Fairview Flood Mitigation Project Ground Breaking

On March 1, the City of Miami broke ground for the first Miami Forever Bond Project - the Fairview Flood Mitigation. The project has two phases and is estimated to be completed by early 2020. The first phase is meant to protect against most of the weather events that the city is experiencing right now such as King Tide flooding and dramatic rain events. The second phase is a pump station that will pump between 20,000 and 30,000 gallons a minute. The City of Miami plans to use the Fairview Flood Mitigation project as a means to understand the effectiveness of water outfall back-flow valves and how to best address storm surge and sea-level rise. 

 

In a recently published special issue of Forest Ecology and Management on "Reduced-Impact Logging for Climate Change Mitigation," Jack Putz (UF) and 27 other researchers from nine countries used the same sampling protocols to measure carbon emissions from selective logging in 61 tropical forest management enterprises in seven countries. They report that adoption of well-known reduced-impact logging (RIL) practices would curb emissions by an average of 60%. These carbon savings from responsible and efficient timber harvests would satisfy up to 65% of the nationally declared commitments (NDCs) to emissions reductions of the studied countries. The articles together demonstrate the value of a focus on solutions to problems stemming from tropical forest exploitation rather than ever more detailed descriptions of deleterious impacts. With recommendations for improved harvesting practices and a monitoring protocol for logging emissions that is efficient and accurate, the researchers call on forest authorities and certification bodies to rise to the challenge of reforming tropical forestry. The authors suggest that many forests should be off-limits to logging, but where timber is harvested, RIL practices should be employed. Advocates of improved forest management have championed this cause for decades, but the articles in this issue provide a clear connection between emissions reductions and logging practices. Read the article.

Following the successful completion of Puerto Rico_ReStart 1 (PR_RS) in March of 2018, and in response to the consequences of hurricanes Irma and María, the University of Florida and the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico (PUPR) launched the second edition, Puerto Rico_ReStart 2: The Project of the Future, was held on the PUPR campus (377 Ave. Ponce de Leon, San Juan, Puerto Rico 00918), from March 22 to 30, 2019. The PR_RS 2 addressed comprehensive ideas for interdisciplinary proposals, and will open new areas for innovative research and visionary projects with the objective of a sustainable and resilient Puerto Rico. For more details about Puerto Rico_ReStart 2, visit http://puertoricorestart.org/

 

 

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