|
Professors to investigate whether treated reclaimed water can be used in the restoration of coastal wetlands in southern Biscayne Bay.
Gary Rand, professor in the Department of Earth and Environment, and Piero Gardinali, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, recently received $2.75 million from the Miami-Dade County Water and Sewer Department to conduct groundbreaking environmental research and analysis. The researchers, who are also faculty in the Southeast Environmental Research Center (SERC), are leading a project that is only the second of its kind in the country to determine the feasibility of using highly treated reclaimed water for the Biscayne Bay Coastal Wetlands Rehydration Project. For the full article please click here. |
|
In the first study of its kind, Florida International University scientists, along with an international team of researchers, have discovered a troubling acceleration of seagrass loss across the globe, threatening the immediate health and long-term sustainability of coastal ecosystems.
“In South Florida, where seagrass beds are particularly widespread and important, growing human populations are increasing the pressure on seagrass meadows,” said co-author James Fourqurean of the Southeast Environmental Research Center at FIU. “With 45 percent of the world’s population living on the 5 percent of land adjacent to the coast, pressures on remaining coastal seagrass meadows are extremely intense. As more and more people move to coastal areas, conditions only get tougher for seagrass meadows that remain.”
The assessment, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on June 29th, shows an acceleration of annual seagrass loss from less than 1 percent per year before 1940 to 7 percent per year since 1990. Based on more than 215 studies and 1,800 observations dating back to 1879, the assessment shows that seagrasses are disappearing at rates similar to coral reefs and tropical rainforests.
For the full article, please click here. |
|
|
The Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology has just completed a study on completed degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) for 2007. FIU ranked Number 1! Their ranking includes the broad fields of: physical sciences, geosciences, mathematics and computer science, engineering, life sciences, social and behavioral sciences, science and engineering technologies and interdisciplinary and other science degrees. When this broad definition is used, we see that Florida International University’s 1,527 degrees awarded to underrepresented minorities leads the nation, followed by the University of Phoenix (a private, for-profit institution with many campuses that report as one to IPEDS) and then the University of Puerto Rico, Mayguez, the flagship university on the island. For more information please visit: STEM Trends: http://www.cpst.org |
|
FIU’s Creative Writing Professor Denise Duhamel has been named “Best Local Poet” by the “Miami New Times” in its Best of Miami 2009 issue.
Duhamel, whom “Miami New Times” said was “truly contemporary” and “worth reading” writes on her Web site, “I began to read poetry in high school, but I assumed all poets were dead because we only read poets. I assumed no one wrote poetry anymore. It wasn’t until college that I began to read contemporary poetry, and it was at that time I switched from writing primarily fiction to writing primarily poetry.”
She is the author of numerous books and chapbooks of poetry. Her most recent titles are “Two and Two” and “Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems.”
In response to Duhamel’s collection “Smile!,” best-selling author Edward Field says, “More than any other poet I know, Denise Duhamel, for all the witty, polished surface of her poems, communicates the ache of human existence.”
A recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Duhamel has read her work on NPR and was a featured poet on the PBS Bill Moyer’s special, “Fooling with Words,” in 1999. |
|
