2010 MSU President's Report: How do humans and the environment coexist?

March 25, 2010

The research of Neil Carter, doctoral student in the Michigan State University Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, and Jack Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and center director, is featured in the recently released 2010 MSU President's Report.

Both Carter and Liu are also members of the International Network of Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS), which is funded by the National Science Foundation and coordinated by the center.

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Sustainability solutions need the power of networks

Feb. 21, 2011

The choices an individual makes about environmental issues are affected by family, friends and others in a person's social network. Michigan State University scientists are studying how to harness the power of social networks to better communicate sustainability science.

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It’s time to take a unified approach toward measuring sustainability

Feb. 20, 2011

Ask any political leader if they are in favor of sustainability, and the pat answer is typically a resounding, “Yes.”

Evaluating its effectiveness, however, is a much trickier endeavor. Thomas Dietz, a sociology and environmental science and policy professor at Michigan State University, took steps to indentify a universal framework to evaluate sustainability at a national gathering of scientists Feb. 20.

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"Telecoupling” explains why it’s a small (and fast) world, after all

Feb, 18, 2011

Understanding and managing how humans and nature sustainably coexist is now so sweeping and lightening fast that it’s spawning a concept unveiled today.

Meet “telecoupling.”

Joining its popular cousins telecommuting and television, telecoupling is the way Jack Liu, director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University, is describing how distance is shrinking and connections are strengthening between nature and humans.

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Doctoral student explores Nepal’s balancing act of having tigers as neighbors

Feb. 3, 2011

There’s a delicate, complicated dance between tigers and people in and around the Chitwan National Park in Nepal -- a dance that's duplicated across the world where wild animals and people share a backyard.

Call it the human-nature tango.

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2011 CHANS fellows to turn AAAS annual meeting into human-nature idea exchange

Feb. 1, 2011

Eleven up-and-coming scientists studying the relationships between human and natural systems will mine the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting this month for ideas, partnerships and inspiration as part of the CHANS Fellows program.

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CHANS-Net leader honored by AAAS

Jan. 11, 2011

Jianguo "Jack" Liu, principal investigator of CHANS-Net, has been named a fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Liu is a Michigan State University Distinguished Professor of fisheries and wildlife who holds the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and is director of the MSU Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability. He was honored for his pioneering research that integrates ecology, various social sciences and policy to understand and achieve environmental sustainability at local, national and global scales.

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Big city life may make residents lean toward green, study says

Jan. 18, 2011

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- The downsides of China’s explosive urbanization – like pollution and greenhouse gas emissions – now are joined by an upside: Better environmental citizens.

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2010 News Roundup

The CHANS community lost one of its leading scholars recently with the passing of Steve Schneider of Stanford University, a co-author of the foundational CHANS works published in Ambio and Science. A touching memoir by colleague Paul Ehrlich appears in the August 13 issue of Science.

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CHANS-Net hosts symposium at 2009 US-IALE

April 17, 2009

CHANS-net hosted a special symposium on "Complexity in Human-Nature Interactions Across Landscapes" at the 2009 conference of the US-IALE (U.S. Regional Association, International Association for Landscape Ecology) April 14-16 in Snowbird, Utah.

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