Ecologue

What are AASHE and STARS? The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) is a coalition comprised of over 900 higher education institutions, businesses, and other organizations; it exists to support higher education faculty, administrators, staff and students as they “lead the global sustainability transformation.” AASHE aims to contribute to a more […]

The Environmental Protection Agency has issued a proposal called the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule in order to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and fulfill the Trump administration’s goals concerning climate policy and the coal industry. The Clean Power Plan was a moderate attempt at slowing anthropogenic climate change, that climate scientists, policy makers, […]

Plastic Pollution Plastic pollution is one of the greatest anthropogenic threats to wildlife; this is because plastic takes far longer to decompose than other materials like aluminum or paper. Most plastics take about 450 years to decompose, while polystyrene (commonly known as Styrofoam) never fully decomposes! Thus, these plastics remain in the ecosystem, where wildlife […]

Communities, Food, Resilience is a seminar hosted by OSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences, the OSU Extension Service, and OSU150 to converse about and reflect on local food systems, community food resilience, and the role of land grant universities. The event will consist of keynote presentations, followed by examples and discussion of systems-level work on community […]

What is the IPCC? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), created by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in 1988, is the “international body for assessing the science related to climate change.” Its purpose is to provide policymakers with assessments of the scientific literature on climate change, the impacts […]

What is Biodiversity? Biodiversity is the variety of life on Earth. A single species is insignificant in the sense that it is one of billions, but it is actually of supreme importance, due to the interdependence of all life. We call this interdependence of life and its physical environment an ecosystem. An ecosystem can range […]

A simplified diagram of one specific ecosystem. Since Oregon State University is often associated with both natural resource management and engineering, it should be no surprise that we have a very active Ecological Engineering program. To understand what ecological engineering is, it helps to be acquainted with the concept of an ecosystem, and the study […]

The Oral History Program at the OSU Libraries Special Collections and Archives Research Center presents Voices of a Warming Planet, an oral history series about climate change. Voices of a Warming Planet is a website containing contextualized interviews with twelve OSU faculty members, staff, and students, including the Sustainability Office’s own Sustainability Officer, Brandon Trelstad! […]

The second annual Washington & Oregon Higher Education Sustainability Conference is February 25th through February 27th at the University of Washington! Last year was the first year that the Oregon Higher Education Sustainability Conference and the Washington Higher Education Sustainability Conference merged, forming WOHESC. The first WOHESC (2018) was a huge success, with over 600 […]

Water is a prerequisite for life, but currently over 1.2 billion people lack access to clean drinking water. Water crises affect 2.8 billion people around the world at least one month out of each year. Scarcity is usually caused by climate change, increased pollution, and increased human demand for fresh water. Water scarcity is a […]