Designing and Implementing Effective Learning Strategies

Dear Students, if you would like to improve your ability to learn, you should read this article called “Strengthening the Student Toolbox” by Professor John Dunlosky, published in the American Educator. The article synthesizes an enormous volume of cognitive psychology and education research to present and explain the 10 most effective learning strategies. These strategies are listed below, and an explanation of each is provided in the original article; the strategies can be used by anyone and do not require computer-driven tutors. The effectiveness of these strategies was typically determined by improved performance on tests. While formal testing will diminish after college, informal testing remains part of life so take these strategies with you post-college. You will be most effective if you can recall pertinent information for your life of work or leisure.

Top 10 Learning Strategies:

1. Practice testing: self-testing or taking practice tests on to-be-learned material.
2. Distributed practice: implementing a schedule of practice that spreads out study over time.
3. Interleaved practice: implementing a schedule of practice that mixes different kinds of problems, or a schedule of study that mixes different kinds of material, within a single study session.
4. Elaborative interrogation: generating an explanation for why an explicitly stated fact or concept is true.
5. Self-explanation: explaining how new information is related to known information, or explaining steps taken during problem solving.
6. Rereading: restudying text material again after an initial reading.
7. Highlighting and underlining: marking potentially important portions of to-be-learned materials while reading.
8. Summarization: writing summaries (of various lengths) of to-be-learned texts.
9. Keyword mnemonic: using keywords and mental imagery to associate verbal materials.
10. Imagery for text: attempting to form mental images of text materials while reading or listening.

Illustration for article by John Dunlosky in American Educator, fall 2013,

Key Competencies for Engineering Graduates According to Education Research and Job Postings

Engineers solve problems that improve the human condition. Ideally, the useful solution should be found efficiently. Efficiency is most likely achieved when engineers engage key competencies. There is no single competency that is most important except to recognize that engineers must coordinate multiple competencies for useful problem solving. This is part of the findings provided by Honor J. Passow and Christian H. Passow in their Journal of Engineering Education (JEE, Vol 106, No 3, 2017) article, What Competencies Should Undergraduate Engineering Programs Emphasize? A Systematic Review.

To find the key engineering competencies for engineering graduates, the authors searched within 8,232 education reports, 2,174 participant responses, and 36,100 job postings. The findings were mapped to ABET and Washington Accord (WA; used by non-US engineering schools) accreditation competencies (see below). The good news is, ABET and WA competencies remain relevant based on education research and job postings. What Passow and Passow identified, however, is these competencies need translation to become better understood. This translation involves (see JEE article Table 1 for full list of competencies):

Teamwork is described as coordinate efforts;

Life-long learning is described as gather information and expand skills;

Ethics is described as to take responsibility;

Design experiments is described as to measure accurately and separate from interpret data; and

Manage projects is described as devise process.

ABET has historically identified 11 competencies, described as: a) an ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering; b) an ability to design and conduct experiments, as well as to analyze and interpret data; c) an ability to design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs within realistic constraints such as economic, environmental, social, political, ethical, health and safety, manufacturability, and sustainability; d) an ability to function on multi-disciplinary teams; e) an ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems; f) an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility; g) an ability to communicate effectively; h) the broad education necessary to understand impact of engineering solutions in a global, economic, environmental, and societal context; i) a recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning; j) a knowledge of contemporary issues; k) an ability to use the techniques, skills, and modern engineering tools necessary for engineering practice.

 

Step-by-Step Cartoon Guide to Improve the World through Mindful Data Collection and Mining

In this blog I share Imme Ebert-Uphoff’s and Yi Deng’s step-by-step cartoon guide to solve environmental problems faster. It starts with recognizing the career of an environmental engineer very much overlaps with earth science and data science, as fields of endeavor and the professionals in those fields. Like earth scientists, environmental engineers monitor and model the world to understand its components, processes, and systems. Like data scientists, environmental engineers query the data to explore relationships between components and across space and time. The American Geophysical Union in their EOS publication has provided an article with guidance on how to coordinate work between earth scientists and data scientists. Environmental engineers can benefit from this guidance, helping us not just in collaboration, but designing our activities in data collection and mining. Below I post this EOS article, “Three Steps to Successful Collaboration with Data Scientists“, by Imme Ebert-Uphoff and Yi Deng.

A step-by-step cartoon guide to efficient, effective collaboration between Earth scientists and data scientists.

Peter, the Earth scientist, and Andrea, the data scientist, worked together to make important decisions regarding their research problem, approach, and experiments, as well as to validate and interpret the results of their study. Cartoon figures are from Clipart Of LLC.

By Imme Ebert-Uphoff and Yi Deng  30 August 2017

The vast and rapidly increasing supply of new data in the Earth sciences creates many opportunities to gain scientific insights and to answer important questions. Data analysis has always been an integral component of research and education in the Earth sciences, but mainstream Earth scientists may not yet be fully aware of many recently developed methods in computer science, statistics, and math.

The fastest way to put these new methods of data analysis to use in the Earth sciences is for Earth scientists and data scientists to collaborate. However, those collaborations can be difficult to initiate and even more difficult to maintain and to guide to successful outcomes. Here we break down the collaboration process into steps and provide some guidelines that we have found useful for efficient collaboration between Earth scientists and data scientists. We base our structure on discussions with many researchers working in similar areas and on our own experience, gained from more than 6 years of collaboration on related topics.

Knowledge Discovery from Data

The data analysis methods we are concerned with are those that seek to identify new knowledge: discovering patterns, revealing interactions between different processes, or yielding other types of insights that can be interpreted by Earth scientists and eventually attributed to some physical effect. We refer to these types of methods as knowledge discovery from data.

Some of these new methods come from the fields of deep learning (using artificial neural networks), causal discovery (using probabilistic graphical models that describe cause-and-effect relationships), and self-organizing maps. Artificial neural networks, for example, have been used to predict air quality and the occurrence of severe weather: These networks have been used to derive nonlinear transfer functions that convert observations to important geophysical parameters. Causal discovery has been used to identify information flow (the pathways between cause and effect) in the atmosphere around the globe. Self-organizing maps are becoming a preferred tool to classify recurring atmospheric flow features such as jet streams.

Meet the Scientists

How do Earth scientists and data scientists get acquainted and begin to work together? Meet Peter and Andrea, our two companions in this article (Figure 1). Peter is an Earth scientist. He studies important geoscience questions, often based on data from observations and computer model simulations. Andrea is a data scientist. She studies the newest data analysis methods developed in statistics, data mining, and machine learning. Let’s follow Peter and Andrea as they meet and move through the three major phases of their collaboration experience.

How did Peter and Andrea find each other? They might have run into each other on campus. Maybe one of them attended a talk given by the other. Or maybe a common colleague connected them. If they were actively looking for such collaboration, they might have met at an activity designed to establish new collaborations between Earth and data scientists, such as the annual Climate Informatics workshop or the Intelligent Systems for Geosciences (IS-GEO) Research Collaboration Network.

Once they met, they briefly talked one on one about the methods for data analysis that Andrea is using and about science questions that Peter is interested in. A 15-minute in-person meeting may have been all that was needed for them to discover some common interest and to set up a longer meeting to discuss potential collaboration.

Would it have been better for Andrea to just read papers from the Earth sciences to identify science questions that might be a good match and then to contact the authors for potential collaboration? It is possible that she could find a good collaborator that way. However, Andrea’s chances for success would be small, unless she already has a solid background in Earth sciences, because of the complexity of identifying problems to work on.

Fig. 1. Peter and Andrea followed an iterative process in which they (top) defined the problem and approach, (middle) conducted experiments, and (bottom) evaluated the results and translated them back into Earth science language. Cartoon figures are from Clipart Of LLC. Click the image to see a larger version.

Research Phase 1: Defining the Research Problem and Approach

Peter and Andrea begin their research collaboration by defining a problem and choosing an approach to solving it (Figure 1, top right). This first phase is an iterative process that must take into account many different and inherently coupled aspects.

On the Earth science side, this task requires knowledge of which science questions are important and not yet fully understood and knowledge of available data sets. It also requires a deep understanding of the physical processes and interactions being investigated, the temporal and spatial scales at which these interactions take place, and most importantly, intuition of what aspect of a science question might benefit significantly from “mining” large amounts of data with innovative approaches.

On the data science side, this task requires a solid understanding of available data analysis methods and what insights can realistically be gained from them. The task also requires knowing the associated data requirements (minimal sample size and distribution assumptions) and computational effort, as well as common pitfalls and how to avoid them.

Neither Peter nor Andrea can define the research problem in isolation.

The aspects from both sides are inherently coupled: For example, to figure out which algorithm to use, our collaborators first need to understand the properties of the available data and the types of insights they want to gain. Thus, neither Peter nor Andrea can define the research problem in isolation. To define a feasible and meaningful research project, they must work closely together and have frequent conversations. They need to be open-minded and willing to learn the basic vocabulary and way of thinking of each other’s disciplines.

Research Phase 2: Conducting Experiments on the Data

In the second phase, the researchers conduct experiments on the data, such as trying different data analysis methods (Figure 1, middle right). This step sounds like a job mainly for Andrea, but if Andrea works in isolation, there is a good chance that she will take many unnecessary detours that might even cause her to get lost and give up on the project altogether. Only Peter knows what kind of preprocessing or other modifications might help to expose the signals or patterns in the data that they seek to discover.

Therefore, this step also requires constant communication between Peter and Andrea. Every time Andrea tries a new approach, Peter needs to look closely at the results and provide suggestions on how additional preprocessing of the data, focusing on a different spatial or temporal resolution, focusing on a specific geographical area, or rephrasing the scientific question may get the team closer to useful results.

Research Phase 3: Evaluation and Interpretation

Once Peter and Andrea obtain promising results, they need to evaluate them (Figure 1, bottom right). Do the results represent a real physical phenomenon, or are they merely an unforeseen by-product of the data collection or analysis method? Economist and Nobel laureate Ronald Coase once said, “if you torture the data long enough it will confess.”

Peter and Andrea need to verify that the patterns are, indeed, properties of the underlying system.

Thus, before presenting the results as facts of the actual physical processes they studied, Peter and Andrea need to verify that the patterns are, indeed, properties of the underlying system, not just artifacts of the specific data set and analysis method. Ultimately, Peter needs to check whether the results are robust, make physical sense, and can be explained by known or hypothesized interactions in the considered Earth system.

What Does It All Mean?

The last tasks of phase 3 lead us to the final step of the project, namely, to fully understand what the results mean in the context of the science question they set out to address. Do Peter and Andrea’s results answer the original question they asked? What exactly did they learn?

Peter and Andrea must translate the research results back into the real world of physics, dynamics, chemistry, and geosciences and spell out all the implications for the considered Earth system.

Only if Peter and Andrea take the time to translate the research results back into the real world of physics, dynamics, chemistry, and geosciences and spell out all the implications for the considered Earth system will anyone in the Earth science community care about the results. Peter obviously plays the bigger role in this last step, but he still needs continuous feedback from Andrea to help him interpret the results correctly because only she knows about weaknesses or limitations of the method.Peter and Andrea learned that they have to work together very closely at every step of their joint project because all their decisions require a deep understanding of both Earth science and data analysis disciplines. Each of them had to be curious about the other’s discipline and also be willing to teach some basic skills or knowledge of their own discipline to the other person. Through this process, they each gained at least some very basic understanding of the nature of the other’s discipline, including its way of thinking, relevant concepts, and terminology.

Working closely together and learning about the other’s field not only made Peter and Andrea’s current collaboration run much more smoothly than it otherwise would have; it also created ideas for future projects. Through close collaboration, Peter and Andrea learned about each other’s fields even as they were contributing to them.

—Imme Ebert-Uphoff (email: iebert@colostate.edu), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins; and Yi Deng, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta

Citation: Ebert-Uphoff, I., and Y. Deng (2017), Three steps to successful collaboration with data scientists, Eos, 98,https://doi.org/10.1029/2017EO079977. Published on 30 August 2017.

Sustaining Urban Metabolism: Science Teachers Planting Trees in Water Quality Lesson Plans

This is a dispatch from Theodore Endreny’s sabbatical in Italy….

Greece laid the foundation for modern education with the Socratic method (i.e., engaging in critical thinking to eliminate faulty hypothesis), the Academy (i.e., Plato created a free institution for students to collectively engage with instructors in higher learning), and the Lyceum (i.e., one interpretation, linked to active learning is Aristotle established a learning environment to get students out of their seats, also called the Peripatetic school). This year Greece constructed a high priority educational initiative on this foundation, to find sustainable ways to reduce urban pollution. This initiative is dedicated to training teachers, and by extension the students. As part of the Fulbright Inter-country Lecture exchange between Greece and Italy, I had the chance to participate in this initiative as a representative of the i-Tree and Parthenope urban metabolism research teams. It was my assignment to share important advances in urban environmental management with the school district of Piraeus, near Athens, Greece.

Piraeus is geographically expansive, surrounding much of the Saronic Gulf, steeped in history, having served as the port for ancient Athens, rich in environmental resources due to its mixture of land and sea ecosystems, and a thriving cultural and business district, with cruises to many of the Greek islands. Our workshops occurred on each end of this blue travel line.

Researchers want to share their results, so investing in teacher training is extremely rewarding due to each teacher disseminating the information each year to an eager and high energy group of students. Some of those students then take the information into their subsequent learning and careers, influencing others. To achieve this dissemination, I worked with Vasiliki Kioupi of the Directorate for Secondary Education of Piraeus, in the Greek Department of Environmental Education, and Dr. Anna Endreny, Chair of the Jamesville Dewitt Middle School Science Department and an expert in teacher training, active learning, and science education curricular development. Our focus was to create a workshop and lesson plan that addressed a problem important to the teachers and their students, so that it would be used in the classroom, and generate learning outcomes that could guide future coursework and careers.

The problem identified by the Pireaus teachers was urban pollution and the impact to coastal areas, making waters unfit for fishing and swimming, and lands unfit for growing crops. Our workshop team knew that solutions to this problem should consider local constraints, including the prolonged economic debt crisis in Greece. The teachers wanted their investment in a solution to yield benefits to human well being, available to all, particularly the increasing number of poor refugees arriving in the Pireaus port. The teachers and students wanted a solution that they could implement, as individuals and small communities, to empower everyone to contribute to a healthier urban environment. To better understand the local problems faced by the school district, and begin our dialogue on solutions, we toured the land and water resources with the local teachers.

In the left photo is the Agia Triada cathedral of Pireaus, built in a Byzantine architectural style after being bombed in WWI. It faces onto Ethnikis Antistaseos Street, shown on the right, where a subsurface infrastructure project encountered valuable archaeological resources. Green and grey infrastructure updates will be challenging in Greece due to subsurface archaeological riches, surface monuments, and budget constraints exacerbated by debt crisis and refugee crisis.

The solution we introduced involved planting and managing urban trees to deliver pollution removal and other ecosystem services. Our research team focuses on how the urban forest and each of its trees is fueled by solar, i.e., renewable, energy to provide low-cost, interconnected functions that holistically make urban areas richer in environmental, social, and economic services. Urban trees can be planted and managed by individuals, and they will significantly improve human well being and biodiversity. For water and soil quality problems, our research team promotes use of tree based filters, which have physical, biological, and chemical properties to treat many pollutants.

A tour of Athens and Nikaia was designed, in part, to understand the urban landscape and the presence of green areas, and individual trees. We visited the Acropolis to take these photos. On the left, looking southwest, is the stone theater Odeon of Herodes Atticus  (5000 seating capacity, originally built in 161 AD, renovated in 1950) and then the Hill of the Muses (1 of 4 major hills in Athens), which is the location of Socrates prison. On the right, looking southeast, are column remnants of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, bordered by the National Gardens and Panathenaic Stadium, which is built entirely of marble, and hosted first modern Olympics in 1896.

We entitled the workshop, “Advances in urban environmental management”, and at each workshop I was asked to deliver a research lecture on how to improve urban water resources using green infrastructure design. We offered the workshop in two locations, and during each the workshops the teachers would role play the part of a student, engaging in our lesson plans. The first workshop was held at the Public Middle School of Galatas. The second workshop was held at 3rd Public Middle School of the city of Nikaia. Each workshop provided 4 hours of professional development credits for the attending teachers, which is 10% of the total they need to earn each year. The teachers attending the workshop were responsible for courses in biology, chemistry, physics, earth science, environmental education, and student based research projects. We had 16 teachers and 3 community members attend the workshop in Galatas, and 30 teachers attend the workshop in Nikaia. Each teacher teaches on average 100 to 200 students each year, so by training 1 teacher, our message was efficiently disseminated to a much larger audience.

In the Peloponnese area of Pireaus, we visited Galatas region. In the left photo, we tour a cave and then nearby water sources. The Galatas region has beautiful clusters of pine forests and aromatic shrubs and flowers. In the right photo, we toured the nearby volcanic peninsula of Methana containing >30 volcanic eruption sites, many of which were visible from the peninsula’s Helona Mountain at 740 m above the Saronic Gulf. This site is considered the western edge of the Aegean islands volcanic arc. While lava and pyroclastic evidence of eruptions in Methana were still present, the most recent eruption was long ago, in 230 BCE, as reported by Ovid.

The lesson plans were structured to connect the problem to the solution, using cause and effect and deductive reasoning principles. The workshop started with a lecture illustrating how urban pollutants (e.g., nutrients, metals, oils, organic compounds, sediment, etc) travel from yards, sidewalks, parking lots, roads, leaky sanitary pipes, across the landscape or through the soil to receiving waters. This travel is referred to as non-point source runoff. To treat the pollutant during the non-point source runoff process requires mapping its travel, or flow, path across the landscape, and then placing a tree based filter in its path. To better understand the water and soil contamination problem, the students should identify the pollutants (i.e., is it nitrogen or lead?). While schools typically do not have the expensive gas chromatography and mass spectrometry equipment to auto-analyze samples, they can visually characterize samples with microscopes.

Anna and Vasiliki coordinating the computer lessons with SimRiver during the Galatas workshop. The i-Tree Canopy lessons then followed. The success of these computer activities was dependent on the incredible IT support provided by the IT personnel at the Galatas and Nikaia schools.

Our first lesson plan connected the complex pollution chemistry of a water sample with a simple, naturally occurring indicator, the diatom. The diatom can be viewed by a microscope. It is a unicellular aquatic plant with > 100,000 species (>200 genera), with varying sensitivity to pollution. In the lesson plan the students used the free, online, SimRiver to: a) virtually collect water samples; b) characterize the diatoms in that sample with microscopes; c) categorize the percent of diatoms that were tolerant or sensitive to pollution; d) conclude if the water sample was polluted or clean based on the diatom categories; and e) categorize the landscape flow path for each water sample; and f) associate clean and polluted water with different landscapes, which were forest, agricultural, and residential, with and without factories. A learning outcome that we emphasized was the association of clean water with landscapes that had more trees.

On the left, a photo of some of the teachers attending the Nikaia workshop. On the right, a photo of some of the teachers attending the Galatas workshop. The teachers in Nikaia are standing in front of posters that explain environmental research projects conducted by their students.

The second lesson plan had students analyze their landscapes for tree cover, and make inferences about water quality. The students used the free, online, i-Tree Canopy tool to view aerial photographs for an area of interest, and characterize the landscape cover (e.g., tree, house, road) using samples from random points in that area. The scientific method uses random point sampling to improve and qualify the accuracy of our predictions.  We structured the lesson plan to create areas of interest and examine the landscapes around the Greek schools. Once the students determined the percent tree cover for their landscape, they could make inferences about whether the trees were providing a water quality benefit. These inferences are improved by making a site investigation (think active learning, with Aristotle’s Peripatetic school) to examine the likely flow paths for the non-point source runoff, and determine where trees are most needed to intercept and filter the pollutants. The i-Tree Canopy tool also provided a list of other tree benefits, including reductions to air pollutants (e.g., CO, NO2, SO2, PM 2.5) and carbon sequestration, which will help reduce the magnitude of climate change. The discussion of benefits introduced the teachers to the concepts of river basins, and how the landscape cover classification would be used by our i-Tree Hydro model to more accurately predict the water quality impacts of tree cover.

Anna and Vasiliki during the delivery of the lesson plan ideas and theory to the teachers during the Nikaia workshop. Throughout, Vasiliki would summarize the lesson in Greek, to ensure that language was not a barrier for learning. The Nikaia and the Galatas participants engaged in the Socratic method during these presentations, asking several probing questions to eliminate false hypothesis and focus the discussion on practical solutions to urban water quality pollution. They were extremely interested in tree-based environmental solutions that also improved economic and social well being.

The teachers provided helpful feedback on our “Advances in urban environmental management” workshops. They were generous with their positive comments and gratitude for offering this training; the teachers in Galatas were particularly grateful for us traveling 2.5 hours from Athens to arrive at their relatively remote school, given how expensive it is for them to all travel to Athens for a workshop. The teachers asked for follow-on workshops that continued using hands-on learning, so their students can actively engage in sampling, characterizing, and remedying pollution problems. They also asked that the future workshops continue to use an interdisciplinary approach to problem characterization and solutions. This is motivated by the Greek students taking at least 3 science courses simultaneously, each year, from the offerings of biology, chemistry, physics, environmental science, and research methods. This interdisciplinary framework is shown to provide the holistic perspective needed for solving complex problems, and is evidence that Greece continues to lead the way in education.

 

Our teacher training workshop team, Noah (for honest feedback from a student on the quality of our ideas), Anna, Vasiliki, and Ted, after delivering the Galatas workshop.

Acknowledgement: The travel for this project was supported in part by the Greek Fulbright Commission and a USDA Forest Service i-Tree award. Logistical support was provided by Artemis Zenetou, Executive Director of the Fulbright Foundation in Greece, Nicholas Tourides, Educational Advisor of the Fulbright Foundation in Greece, and Paola Sartorio, Executive Director of the Fulbright Foundation in Italy. Programming support was provided by Vasiliki Kioupi, Environmental Education Coordinator, Directorate for Secondary Education of Piraeus, Greek Department of Environmental Education. The preparation leading to the workshop was supported by the U.S. – Italy Fulbright Commission and Parthenope University through a Fulbright Scholar grant to Theodore Endreny to serve as Distinguished Chair in Environmental Science at Parthenope University in Naples, Italy, and by the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry through a sabbatical leave to Theodore Endreny.

Vasiliki Kioupi, Artemis Zenetou, Ted Endreny, Anna Endreny, and Nicholas Tourides at the Athens office of the Fulbright Foundation in Greece.

Sustaining Urban Metabolism: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Green Infrastructure

This is a dispatch from Theodore Endreny’s sabbatical in Italy….

Not only does Portugal define mainland Europe’s western edge, it is also on the cutting edge of Europe’s urban renewal and sustainable landscape design. The country can showcase stunning graffiti and green infrastructure installations that serve environmental, social, and economic goals. Portugal’s portfolio of projects, and the leadership team helping design them, were on display during the early May 2016 workshop, “Design and implementation of urban green infrastructure: adaptation to global change”, held at the University of Beira Interior in Covilha, in the Star Mountain Range. As part of this workshop, I was invited to deliver a seminar on our i-Tree Hydro tool, explaining the new soil water balance routines; these were primarily developed by SUNY ESF ERE PhD student Tom Taggart to respond to grey infrastructure pipes that drain and leak water, as well as green infrastructure devices such as rain gardens, rain barrels, and green roofs.

Green Infrastructure Workshop Panel members. This group of includes an economist, landscape architect, architect, city and regional planner, geotechnical engineer, hydraulic engineer, civil engineer, and an ecological engineer.

University of Beira Interior engineering department, home to the workshop, featuring tiles from the building’s wool factory origins

The workshop was strategically small, providing greater impact by providing attendees a rare chance for long and detailed conversations on the challenges and opportunities for sustainable green infrastructure design. The organizers had arranged for participation and talks by a wide range of professionals, both academics and practitioners, and this interdisciplinary mix created several aha moments for participants as we reached beyond our own discipline and learned from our colleagues. The mix of professionals included economists, city and regional planners, landscape architects, architects, geotechnical engineers, civil engineers, water engineers, environmental scientists, and botanists. The students attending the workshop, and the panel discussion, were provided with very practical training. For example, I presented the steps to use the i-Tree Hydro tool, with details on how to obtain and process input data of land cover, precipitation, and terrain elevation, which is used to calculate a topographic index for predicting wet areas that may benefit from more tree plantings. Dr. Cristina Fael explained how to design river flood plains so that they provide riparian forest habitat as well as convey new, likely larger, flood waters due to climate change. And Carlos Ribas explained how to install a green roof that spans about 15 soccer fields, but also includes a variety of slopes, elevations, and functions.

Carlos Ribas on the 2.1 ha green roof he designed for Alcantara Wastewater Treatment Plant in Lisbon.

Field tours added to the workshop learning. In Covilha, installations of green infrastructure are fitting into a streetscape that has historic tiled buildings and avant-garde graffiti, both of which celebrate the town’s wool heritage as home to the Royal Textile Factory. In such a setting, street trees and vegetated walls would need to installed such that they enhance, and not obstruct visibility of the graffiti and tiles. Working with biological growth can create graffiti and beauty, as illustrated by Artist William Kentridge who power washed specific parts of the biological muck from stone levees lining the Tiber River right bank, to create expansive, yet disappearing, murals called Triumphs and Laments. In Milan, and increasingly other cities, vertical forests are grown on buildings, again providing an example of creating and not obstructing beauty.

Covilha wool themed graffiti set alongside church tiles from the town’s 19th century era as Royal Textile Factory.

Covilha wool themed graffiti celebrating the role of the sheep in sustaining the town’s economic past, its eco-tourist future.

Covilha wool themed graffiti showcasing spinning, and the many threads connecting the society and economy, with fresh laundry drying overnight in front of this mural.

In Lisbon, the tour focused on the green roof for the Alcantara Wastewater Treatment Plant, designed by Carlos Ribas and Joao Nunes. This green infrastructure project performs multiple functions, including decreasing the stormwater runoff burden of the plant, the odor of the plant, and the break in landscape connectivity between hill and river initially incurred by the plant, as well as provides a picnic site for the plant workers and an inspirational aesthetic for the tens of thousands of commuters. Back in the University of Beira Interior, a tour of the engineering department featured their laboratory flume used to represent a meandering river and design sustainable floodplains. This laboratory can contribute to analysis of green infrastructure as linear systems, connecting urban to rural landscapes, and providing corridors to support biodiversity and human well being.

Contact information: Dr. Theodore Endreny, te@esf.edu

Acknowledgement: The travel for project has been supported in part by the Portugal Fulbright Commission, the University of Beira Interior, and a USDA Forest Service i-Tree award. The preparation leading to the workshop was supported by the U.S. – Italy Fulbright Commission and Parthenope University through a Fulbright Scholar grant to Theodore Endreny to serve as Distinguished Chair in Environmental Science at Parthenope University in Naples, Italy, and by the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry through a sabbatical leave to Theodore Endreny.

Sustaining Urban Metabolism: Estimating Planted and Plantable Space in Cities a Critical Step for Designing Tree-based Ecosystem Services

This is a dispatch from Theodore Endreny’s sabbatical in Italy….

The urban areas of our planet are an extremely popular living environment, and the simple act of maintaining or increasing tree cover can profoundly improve urban sustainability [0]. The global urban area covers only 4% of our land, yet it contains 60% of our population. The metabolism of these areas is enormous, with each person needing between 1 and 10 hectares of non-urban area to support their resource consumption and waste generation [1]. Urban trees can help reduce the ecological footprint of this metabolism and improve ecosystem carrying capacity by delivering an array of ecosystem services. These services include production and regulation, such as growing nutritious foods and maintaining a livable climate, as well as supporting and cultural services such as biodiversity and peace of mind [2]. With urban areas containing such a high density of residents, an urban tree has the potential to improve the well-being of a large number of people. Our i-Tree research team develops tools for measuring the benefits of urban tree cover in order to help communities manage their sustainable well-being. In January 2016 we initiated a collaborative urban metabolism research effort with Italian scholars (led by Professor Sergio Ulgliati of Parthenope University) to collect data on tree cover and potential tree cover in a set of global urban areas, predict the associated ecosystem services, and investigate whether trends in tree cover and their services scale geographically or demographically. Our urban areas include several in Italy, such as Naples were the group is stationed, as well as the global megacities (Tokyo, Beijing, Istanbul, Cairo, London, New York, Manila, etc), defined as areas with at least 10 million human inhabitants.

This report presents the first step in our urban metabolism research, which was to select a method for determining the percent of tree cover, and potential tree cover, in our set of global urban areas. Although there is no international standard for land cover classification, most land cover maps limit classes to landscape units and fail to explicitly include trees in urban landscape units, limiting them to forested units [3]. Ecological engineers will often use such landscape units, and make inferences about associated ecosystem structures (e.g., trees) and services (e.g., wood and fuel products, climate regulation) they need in their project designs (see Figure 1). However, in urban landscapes there is no explicit estimate of the tree cover and structure, and the assumption of zero tree cover ignores the substantial value contributed by existing urban trees [4].

Figure 1. Illustration of landscapes and their associated ecosystem services, where parks and gardens are an extremely valuable sub-unit providing services in the Urban landscape. [credit Millennium Assessment]

Our research method involved testing several products to estimate tree cover in Naples, Italy, defined by its political boundary to have an area of 118 km². By testing several land cover classification products we could determine if there were differences in the estimated area between products, and then identify which product would be best for our classification of trees in the set of global urban areas. We considered the following products, NLCD, CORINE, MODIS, MAGLC, i-Tree Canopy, each explained below: In the US, the 30 m raster National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) from LandSAT is a common land cover product that classifies urban areas as 21 – 24 (developed areas of low to high density), and forested areas as 41-43 (deciduous, evergreen, and mixed forests). In Europe, the polygon CORdination of INformation on the Environment (CORINE) land cover dataset is a common land cover product that classifies uses the class of artificial areas, and sub-classes of continuous or discontinuous urban fabric, which can include many sub-classes of residential cover, as well as several forest area classes such as agro-forest, broadleaf, coniferous, and mixed forests. Global datasets include the 500 m raster Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Land Cover product (MCD12Q1) that has a single urban class and five forest classes (evergreen needle and broad, deciduous needle and broad, and mixed). The Millennium Assessment global land cover (MAGLC) used similar data to create a 1000 m raster land cover map that inventoried landscape elements for estimation of associated ecosystem services, and it used 1 urban class called artificial cover, and several forest classes (e.g., broad leaf, needle leaf, mixed). An alternative method for land cover inventories involves a random survey, using photo-interpretation with i-Tree Canopy, to identify the fraction of inventoried points in discrete land cover classes, such as deciduous tree and evergreen tree to identify tree canopy, and other classes to discriminate between non-plantable and plantable areas, such as impervious area that is not-plantable, and impervious are that is potentially plantable. Outside of the United States, in place of NLCD we used the LandSAT based maps of forest cover, created by M.C. Hansen et al., and published in Science.

Our results clearly identified the i-Tree Canopy photo-interpretation product as the best estimate of tree cover, and the product we will use for future urban land cover characterization. The Naples area has a mixture of landscape units, including urban and forest, clearly seen in aerial photographs (Figure 2). Using i-Tree Canopy with a 2014 photo dataset the tree cover of Naples was estimated as 24.2% of the urban area, and potentially plantable urban area, such as sidewalks and plazas, could contribute another 20% of the total urban area to canopy cover. This estimate is based on a survey of 500 points, which takes approximately 2.5 hours to complete, and it had an uncertainty of 2%; 500 points is a recommended minimum for controlling the uncertainty in the estimate.

No other land cover product approached this i-Tree Canopy estimate of 24.2% forest cover. LandSAT (i.e., Hansen et al. equivalent of NLCD) estimated tree cover in Naples for 2014 as 6.3% of the total area, with this number accounting for all detected loss and gain in cover between 2000 and 2014. CORINE estimated forest cover from 2006 data at 7% of the Naples area (Figure 3),the MAGLC estimated forest cover as 4.5% from 2000 data (Figure 4), and MODIS estimated forest cover from 2013 data as 1.8% of the Naples area (Figure 5). Although the dates of each land cover product were different (2014 to 2000), this is not expected to explain the range in tree cover (24.2 to 1.8%). The MODIS and i-Tree Canopy products are closest in date (2013 and 2014), yet they capture the 22.4% range in variation between the maximum and minimum estimates. In general, based on land cover analysis by the Naples government, the vegetated area in Naples has decreased by 1.2% between 2011 and 2015, suggesting the 2014 data product used by i-Tree Canopy is a conservative estimate of tree cover. Given the uncertainty in this estimate is less than 2%, it is also considered the best estimate, and spatially it is the most precise estimate by providing a value for tree cover in the urban fabric.

Figure 2. The i-Tree Canopy product used in photo-interpretation to estimate 22.4% tree cover in the red polygon that is Naples.The area surrounding Naples includes the Mediterranean to the south, and mixed uses to the north.

Figure 3. The CORINE land cover product to estimate 7% tree cover in the red polygon that is Naples.

 

Figure 4. The MAGLC land cover product to estimate 4.5% tree cover in the red polygon that is Naples.

Figure 5. The MODIS land cover product to estimate 1.8% tree cover in the black polygon that is Naples. It also mis-classified a rocky outcrop as snow and ice.

Future work in this research area will involve applying the i-Tree Canopy tool to nearly 30 global cities. We are interested in having volunteers contribute to this work, and if you are interested please contact us (see below). We will then apply the i-Tree Canopy surveys of land cover types to estimate the existing and potential ecosystem services in these urban areas. This will include using the i-Tree Hydro tool to examine stormwater runoff and how trees reduce volumes and pollutant loads. For the i-Tree Hydro applications, the i-Tree Canopy photo-interpretation product was able to sub-classify each tree cover area by the type of land cover below the canopy, as either impervious or pervious. This sub-classification is important for simulation of urban water balances, in order to allow precipitation passing below the canopy to partition into soil infiltration or overland runoff. The i-Tree Canopy product identified shrub and herbaceous cover in the urban environment, as well as bare soil areas, and of course the impervious areas as potentially plantable or not plantable. The i-Tree Canopy tool could be used to provide data for regression models that estimate the tree cover for each urban class used in CORINE and NLCD (e.g., LandSAT product by Hansen et al.), perhaps implementing multiple-regression with additional explanatory variables such as geographic region or urban density. This would allow users of these CORINE and NLCD data products the opportunity to benefit from our estimates of urban tree cover.

Contact information: Dr. Theodore Endreny, te@esf.edu

Acknowledgement: The scholarly collaboration for this project has been supported by the U.S. – Italy Fulbright Commission and Parthenope University through a Fulbright Scholar grant to Theodore Endreny to serve as Distinguished Chair in Environmental Science at Parthenope University in Naples, Italy, and by the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry through a sabbatical leave to Theodore Endreny.

The National Research Council’s Vision for Science Proficiency – ERE Reblogging

Our ESF ERE department is prepared to welcome students trained in the Next Generation Science standards, which target proficiency in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. Cutting edge engineering students need STEM proficiencies to best achieve their professional goals. Beginning with the discipline of science, engineers will use science as a toolkit, accessing it for existing knowledge and for knowledge building; paraphrasing the National Research Council (NRC), knowledge building is a process of extending, refining, and revising knowledge. To share more about how the NRC plans to train of our next generation scientists and engineers, I am Reblogging from www.NextGenScience.Org ….

The National Research Council’s (NRC) Framework describes a vision of what it means to be proficient in science; it rests on a view of science as both a body of knowledge and an evidence-based, model and theory building enterprise that continually extends, refines, and revises knowledge. It presents three dimensions that will be combined to form each standard:

Dimension 1: Practices

The practices describe behaviors that scientists engage in as they investigate and build models and theories about the natural world and the key set of engineering practices that engineers use as they design and build models and systems. The NRC uses the term practices instead of a term like “skills” to emphasize that engaging in scientific investigation requires not only skill but also knowledge that is specific to each practice. Part of the NRC’s intent is to better explain and extend what is meant by “inquiry” in science and the range of cognitive, social, and physical practices that it requires.

Although engineering design is similar to scientific inquiry, there are significant differences. For example, scientific inquiry involves the formulation of a question that can be answered through investigation, while engineering design involves the formulation of a problem that can be solved through design. Strengthening the engineering aspects of the Next Generation Science Standards will clarify for students the relevance of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (the four STEM fields) to everyday life.

Dimension 2: Crosscutting Concepts

Crosscutting concepts have application across all domains of science. As such, they are a way of linking the different domains of science. They include: Patterns, similarity, and diversity; Cause and effect; Scale, proportion and quantity; Systems and system models; Energy and matter; Structure and function; Stability and change. The Framework emphasizes that these concepts need to be made explicit for students because they provide an organizational schema for interrelating knowledge from various science fields into a coherent and scientifically-based view of the world.

Dimension 3: Disciplinary Core Ideas

Disciplinary core ideas have the power to focus K–12 science curriculum, instruction and assessments on the most important aspects of science. To be considered core, the ideas should meet at least two of the following criteria and ideally all four:

• Have broad importance across multiple  sciences or engineering disciplines or be a key organizing concept of a single discipline;
• Provide a key tool for understanding or investigating more complex ideas and solving problems;
• Relate to the interests and life experiences of students or be connected to societal or personal concerns that require scientific or technological knowledge;
• Be teachable and learnable over multiple grades at increasing levels of depth and sophistication.

Disciplinary ideas are grouped in four domains: the physical sciences; the life sciences; the earth and space sciences; and engineering, technology and applications of science.

NAE features Capstone, Co-op and Course Programs that Deliver Real World Experiences

The SUNY ESF ERE program shares with the National Academy of Engineering a commitment to maintain excellence in undergraduate training. One training initiative is the development of capstone, co-op, and course programs that bring students real world experiences, often through partnerships with industry, agencies, community groups, or other organizations. These experiences are a blend of teaching and research and outreach and provide high level training through inquiry and experience outside of the classroom. The results of these endeavors are better trained engineers and new solutions for society – benefiting all involved in the partnership.

Ideas for such training are provided in the NAE report, Infusing Real World Experiences into Engineering Education, which summarizes this training initiative and provides a comparative framework for showcasing the excellence of ERE’s capstone and course program, ERE Planning and Design. The reason ERE was not featured in this report is the NAE could only fit 29 programs into the document, and ERE was represented by similar programs. To achieve greater success in ERE Planning and Design our department plans to grow our external partnerships, and perhaps reach the success of Harvey Mudd College’s capstone program featured in the report. More on that effort later. For now, here is the NAE report.

NAE Report Cover Image

From the NAE report: “The aim of this report is to encourage enhanced richness and relevance of the undergraduate engineering education experience, and thus produce better-prepared and more globally competitive graduates, by providing practical guidance for incorporating real world experience in US engineering programs. The report, a collaborative effort of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), builds on two NAE reports on The Engineer of 2020(NAE, 2004; 2005) that cited the importance of grounding engineering education in real world experience. This project also aligns with other NAE efforts in engineering education, such as the Grand Challenges of Engineering, Changing the Conversation, and Frontiers of Engineering Education.

“The Real World Engineering Education (RWEE) committee invited nominations from US universities and colleges that offer programs in undergraduate engineering, some of which involved partnerships with other types of institutions, corporations, or community members. The committee gave preference to 4-year programs that could be adopted or adapted at other institutions. Nominating institutions were asked to provide a description of the program, its start date, anticipated and actual outcomes, original and current funding, number and diversity of students and faculty involved in the program, partners, and methods of assessment (to facilitate ongoing improvement of new programs).

“The number of nominated programs—89, at 73 public and private universities and colleges around the country—indicates the importance many institutions place on the incorporation of real world experiences for their engineering students. Furthermore, we are pleased to note that, although some of the nominated programs have been operational for several decades, over half were launched since 2006, which suggests an increasing interest in enhancing US undergraduate engineering education through the inclusion of practical, real world experience.

“The 29 selections described in the following pages feature a diverse range of model programs in terms of institution type, program category and scope, geographic location, and longevity. The report also includes a section on potential barriers to implementation, as described by engineering and engineering technology deans, together with suggested methods of overcoming those barriers.

“We are excited about the potential of this report to promote awareness and adoption of programs that incorporate real world experiences in engineering education. We believe the report will be useful to both academic and industry professionals interested in engaging and better preparing engineering students for the workplace and for competition in the global economy. “

ERE Considers the Ultimate Design Challenge – Improving the Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum

The ERE faculty and staff met this month to discuss a new article, “Undergraduate Engineering Curriculum: the Ultimate Design Challenge”, by S. Ambrose, published in the The Bridge, 16-23, Summer 2013, a periodical of the National Academy of Engineering.  The meeting was organized to consider how changes in SUNY Seamless Transfer paths and ABET program criteria for environmental and similarly named engineering programs for 2015 might be incorporated into the ERE curriculum along with new findings for best teaching practices.

Ambrose’s The Bridge article recommends creating the curriculum by using skills of systems thinking, critical problem solving, and design, based on concurrently using 6 key findings from learning research on best practices for designing curricula. For each of the 6 key findings on best practices, I summarize below the practice, its goal, and the how of implementation.

1. Finding 1: Context and Continual Integration Promotes Transfer of Knowledge & Skills. Goal –continually engage students in integration of knowledge and skills across context and time on tasks the students’ value. How–acquire component knowledge and skills, practice them to point when they can combine them fluently, then use them when appropriate.

2. Finding 2: Early Exposure Lays the Foundation for Future Learning. Goal –introduce engineering students to design in 1st year to expose them to thinking like an engineer and motivate learning. How–use design courses each year to reinforce design is open ended and engineering challenges extend beyond domains (i.e., sponsored by agencies, NGOs, communities). First year is more conceptual, the last year is more technical. Develop skills to: structure ill-structured problems and decompose problems; implement systems perspective; identify parameters and constraints; work in teams.

3. Finding 3: Meaningful Classroom Engagement Leads to Deeper Learning. Goal –enhance learning with deliberate practice coupled with targeted feedback in and out of the classroom, providing opportunity to apply concepts or principles, and consider alternative approaches or designs. How– to achieve realistic practice and feedback then accomplish meaningful engagement in many ways, including: peer instruction in conceptual questions; realistic case study problems connecting theory and practice; problem based learning using analytical and integrative thinking; flipped or inverted classrooms; collaborative and cooperative learning.

4. Finding 4: Reflection Connects Thinking and Doing. Goal –continually interweave thinking and doing to capture meaning of learning experience and establish structured reflection. How–structure reflection with low stakes writing and mathematical assignments (i.e., focus on concepts, not correcting for writing or mathematical errors): ask students to express what they are learning and how it connects with what they already know, and how they might use the knowledge in the future; create e-portfolios allowing students to assemble and showcase evidence of learning.

5. Finding 5: Metacognition Supports the Development of Lifelong Learning Skills. Goal –students continue to learn independently and are disabused of the presumption that engineers work only on problems that can be solved using memorized facts and procedures. How–engage students in metacognition, defined as the process of reflection and directing one’s own thinking. Self-directed learning requires students: assessing the task at hand, including goals and constraints; evaluating their own knowledge and skills including strengths and weaknesses; planning their approach in a way that accounts for the current situation; applying various strategies to enact the plan and monitoring their progress; reflecting on the degree to which their current approach is working so they can adjust and restart the cycle as needed.

6. Finding 6: Experimental Learning Opportunities Connect Theory & Practice in Authentic Settings. Goal –create an educational environment that weaves the connections back and forth across the formal and experiential curriculum. How–engage students in experiential learning activities, such as co-ops or service learning, so they apply what they have learned before entering the workforce.

 

ERE Program Ranks Among Nation’s Best for Percent Female Students

Brian L. Yoder recently reported on the top ten schools ranked by percentage of women awarded bachelor’s degrees, and number one was Smith at 95%, number 10 was Yale at 38.2%, and ERE is now averaging 40% and in 9th place, and in good company with Franklin Olin College, Howard, MIT, Tuskegee, CalTech, and Harvey Mudd to name other top 10 schools. Our only surprise is the article did not include ERE – an understandable oversight given we are a department and not an entire school. Nonetheless, this is a rank we are working to promote. The ESF and ERE community certainly does not side with the at times brilliant and misguided Larry Summers that we should expect fewer than 50% enrollment of women in engineering.

You can read more about this important issue Yoder’s a Databytes article, “Women in Engineering“, published by the American Society for Engineering Education informative Prism Magazine . As reported by Yoder, Environmental Engineering is the top engineering field for women, approaching 50% of all degrees in a survey of 905 degrees awarded in 2012.

Women in Engineering ranking of Top 10 Schools based on Degrees awarded to Women. ESF’s ERE program would be #9 if included in the survey!

Recruiting, retaining, and graduating more female engineers is a critical issue for securing a better planet and achieving socially, ecologically, and economically sustainable engineering designs. Here is simple reason to bring more women into engineering – design is inherently about considering alternatives, and proper consideration needs to include perspectives of 50% of our population, hence women are needed in engineering. Many programs have fewer than 10% female enrollment and graduates.

Female high school graduates are certainly earning their place in engineering programs by achieving the entrance requirements in test scores and grades; in fact Richard Whitmere, an educational researcher, suggests boys may need affirmative action to out-compete girls for 50% or more of the available openings in college admissions.  There is ongoing research on differences and similarities between male and female learning styles, as well as bridging across styles, as described in Dr. Guian’s book, “Boys and Girls Learn Differently”, which is discussed on a blog site advocating for male students. According to Whitmire’s book, “Why Boys Fail”, the K-12 educational system demands more reading and writing than boys are ready to engage, which may partly explain the history of gender separation in engineering if it’s emphasis on math and science had provided a refuge for boys. Communication is also emphasized in engineering, and by increasing female enrollment in engineering education we collectively enrich the whole.

Need we say more.

While the ERE program is proud of its 40% female enrollment at the undergraduate level, we are not content. Our goal is to grow this number to 50%, and perhaps keep going if women out compete men for positions. Thankfully, we have a large percentage of women in our graduate programs, as well. Dr. Endreny has 7 female graduate students in his graduate team of 12, and the scholarly contributions achieved by this gender balanced team are rich, diverse, and fun! Part of the fun is captured by the GoldieBlox toy company, designed to enhance spatial reasoning in girls, and the Sesame Street STEM campaign geared toward sharing with girls how cool engineering can be as a career.

 

Sesame Street Often Says it Best.

ERE’s recent outreach efforts have made engineering fun and encouraged the next generation to engage this excellent profession!

ERE’s Paul Szemkow oversees fountain design and performance testing.