The theme of the sixth annual conference, which coincides with the 40th anniversary of the best-seller Limits to Growth, is “Adaptation: Creating a Resilient Future.” The HSU symposium in the Kate Buchanan Room will be anchored by top specialists in the field who will examine the effects of climate change on energy and transportation systems, food production, economics and natural resources.

The conference combines the symposium on campus Thursday and Friday, July 19-20, and an Expo/Trade Show and tours from the Arcata Community Center on Saturday, July 21. Attendance at the expo is free and open to the general public.

Nationally recognized authors and experts at the Humboldt State symposium will probe the development of strategies and technologies that can foster adaptation to a changing climate. Headline speakers are:

• Bill McKibben, famed educator, environmentalist and author of The End of Nature, The Global Warming Reader and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future and founder of 350.org, an advocacy organization for grassroots global climate solutions

• Jorgen Randers, one of the original authors of The Limits to Growth, now a professor of climate strategy at the BI Norwegian Business School and writer of a new book, 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next 40 Years

• Richard Heinberg, Post-Carbon Institute senior fellow and author of more than 10 books on energy policy

• James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency and Too Much Magic and a specialist in suburban sprawl and diminishing global oil supplies

• Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Town movement and of the Transition Network, author of The Transition Handbook—From Oil Dependence to Local Resilience and The Transition Companion

Humboldt speakers will include Lonny Grafman, HSU professor of environmental engineering professor and founder of Appropedia, an online source of collaborative solutions in sustainability, appropriate technology and poverty reduction; Michael Furniss of the Redwood Science Lab, who will discuss the impact of climate change on redwood forests; and Aldaron Laird of Trinity Consulting, author of the Humboldt Bay Shoreline Inventory and Inundation Assessment.

The Building Green Communities Trade Show and Expo at the Arcata Community Center on Saturday, July 21 will include exhibitors and vendors with information, goods and services related to the development of a sustainable and resilient future. A number of working groups will delve further into issues presented at the conference.

Tours departing from the center will include the Arcata Marsh and Humboldt State’s CCAT House, oyster farms and the Potowat Health Center, local food producers, dairies and fisheries and a Northcoast Tribal Tour featuring indigenous permaculture and redwood canoe construction.

Conference pricing ranges from $30 (webcast) to $65 (regular ticket). All conference attendees will receive a Community Resilience Toolkit, a 120 page workbook of all resource materials for investigating and explaining how to build community resilience.

Attendance at the Tradeshow/Expo is free and tours are $40 each.

Full information is available at (707) 599-6612 and online registration is posted at www.AdaptationConference.org.

Conference manager Larry Goldberg can be reached at (707) 845-7272 and larry@northcoast.com.

Humboldt State is recognized in the new annual edition of the company’s downloadable book, “The Princeton Review’s Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2012 Edition.”

The free guide for prospective college students and their families canvases “institutions of higher education that demonstrate a notable commitment to sustainability in their academic offerings, campus infrastructure, activities and career preparation.”

Humboldt State is one of only seven of the 23 California State University campuses to be profiled in the review, which has no affiliation with Princeton University.

“Being recognized nationally and transnationally as a green school is a big help in letting prospective HSU students know that we have a lasting and demonstrated commitment to sustainability,” said Tall Chief Comet, the university’s director of sustainability programs.

“Our reputation as an outstanding institution for natural resources and environment-oriented studies, due in no small part to our unique geographical location, lends a synergistic effect to the university and surrounding community. Together, we are very cognizant of needing to balance the social, economic and environmental issues of our society, now and in planning for the future. There’s an ever-expanding breadth and depth of sustainability activities on this campus; I’m constantly challenged with trying to keep up, but also very heartened by what is happening!”

The Princeton Review polled administrators at 768 institutions of higher learning in the summer of 2011 about their schools’ sustainability initiatives and their environmentally-related policies, practices and academic offerings.

A separate but related Princeton Review survey confirmed recently that college-bound high school graduates attach increasing importance to applying at schools where sustainability and environmental protection are institutional priorities. Of more than 7,400 applicants contacted, fully 68% said collegiate “green” commitments would influence their choice of school.

As a long-time green campus, Humboldt State incorporates sustainability across a broad series of academic and service learning disciplines, coupled with many student volunteer programs in the Redwood Coast community. Healthy living, energy and water conservation and financial savings are integral to the sustainability mix, often driven by student-led initiatives like CCAT and the Humboldt Energy Independence Fund.

Details are posted at www.princetonreview.com/green-guide.

Full information about HSU’s sustainability programs is at www.humboldt.edu/green.

The Chancellor’s Office cited HSU’s Innovative Waste Reduction Program, a partnership with the Humboldt Waste Management Authority and Environmental Science Associates to divert 100 percent of the campus’s organic waste by 2013.

T.C. Comet, director of HSU’s Office of Sustainability, said, “The award recognizes that a small rural university like ours can innovate successfully in new fields of endeavor, and into the bargain make energy-saving gains with far fewer resources than those enjoyed by our big-city counterparts. And working closely with our progressive community partners, we know we will able to build on our diversion program far into the future.”

Announced last summer, the program’s first 12-18 months are devoted to laying the diversion project’s foundations and working out the logistics.

In the meantime, HSU’s student-run Waste Reduction and Resource Awareness Program annually diverts about four tons (8,000 pounds) of compostable waste out of the landfill.

As part of the new food diversion program cited by the CSU, Comet projects that eventually, volume might soar to 300 tons of organic waste shunted out of the landfill every year.

Pre- and post-consumer organic waste will be collected from campus eateries like the “J” Cafeteria, with the cooperation of Dining Services.
Organic waste also will be collected from newly installed, wildlife-resistant compost bins placed around campus.

The plan is to transfer organic waste to the Humboldt Waste Management’s authority’s new anaerobic food waste digester. There, bacteria will break down the waste in an oxygen-free environment, resulting in two main byproducts: one that can be used to create electricity to power the Elk River wastewater treatment plant in Eureka and the other to produce nutrient-rich fertilizer.

Details about HSU sustainability initiatives are posted at humboldt.edu/green. Information about the student-run Waste Reduction and Resource Awareness Program is at humboldt.edu/wrrap. The rundown on the Humboldt Waste Management Authority’s Food Waste Program is at http://www.hwma.net/food-waste.

A baby hummingbird—weighing less than five grams and no more than a few weeks old—feeding with its mother.

The scene became even more compelling when the fledgling suddenly spread its wings and flew, leaving its nest for the very first time.

“It was amazing,” recalls Scheerer, who was there on a film shoot for the California Environmental Legacy Project (CELP), a statewide initiative co-founded by HSU Biology Professor Jeffrey White designed to increase public awareness about the environment.

For the past year, Scheerer and a handful of HSU students, alumni and crewmembers have visited five natural habitats—Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, Point Reyes National Seashore, Lassen Volcanic National Park, Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook State Park, and Redwood National and State Parks—to film the local wildlife and scenery.

Left to Right: Film Professor David Scheerer, alumnus Timothy O’Malley, and graduate student Will Goldenberg (‘12, Wildlife Management & Conservation) film in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park for the California Environmental Legacy Project.

Later this year, they’ll produce a media package for every site—a short film and five to ten podcasts—describing the scientific, geological and cultural history of each location.

“How did these places come to be? How did the largest trees on earth, for example, come to be living on the Franciscan mélange, home to the most unstable soil on earth?” Scheerer asks.

The project is part of the California Environmental Legacy Project (CELP), a statewide initiative funded by a $3 million National Science Foundation grant and other contributions that brings together scientists, educators and media professionals from around the state to improve public understanding of the environment. Co-founded by Principal Investigator and Executive Producer Jeffrey White, the project includes online educational materials, site-specific films and a two-hour documentary on California’s environmental history to air on PBS this fall.

“The goal is to get people to understand nature in a way that they are either connecting with it for the first time, reconnecting, or are inspired to continue connecting,” Scheerer says.

Graduate student Will Goldenberg (’12, Wildlife Management & Conservation) is a production assistant and assistant cameraman who’s worked on the project since 2011. Last spring, he helped conduct a tram shoot in the Redwood Forest. Crews mounted a camera on a cable between two trees and it captured footage while zipping through the forest.

In August, he travelled with Scheerer to Lassen Volcanic National Park, where they recorded geothermal features like hot springs and boiling mud pools. In January, they encountered a herd of Peninsular Bighorn Sheep in the Borrego Desert, an endangered species that has inhabited the area for thousands of years.

During their most recent trip, they hiked to a remote cave in the Anza-Borrego to film pictographs—or rock drawings—sketched by the indigenous Kumeyaay, people native to the southwest United States and northwest Mexico. They also witnessed the annual migration of the Swainson’s hawk from Argentina to Canada.

Emmy-award winning cinematographer Rick Rosenthal (‘67, Zoology) behind the camera at a recent shoot in the Anza-Borrego Desert.

One of the highlights, Goldenberg says, was working with Emmy award-winning cinematographer Rick Rosenthal (’67, Zoology), who accompanied them on the trip.

“It was a huge opportunity to see how he did this type of work,” says Goldenberg who is considering a career in wildlife cinematography.

Over the next few months Scheerer and his team will turn 100 hours of raw footage into five, 15-minute movies and 25 podcasts. Each documentary will include interviews with scientists, park officials and visitors, an original score and computer generated images. The films will be available online next year, Scheerer says.

“”I think a lot of people somehow think of the natural world as separate from us,” Scheerer says. “Our goal here is to remind people that we are part of the wild, that this is where we come from and that these stories are our story.”

For more on the California Environmental Legacy Project.

A team of two staff engineers and two student assistants recently developed a solar power option for a device called the SE200, which uses electricity to purify contaminated water. The system offers a sustainable alternative to traditional purification methods like boiling in places like sub-Saharan Africa.

The SE200 is an electrochlorinator, an appliance that turns salt water into chlorine, which is used to disinfect contaminated water. Electrochlorination is a common disinfecting technique that has only recently been used in third world countries.

Using solar technology designed by SERC Engineers, the SE200 converts salt water into bleach. The bleach is used to purify water in developing areas like sub-Saharan Africa.

“What we’ve been able to do is take this technology a step further, make it sustainable and extend it to people who live off the electricity grid,” says SERC Engineer Peter Alstone (’09, Environmental Systems), who designed the device with Robert Hosbach (‘11, Environmental Resources Engineering), Kristen Radecsky (‘09, Environmental Systems) and Zak Stanko (‘12, Environmental Resources Engineering).

SERC was asked to create the renewable power system this summer by Cascade Designs Inc., a Seattle-based company that developed the SE200 in 2008 in partnership with PATH, a non-governmental organization that promotes public health in the developing world. SERC was a natural choice for the project because of its work supporting low-carbon lighting options for the World Bank Group’s Lighting Africa Program and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lumina Project, Alstone says.

SERC engineers created two solar-powered clean water devices. The first was a 40-watt system for community water kiosks that can treat up to 9,000 liters a day, charge cell phone batteries and power LED lights. The second was a mobile, 20-watt device for aid organizations that can treat up to 3,000 liters a day during emergencies.

The 20-watt mobile device is housed in a waterproof container and treats up to 3,000 liters of contaminated water a day.

The International Finance Corporation estimates that about 3 billion people worldwide live without regular access to clean, piped water and that many suffer from waterborne illness as a result. In rural areas, boiling is the most common water purification method, but it requires the burning of fossil fuels, which increases greenhouse gas emissions.

Using the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism methodology, SERC engineers estimate that the SE200 uses 10,000 times less energy than traditional purification methods like boiling. Entrepreneurs looking to subsidize the system can use that potential reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to apply for carbon financing, an international mechanism established after the Kyoto Protocol that facilitates financial rewards for projects in developing countries that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.