Environment and Sustainability

What is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful, thoughtful and functional "green" projects in the world is taking shape in the ancient kingdom of Ladakh, a remote region high in the Indian Himalayas, west of Tibet.

What's up with the mist? When the Niagara Parks Commission posed that question back in 2004, the concern was that high-rise hotels on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls were contributing to the creation of more mist, obscuring the very view that millions of tourists flock there every year to see. Now University at Buffalo geologists have determined that the high-rise hotels are probably not to blame.

University at Buffalo chemists have for the first time identified at wastewater treatment plants the metabolites of two antibiotics and a medical imaging agent.

Imagine wiping 1,500 cars -- and all their fossil fuel emissions -- right off the road. That's equivalent to what the University at Buffalo has accomplished as a major green power purchaser, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which just named UB one of its Top 10 College and University Green Power Partners.

Mudflows initiated by natural processes at old, inactive volcanoes are some of the most lethal geologic phenomena and they contributed to last week's tragic mudslide in Guinsaugon, Philippines, according to a University at Buffalo scientist whose team has developed advanced computer models of mudflows.

The University at Buffalo is leading the way in energy savings as the first university in the country to completely replace its campus-wide beverage vending machines with green technology, saving $21,000 a year on electricity costs.

Male water fleas that scientists have never seen have made their debut in a University at Buffalo laboratory, providing biologists with their first glimpse of these elusive organisms. The UB research, opens a new window on the biological diversity of several species of water fleas that play major roles in freshwater food webs.

Entire rooms black with mold. Boats sitting in trees, miles from shore. Hospitals with windows broken -- not just by the storm, but by patients and staff desperate for fresh air. City officials standing at major intersections wearing sandwich boards that said "Boil water" since there was no other way to get the word out. Enough solid waste to fill 11 World Trade Center Towers. These are some of the vivid pictures that were drawnat the University at Buffalo by six researchers from various disciplines who presented findings to colleagues about what they saw during reconnaissance trips to the Gulf Coast in September and October.

In a live and online Webcast seminar, structural engineers and social scientists who were dispatched to New Orleans and Mississippi in the days after Katrina hit will describe the vast devastation they saw and discuss strategies for improving U.S. resilience and response to natural disasters, terrorist attack and other extreme events.

With energy costs throughout the nation hitting record highs and no relief in sight, the University at Buffalo is, for the second time in its history, embarking on a major, campus-wide, comprehensive energy-conservation project.