagine how I am missing you Anna! Send my regards to Mammy and Dad. Blessed weekend. Yours, Gideon.” And then I contentedly return to my homework.

Energized in Uganda

First person

I would never have believed that one class could take me so far beyond the borders of the classroom, so greatly influence the areas in which I hope to continue my education, and create such a strong network of global connections.

completion on the trip and partnered with a Ugandan undergraduate student. I was partnered with Gideon Monday, who already had been working with the Lweza school for a number of months. Gideon and I were assigned to create an educational workshop for the students, so they could learn how to care for their new digester.

ration technology for use in the digester, to performing interviews and waste audits around the community. When the sunny day of our workshop finally arrives, we all crowd into the white van and traverse the bumpy roads to Lweza. Attendees begin arriving slowly; by the time the workshop begins, the main hall contained a few hundred pairs of eager eyes watching and learning about their new anaerobic digester. The first presentation by Gideon explained what biogas was and how it would be used for cooking at their school; next came the skits where American undergraduates performed tasks that would be made easier with biogas, such as no longer needing to carry firewood, then finally came a game where we displayed images of different waste types and asked the children if those materials could enter an anaerobic digestion system. The children shouted out the answers, and it was great to hear a few hundred voices loudly cheering “biogas!”

30 In Common Spring/Summer 2014 31

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Networking online

Nelson Institute alumni can find opportunities for social net-working on Facebook and Twitter, for professional networking on LinkedIn, and see snapshots from campus and student life on the photo-sharing site Instagram.

president of advancement. The organization celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2014. To read the interview: go.wisc.edu/zanoni

Peter Allen (M.S. CBSD ‘09) and his wife Maureen have founded Mastodon Valley Farm, a small family farm and ecological restoration project in the Kickapoo River watershed in southwestern Wisconsin’s Driftless area. Their mission is to restore the landscape’s native oak savanna ecosystems while producing healthy and nutri-tious foods for the community. Allen also teaches courses and provides consulting services on how to design, establish and manage perennial savanna agro-ecosystems through his company Savanna Gardens, LLC. 

Kat Friedrich (M.S. LR ‘06) now serves as editor of the Clean Energy Finance Forum, an online publication sponsored by the Yale Center for Business and the Environment.

Alumni Notes

What’s new in your career and life? Write us at incommon@nelson.wisc.edu or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and share an update there.

Norma Gallegos-Valles (ES ’13) and George Reistad (ES ’11) are featured in a series of bilingual videos produced as part of the New Green Challenge, a Madison Gas and Electric-sponsored initiative that encourages members of Madison’s African American and Latino communities to live greener lives by saving energy, eating well, reducing waste, con-serving water and driving less. View the videos on YouTube: go.wisc.edu/newgreenchallenge

Steve Hopkins (M.S. LR ‘88) recently completed the Iowa Certified Public Manager Program through the State of Iowa and Drake University. He is the Nonpoint Source Program coordinator for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in Des Moines.

Ezra Meyer (M.S. WRM ‘03) serves as a water resources specialist with Clean Wisconsin, assisting in the design and implementation of the organiza-tion’s water program.

Justin Mog (M.S. LR ’99, Ph.D. LR ’03) is assistant to the provost for sustainability initiatives at the University of Louisville, leading efforts to help the campus become more environmentally and socially responsible. Initiatives include reduced energy use, single-stream recycling, increased use of local food, environmentally responsible building design, green purchasing policies and better accessibility for bicycle riders.

Alumni-authored books on cooperative conservation, stream lifeNelson Institute alumni have penned two new books from University of Wisconsin Press.

In Living a Land Ethic, Steve Laubach (M.S. CBSD ’00, Ph.D. CHE ‘13) chronicles the formation of the 1,600-acre reserve surrounding the Leopold Shack near Baraboo, Wisconsin. When the Leopold Memorial Reserve was founded in 1967, five neighboring families signed an innovative agreement to jointly care for their properties in ways that honored Aldo Leopold’s legacy. In the ensuing years, the Sand County Foundation and Aldo Leopold Foundation were formed to carry on this tradition. Laubach, a watershed education and outreach specialist for the UW-Madison Arboretum Earth Partnership for Schools program and a lecturer at Edgewood College, draws from the archives of both organizations to share the Reserve’s untold history and its important place in the American conservation movement.

Ron Dolen (M.S. WRM ‘09), Katie Songer (M.S. ER ’09) and Michael Miller, in collaboration with dozens of biologists and ecologists, have prepared Field Guide to Wisconsin Streams, a unique compendium of the plants and animals known to inhabit Wisconsin’s 84,000 miles of streams. The guide includes more than 1,000 images illustrating plant, fish, invertebrate, amphib-ian and reptile species, along with detailed ecological and taxonomic notes, descriptions of look-alike species, and distribution maps. Dolen is an environmental scientist and educator who has conducted watershed studies and trained citizen volunteer stream monitors at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources; Songer is an environmen-tal scientist, educator and writer who has worked with AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps and the Wisconsin DNR. 

ES denotes environmental studies undergraduate major; ESC, environmental studies undergraduate certificate. Graduate programs: CBSD, Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development; EAP, Energy Analysis and Policy certificate; EM, environmental Monitoring (through 2005); ER, environment and Resources (after 2007); LR, Land Resources (through 2007); and WRM, Water Resources Management.

After six years operating a guide service at Zion Adventure Company near Zion National Park in Utah, Nick Wilkes (ESC ’00) has returned to Madison and started three small businesses: Nick Wilkes Photography, Isthmus Design and Devils Lake Climbing Guides, offering rock climbing trips and courses at Devil’s Lake State Park.

Hobbie and Dannenberg honored with alumni awards

In March the Nelson Institute named the recipients of two new annual alumni awards, recently established to spotlight some of the accomplishments of the nearly 4,000 alumni of the institute’s graduate and undergraduate degree and certificate programs. 

LYNN HOBBIE, who earned a master’s degree in Land Resources with a certificate in Energy Analysis and Policy in 1984, received the Distinguished Alumni Award. Hobbie is senior vice president of Madison Gas and Electric, where she has worked for 28 years in a variety of roles. She currently oversees corporate communi-cations, customer energy efficiency and renewable energy programs, energy prod-ucts and services, economic development, residential and community services, business marketing, web services and social media.   She has been deeply involved in numerous community organizations and serves on several boards and committees. She has participated in and provided support for numerous Nelson Institute events, and she has offered professional devel-opment advice for students in the Nelson Institute Community Environmental Scholars Program. 

MATT DANNENBERG is the first recipient of the Early Career Alumni Award. Matt is the central Wisconsin organizer with the League of Conservation Voters, working to recruit new voters concerned about conservation, develop leaders, and engage activists on conservation issues. He also oversees the organization’s Madison-based volunteer and internship programs and the state-wide Native Vote program. Dannenberg joined the organization in 2010 after earning a bachelor’s degree in political science with a certificate in environ-mental studies from UW-Madison. He has mentored dozens of conservation advocates, gives guest lectures at colleges, universi-ties and other events, and regularly writes opinion columns on the politics of conservation.

The 2014 alumni awards were presented at the Nelson Institute Earth Day Conference in April. For more information about crite-ria and nomination, visit nelson.wisc.edu/alumni/awards.

In search of a winning chili recipe? Try the creations of grad student champs at the 2014 Nelson Institute chili cook-off. As students, fac-ulty, staff and alumni sampled from the competing crocks, a panel of judges deemed Stubb’s chili, prepared by Chris Bocast, and Desi chili, a preparation with an Indian twist from Vaishnavi Tripuraneni and Amulya Vishweshwer, to be the best. Get cooking: go.wisc.edu/chilirecipes

Camille Zanoni (ESC ’99) was profiled by the Wisconsin State Journal in April, discussing the growth and future goals of the Aldo Leopold Nature Center, where she serves as interim executive director and vice

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Rendezvous on Terracethe

FRIDAYSEPTEMBER 12

5:00-7:00 PMTRIPP DECK

MEMORIAL UNION

NELSON.WISC.EDU/ALUMNI

NELSON INSTITUTE ALUMNI

40 Science Hall550 North Park StreetMadison, WI 53706

JORDAHLPUBLIC LANDS LECTURE

featuring William CrononCronon’s remarks will explore the meaning of the Wilderness Act upon its 50th anniversary.

Tuesday, October 21 7:00 PM Shannon Hall Memorial Union800 Langdon St, Madison, WI

nelson.wisc.edu/jordahl

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