Schools Receive Grants For Environmental Research

Endless supplies of clean, healthy water, and heating, air conditioning and lights powered by the Mississippi River. With help from public and private grants provided this year to colleges and universities nationwide, these are some of the possibilities that researchers are exploring. They're possibilities that might help slow global warming and provide a more positive future for generations to come. Grants provided to colleges and universities also are helping the powers that be take proactive steps on campus that include everything from green retrofits featuring renewable energy to free bicycle giveaways for commuter students. Taking online classes is another convenient way for students to reduce emissions.

By now, researchers understand that climate change happens naturally - and gradually. As the earth orbits the sun and continents shift and collide, populations change and long ice ages gradually shift into long tropical periods. We're now rushing climate change in more quickly, they say. By discharging harmful gases into the air when there aren't enough trees to absorb them, researchers suggest that we're causing warmer summers, colder winters and showers that return those gases to the earth and our drinking water supplies in the form of acid rain.

Contact Education Connection Online for information about taking courses online and do your part to reduce harmful emissions. In the United States, energy is the largest producer of carbon emissions. A New Orleans college is working, with help from a $4 million federal grant, to build a center where it can test the production of renewable energy. The center, which would be known as Riversphere, would focus on making and commercializing energy from the Mississippi River, according to an April announcement from the institution. Riversphere also would focus on sustainable water supplies and would feature exhibition and meeting space and more, the announcement noted.

At a university in Maryland, the research being carried out with help from a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation has to do with development and its effects on water, a November university announcement noted. A professor who works at this university suggested in the announcement that there are better ways for managing stresses that development places on water supplies and ecosystems.

Because climate change is a global concern, the United States isn't focusing its research efforts on this area alone. A Georgia university, with help from a $2.4 million Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Grant, for example, plans in part to explore water quality issues in the Amazon River. Across the pond, the European Commission Seventh Framework program has provided about $4.8 million (3 million pounds) to researchers at a Liverpool university and other institutions in Europe and Africa. The grant money is intended so that the researchers can explore how climate modeling and disease forecasting systems might be combined to predict epidemics far enough in advance that they might be prevented, according to an April announcement from that English college. Researchers believe that climate change can change the diseases affecting different parts of the world. Their studies are to focus on areas of Africa and diseases such as malaria and Rift Valley Fever, which can be spread by mosquitoes that are particularly abundant in warm, moist conditions.

Colleges and universities are spending grant money now to find ways to ensure a healthier future and better quality of life for future generations. Some of their efforts might slow some of the damage we've unknowingly been doing to the environment for years. Through green renovations on campus, colleges and universities also are setting a good example for others to follow. There are many academic scholarships and other grant and scholarship programs for those that want to earn degrees in fields that perform research such as those mentioned.