Making the Future Bright: The Solar Energy Curriculum Consortium (SECC)

IMPACT. 1: The SECC will develop five high quality, locally relevant lessons for the proposed solar energy curriculum, including teacher-friendly instructions, classroom-ready materials, and content-appropriate support materials. -- 2. The lessons will incorporate online, real-time and historical energy production by the solar photovoltaic installations at OSU's Stone Laboratory on Gibraltar Island and weather data from a Stone Lab owned weather buoy deployed in Lake Erie. -- 3. Together, these efforts promote an energy-literate citizenry of informed and responsible decision makers and environmental stewards.OSU PARTNERS: Ohio Sea Grant and Stone Laboratory; OSU Extension; Facilities, Operations, and Development; Office of Energy and EnvironmentCOMMUNITY PARTNERS: Science Educators in grades 4-12 in the State of Ohio; Informal education groups at Stone LaboratoryPRIMARY CONTACT: Kristen Fussell ([email protected])The importance of renewable energy is obvious, yet less than 1% of electricity generated in Ohio is derived from solar energy. Furthermore, learners of all ages are largely uninformed about solar energy. Bringing a wealth of knowledge, experience and resources together, Ohio Sea Grant, Office of Energy and Environment, Facilities, Operations, and Development, and Energize Ohio are well poised to initiate a Solar Energy Curriculum Consortium (SECC) to develop locally relevant, inquiry-based lessons easily accessible to formal and informal educators throughout Ohio

Establishing a Flexible but Robust Framework to Assess Nutrient Removal in Diverse Wetland Restorations

Globally, investments are made to protect, restore, construct, and manage wetland ecosystems to mitigate eutrophication. However, efforts to assess nutrient removal in restored wetlands are often limited and data remains inadequate. In Ohio, wetland restoration is being implemented statewide as part of the H2Ohio Initiative to improve water quality. The H2Ohio Wetland Projects are diverse and numerous, representing over 50 projects including reconnection of diked coastal wetlands as well as wetland restoration and construction on agricultural land and floodplains. The H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program (HWMP) includes a multi-disciplinary, coordinated team of researchers developing a long-term data collection framework to assess the nutrient removal effectiveness of wetland restoration throughout the state. We are developing a tiered approach to maximize use of limited resources by intensively investigating and modeling selected representative projects and developing synthetic analyses to infer biogeochemical process from low resolution indicators in less intensively monitored projects. Monitoring will take a mass balance nutrient budgeting approach aimed at quantifying major pools and fluxes of nitrogen and phosphorus to quantify load reduction in contrasting restoration approaches. Measurements will include hydrologic dynamics, groundwater exchange, vegetation dynamics, soil and surface nutrient status, surface water nutrient concentrations, and sediment-surface water nutrient exchange. Ultimately, the HWMP provides an unprecedented opportunity to compare diverse wetland restoration, construction, and management approaches in terms of direct assessments of nutrient cycling mechanisms. The HWMP will not only generate open data to inform wetland research and management, but will also enhance capacity through cultivating a network of researchers and practitioners

Establishing a Flexible but Robust Framework to Assess Nutrient Removal in Diverse Wetland Restorations

Globally, investments are made to protect, restore, construct, and manage wetland ecosystems to mitigate eutrophication. However, efforts to assess nutrient removal in restored wetlands are often limited and data remains inadequate. In Ohio, wetland restoration is being implemented statewide as part of the H2Ohio Initiative to improve water quality. The H2Ohio Wetland Projects are diverse and numerous, representing over 50 projects including reconnection of diked coastal wetlands as well as wetland restoration and construction on agricultural land and floodplains. The H2Ohio Wetland Monitoring Program (HWMP) includes a multi-disciplinary, coordinated team of researchers developing a long-term data collection framework to assess the nutrient removal effectiveness of wetland restoration throughout the state. We are developing a tiered approach to maximize use of limited resources by intensively investigating and modeling selected representative projects and developing synthetic analyses to infer biogeochemical process from low resolution indicators in less intensively monitored projects. Monitoring will take a mass balance nutrient budgeting approach aimed at quantifying major pools and fluxes of nitrogen and phosphorus to quantify load reduction in contrasting restoration approaches. Measurements will include hydrologic dynamics, groundwater exchange, vegetation dynamics, soil and surface nutrient status, surface water nutrient concentrations, and sediment-surface water nutrient exchange. Ultimately, the HWMP provides an unprecedented opportunity to compare diverse wetland restoration, construction, and management approaches in terms of direct assessments of nutrient cycling mechanisms. The HWMP will not only generate open data to inform wetland research and management, but will also enhance capacity through cultivating a network of researchers and practitioners

‘Giving Children a Better Life?’ Reconsidering Social Reproduction, Humanitarianism and Development in Intercountry Adoption

This article takes a political economy approach to intercountry adoption (ICA) as a global system to consider how children’s well-being is often at the center of essential development questions in sometimes contradictory ways that are masked by the depoliticizing sentimentality applied to children. A reconsideration of ICA as social reproduction rather than child rescue also decenters development studies’ tendency to reduce development to problems in the global South. Instead, I highlight how ICA as an ostensibly humanitarian intervention also has much to do with crises of social reproduction in the global North. It is therefore important for development studies to critically question underlying assumptions and practices in discourses about ‘giving children a better life’