Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment
The University of Tennessee's Institute for a Secure and Sustainable Environment (ISSE) seeks to promote the development of policies, technologies, and educational programs that cut across multiple disciplines, engage the university’s research faculty and staff, and grow in response to pressing environmental and security issues facing the state, the nation, and the globe.
News & Events:
Jack Geibig (director of ISSE's Center for Clean Products) gave a presentation at the American Institute of Architects national convention in San Francisco on April 30. The educational seminar was titled “Use of Life Cycle Inventory Data in Materials Selection: A Case study of the Natural Stone Industry.”
ISSE's Center for Clean Products has been asked to lead the development of a national green product standard for toys through the Ecologo program. The multi-stakeholder effort will include Walmart, Target, and FAO Schwartz to name a few key participants. Cat Wilt will lead the effort.
ISSE students and staff won top honors at the P3 Award Competition during the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Sustainable Design Expo held in Washington, D.C., on April 18-19, 2009. Their winning entry was "The New Norris House: A sustainable Home for the 21st Century."
ISSE's Tim Ezzell, a historian and planner, and Tricia Stuth, assistant professor in the School of Architecture, served as faculty mentors on the project. Catherine Wilt, policy director for ISSE’s Center for Clean Products, advised the project on green building materials and other sustainable design elements. Read UT's press release.
Reports & Publications:
G. Tang, M. A. Mayes, J. C. Parker, X. L. Yin, D. B. Watson, and P. M. Jardine. 2009. Improving parameter estimation for column experiments by multi-model evaluation and comparison. Journal of Hydrology 376, 567–578. doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2009.07.063.
M. A. Mayes, G. Tang, P. M. Jardine, L. D. McKay, X. L. Yin, M. N. Pace, J. C. Parker, F. Zhang, T. L. Melhorn, and R. Dansby-Sparks. 2009 (in press). Influence of sedimentary bedding on reactive transport parameters under unsaturated conditions. Soil Science of America Journal.
F. Zhang and J. C. Parker. 2009 (in press). An efficient modeling approach to simulate heat and mass transfer between fracture and matrix regions for oil shale retorting. Transport in Porous Media.
Jie Zhuang, John S. Tyner, and Edmund Perfect. 2009. Colloid transport and remobilization in unsaturated porous media during transient flow. Journal of Hydrology 377, 112-119, doi:10.1016/j.jhydrol.2009.08.011.
Download a copy of The University of Tennessee Campus Heritage Plan from the Community Partnership Center's home page.
Tom Burley and John Peine. 2009 August. NBII-SAIN Data Management Toolkit: Importance of Data Management. USGS Open-File Report 2009-1170.
Read the ISSE's 2009 Annual Report:
A message from the Director...
"ISSE Shapes Sustainable Research Agenda"
Randy Gentry,
Director
Sustainability, a term still fairly new to the lexicon, defies a tidy definition in part because it can be applied to virtually every aspect of human activity and thus encompasses the complex interaction among economic, social, and environmental factors. Perhaps the best working definition of the term is derived from the 1987 report titled "Our Common Future," also known as the Brundtland Report. The report identifies sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." [continued...]