Greetings, Colleagues,

I hope the start of 2023 is going well. I’m reaching out today to send you iSEE Quarterly update for Winter 2022 from the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment.

For more up-to-date news from iSEE, please sign up for our E-newsletter at https://illinois.edu/fb/sec/5031776.

IN RESEARCH

• iSEE received a $1M gift from a class-action lawsuit settlement; it is being used for  iSEE-funded $300k low-carbon transportation solutions research.
• A new cover crop project called iCOVER received a $5M grant from USDA and was featured in The News-Gazette.
• From the Agroecosystem Sustainability Center and SMARTFARM project: 
  
  • ASC team members co-authored paper led by Stanford on cover crops’ effect on yields; also, papers on soil carbon budgets and increased adoption of cover crops
  • ASC was featured in a video for American Geophysical Union meeting, and team members also were part of an Illinois Farm Bureau video.

• From the Illinois Regenerative Agriculture Initiative: 
  
  • The Riggs Brewery “Field to Beer” video was immensely popular, receiving more than 11,000 interactions on Twitter.
  • IRAI was also featured in Illinois Farmer Today.

• From the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation:
  
  • CABBI authored a multi-institutional study that explored the first known use of CRISPR/Cas9 editing of miscanthus. Another team published a paper on 3-D phenotyping tools for miscanthus.
  • Articles have featured new Sustainability Theme Leader Wendy Yang, new Feedstock Production partner and PI Ernst Cebert of Alabama A&M, and new Conversion PI Heng Ji.
  • Six CABBI researchers (including Lisa Ainsworth, Kaiyu Guan, and Don Ort) were named to Clarivate’s highly cited list; and CABBI researchers have earned two EMSL awards for continued studies of sorghum stems.

• From the I-FARM “Farm of the Future” project:
  
  • View a new overview video.
  • Check out the FAQ article.
  • The project has received FarmWeekNow and WAND-TV coverage — and was featured on the Big Ten Network during Illini basketball games!
  • Robotics in the field media coverage in The News-Gazette.

• From the Energy-Enhancing FEWS project:
  
  • Team members are part of new $2.5M USDA grant to convert biowaste to pavement.

• Members of the Illinois Geothermal Coalition have successfully demonstrated efficient use of an abandoned oil well in the Illinois Basin as a geothermal “battery.”
• An iSEE biobased chemicals and inks project was featured for its work on printable electronics.
• Former iSEE Associate Director Gillen D’Arcy Wood recently published a new website on ocean data from 19th century voyage.

 IN EDUCATION & OUTREACH

• Registration is open for iSEE Congress 2023 — “Addressing Crises of a Planetary Scale: Lessons from Pandemics and Climate Change.”
• The Fall 2023 Critical Conversation is expected to bring together stakeholders to discuss climate-smart commodities.
• iSEE’s Environmental Leadership Program for Spring 2023 is already more than past the midway point; check out our student blog for some perspective on the immersive learning experience.
• Read a Certificate in Environmental Writing (CEW) success story in former Q author and CEW recipient Zack Fishman.

IN CAMPUS SUSTAINABILITY

• Our Grind2Energy video explored how dining hall food waste produces energy and fertilizer; its release spurred coverage by The News-Gazette and WCIA-TV.
• iSEE’s new, more comprehensive Student Action webpage offers listings for iSEE jobs, volunteering, and student organizations to join.
• Illini Lights Out fall semester featured RECORD totals: more than 640 volunteers turned off 20,303 bulbs, saving the campus as much as 35,000 kWH, $3,090, and nearly 25 tons of GHG. Spring dates: Jan. 27 (130+ volunteers, 5,043 bulbs, 8,700 kWH, $760, 6.2 tons of GHG), Feb. 10 and 24, March 24, and April 21.
• At the November Zero Waste basketball game (see video) more than 280 pounds of beverage containers and other recyclables were diverted from the landfill. The next Zero Waste basketball game March 2 seeks 100 volunteers. iSEE partnering with F&S, Housing, Athletics, and Union for a #don’twasteWednesdays twitter campaign all spring. FALL PLAN: a ZW football tailgate.
• A new Waste Transfer Station video shows the great work by Facilities & Services — but also the need for all campus community members to pre-sort their recyclables to prevent them from becoming landfill waste.
• Greener Campus certifications in the new year: One new office (Visit Champaign County!), one new chapter (Sigma Lambda Gamma sorority), and nine new events (including Illini Lights Out) certified in January.
• Read our article about the sustainable features of Campus Recreation and our feature about the new beekeeping club on campus.

Thanks for reading, and best wishes for the remainder of the spring semester!

Best,

Madhu Khanna

Madhu Khanna

Pronouns: she, her

Alvin H. Baum Family Chair & Director, Institute for Sustainability, Energy and Environment

ACES Distinguished Professor in Environmental Economics

Co-Director, Center for Economics of Sustainability

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

1301, W. Gregory Drive, Urbana, IL 61801

Information about how commercial bee keeping functions and its impact to overall bee populations was inquired about by Brent Lewis, Landscape Architect. Below is the response from Adam Donzel, an Assistant Professor in Entomology. 

'Hi Brent,

Yeah, there is work on that.  Here are links to couple studies about it:

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep32023

https://academic.oup.com/jinsectscience/article/22/1/17/6523145

Basically, yes, there are some stresses involved with migratory beekeeping but sedentary colonies can also have similar issues. In some scenarios, migratory colonies could be healthier as they are moved to areas with good nutritional resources all the time, while those left in place have to deal with times of low food availability. In reality, though, migratory colonies do undergo a lot of stress as they are used to pollinate crops and a lot goes into that - the stress of confinement, heat, exposure to agrochemicals, etc. From a beekeeping perspective, this is calculated into the fees charged for pollination (to some extent at least). Right now, beekeepers charge about $200/hive to pollinate almonds for example (the most lucrative pollination event). Big beekeepers manage 20,000-50,000 hives!  "Small" commercial beekeepers usually have 2-5000.

Migratory beekeeping uses about 85% of the managed colonies in the USA (incredible!). One big issue with this is that, if a new pest or pathogen is introduced, it will be spread throughout the country very fast. And in big pollination events, like almonds, hives are concentrated at very high densities, which does present a lot of opportunities for spreading diseases. They do mitigate this to some extent, however, as there are health checks required to move bees across state lines, and almond growers usually require checks of colonies to make sure they are healthy.

Hope this helps - always happy to answer questions when I can!"

From: White, Morgan

To: Moore, Meredith Kaye

Hi Meredith,

Where on the portal do you think BeeSpotter belongs? I'm thinking it should be in the Resilience theme, but I'm not sure whether it should be under one of the other projects or just under the main one.

Morgan

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Moore, Meredith Kaye

To: White, Morgan

Hi Morgan,

That’s a good question. In my opinion, it doesn’t seem to fit well with any of the other projects under the resilience theme page. So unless we want to create a new project “support local pollinator projects” (or something of the sort) with the intention of adding additional pollinator projects, I vote for now let’s make it a project under the main theme. Does that make sense?

Thanks,
Meredith
 
Link to proposal:

https://uillinoisedu-my.sharepoint.com/:w:/g/personal/fandsamaloto2_ad_u...

Link to BeeSpotter:

https://beespotter.org/

True food circularity must include waste reduction on the agricultural and consumer sides. Don't miss this third iSEE Congress webinar on "Circular Food Systems," with Brian Roe, Van Buren Professor of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics at Ohio State; and Tom Theis, Director of The Institute for Environmental Science and Policy, University of Illinois Chicago. Register here >>>

November 3, 12–1 pm • Zoom webinar

Julie Wurth • Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment

"How Can We Reduce Waste from Agricultural and Food Systems?"

Previous Title: Reusable Dining Options

Previous Project Description: The Zero Waste SWATeam is interested in pursuing reusable service options for campus facilities which serve food at any capacity. This particularly applies to to-go options.

A to-go option using reusable containers will be implemented this fall in University Housing Dining at three locations: Lincoln Avenue Dining, Illinois Street Dining and Ikenberry Dining.  

Previous Project Background: 

As stated in the iCAP 2020, 

"Objective #5.3 ensures that items used on campus-particularly at large events- are durable, repairable, and reusable, and that they contribute to our university-wide culture of reuse."

This project is aligned with the goals of cultivating a zero waste culture on campus. Food is an enormous portion of the human experience, and rather than eliminate it, the Zero Waste SWATeam hopes to shift the paradigm towards the sustainable future the University of Illinois is planning. By providing opportunities for students to utilize reusable containers and participate in a reusable dining program, it will not only yield measurable reductions of single-use items in the waste stream, but will also bring sustainability to the forefront of each participant.