Runoff in urban areas is an increasingly important issue when it comes to water quality. It is a major hydrologic issue in New York City, as urban infrastructure creates excess runoff and impervious surfaces decrease the infiltration rate of land surfaces. This excess runoff, which often times carries with it pollutants and contaminants, has proven to create water quality issues. It has become ever more critical to try to mitigate the influx of runoff into our waterways. Urbanization increases runoff, and in NYC 64% of the area is impervious. In this module students will explore green roofs as a potential solution to the environmental impacts of increased precipitation brought on by climate change. They will evaluate data collected from studies on 15 green roofs from different areas of the US and other countries, as well as historical precipitation data from Central Park in NY to illustrate how precipitation patterns are changing and if we need to use green infrastructure, such as green roofs, to combat the symptoms of climate change. Students will also use Model My Watershed , a watershed-modeling web app, to analyze real land use data, model storm-water runoff and water-quality i

The issues of redlining and environmental justice will be introduced and used as a framework for a number of topics in the third part of the semester in a non-majors Environmental Science course.

Materials for the workshop on social justice presented at the 2021 BIOME Institute.

Workshop about models for introducing social justice issues into classes developed in a Faculty Mentoring Network. Presented at the 2021 BIOME Institute.

Basic data handling and data analysis skills are introduced to visualize and analyze ‘big data.’ Environmental justice is introduced to give students an understanding of tools and strategies to explore while developing advocacy and communication skills.

This exercise explores circumstances of urban heat islands in the United States using spatial data, including an exploration of heat island solutions.

In this exercise, students use a combination of publicly available data and tree cover data that they generate using iTree Canopy to test whether tree cover is equitably distributed within the city of Dallas.