Earth Hour at York U

Please join us at York U as we celebrate Earth Hour 2010 at York U! IRIS and ECO are launching the first annual Earth Hour Symposium March 24th.

Event Schedule – March 24th

305 York Lanes

519 York Research Tower (same as new Archives building)

Registration

No registration required, however, we’d love to know you are coming, and you can RSVP on our Earth Hour at York U Facebook event page.

Poster

Click here to download the Symposium Poster.

The following appeared in the Monday, February 8, 2010 edition of Y-File:

UYFIf you look at the York home page, you’ll see two new items: the logos of the social media sites Facebook and Twitter, guiding you to more sources of information about the University.

With the growth of social media on the Web, it has become essential for organizations to be where their audience lives – on Facebook and Twitter, among other popular sites. In recent times, many units at York have expanded their presence on one or both of these services – often with spectacular results.

The Admissions & Recruitment unit, for instance, has been among the pioneers in the use of social media at York. Having begun using Facebook in the spring of 2007, its York University page now boasts the most fans of all, at more than 4,200.

IRIS Call for Nominations for the IRIS Executive

IRIS is now accepting nominations for volunteers to serve on the IRIS Executive, the executive board which oversees and approves the implementation of the Institute’s policies, procedures, budgets, annual reports and strategic plans.

Nominations are open to students, staff and faculty and are due by March 3rd. University community members who are interested in serving on the IRIS Executive board should submit their CV to Annette Dubreuil, IRIS coordinator, at afdubreu@yorku.ca.

To learn more about the IRIS Executive and its structure, read our the IRIS Membership and Governance document.

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IRIS promotes practical sustainability solutions that encompass environmental, social and economic considerations at local, regional and global scales. Operating as a leading edge interdisciplinary research institute, IRIS is a hub for sustainability-related activities at York University.

The following appeared in the Monday, February 8, 2010 edition of Y-File:

Howard Daugherty, a professor of environmental studies and a researcher in neotropical ecosystems, died on Feb. 12 after a short illness. He was 68.

Prof. Daugherty was also the public face of York’s Las Nubes Reserve, a 133-hectare area of mountainous cloud forest in Costa Rica. The land was donated to York University by Dr. Woody Fisher in 1998 and Prof. Daugherty played a key role in its oversight.

Born in Kremmling, Colorado, Prof. Daugherty received his PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in ecology at the University of Georgia. His primary areas of research included studying protected areas in the neotropics, natural resource policy and management, biological conservation and sustainable development. Prof.

The following appeared in the Monday, February 8, 2010 edition of Y-File:

What is the value we ascribe to trees and urban forests? Are they merely things that stand in the way of development and urban sprawl or do they have value?

These questions and more will be the subject of a special lecture today hosted by the Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS). The lecture, which will take place from 1:30 to 3pm in 280 York Lanes, features a number of speakers who will address the value of urban forests. It also marks the release of a report by IRIS researchers on the value of the Keele campus urban forest.

Above: A Google map of the Keele campus. The circles indicate surveyed plots within buildings and squares indicate plots within park-style land. For each plot, IRIS researchers recorded the location of the plot, its global positioning coordinates and the actual land use.