New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, along with Department of the Secretary Sally Jewel and other officials, announced a consortium to lead a new Science and Resilience Institute. The Institute will focus on resiliency in urban ecosystems and their adjacent communities through an intensive research program focused on the restoration of Jamaica Bay, which was heavily impacted by Superstorm Sandy in October 2012. The City University of New York will lead the consortium, which is still under development and includes many of the area's research universities and key local institutions: Columbia University's Earth Institute and its Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Cornell University, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York Sea Grant, Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University, Stevens Institute of Technology, Stony Brook University, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The Resilience Institute will integrate research from climate science, engineering, and sustainability and resilience studies to create a comprehensive program of research, monitoring and education while helping to restore Jamaica Bay. The Resilience Institute also will convene events to share and disseminate research findings. Formally opening by Fall 2013, the Resilience Institute's first undertaking will be the "Urban Resilience in an Era of Climate Change: Global Input for Local Solutions" Symposium on October 17-18. The symposium will bring global and local expertise together to examine what urban resilience means and how to achieve it. 

 

For more information, contact Danielle Chesky, Director of the Great Lakes Washington Program at the Northeast-Midwest Institute. 

During routine monitoring this year, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (DNR), working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, found one sample out of 225 from the Maumee River that tested positive for Asian carp environmental DNA (eDNA).  Ohio DNR also tested 100 samples from the Sandusky River, all of which came back negative for Asian carp. The monitoring is part of a larger effort to keep Asian carp, specifically silver and bighead carp, out of the Great Lakes basin. As part of these efforts, the federal government has spent around $50 million per year since 2010 on monitoring, research, deterrents, and other research. Testing in the previous two years showed Asian carp eDNA in the Maumee and Sandusky bays and rivers, triggering exhaustive netting and surveying, though surveyors found no live fish. Monitoring for live fish continues through an ongoing interagency fish sampling program, commercial fishery catch reporting, and reporting by recreational fishermen. 

 

For more information, contact Danielle Chesky, Director of the Great Lakes Washington Program at the Northeast-Midwest Institute. 

 

For more information, contact Colleen Cain, Senior Policy Analyst at the Northeast-Midwest Institute. 

The 2013 Policy Summit on Housing, Human Capital, and Inequality will take place in Cleveland, OH from September 19-20. The annual summit features policy discussions about development issues facing communities in the Northeast and Midwest. Topics range from consumer finance and financial education to housing finance reform and strengthening and rebuilding communities post-foreclosure crisis. The summit aims to be a meaningful, relevant exchange of knowledge and best practices to serve the needs of constituents--including academics, bankers, elected officials, practitioners, and policymakers--across the Third (eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and all of Delaware) and Fourth (Ohio, western Pennsylvania, eastern Kentucky, and the northern panhandle of West Virginia) Federal Reserve Districts. Learn more about the conference here.

 

For more information, contact Colleen Cain, Senior Policy Analyst at the Northeast-Midwest Institute.