By Kevin Fitzsimons

Visitors tour the Olentangy River Wetland Research Park.

On Earth Day and every day, OSU research is global

The 30th anniversary of Earth Day, on April 22, offers an opportunity to reflect on work being done at Ohio State to improve the Earth. From the legal arena to the Marion prairie, faculty at Ohio State are making significant advances in several areas of environmental research and teaching.

The following summaries describe just a sample of Ohio State's environment-related activity.

Environment spawns new breed of lawyers

In the 30 years since the first Earth Day, extensive legislation has helped ensure cleaner air and water in the United States. As the area of environmental and conservation law grows to meet ever-changing environmental standards, the number of attorneys specializing in these areas also has increased.

"Thirty years ago, most law students would not have expected to practice environmental law at any point during their career,"said Earl Finbar Murphy, professor of law in Ohio State's College of Law.

"It is now a major part of the American legal system,"said Murphy, who has taught environmental and conservation law for more than 40 years. "We have an elaborate body of regulation, statutes and case law on environmental matters."

Students in the College of Law today can take classes in environmental torts, land-use planning or international environmental law.

Murphy first taught conservation law during a summer course in 1962 at Temple University School of Law in Philadelphia. It wasn't until the late 1960s, when Murphy arrived at Ohio State, that he first taught natural resource law and environmental law on a regular basis.

"Earth Day reflected a changing public attitude,"said Murphy, who spoke at Ohio State's first Earth Day observance in 1970. "The creation of Earth Day as a day for celebration helped the cause increase in significance.

Researcher tackles heavy metals

When the Industrial Revolution changed the nature of life in America for the better, it also brought with it environmental pollution. Heavy metals tainting ground-water supplies are part of that legacy.

Now, an Ohio State plant biologist is devising ways to stop that contamination before it reaches the ground water. His answer: algae.

Richard T. Sayre, chair of the Department of Plant Biology, is working with a species of metal-grabbing algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, that acts like a sponge to soak up and bind a variety of heavy metals, including copper, in the soil before it gets to the ground water.

Heavy metals enter Lake Erie through four rivers: the Cuyahoga, Black, Maumee and Ashtabula. Sayre's research offers the promise of safer, more effective and relatively inexpensive cleanup of these heavy metals.

While small amounts of some heavy metals, including zinc, copper and nickel, are necessary for human health, others, like cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead and uranium, are not, Sayre said. Prolonged exposure, even at a low dosage, or a more concentrated short-term exposure, is cause for concern.

Ohio ranks in the top 10 states in the nation for unacceptable levels of heavy metals. This is where Sayre's algae can come to the rescue.

"Algae can be changed genetically to bind about 20 percent of their total weight. Once the metal binds to the algae, the algae can be harvested and the metal recycled, reducing the total amount of metal mined, smelted and released into the environment,"Sayre said. "It also could be deposited in safe-site waste dump locations where it is unlikely to cause problems."

Statistical models help predict climate

Most people remember the large El Nino event that started in 1997 and lasted through 1998, during which time the sea-surface temperatures in the Eastern Pacific rose dramatically, causing significant changes in world weather patterns.

A new program in Spatial Statistics and Environmental Sciences (SSES) within the Department of Statistics at Ohio State is pioneering the application of statistical modeling in order to better predict such phenomena in the future. Research programs in the SSES program emphasize areas of "big science,"such as remote sensing of the Earth on a global scale, regional climate modeling in space and time, and statistical issues in climate change.

"Applying statistical modeling to climate prediction is not straightforward," said Noel Cressie, professor of statistics and director of the program. "Our current work on the El Ni–o Southern Oscillation phenomenon uses hierarchical Bayesian dynamic modeling of sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific. The models are designed to give long-lead statistical forecasts of regional warming and cooling of the equatorial Pacific Ocean surface."

The same principle of hierarchical modeling is applied to optimal estimation of global environmental processes such as the distribution of aerosols and ozone in the atmosphere.

More information about the SSES program can be found at www.stat.ohio-state.edu/~sses.

Prairie is both retreat and ecosystem

Just beyond the traffic along state Route 23 and the expanses of corn and soybeans covering central Ohio is a bit of what settlers may have seen centuries ago as they rolled onto the Sandusky Plains. Big bluestem and Indiangrass, as high as a rider on horseback, and the vivid colors of prairie wildflowers cover much of the 25-acre OSU-Marion Prairie and Nature Center.

This patch of tallgrass prairie blooms on former agricultural land in the heart of Marion County. Ecologist Peter S. Curtis and other scientists from the College of Biological Sciences at Ohio State are applying the tools of restoration ecology to establish a new prairie behind the OSU-Marion campus.

With only 100 acres of prairie remaining from an estimated 75,000 acres originally growing in Marion, Crawford and Wyandot counties, the OSU-Marion Prairie is an important part of statewide efforts to preserve and restore Ohio's ecosystems and biodiversity, Curtis said. It also is a living laboratory, offering students from preschool through graduate school an opportunity to explore biology outside the classroom.

Ohio State biologists are using the restored prairie to study how best to convert land no longer needed for agriculture back to its presettlement condition.

Along with fire -- in the form of occasional controlled burns of the prairie -- as a management tool, Ohio State scientists are experimenting with adding sawdust to the soil as a way of removing the nitrogen on which weeds thrive.

Team seeks to create 'greener' SUV

Ohio State has joined 14 other top North American universities in the race to create an environmentally friendly sport utility vehicle.

FutureTruck 2000, a four-year competition co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors Corp., challenges each university team to enhance the "greenness"of a Chevrolet Suburban by converting it from gasoline power to an alternative propulsion system.

"A few organizations have tried on paper to redesign the sport utility vehicle to make it more environmentally sound and reduce its greenhouse gas impact,"said Giorgio Rizzoni, faculty adviser to Ohio State's FutureTruck team. "But this is the first time that a serious partnership, combining resources and know-how from the public and private sectors, has tackled the real-world obstacles of such a challenge."

Last fall, General Motors presented each team with $10,000 in seed money to finance its initial work, allowing students to turn their "paper"ideas into "on-the-road"ideas, Rizzoni said. In January, GM delivered to campus one of the first newly redesigned Suburbans to roll off the assembly line.

Ohio State's FutureTruck team has two months to re-engineer the vehicle before competitive evaluation of its progress takes place. Vehicles will be evaluated in June for safety, greenhouse gas impact, acceleration, handling, exhaust emissions, braking, fuel economy, consumer acceptability, trailer towing capacity, off-road performance and other criteria.

The engineering strategies proposed by the universities take advantage of all types of advanced automotive technologies, including hydrogen fuel cells, hybrid powertrains (combining electric motors with internal combustion engines), space-age lightweight materials, advanced electronics and alternative fuels.

More information is available at http://members.aol.com/futurcar.

Coal desulfurization process developed

Ohio State and the Ohio Department of Development's Ohio Coal Development Office (OCDO) have joined forces to fund and produce the commercial demonstration of a patented process for cleaning the flue gas created by burning coal.

The process, known as OSCAR (Ohio State Carbonation and Ash Reactivation), could increase the use of Ohio's coal in the nation's industries and create jobs in economically distressed areas across the state.

"A key tenet in our mission at Ohio State is to provide technology development and technology transfer that will benefit our society in fundamental ways," said David Ashley, dean of the College of Engineering. "We believe OSCAR will benefit Ohio as well as the nation and the world, by providing for the economic removal of sulfur and nitrogen oxides from the coal combustion process in an environmentally responsible fashion."

An OSCAR-based flue gas desulfurization system for coal-fired combustors could result in more than $100 million in savings annually in Ohio alone, compared to current technologies. Savings would come from reducing the amount of byproducts sent to landfills, as well as from development of new uses for this resource.

The OSCAR process, invented by L.S. Fan, chair of the Chemical Engineering Department, and Rajeev Agnihotri, a postdoctoral researcher in chemical engineering, provides for the economic removal of sulfur and nitrogen oxides from coal combustion processes in an environmentally responsible manner.

This $8.5 million project is a collaboration between Ohio State's departments of Chemical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering and Geodetic Science, the OCDO and Ohio State's McCracken Power Plant, which will serve as the commercial demonstration site.

Wetlands key to keeping water clean

Long recognized for their value as habitat for fish and wildlife, wetlands are becoming increasingly known for their water-cleansing benefits.

"Wetlands act as the Earth's kidneys, purifying the water that flows through them,"said Bill Mitsch, professor of natural resources at Ohio State.

Wetlands are land areas that are saturated by water frequently enough to support plants and wildlife. Some wetland plants include cattails, swamp milkweed, water lilies and blue flag iris. Wildlife includes river otters, turtles, muskrats, wood ducks, rails and frogs.

Studies conducted at Ohio State's Olentangy River Wetland Research Park over the past six years have shown that concentrations of phosphorus decreased about 60 percent and nitrogen levels were reduced by one-third as river water passed through the park's wetlands, Mitsch said.

These nutrients enter waterways through agricultural and urban runoff and in wastewater from sewage treatment plants, Mitsch said.

"Too much phosphorus and nitrogen can cause algae growth in ponds, lakes and rivers,"he said. "Excessive amounts of algae can kill fish by reducing the oxygen supply in water and harm underwater vegetation by blocking sunlight. High levels of the form of nitrogen called nitrate can be harmful to humans."

Wetlands minimize flooding, add oxygen to water and possibly even absorb some potentially harmful pesticides, Mitsch said.

The river-water sediment flowing through the research park's wetlands also is reduced by up to 40 percent or 50 percent, said Virginie Bouchard, an Ohio State assistant professor of natural resources.

Sediment buildups must be cleaned from drinking water supplies, dredged from rivers and lakes to keep boating channels open and cleared from drainage ditches. High sediment levels in waters also hurt fishing and recreation.

Half of the original 221 million acres of wetlands in the lower 48 states have been destroyed, and an additional 290,000 acres continue to be lost each year, Bouchard said. In Ohio, 87 percent of the original wetlands have been lost, from 5 million acres before 1800 to about 500,000 acres now.

"On Earth Day and all year long,"Bouchard said, "people should try to protect the entire landscape, and wetlands are an important part of the landscape."

Compiled by: Melissa Weber, College of Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Liz Cutler Gates, College of Law; Sandi Rutkowski, College of Biological Sciences; Kyle Sharp, College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; and Gina Langen, College of Engineering.

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