We're a little late to the party on this one, but last week's Chronicle of Higher Education feature on space planning and long-term sustainability is full of good stuff.

The issue of space planning on campus is always a sticky one, with individual professors, departments and research teams doing their best to preserve their own interests, which could be anything from always teaching at 10am in a particular room to defending unused extra storage space. And as the cost of building and Scott Carlson reports.

Aside from personnel, facilities budgets are the biggest on campus, and wasted space, even if it’s just a few rooms, can cost a university millions of dollars over a building’s lifetime. The situation gets worse when energy or construction prices spike, as at the University of Michigan, which lost $100 million in state appropriations and was forced to respond with an immediate assessment of its construction and renovations plans, slowing its space growth rate from 2% per year to 0.5%.

And cost is not the only source of difficulty. Sustainability plays a part as well. Schools that have signed the President’s Climate Commitment have promised to work towards significant greenhouse gas emissions reduction, but may find that their need to grow conflicts with the need to conserve. Carlson reports, “campus growth is also still seen as an exciting sign of progress…the State University of New York at Buffalo recently announced a plan to add or renovate some seven million square feet in the next 20 years. Every new building will add to the university emissions.” SUNY-Buffalo, which has signed the ACUPCC, will likely find that no matter how energy-efficient these buildings are, they will hinder or slow its progress towards carbon neutrality.

So what’s to be done?

"Some colleges, for reasons either economic or environmental, are considering a halt to their growth. Administrators at the University of Minnesota, which has signed the climate commitment, are just starting to discuss a no-net-growth policy: If the university builds something new, something else has to come down. That could be a difficult step to take on a campus with lots of historic buildings. And even if such a policy gained traction at Minnesota, it may have to come after the university puts up a new football stadium, a biosciences building, a center for magnetic-resonance research, and other projects already in the pipeline,” writes Carlson.

The idea of no-net-growth is unappealing to many, even if the new spaces end up being better, more efficient, and more useful to students and faculty--which is in no way a guaranteed result. But as the idea of a national cap-and-trade emissions plan gains traction, making energy and construction companies account for their climate costs, the decision may come down to necessity rather than desire.

What do you think of a no-net-growth policty? What are the drawbacks, the benefits? Is it a crucial part of a sustainability plan that includes carbon neutrality?

As a warm-up to this year's AASHE conference, I toured Duke University with a group of other sustainability professionals, starting with the swamp.

I imagine most campus visitors don't immediately get dragged out into the marsh, but the interest on everyone's faces was a visible reminder that schools aren't just invested in clean energy, but also in traditional environmental work, such as restoring wetlands. This is particularly true when projects involve students in the process.

The SWAMP (Stream and Wetland Assessment Management Park) project is designed to restore an urban watershed, research several different kinds of wetlands, and purify local water supplies. The work was largely funded by the state of North Carolina because of its positive impact on downstream water quality, with a smaller contribution from the university itself. Students are trained on "real-world restoration techniques, modern hydrologic modeling, and the basic principles of stream, lake, and wetland ecology" as part of their coursework, and they came on the tour with us to answer questions and tell us about the work they've done.

As part of the tour, we also looked at several LEED-Silver campus buildings, counted bike racks, toured a prototype "smart house," and ate a meal of local food from one of the campus cafes. However, for many people the most memorable part of the day was the morning walk through the woods. One attendee remarked, "I love that students are out here doing the work. That happens at a lot of universities, but not enough. Maybe it needs to be more than just the natural science students."

The idea that students and others on campus need to connect better to their surroundings was a common theme of the conference. Between sessions on eco-literacy, local environmental history projects, campus habitats, and Vandana Shiva's appeal to get people back on the land, almost everybody had something to say.

After Janice Crede started taking small groups of students out to a cabin for a week (no laptops or TVs allowed) for a "Nature Immersion" curriculum she piloted at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, she started seeing results. "We wanted to help students understand a little bit more about their impact on the planet. They have a half-hour biology class each day, then we let them loose to explore the lake, the woods, the bog, before we have some conversations about sustainability and leadership. Everything is outside. We eat dinner by the campfire and stay up too late, and by the end of the week they no longer miss their laptops, and they don’t want to leave."

Surveys and open-ended writing assignments that the students complete before and after the course corroborate Crede's thesis: "What they told me is that they come back and they feel changed in their attitudes, perceptions and behaviors. They feel as if they have a whole new group of people they can relate to."   

We are recapping AASHE: Sustainability on Campus and Beyond as it happens. If you were at the sessions we're covering, weigh in with your comments below. Or see others' blogs, photos and Twitter updates on the AASHE live page.

In the space of an hour, Vandana Shiva, physicist and agricultural activist, managed to connect the oil and human labor inputs required by modern agriculture, the nutritional deficit of monocrops, the dangers of species loss, the moisture depletion of agro-chemically treated fields, the imbalance of grain that goes to factory farms rather than human mouths, obesity and diabetes, US grain subsidies, biofuels, the 160,000 annual suicides of Indian farmers who are finding the monocrop seeds they purchased won't grow, and the mass exodus of families from heritage land. The coherent case that emerged at the end was simple: "We must get people back on the land."

One of several sustainable food experts that have earned attention in recent years, Shiva is in good company. Michael Pollan, Frances Moore Lappe, and even Jane Goodall have spent years studying the American industrial food systems and come to similar conclusions.

While agricultural yields increased dramatically in the mid-1900's, the soil depletion that has resulted makes farmers even more dependent on intensive chemical fertilizer and water inputs. Not only is this problematic for the farmers who are increasingly sensitive to drought and price fluctuation, but fertilizers based on fossil fuels could very soon become impossible to obtain, if declining oil predictions are correct. The answer, says Shiva, is biodiversity. "The delicacy that small-scale farming requires, is the delicacy that encourages biodiversity. And biodiversity makes for healthier food.”

As she spoke, Shiva compared universities—and their status within their communities—to the recent election, making the case that just as President-elect Obama will use his advisors to find solutions to the problems facing the nation, "every campus should make its own transition team for food beyond oil. We can create a food system beyond toxics. Beyond genocide."

In fact, she claimed, food is not only an agricultural issue, but integral to national security and peace. "For me, food is about peace. Peace with nature, peace between communities, and peace with our own bodies. Because we are at war with our bodies now, and food has become ammunition."

She went on to say that universities and colleges, who made major strides in the research that based our current agricultural system on fossil-fuel based fertilizers, have a large share of the responsibility for finding a solution."Campuses have a lot of eaters, and a lot of influence in their community. Wouldn't it be exciting if biology classes planted their own biodiversity plots? Why shouldn't edible schoolyards be on every campus?"

Given the intricacies of the global food system, it's no small demand. Shiva’s final comparison drew a laugh from the audience: “Those guys fiddling with the derivatives that put your economy into this state are like me, they juggle numbers. But wouldn’t it be amazing if they were juggling numbers that would make a better system for us?”

Podcast Interview with Vandana

Vandana Shiva: Why Shouldn't Edible Schoolyards Be On Every Campus?

We are recapping AASHE: Sustainability on Campus and Beyond as it happens. If you were at the sessions we're covering, weigh in with your comments below. Or see others' blogs, photos and Twitter updates on the AASHE live page.

Being part of National Wildlife Federation, those of us at Campus Ecology talk a lot about wildlife habitats. Not only are we invested in maintaining biological diversity and preserving the migration paths of plants, birds, butterflies and animals, we also know that creating spaces for wildlife means that we are providing natural carbon sequestration opportunities.

We recently hosted a teleconference on campus habitat restoration (available here) and learned about some great things that schools have been doing to green their campuses through the use of habitat. The University of Central Florida, for example, focused their efforts on education by creating several distinct ecosystems in the UCF arboretum that replicate habitats exclusive to central Florida. The 12-acre biogeographic garden is crisscrossed with trails for students and visitors. The university has also started a temperature tracking system on campus to explore the "urban heat island effect." Native vegetation will be planted on roofs and in hot spots, and then temperature will be tracked again. Staff hope to see significant cooling in certain areas.

Oakton Community College in Des Plaines, Illinois, took a different approach by restoring habitat that had already been damaged.  Oakton's acres of habitat had been overrun with buckthorn and a Eurasian garlic mustard plant which crowded out native species and plants. With a grant from BP and a lot of help from student volunteers, these plants are slowly being eradicated to make room for seeds from local (within a 25-mile radius) northeastern Illinois. Once these take hold, the ecosystem can return to its natural state and attract pollinating insects and other wildlife. Oakton also uses controlled burns, as local species are adapted to fire and will survive, while invasive plants often won't.

An even bigger project is currently taking place at The University of Washington Bothell Cascadia Community College, where staffers looked at a dilapidated section of the North Creek floodplain on campus lands, and embarked on a decades-long restoration to manage watersheds and coax the forest back to life. (Look here for more details.) The ongoing restoration acts as a valuable case study to students, while it also attracts good press to the school as one of the biggest floodplain restorations in the Pacific Northwest.

It can sometimes be difficult to convince other campus decision-makers that habitat restoration is important and effective. It took several years to formulate the plan and gain permits for the wetlands restoration project at UWB/CCC, and even though progress is being made, it takes several decades for an ecosystem to reach maturity. Many of the people who contributed to the project may never see this part of North Creek functioning in its full glory. Also, seeing energy costs go down due to increased efficiency is, to many people, more satisfying than knowing that green space is sequestering carbon. This means some campuses are more willing to retrofit buildings than create habitats. Both are important, but we think that the Wildflower loop at UCF's aboretum is good evidence that habitats are important for well-being, not just carbon capture.

Check out our podcast and powerpoint of the web conference if you want to get more details on these projects. You can also contact us for more research and examples if you're interested in implementing this kind of project on your own campus. To start small, consider dedicating a small section of your campus as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. And for extra credit, check to see if Fritz Haeg's Animal Estates exhibit is coming to your town. This traveling installation reintroduces animals into environments such as strip malls, garages, office parks, freeways, front yards and parking lots to examine the displacement of wildlife by humans and bring species back into harmony. 

This underwhelming waterway is known as Kraut Creek to residents of Boone, NC, who remember the days when a local sauerkraut factory sent its runoff downstream, polluting air and water alike. Now that the factory is long gone, a group of professors, students, engineers and local environmentalists who are inspired by the creek's potential have teamed up to restore a 150-foot stretch of the stream to its former glory.

“When the project is completely finished, it’s going to be beautiful,” says Jana Carp, pictured at left. “We have a landscaping plan that will filter storm water runoff, stabilize the banks and incorporate native plants and shrubs that will shade the creek and provide a better habitat for fish, amphibians and birds.”

While the scope of the project is small, the Committee hopes that their work, in partnership with local organizations such as the Boone Area Chamber of Commerce, MountainKeepers, and the National Committee for the New River, will inspire other property owners along the stream banks to embark on similar projects.

The restoration is expected to take about four weeks to complete, although it will take much longer to see the return of wildlife and measure differences in water quality. For more information, click here.

Image: Members of the Kraut Creek Committee on the damaged banks. Photo taken by Marie Freeman, via Appalachian State University News.

Hillsborough Community College is going for gold: Gold LEED, that is, at a new campus in Tampa Bay's SouthShore community. Constructed with recycled steel, outfitted with efficient daylight-monitoring lights, and bordered by a lagoon to collect rainwater for irrigation and plumbing, the small campus is expected to save 80% of its water costs and about $156,000 on lighting and utility bills. While certification is still under review, the college is confident that the buildings will qualify, as they were designed and built around the Gold guidelines. The three buildings will house classrooms, administrative offices, a nursing lab and a student union center when they open this summer.

Even better, HCC's President Gwendolyn Stephenson has committed to aligning every new construction or renovation project with U.S. Green Building Council guidelines, including an additional three buildings for the SouthShore campus. She says, "Colleges have to be thoughtful stewards of our planet's natural resources. We have a role in educating the public. I think we have to be role models." 

Of course! There are several ways to save energy and keep cool during the summer. When leaving home in the morning close the blinds and curtains part way to keep the sun out and keep the house cool. Avoid using the oven, use the grill instead – heat up the outside instead of the kitchen. While driving, instead of using the air conditioning put both windows down for a good, cool cross breeze. Use a sun shield in the car to protect the interior and to keep it protected from direct sun that will heat it up. To reduce water use in the summer, plant native species, for example drought-tolerant plants in desert areas. Collect rainwater in barrels and use it to water the lawn. Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, planted drought-tolerant plants and shade trees on campus: vegetation appropriate for a hot, dry climate. The shade trees provide a cool place for students to relax.

NWF’s mission is to inspire Americans to protect wildlife for our children’s future. The National Park Service was created to preserve natural resources. So it would be logical to assume that the park service and NWF have similar interests. And we do. We both know how important land conservation is. We both want to preserve outdoor spaces and educate people about nature and show that we can live in harmony with the great outdoors. Parks are essential in maintaining wildlife habitat, curbing sprawl, and educating people and getting them excited about the Earth. But our nation’s parks are in trouble.

In parks across the country, cell phone towers are starting to go up, suburbs are pushing closer and closer to park boarders, and funding to maintain parks is disappearing. And then there are the impacts of global warming - drought, increased forest fires, increased pollution, temperature variations and new invasive species. Putting a strain on these immensely important resources threatens wildlife and will be incredibly hard to reverse. The more we stress our national parks, the more important conservation will become.

Conservation and habitat restoration are areas that NWF fellows have worked on in the past and are currently working on this year as well. Melissa Fries and Edi Sonntag, both 2006 Campus Ecology Fellows, are working on habitat conservation projects. Melissa is working to protect fragile vernal pools around the Ohio State campus while Edi is completing an intensive survey of amphibians and reptiles on the Michigan State campus. As wild land encounters more man-made threats, this type of habitat work will become more and more important.

Having just relocated to Virginia from Juneau, Alaska, I have to admit that I know next to nothing about the invasive species present here. In Alaska, the worry is that Atlantic salmon, mollusks from New Zealand, or crabs from China will be introduced to rivers and streams. Seafood is a big deal in the ‘Last Frontier.’ I didn’t realize garlic mustard was just as threatening in Virginia until one of NWF’s naturalists pointed it out. Garlic mustard is a weed from Europe that messes up the relationship between trees and fungi, which can be devastating to forests.

Invasives are nothing new. NWF Campus Ecology Fellows have been tackling this problem for years. In 2003, Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin decided to take on invasive plants and succeeded in getting half of the campus to incorporate native plant species in landscape designs. The State University of New York dealt with invasives in 2004 by educating local kindergarten through high school students. NWF Fellow Richard Strain got students to grow local pine seedlings, which were transferred onto the SUNY campus.

Students have the potential to make enormous changes on their campuses. Northland College and the SUNY campus can be examples for other students trying to make a positive environmental change locally. To learn about other National Wildlife Federation fellows that have completed habitat restoration projects and taken on invasive species, check out our website!