Because Hampton Roads is Our Pride

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Manmade Climate Change Causing Sea Level Rise in Philippines, Northeast Australia

A sophisticated new analysis of long-term sea level trends in the western tropical Pacific (WTP) Ocean indicates that climate change caused by humans is responsible for rising waters in the Philippines and northeast Australia, and that this rise will continue in the near future.

Benjamin D. Hamlington, an oceanographer at Old Dominion University, leads a team of scientists who report their findings in the journal Nature Climate Change. The article, "Uncovering an Anthropogenic Sea Level Rise Signal in the Pacific Ocean," debuted online on July 20, 2014.

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Solar Array Installed by Dominion Virginia Power Unveiled on Roof of ODU's Student Recreation Center

 More than 600 solar panels have been installed by Dominion Virginia Power on the roof of Old Dominion University's Student Recreation Center. The solar array will generate approximately 125 kilowatts for the electric grid. That is enough to power 31 homes. "Old Dominion University's development of solar technology and groundbreaking photovoltaic energy research has been recognized nationally. Thanks to more than $3 million in research grants from a variety of sources, including Dominion Power's generous support over the years, Dr. Sylvain Marsillac and his team have been able to further this research by testing solar energy concepts," Old Dominion University President John R. Broderick said. 

Related News Articles: WAVY-TV - ODU adds 600 solar panels to its campus rec center
 Generation Hub - Dominion installs 600 solar panels at Old Dominion University
 The Virginian Pilot/Associated Press - Solar panels installed atop ODU student center
 Power Engineering - Old Dominion University home to rooftop solar project
 Marketwatch - Dominion Virginia Power Dedicates New Solar Installation at Old Dominion University

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Researchers with Old Dominion University's Water Quality Lab prepare for one of 15 trips on the R/V Fay Slover to gather data on the Chesapeake Bay. This is the first trip of the season for the Water Quality Lab. The season runs July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2015. The tests that span the bay to the Maryland border began in 1984. The water quality researchers have 27 stations that they visit to gather data. 

Click on the individual photos to learn more.

Photos by: David Hollingsworth | Old Dominion University Photography

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(Photo courtesy: NPR -  Homes along the Hague River in Norfolk, Va.)

As Sea Levels Rise, Norfolk is Sinking and Planning | NPR

From the water's edge in Norfolk, Va., the U.S. naval base spans the whole horizon. Aircraft carriers, supply centers, barracks and admirals' homes fill a vast expanse.

But Ray Toll, a retired naval oceanographer, says the "majority of [the naval base], if not all of it" is at risk of flooding "because it's so low and it's flat."

 The Norfolk-Hampton Roads area in Virginia is home to the largest naval operation in the world. This area is particularly vulnerable because the land is sinking as sea levels are rising. Planning for that is both a national security concern and a topic of discussion among the area's business owners.

Toll, working through Old Dominion University, is helping devise a plan that would coordinate a response between the federal and local governments and local businesses. Toll says a regional approach is necessary because it's not just the military that is affected.

 "Any impacts that the Navy is going to feel is going to have a direct and indirect impact on the business infrastructure," he says. And Toll says, "that goes all the way down to the small shops that are right on the water, because everybody lives here."

Read more on NPR.org.

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With the 2014 hurricane season upon us, 10 critical facilities throughout Chesapeake, Gloucester County and James City County can rest easier knowing their emergency power needs have been accurately documented.

A partnership formed last fall between the Norfolk District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Old Dominion University student and faculty assets, and the Hampton Roads Emergency Management Committee provided communities a clearer picture of their critical facility emergency power needs – at no cost.

Read more.

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ODU Professor Featured in National Media on Energy Security

Steve A. Yetiv, the Louis I. Jaffe Professor of International Relations at Old Dominion University, was a guest on Al Jazeera America on Thursday, June 12, speaking about energy security in the wake of recent instability and insurrection in Iraq. Click here to watch the interview.

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ODU Researchers Use 3D Technology to Plan Hurricane Evacuation Routes

"New technology is putting the city of Virginia Beach ahead of the game when it comes to transportation planning. Researchers from Old Dominion University's Center for Innovative Transportation Solutions are using real-time 3D traffic models that span the entire city.

These models are important for hurricane evacuation route planning.They can actually simulate traffic patterns that have already happened and then manipulate road conditions, like traffic lights, to see what would work best for traffic flow."

Read the full story on WVEC.com.

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How do you teach children the science behind climate change and sea level rise? You do it as entertainingly as possible, which is what Science Alliance Live at Old Dominion University does with its presentation of the children's stage play "Tuk in the Arctic."

The project brings the sciences and the arts together to educate children in Hampton Roads about climate change.

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Va. Beach finishes model to predict traffic effects

The program, which will be used to find the impact of road projects on the city's traffic network, is almost unrivaled in the country in scope and precision, developers say.

As Virginia Beach wrestles with urban planning issues for a growing, spread-out city, its leaders will have the help of a new tool developed by modeling and simulation researchers from Old Dominion University.

On Tuesday, June 11, Virginia Beach City Council was presented a completed "microscopic" model of the entire City of Virginia Beach developed by researchers from ODU's Center for Innovative Transportation Solutions (CITS).

The model is a product of a partnership between the city and CITS. Mike Robinson, director of the ODU center, said a microscopic model adds significant detail to traditional "macro" modeling, including individual traffic signal timing, right down to modeling the behavior of individual drivers.

Read more: ODU Modeling and Simulation Engineers Develop Traffic Simulation Tool for Virginia Beach City Council

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The following is an excerpt from a washingtonpost article featuring Norfolk and Old Dominion University researchers' expertise on climate change and sea level rise:

Larry Atkinson, an oceanographer who is co-director of the Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Initiative at Old Dominion University, said when the mayor was asked about the report, he waved away the question. “He says, ‘I can’t think about five feet. What do you want me to do, move the whole city?’ ”

It’s not just Norfolk, Atkinson said. Much of the Eastern Shore would be underwater; Baltimore and Washington would be in trouble, too. “At five feet,” he said, “the Mall’s flooded.”

Driving around town, Atkinson and his colleague Michelle Covi recently pointed out dozens of places where water regularly fills the streets, keeping people from work. “By 2040, this will be flooded every high tide,” Atkinson said as he drove north on Hampton Boulevard. “That means the main road to the Navy base will be impassable two to three hours a day.”

Atkinson pulled in to O’Sullivan’s Wharf, a bar with a back deck overlooking Knitting Mill Creek. Over hush puppies and beer, he and Covi fretted about Superfund sites along the Elizabeth River. The toxic muck has been capped, but they wondered: Is the Environmental Protection Agency looking into what might happen when the water rises?

“Even landfills could be a problem,” Covi said. “I’d think they would float. Just pop up and float away.”

At a nearby table, Atkinson spotted Deborah Miller, a retired graphic designer at Old Dominion, and her husband, Gary Chiaverotti, a retired Navy captain. The couple is among Norfolk’s earliest adapters. In 2008, after filing flood-damage claims that cost the federal government more than $100,000, they agreed to let the Federal Emergency Management Agency add about four feet to the foundation of their small house on Haven Creek.

“We didn’t have to take anything out. The man said, ‘Nothing will move,’ and it didn’t,” Miller said. “My china and crystal all stayed in the china cabinet.”

Click here to read the full article.

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The fifth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has a cogent message: The planet is on a path to a much warmer state. This may not be very convenient for us. In fact, it may be catastrophic.

Plag: A talk with a younger self - by Hans-Peter Plag, Old Dominion University professor in the Department of Ocean, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and co-director of the university's Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Initiative

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Full Story Source: GovernmentVideo.com Arctic Scientist Hits the Field with Wireless Audio Research scientist and oceanographer Victoria Hill has always been driven by her own curiosity and the possibility of discovery. As a researcher for Old Dominion University in Virginia, this has taken her to some of the more interesting — and remote — parts of the earth including Barrow, Alaska and the Barneo ice base, which is located at 89 degrees north and 30 degrees west — in immediate proximity of the North Pole. Before leaving for Barneo last April, Hill packed necessities including her ice boots, extreme cold mittens, down booties, many pairs of thermal socks and her Sennheiser ew 112-p G3 wireless system.

Barneo, a floating temporary ice camp run by the Russian Geographical Society, is accessible by helicopter during the month of April and is noted for its harsh and inhospitable conditions — namely high winds and temperatures that routinely fall below -25 degrees Celcius. Hill, who was there to study the effect of sunlight on the arctic and the rapid retreat of sea ice, was mandated to share her research findings with the general public. So she took A/V matters into her own hands and started a video blog, Outreach from the Arctic, which captures the broad scope of her experiences on location.

To read the full article about Victoria Hill's work and research in the Arctic visit, GovernmentVideo.com

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Old Dominion researchers have done nationally recognized work in fields such as insurgent modeling, vulnerability mapping and medical simulation development. ODU's M&S research continues to provide real-world expertise. A senior capstone project this year has been to provide modeling and simulation assistance to Newport News Shipbuilding. This project will directly benefit one of the shipyard's production facilities.

"Exploring and Crafting Models for Success" - by John Sokolowski, Executive Director of Old Dominion University's Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center (VMASC) and Associate Professor of Modeling, Simulation and Visualization Engineering

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Blue Agave: Can It Produce both Tequila and Biofuels?

Anyone who has ever thrown back a shot of tequila may not be surprised to learn that researchers at Old Dominion University are using the "T- word" these days in reference to high-octane alternative fuels.

That doesn't mean that ODU researchers are turning actual tequila into fuels. They are interested, however, in the blue agave plant, which contributes the sweet juice that is the raw product in tequila production.

You see, when the blue agave is harvested, only the bulbous heart of the plant is taken to the distillery to be cooked down into a useable liquid. The 3-to-6-foot spike-like leaves of the desert plant are hacked off and often discarded. Those leaves are the biomass that ODU geochemist Patrick Hatcher has his eyes on now after years of focusing almost exclusively on algae as a biomass source.

A U.S. patent secured late last year by Hatcher and ODU resulted in him receiving a phone call from a businessman who owns a company that makes sweetener from the blue agave plant harvested in Mexico. "That's the one used for making tequila," Hatcher pointed out. "This businessman suggested that we consider this Agave tequilana weber to see if it can be used for biodiesel production. He told me that they throw away most of the plant in the tequila process and that if we could make a crude oil from this throwaway product there might be businesses interested in doing this."

So far, Hatcher and his colleagues have not been able to come up with blue agave biomass, but they have obtained from local sources some leaves of a close relative- Agave americana - and their tests show this to be a splendid raw material for Hatcher's newly patented technology to convert biomass into a crude oil.

The businessman who contacted Hatcher has shown interest in connecting the ODU research team with tequila producers in Mexico. Hatcher said he will probably have to go to Mexico to get blue agave samples and learn more about possible business agreements with tequila producers.

Read more.

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Old Dominion University students continue to plant milkweed in a garden plot outside the Kaplan Orchid Conservatory. It's part of an initiative by the biological sciences department, Monarchs for Monarchs, to make the campus and surrounding area friendlier turf for migrating monarch butterflies. (Photo by Steve Daniel)

Read more:

Monarchs for Monarchs: Milkweed Planting to Continue Over Next Few Weeks on Campus

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With honeybees in decline, mason bees eyed for duty

"One in three bites of food is produced by a flying insect," Old Dominion University biology professor Lisa Horth told The Virginian-Pilot. "Most of those are bees. Bees are a multibillion-dollar industry in itself. And bees are dying." 

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Erin Heller (pictured above), a master's student in biological sciences at Old Dominion University, has received a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate research fellowship worth approximately $132,000 to support her graduate studies in avian ecology and behavior.

The proposal that Heller submitted to the NSF focused on her current research on how urbanization affects the relationship among birds, ticks and tick-borne disease pathogens within Hampton Roads.

During the past two years she has been a frequent visitor to the Virginia Zoo and other natural areas in the region, where she uses a series of nets 40 feet long and 10 feet high to catch wild birds. "Then I extract them from the nets, band them with federal bands (from the U.S. Bird Banding Laboratory) and take numerous morphometric measurements. We also check the birds for ticks and remove the ticks if they have any," she explained. "The ticks are later identified in the lab and tested for disease pathogens."

To read more about Heller's research, visit the ODU News page.