Events
The Institute of the Environment sponsors and co-sponsors a number of conferences, workshops, and campus activities throughout the year that help encourage interdisciplinary interaction between faculty, students, and departments across campus. IE lists these on its calendar, as well as upcoming talks, seminars, exhibits, and other happenings to help keep the UA community and the general public up to date on the latest environment-related events on and off campus.
Upcoming Events
Using Solar Power When it Rains
Cronin will present data from photovoltaic test yards. Annual energy yields, system efficiencies, reliability, degradation rates, and costs will be reported. Solar power is intermittent due to clouds and nighttime. Therefore energy storage or a Smart Grid will be needed if solar power is to provide more than 2% of the electricity used in Tucson. I will defend this claim and share some proposals for integrating megawatt-scale batteries with photovoltaic fields.
Fossil Fuels, Mine Labor & Industrial Struggle: Making Sense of the Colorado Coalfield War
Thomas Andrews, an environmental, mining and labor historian, will be speaking on the origins of fossil-fuel dependency in the American West and the role of workplace environments in shaping mineworker solidarity.
The author of the award-winning Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War, Dr. Andrews’ interdisciplinary research has been supported by the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Among the honors received for
Irrigated Agriculture in Arizona: Its Past, Present and Future in Light Arizona Water Supplies and Water Management Strategies
Panelists include Nicholas D. Kilb, Agricultural Planner, Arizona Department of Water Resources. Additional panelists, including farmers, to be announced.
Arizona State University’s Decision Center for a Desert City (DCDC) continues its series of Water/Climate Briefings with a panel discussion of Irrigated Agriculture in Arizona, covering such topics as the role of agriculture in reaching safe yield by 2025, its relationship to the Groundwater Management Act (GMA) of 1980 and alternative/improved strategies that would encourage greater irrigation efficiency.
Can we Save Arizona's Sonoran Desert
"My Arizona" Lecture: Can We Save Arizona's Sonoran Desert
Betancourt said he believes we are standing on a threshold and must now choose between saving the desert or resigning ourselves to these novel and combustible grasslands. What decisions must we make, who makes them and how will they be implemented across complex physical and cultural landscapes?
Echinoderms, Ecology, and Eleni Sikelianos
In the last installment of the UA Poetry Center’s fall series “Oh Earth, Wait for Me,” poet Eleni Sikelianos will read from her work, which has been described as “avant-garde pastoral” and is often about place as seen from an ecological perspective. The reading will be held on Friday, Dec. 4, at 8 pm.
The Air We Breathe
Humans can live for a week without food, several days without water, but just a few minutes without air. Find out about the swirling ocean of air we often take for granted yet cannot live without. Learn what we mean by "good" and "bad" ozone; how colorless air molecules turn the sky blue; why cloud droplets are white; and other fascinating facts about the air we breathe.