As the Paris climate negotiations closed last Saturday, you heard a great deal of hope and optimism as well as congratulations for vision and progress emanating from COP21. Indeed, important commitments have been made – but they’re pledges, not actions, and they don’t reverse the adverse climate change underway. Which is why...

Frank Incropera acknowledges that it’s somewhat unusual for an engineer to delve deeply into the topic of climate change. Scientists, not engineers, have played the most prominent roles in the climate change debate to date. However, Incropera believes solving the problem going forward will require a joint effort from the...

It is human to be hopeful. Yet, in 20 years of meetings to avert the consequences of global warming and climate change, the United Nation’s Conference of Parties (COP) has failed to meet the challenge. Greenhouse gas emissions and the Earth’s average surface temperature have continued to rise, while the...

The Morrison Family Education and Outreach Pavilion at ND-LEEF was recognized with an Acanthus…

The University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish: gold helmets crackling under a roar of the Victory March, embraced under Jesus’ outstretched arms.  Try again. 

Sheila Christopher-Gokkaya and Brittany Hanrahan attended the symposium on behalf of Notre Dame. Article written by Greenleaf Advisors president John Andersen, reflecting on symposium highlights.  This week 200+ of the nation’s agricultural leaders assembled in Memphis, TN at the Healthy Soils…

Notre Dame Research has opened its annual competition for the Library Acquisitions and Equipment Restoration & Renewal Grants. University of Notre Dame teaching and research faculty, library faculty, research faculty, and special professional faculty from all Colleges and Schools are eligible…

World leaders took to the stage at the climate change conference in Paris this week and declared that the future of the planet was at stake. They delivered speeches warning about the dire consequences of inaction and called on the world to unite in tackling greenhouse gas emissions.

As the historic 21st Conference of Parties gets underway in Paris, members of the Notre Dame community are finding a variety of ways to stay informed and engage in the climate negotiations.

The more than 190 countries that have gathered in France for worldwide climate talks did much of their work in advance. Before the summit, at least 181 nations had already announced their plans to lower their carbon emissions in order to help slow the pace of global warming.

Warming-fueled droughts and storms imperil populations, industries and even the existence of some countries. Climate change may be the one thing that threatens everyone on Earth. But the peril is much more dire for people in some countries if negotiators fail to reach a climate deal in Paris in the...

If you don't live on the West Coast, you don't understand what it's like to not have access to water in the United States, right? One year ago, a half million Toledo residents experienced their own kind of water shortage – one that left 400,000 people with no clean drinking water from their...

The world has changed a lot in the past 12 months, with political conflict focusing the world on immediate crises, not the distant future. But a group of scientists are are showing how these conflicts will affect our ability to adapt to climate change down the road–and our ability to survive as...

Replacing culverts with bridges may benefit fish because of improved connectivity of streams in a watershed, a pilot project in the Huron-Manistee National Forests shows. But doing so also creates risks of more pathways for invasive species to spread and of fine sediments that can smother fish spawning beds, a study by U.S. Forest...

BARCELONA, Nov 17 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Syria, Libya and Yemen are among the countries whose ability to withstand climate change shocks and stresses has deteriorated most in the past five years, suggesting conflict makes people more vulnerable to climate impacts, researchers said. The University of Notre Dame Global Adaptation...

Ecologists study the mix of organisms that live together in a habitat. Sometimes they’ll focus on one member of this ecosystem. But “there are many cases where you’d like to look at a whole community [of organisms],” says Michael Pfrender. He’s a geneticist at the University of Notre Dame in...

In the lead-up to 21st meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP 21), 10 countries have come from behind to make marked progress in their ability to withstand the shocks and stresses of climate change, while five are distinctly less resilient, according to data released Tuesday (Nov. 17) by the...

Scientists have observed three species of wasps evolving into three new species, an intriguing case of rapid evolution in action.

The Morrison Family Education and Outreach Pavilion, the inaugural building at the University of Notre Dame’s Linked Experimental Ecosystem Facility (ND-LEEF) at St. Patrick’s County Park, received a 2015 Citation Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA)…

The concept that biodiversity feeds upon itself is not uncommon in the world of evolution. The problem is a lack of hard data that shows this process to be naturally occurring.  …

A back-country skier skins up a slope in the North Cascades. Photos by Rylan Schoen It was mid-January 2015. And Carson Guy, an enthusiastic Alpine skier who’s usually on the slopes between 50 and 100 days each year, was headed to Alpental. OK, so it looked like rain at the...

Two innovative projects that address climate change in developing countries — an imaginative program in Mozambique that produces starch for craft beer from cassava and another that helps cities worldwide develop resiliency to disaster — have won the coveted 2015 Corporate Adaptation Prize awarded by the University of Notre Dame...

The Notre Dame Linked Experimental Ecosystem Facility (ND-LEEF), a unique environmental research collaboration between the University of Notre Dame and St. Patrick’s County Park, will host its third annual public Science Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday (Sept. 20).

Not many people have likely heard of Beaver Island, a large, isolated island located far off shore at the northern end of Lake Michigan. Home to roughly 600 permanent residents and accessible only by ferry or small plane, Beaver Island is a well-kept secret of remote Great Lakes shores and...

The University of Notre Dame’s Global Adaptation Index is joining a team of researchers who, with National Science Foundation (NSF) backing, will look at innovative ways of making urban infrastructure more resilient and equitable.

In recent weeks, we have learned that Pope Francis enticed Cuban President Raúl Castro to consider a return to Catholicism, and has ended a dispute involving US nuns that will allow them to return to serving the poor free from the suspicion of heresy.   Perhaps most surprisingly, at least...

If time travel were possible, big game hunters would be clamoring to visit the Yukon during the last ice age. About 30,000 years…

Four faculty members from the College of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame have received Defense University Research Instrumention Program (DURIP) grants from the Department of Defense for 2015, totaling more than $1.8 million. These highly competitive awards will enable the purchase of new state-of-the-art equipment in support of...

Jessica Hellmann, associate professor and associate department chair of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, has been named the new director of the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment.    As director, Hellmann will work to solve grand environmental challenges, while advancing interdisciplinary research, teaching and engaging...