![Massive algae bloom of of the coast of Patagonia. [Wikimedia Commons]](http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Patagonian_Bloom-150x110.jpg "Patagonian_Bloom")
In the last century we have witnessed incredible environmental leaps in our understanding of planet Earth. With a focus on integrated, systems thinking we invite you to register for an interactive online webinar that explores the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment.
More than half of the world’s population now lives in urban settings, making sustainable urban management a critical concern. This course introduces you to the fundamentals of urban environmental management and sustainability with a special focus on New York City.
As biodiversity takes a hit from climate change, forward thinking groups store seed samples in gene banks. The idea: if an entire species is wiped out, scientists can repopulate from the samples. Hello, plant versions of Adam and Eve.
A golf-ball-sized rhinoceros beetle flies through the open-air pavilion and lands on my table. I look up from my notes, an attempt at reworking my African wild dog study methods, and realize I haven’t seen one of these mighty beasts since my junior year in South Africa. The beetle is a welcome companion on this quiet, star-studded night in Jordan’s Ajloun Forest Reserve. Creature comforts: another perspective shift made possible by the Columbia Global Centers.
What we call forest—addressing it simply as an object in space—is in fact an ever-shifting process, a living and breathing colony possessed of a body, a purpose, and a lifespan—at once noun, a verb, an adjective. In these budding, bristling eons of development, the forests came to be the lungs of the organic Earth, an incredible organ that generates a bounty of oxygen and a great regulator of global climate patterns.
CERC students visit and document their experiences on video at the Lower East Side Ecology Center’s new permanent e-waste warehouse located in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
As we in North America emerge from a remarkably mild winter, the brief and sunny summer in the world’s deep south is drawing to a rapid close. Antarctica’s days are becoming shorter, and come the vernal equinox the South Pole will enter into its yearly hibernation—six months of dusk and night. Researchers from Columbia University and elsewhere have spent these bright months bearing the chill in pursuit of access to a realm deep beneath the soaring, scathing surface of the glacier.
In partnership with Columbia’s Global Center in Amman, the Columbia University Middle East Research Center, undergraduate students of all majors have the unique opportunity to study ecosystems and environmental sustainability in Jordan.
The organic-rich source rock of the Marcellus Shale is an on-going target for massive gas extraction. Advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking, have made this extensive area of Marcellus black shale one of the largest unconventional and widely controversial gas operations in the United States today.
Summer 2012 applications for the Student Ecosystem Experiences for Undergraduate program are now being accepted. Undergraduate students of all majors can apply for the opportunity to conduct field work and study unique ecosystems abroad.
State of the Planet is a forum for discussion on varying viewpoints. The opinions expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Earth Institute or Columbia University.
