Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is practically everywhere. Inexpensive to produce and highly versatile, it has been employed in a host of everyday goods. Its utility, unfortunately, is matched by its toxicity.
The University of Michigan is leading research, analyzing new technologies, and convening and expanding programs and partnerships around critical topics pertaining to conservation, preservation, restoration, and resilience.
From managing national estuary research to highlighting human-exacerbated challenges facing threatened species in protected areas, U-M researchers are at the forefront of protecting biological diversity and advancing conservation efforts, across an array of disciplines. Some of our key partnerships and initiatives include the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, Forests & Livelihoods: Assessment, Research, and Engagement, Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum, the National Estuarine Research Reserve System Science Collaborative, and the University of Michigan Biological Station. Find U-M experts in sustainability and environmental science, across fields and academic units.
Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is practically everywhere. Inexpensive to produce and highly versatile, it has been employed in a host of everyday goods. Its utility, unfortunately, is matched by its toxicity.
This year’s theme was “Global Change and Its Consequences for Green Life,” and focused on the Direct and indirect impacts of environmental change on green life survival, reproduction, and distribution, how green life can buffer the impact of global change, evolutionary responses of green life to environmental change/stress, green life functional traits and their environmental correlates, and agroecology.
In 1973, toxic flame retardant was mistakenly sent to Michigan farmers as livestock feed, causing an environmental health crisis. To this day, researchers continue to investigate the health effects of the contamination, and community members are active in advocating for clean-up efforts.
Birds across the Americas are getting smaller and longer-winged as the world warms, and the smallest-bodied species are changing the fastest.
Globally, health care plastics packaging was 14.5 billion pounds in 2020 with projections up to nearly 19 billion pounds by 2025. Around 25% of all waste generated at hospitals is plastic. Moreover, 35% of all waste generated at hospitals occurs in the operating room setting, ending at a landfill due to lack of viable recycling options. To address this sizable issue, the medical plastics recycling initiative was created.
The healthy herds hypothesis has even been used to suggest that manipulating predator numbers to protect prey might be a useful conservation strategy. Even so, hard evidence supporting the hypothesis is scarce, and in recent years many of its assumptions and predictions have been questioned.