With the fall semester officially underway, Interim Dean Allan Strong shares a message with new and returning students, staff, faculty, and alumni, including exciting milestones for the School and developments for the year ahead. 

Fifteen first responders and emergency managers participated in a drone workshop hosted by the UVM Spatial Analysis Lab in the Rubenstein School this summer. The multi-day workshop concluded with a celebration of partners and UVM accomplishments in un-crewed aircraft systems (UAS) research, including a wide range of experiential learning, ecological research, and community support happening in the Rubenstein School.

UVM Research was instrumental in the creation and adoption of the Vermont's first Environmental Justice law. Former Rubenstein School PhD student Qing Ren and Rubenstein School Associate Professor Bindu Panikkar created a new index tool to measure cumulative impacts of environmental risk, social vulnerability, and health risk in Vermont communities. In collaboration with Rubenstein School Research Associate Professor Gillian Galford, they used census tract data to assess the connection of race, poverty, food stamp use, and Limited English Proficiency with exposure to environmental risks.

In a recently published commentary in Global Change Biology, New England forest researchers respond to a challenge raised in a 2021 article that called for a more science-informed approach to calculating carbon reduction. Researchers, led by Rubenstein School Professor Anthony D’Amato, argue that the design of current carbon offset programs relies on absolute and simplistic ecological metrics to provide incentives that do not reflect real climate benefits. The research team proposes an alternative approach using biophysically relevant forest measures such as relative density of trees. 

A group of middle and high school educators from Vermont and Mississippi recently engaged in a unique professional learning program that promotes place-based STEM education and research about critical zone science and the Lake Champlain basin. Hands-on activities took place at several locations in Chittenden and Addison counties, including UVM’s Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory along the shores of Lake Champlain in downtown Burlington.

In July, the Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IBPES), issued a voluminous report identifying 50,000 wild species that are essential to daily life of half the world’s population. It took four years of work by 85 experts and 200 contributing authors to produce the comprehensive report. One of the three co-chairs of the report is Marla R. Emery, a 31-year U.S. Forest Service veteran and adjunct professor in the Rubenstein School.