InSites is a quarterly newsletter that highlights the personalities and projects of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI) of The University of Tennessee. WMREI is an affiliate of the EERC.
WMREI was created in 1985 as a state-funded Center of Excellence. Research areas include solid-, hazardous-, and nuclear-waste management; waste minimization; and pollution prevention.
Biotechnology is the focal point of the institute's technical research, while issues involving public attitudes and federal/state policies related to waste-management issues are the primary concerns of the institute's policy research.
For additional information about InSites, or to be added to our mailing list, please write InSites, WMREI, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-1156, or fax 865-974-1838. Or, if you prefer, email us.
Table of Contents
Eye to the Sky
,
Elise LeQuire
Regional Strategy for Clean
Air,
Elise LeQuire Saving
Grace Wanted:
Educators Determined to Help Save the World (One Classroom at a Time)
David Brill Staff
Citings
Each morning at dawn, a heliostat atop the tallest building on the campus of the University of Tennessee (UT), Knoxville, locks onto the sun’s orbit, tracking its rise to the zenith and eventual descent over the western horizon.
The mission of the heliostat, or suntracker, is to capture the distinct radiative fingerprints of pollutants invisible to the human eye, including nitrogen oxides, which are precursors to acid rain, and ozone, a corrosive gas with documented adverse effects on vegetation and human health in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, an International Biosphere Reserve, and elsewhere.
Mirrors in the suntracker, located on the roof of UT’s eight-story Science and Engineering Research Facility (SERF), send the sunlight through a 60-foot tube to a high-resolution spectrometer that measures the amount of the sun’s infrared light absorbed by each of the measured molecules.
“Infrared spectroscopy measures wave lengths longer than red, which are invisible to the human eye,” says Robert Compton, UT’s Paul and Wilma Ziegler Professor of Chemistry. “Everything that has a temperature has a measurable emission spectrum, and many molecules in the atmosphere absorb infrared radiation. This includes naturallyoccurring molecules such as water and carbon dioxide, as well as aerosols and pollutants that are byproducts of industrial activity.
“This area has it all: The natural beauty of the Smokies, the combined expertise of physicists, engineers, and chemists at UT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and technology such as high-tech spectrometers. One such tool is Raman spectroscopy, which is similar and complementary to infrared spectroscopy,” Compton says.
This region is also one of the most polluted in the United States. Knoxville routinely ranks in the top-10 most polluted cities, and the region’s national park is one of the most endangered in the nation due to its high levels of air pollution.
“The original purpose of our research was to sample gases in Knoxville, the Smokies, and to the west at ORNL operations in Oak Ridge, where we know that emissions of uranium hexafluoride are of concern,” Compton says.
“In the Smokies study, we will be tracking ozone, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds. We want to look at seasonal and subseasonal variations and the local distribution of these gases as well as augment the already extensive air pollution monitoring underway in the Smokies.”
Compton is also on the lookout for unknown molecules that
might be a product of the soil chemistry peculiar to
Great Smoky Mountains National Park. “In basic versus applied science,
you don’t know what you’re looking for, but we’d like to find
molecules that may be evolving in the Smokies,” he says.
HIGH-TECH TOOLS
As heat, or radiation, from the photosphere of the sun enters the atmosphere,
different molecules absorb spectra of
infrared light at different wavelengths.
“That’s why you need a high-resolution spectrometer. The narrower the absorption lines, the more lines one can detect, and therefore the better the fingerprint. It’s like DNA fingerprinting for molecules; each fingerprint is specific to a certain molecule,” Compton says.
The tool that makes this possible is the ABBomem DA-8 Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectrometer, purchased only one year ago with the help of UT’s chemistry and physics departments, the Center for Environmental Biotechnology (CEB), and the College of Arts and Sciences. The purchase was an upgrade of a DA-3 spectrometer originally acquired from the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant through an Energy-Related Laboratory Equipment grant from the Department of Energy.
The new instrument can measure 48 to 60 different molecules,
nearly three times the number measured by conventional
ground-based air monitors. Moreover, infrared spectrometry can more accurately
assess the amount of ozone, a highly reactive gas that can be difficult to measure
in the Earth’s lower atmosphere, the troposphere.
In addition to the technological assets of the Atmospheric Research Facility on the sixth floor of the SERF building; UT’s physics, chemistry, and environmental engineering departments; and ORNL’s environmental sciences division, the research team boasts an array of human experts.
Among them are designers of the suntracker, Stewart Hager, a postdoctoral student, and Bill Blass, a physics professor, who insisted that a hole be left in the roof of the SERF building to accommodate the tube and mirrors that feed sunlight to the spectrometer.
Rather than purchase a suntracker, Hager says the researchers designed their own. Materials and equipment costs were estimated at about $3,000, and the Physics shop built it on site. By contrast, the University of Colorado at Boulder bought a similar instrument at a cost of $60,000.
The team can also track regional emissions from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Bull Run and Kingston steam plants—two of the largest coalfired steam plants in the United States situated to the west and upwind of the Smokies and Knoxville—and from Oak Ridge’s legacy of thousands of canisters of toxic and radioactive uranium hexafluoride produced at ORNL’s gaseous diffusion plant.
When the sun is low over the southern horizon, the suntracker can also detect fluoride emissions from Alcoa Aluminum Company’s 1,600-acre Tennessee Operations plant. In fact, the UT group has detected hydrogen fluoride and a number of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere.
GETTING WARMER
Compton’s group hopes to garner funding from the National Science Foundation
and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to catalogue the absorption spectra
and radiative properties of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over East Tennessee
under a variety of atmospheric conditions and record their abundance over time.
Greenhouse gases are important regulators of the atmosphere that allow life on Earth to thrive, but increased population and industrial activity have increased the amounts of these gases. While most scientists agree that greenhouse gases are increasing, no one is sure what the ultimate effect will be.
“The Earth’s atmosphere is nonlinear,” Hager says. “You can tweak it a little and get a very big effect, so we don’t know if the climate will warm gradually, or suddenly crash and send us into the next Ice Age.”
Specifically, the team will monitor dynamic clusters of carbon dioxide and water and nitrogen oxides and water, which come together, collide, and come apart in distinctive patterns. Along with the suntracker and infrared spectrometer, the team uses two other advanced instrumentation techniques for pollution analysis: Raman spectroscopy and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy.
State-of-the-art Raman spectroscopy, which analyzes the light-scattering properties of matter, helps the team pinpoint the infrared absorption characteristics of these clusters, or dimers, in the lab.
“Raman spectroscopy allows us to look at aerosols and solid samples in the lab, identify a fingerprint, and then look for it in the atmosphere,” Compton says. “Likewise, solid state NMR of soils can detect the presence of classes of organic compounds.”
For students in physics and chemistry, exposure to these advanced technologies— high-resolution infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and the suntracker—provides hands-on experience crucial to their careers.
Chemistry graduate student Jeffrey D. Steill, who was awarded the Hilton A. Smith Graduate Fellowship in 2000 and is a CEB fellow, says mastering these fancy instruments, and even more, learning to apply advanced computer skills to vast amounts of data, will be useful, whether he pursues a career in university or government research or in the private sector. “There are great opportunities for many applications, from those in the medical profession to pharmaceuticals to forensic chemistry,” Steill says.
Compton agrees. “Our students are gaining experience in a staple technique for industry or research,” he says. “We want to provide job training with the most fundamental tools for basic or applied research to young scientists in East Tennessee.”
* * *
For more information contact Robert N.
Compton, Department of Chemistry, 316 Beuhler Hall, The University of Tennessee,
Knoxville, TN 37996-1600, call 865-974-9513, or <email rcompton@utk.edu>
Regional Strategy
for Clean Air
Local leaders partner to chart a course for meeting federal clean-air mandates without stalling the economy.
by Elise LeQuire
AS DEADLINES FOR COMPLIANCE WITH stricter air-quality standards loom, leaders from around eastern Tennessee convened in April at the University of Tennessee’s (UT) Conference Center in Knoxville for a Regional Clean Air Action Summit.
Hosted by Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale and 11 other county mayors, the summit featured Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander as the keynote speaker. Calling the condition of the air in the Tennessee Valley and Great Smoky Mountains National Park “completely unacceptable,” Alexander, who is the chairman of the Senate Energy Subcommittee, noted that only Los Angeles and Houston had more days of ozone air violations than the Smokies had in 2002.
“For the next 20 years, we need to rely much more on newer, cleaner forms of energy, including natural gas, nuclear power, wind power, and coal gasification,” Alexander said, citing Eastman Chemical Company’s technology for cleaner burning of coal. “Eastman and the Tennessee Valley Authority will create more good jobs if they can clear the air with coal gasification.”
Modern coal gasification is a technology that creates a clean, fuel-grade gas from coal and produces more energy per pound of coal than conventional combustion technology. Moreover, byproducts of coal gasification include industrial-grade chemicals and hydrogen, a clean fuel that could one day replace gasoline in the transportation sector.
Stagnant Air, Stagnant Economy
Recruiting new industry to help create jobs, however, may be difficult if local
counties fail to comply with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
(EPA) new, stricter 8-hour ozone standards, said Barry Stephens, director of
the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s Division of
Air Pollution Control. “Local officials don’t want the nonattainment
designation,” he said, because that would discourage new industry.
EPA is scheduled to designate nonattainment areas in April 2004, and five area counties—Anderson, Blount, Jefferson, Knox, and Sevier—are likely to qualify. However, 30 counties and seven urban areas in Tennessee have chosen to adopt an Early Action Compact (EAC), which allows them to delay the nonattainment designation by starting now to design local actions that will move them toward the goal of attainment by 2007.
The EAC process requires that certain deadlines be met for implementing such actions. By June 16, 2003, the state must submit one master list to EPA outlining actions the participating groups plan to take to move their areas into attainment.
John W. Shipp, Jr., general manager of Environmental Policy and Planning at the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), described steps that TVA is taking to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.
“TVA has six scrubbers to reduce sulfur dioxide and
will add five more to its coal-fired units at four plants,” Shipp said.
TVA is also adding 18 selective-catalytic- reduction systems (SCRs) to 25 units
at seven of its plants in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama. SCRs convert nitrogen
oxides to nitrogen gas and water vapor. In all, TVA will spend about $1
million a day to reduce emissions from its plants through the end of the decade.
“From here on out, further reductions will be much more costly,”
he said.
Gains and Losses
While emissions from stationary and mobile sources are decreasing, a steady,
2.9 percent annual increase in vehicle miles traveled will likely offset a portion
of the reductions in emissions from onroad mobile sources. Wayne T. Davis, UT
professor of civil and environmental engineering, presented recent results of
research that models current and future emissions from mobile and stationary
sources.
In 2007, emissions of nitrogen oxides from on-road and off-road mobile sources will create 67 percent of the total nitrogen oxides emitted in the seven-county area comprising the Knoxville EAC.
The good news is that emissions are projected to decrease between now and 2020; the reductions are just not coming fast enough to give us the benefit by 2007, Davis said.
Betsy Child, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, moderated the discussion, and Tennessee Congressman Zach Wamp, co-chairman of the House Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Caucus and a strong proponent of renewable energy, spoke at the luncheon. Breakout session topics included alternative fuels, energy efficiency, commuter choice, and educational programs that encourage the public to adopt practices that produce less ozone, especially when high ozone levels are predicted. Such practices include carpooling, using public transportation, and waiting until late in the day, when ozone levels drop, to mow the lawn.
Knoxville as Crossroads
Jonathan Overly, presenter of the breakout session on alternative fuels and
coordinator of the East Tennessee Clean Fuels Coalition, noted that eastern
Tennessee is trisected by three major interstate systems—I-40, I-75, and
I-81— heavily traveled by diesel-fueled tractor-trailers. Switching these
big rigs to alternative fuels such as compressed natural gas (CNG), propane
gas, and biodiesel could significantly reduce emissions locally. Biodiesel,
which can be produced from renewable resources like
soybeans or from recycled waste streams like cooking grease, can be mixed with
diesel fuel in any percentage or used as a pure fuel.
“Though there is a regional component of air pollution, local action is crucial,” said Overly, who also serves as a research associate with UT’s Energy, Environment and Resources Center (EERC). Sevier County, for example, a gateway community to the Smokies, has paid to install natural-gas stations for local fleets that are switching to CNG.
The summit was sponsored by 10 regional companies, including TVA, Akins Crisp Public Strategies, and IdleAire (see “The Truck Stops Here,” next column). Lynne A. Liddington, director of Knox County’s Air Quality Management division, spearheaded efforts to organize the summit. Jack Barkenbus, EERC executive director, and Overly served on the planning committee for the Action Summit. “The local community in Knoxville has a history of working together on water issues. This is the beginning stage of putting together a group to deal comprehensively with air quality issues,” Barkenbus said
* * *
For more information contact Jonathan Overly, EERC, The University of Tennessee, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134, call 865-974-4251, or email <jgoverly@utk.edu>.
The Park Service is armed and battling a tiny insect that threatens to fell the hemlock, one of the Smokies’ most graceful and beloved trees.
By David Brill
Few trees native to the forests of Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) are as graceful or evocative of place as the hemlock. These plentiful evergreen trees provide nesting habitat for birds, shelter trout streams from the summer sun, and mottle hillsides.
Hemlocks are the dominant tree species in about 5,000 acres in the Park— or about 1 percent of the GSMNP’s halfmillion acres—but they are widely distributed elsewhere in the Park.
Though some of the Park’s hemlocks are 400 years old, the entire population is under threat from an exotic insect pest that’s much smaller than the head of a pin but destructive enough to decimate the Smokies’ hemlocks.
The hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA) or more technically, Adelges tsugae Annand, an aphid-like insect that’s native to Japan and China, sucks the sap from the bases of hemlock needles, usually beginning on the undersides of the branches. As the HWA feeds, it disrupts the nutrient supply to the needles. The loss of foliage eventually kills the tree.
In May 2002, the Park Service con- firmed GSMNP’s first HWA infestation three miles north of Fontana Dam in Swain County, North Carolina. A short time later, Park Service personnel identi- fied a second infestation site about a mile from Cades Cove in Blount County, Tennessee. As of press time, the Park Service had located 43 additional areas of infestation. The adult HWA is covered with a white waxy wool resembling the tip of a cotton swab. Infested trees can succumb to the pest within three to five years of the initial attack. The HWA is closely related to the balsam woolly adelgid, which has killed more than 90 percent of the Park’s Fraser firs at high-elevation sites like Clingmans Dome and Balsam Mountain.
EXPECTED (BUT UNWELCOME) VISITOR
The HWA was first detected in the Pacific Northwest in the 1920s. The western
hemlock, like the hemlocks native to China and Japan, is tolerant of the pest,
and the HWA did little damage.
By the early- to mid-1950s, the HWA had made its way East, and observers first detected it in a large municipal park in Richmond, Virginia.
Once established in Richmond, the insect was then positioned to ravage a tree species vulnerable to its feeding habits: the Eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), which is plentiful in GSMNP. By the 1970s and ’80s, distribution of the HWA had spread rapidly, moving west onto the Blue Ridge and north, reaching as far as Massachusetts.
Currently, the HWA infests about one-half of the area where hemlocks occur in the Eastern United States. In Shenandoah National Park about 80 percent of the park’s hemlock trees are now infested, and most are expected to die. Between 1999 and 2001, the HWA jumped the border from Virginia into North Carolina and moved south toward GSMNP.
Though hemlock trees are of little commercial value, they play a vital role in the maintenance of healthy ecosystems in GSMNP, according to Glenn Taylor, a GSMNP forestry technician.
“Many neotropical migrant birds, like the wood thrush, come to the Smokies from Central and South America to nestin the hemlock,” says Taylor. “The trees also shade streams and keep water temperatures low, which increases dissolved oxygen and helps sustain cold-water fish like trout.”
PESTICIDAL MISSION
While techniques for fighting the HWA were not fully developed in time to save
the hemlocks in Shenandoah National Park or other sites of early infestation,
the Park Service, in tandem with the U.S. Deaprtment of agriculture’s
National Forest Service and the University of Tennessee (UT), is taking aggressive
action in GSMNP to combat the pest.
The Park’s pesticidal arsenal comprises three proven weapons. The first involves use of a esticidal soap solution that’s sprayed onto the branches of infested trees. The soap, which contains potassium salts of fatty acids and alcohol, dissolves the waxy wool and kills the insects by drying them out. For the spray to be effective, says Taylor, the entire tree must be saturated. Sprayers powerful enough to reach the upper branches of the hemlock trees must be pulled behind vehicles, which limits use of this option to accessible sites, like Park visitor centers, with high-value trees. A second treatment option—which must also be administered by hand—is a chlorinated nicotine compound that’s injected into the soil at the base of the tree and is then taken up by the tree’s roots. The compound kills the HWA as it feeds on the needles of treated trees.
The injection treatments last longer than the soap—about a year—but are slower acting and more costly.
According to Taylor, treating a single tree with the injector can cost $75 or more, while soap treatment costs about $30 per tree.
“The soap and pesticide must be applied by hand, so it is not practical to treat large or isolated stands,” says Kristine Johnson, GSMNP supervisory forester. “But in developed areas or with smaller outbreaks, we may be able to keep an outbreak in check.”
The Park Service’s most effective treatment method may involve inviting one of the HWA’s natural enemies to join the fight.
In the HWA’s home in Japan and China, natural predators keep the pest’s population under control. Among these predators is a tiny lady bug beetle, Pseudoscymnus tsugae, which feeds almost exclusively on adelgid species, including the HWA and the balsam woolly adelgid. The all-black P. tsugae is about one-tenth of the size of the familiar red-and-black lady bug.
In 1992, on a trip to Honshu, Japan, Mark McClure, a scientist with the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in Windsor, Connecticut, observed P. tsugae feeding on the HWA and noted that the beetle killed 86-99 percent of all adelgids present in its feeding range. McClure collected several of the beetles and returned with them to the United States.
McClure’s research indicated that the beetle feeds exclusively on adelgids. Thus, the distribution of P. tsugae will likely be limited to areas where adelgids are available as a food source.
VORACIOUS FEEDERS
Between 1995 and 1999, 120,000 adult P. tsugae were released in hemlock forests
in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Virginia. According to a paper titled “Is
Pseudoscymnus tsugae the Solution to the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Problem?”
written by McClure and Carole Cheah and Timothy Tigner, “P. tsugae reproduced,
dispersed, overwintered, and showed remarkable short-term impact on [the HWA]
by reducing adelgid densities 47 to 88 percent in only five months....”
Taylor points to the beetles’ voracious appetites as the key to their success in controlling HWA infestation. “Each beetle in development to adulthood eats about 100 adelgids,” he says. “Though P. tsugae will feed on all life stages of the adelgid, adult beetles need the nutrientrich adelgid eggs, which are generally available in spring, to reproduce.”
In June, the Park Service began the experimental release of 10,000 P. tsugae in four highly infested locations in GSMNP: the Cataloochee area in North Carolina and Panther Creek, Laurel Falls, and Stony Branch areas in Tennessee. Each location received about 2,500 beetles, the minimum number to be effective, says Taylor. The National Forest Service provided the beetles, which were acquired from a private lab in Pennsylvania, at a cost of nearly $2 apiece.
Four months after the release, Paris Lambdin, a professor in UT’s entomology and plant pathology department, returned to the Laurel Falls release site and confirmed that the beetles had survived and established themselves on the area’s heavily infested hemlock trees.
The Park Service plans additional releases of P. tsugae in the future. According to Taylor, an entomology laboratory at the New Jersey Department of Agriculture may provide the beetles for $1 apiece. The North Carolina Department of Agriculture has also started hatching the beetles at a laboratory on the North Carolina State University campus.
LONG-TERM FIGHT
Taylor concedes that, despite their best efforts, Park Service personnel will
likely never completely eradicate the HWA from the Park, in part because the
pest is so widely distributed.
“This will be a long-term battle that we may never
fully win,” he says. “We regard fighting the HWA as an ongoing maintenance
task, and maybe the best we
can hope for is to keep the pest in check.”
Wanted: Educators Determined to Help Save the World (One Classroom at a Time)
An EERC summer course is designed to help educators advance sustainable development concepts from theory to practice at their home colleges and universities.
by David Brill
IN JULY, THE UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE’S (UT) Energy, Environment and Resources Center (EERC) will offer a five-day course titled “Toward a Sustainable Future: A Course for College and University Educators.”
The course is designed for educators who want to learn more about the concepts, approaches, and materials for educating for sustainability. The course also targets academic administrators who wish to enhance the presence and profile of sustainability on their campuses.
Don Huisingh, EERC’s senior scientist in sustainable development, will lead the course July 27-31 at the UT Conference Center.
Huisingh says the course is based on the concept of sustainability as a “golden thread” that can be woven throughout all aspects of university life. Course participants will learn how to incorporate sustainability into existing as well as new courses. They will also learn how to work with other faculty members at their home institutions in effecting essential academic changes.
Huisingh has developed and led similar courses in Europe, Latin America, and Canada. “The EERC is delighted to offer this course for the first time,” says EERC Executive Director Jack Barkenbus, “and because of his rich overseas and domestic experience, Don Huisingh is the perfect person to lead it.”
A World out of Balance
In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development, also
known as the Brundtland Commission, produced the report Our Common Future, which
defined sustainable development as “meeting the needs of the present generation
without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
In the years since, this definition has posed a worthy but elusive goal. Unless things change, says Huisingh, we’ll pass on the legacies of global warming, declining water quality and quantity, fragmented ecosystems, vanishing species, gluttonous resource consumption, unchecked population growth, rampant development, and social injustice to future generations. In fact, these conditions already afflict much—if not most—of today’s world, says Huisingh.
Today’s Students, Tomorrow’s Leaders
Compounding the problem, Huisingh insists, is the fact that far too many U.S.
college students know little about the threats to Earth’s environment.
Even more are unaware of the inequities between developed and developing countries
in terms of resource consumption, social justice, and access to adequate nutrition,
healthcare, and education.
“The students who now occupy our classrooms will soon assume leadership roles and construct the social, political, economic, and environmental frameworks of the future,” says Huisingh. “If we fail to promote the principles of sane—and sustainable—development and resource use, our future leaders will unwittingly perpetuate the status quo.”
If we ever hope to achieve sustainability, says Huisingh, we must alter how and what we teach by incorporating the principles and tools of sustainable development into our curricula at all levels of education. Huisingh’s summer course offers an important step in reorienting higher education to embrace these tools and principles.
Course participants will take home extensive curricular materials and resources on CDs and will become part of a rapidly expanding worldwide electronic network of educators who are working to help their societies become more sustainable.
“The course materials have been designed to assist educators in transforming their educational activities to help students become effective change agents for sustainable development,” says Huisingh.
Sustainability Experts
The summer course will present the combined expertise of several noted sustainability
experts. Huisingh has pioneered education on the principles of sustainable development
through professorships at UT, North Carolina State University, and University
of Massachusetts at Lowell in the United States and Lund University in Sweden,
Erasmus University in The Netherlands, The Danish Technological University in
Denmark, and Monterrey Tech in Mexico. Huisingh has worked on sustainable development
educational and policy issues in more than 90 countries.
The following experts will join Huisingh on the course faculty:
PROJECTS.
In collaboration with the Tennessee Forest Products Center, the Energy, Environment
and Resources Center’s Research Ecologist Jack Ranney, Energy Research
Director David Doane, Senior Research Associate Greg Harrell, and Professor
Richard Jendrucko (Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering), are representing
UT on an Industries of the Future team that’s examining energy savings
in Tennessee’s major industrial sectors. This initiative teams six universities
in Tennessee with the Office of Economic and Community Development’s State
Energy Office. UT is leading the team’s examination of the forest products
industry.
PRESENTATIONS.
EERC Senior Research Associate Jack Geibig served as keynote speaker at the
Electronic Design, Manufacturing, and the Environment symposium in Irvine, California.
Geibig presented “Life-cycle Comparison of Energy Use During the Application
of Lead-free Solders,” preliminary results of an overall assessment of
lead and lead-free solders. This research was completed through EERC’s
Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies for the US Environmental Protection
Agency’s Design for the Environment program.
PUBLICATIONS.
Jonathan Overly, EERC research associate and coordinator of the East Tennessee
Clean Fuels Coalition (ETCFC), recently published “East Tennesseans and
Energy Use in the Transportation Sector—Making the Switch” in the
Foundation for Global Sustainability’s Hellbender Press (Nov/Dec 2002).
In addition, Overly and ETCFC have been featured in Clean Fuel Solutions (“Clean
Cities Initiative Powers up...,” Winter 2003) and InSites (“Forging
a Path...,” Spring 2002).
HONORS.
EERC Senior Scientist David Feldman (Political Science) was recently chosen
President-elect of the Tennessee chapter of the American Water Resources Association
(AWRA) at the 13th Annual Tennessee Water Resources Symposium held at Montgomery-Bell
State Park near Nashville.
EERC Research Ecologist Jack Ranney has been appointed to represent the Tennessee Exotic Pest Plant Council (EPPC) as a voting member of the Southeast EEPC Board of Directors. Ranney was already serving as Tennessee EPPC’s vice president and as a nonvoting Southeast EPPC board member on behalf of SAMAB, the Southern Appalachian Man and the Biosphere program.
The University of Tennessee presented the university’s highest student honor, the Torchbearer Award, to Student Intern Sarah Surak (Political Science) and six other students for academic achievement and service. Surak, co-chair of UT’s Recycling Task Force and president of Students Promoting Environmental Action in Knoxville (SPEAK), has conducted extensive recycling research and helped implement campus recycling activities. In addition, Surak serves as the Student Government Association’s Campus Beautification Director and secretary of the Tennessee Recycling Coalition.
