[ensu] November 6, 20, 27: IES Environmental Studies seminars
- From: ENSU <utorensu@xxxxxxxx>
- To: ensu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2002 13:40:45 -0500 (EST)
FYI
--- Mona El-Haddad <m.elhaddad@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: "Mona El-Haddad" <m.elhaddad@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <m.elhaddad@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: November 6, 20, 27: IES Environmental
> Studies seminars
> Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2002 13:04:36 -0500
>
> Institute for Environmental Studies
> ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES SEMINAR SERIES: Wednesdays at
> 4:00 p.m.
> Room 2093, Earth Sciences Centre (Huron & Bancroft)
> (north of College St., east of Spadina Ave.)
> For a map and updates, please see
> http://www.utoronto.ca/env/seminars/env-fall.html
>
> No registration required - all are welcome.
>
> WED NOVEMBER 6 2002, 4:00 p.m.
> Bernard Fleet, Senior Advisor - Technology,
> Electrovaya Inc., a TSE
> listed company that provides portable power systems.
>
> The role of information technology & GIS in
> environmental management
> Having spent most of his academic and industrial
> career in the field of
> industrial pollution abatement and at one time or
> another having covered
> the waterfront from chemical pollution monitoring to
> hazardous site
> remediation, Dr. Fleet will focus on a theme that
> might have broad
> relevance to the environmental arena: the area of
> information technology
> and geographic information systems (GIS) and their
> importance in
> managing projects in the brown sector of the
> environment. Geographical
> information systems are tools for visualization and
> analysis of the
> spatially distributed data. They are in fact
> relational databases with
> space/time localization. The main analytical
> possibilities are in
> overlaying and correlating layers of these spatial
> databases such as
> pollutant species, concentrations and distribution
> on a geographic site
> map. Hence GIS can be used for project planning,
> monitoring and
> management. Examples of the application of GIS to
> environmental
> management planning, in the areas of risk
> assessment, environmental due
> diligence studies and contaminated site
> investigation (surveys,
> remediation strategies and property valuation) will
> be presented.
> Some emerging areas will also be discussed such as
> estimation of
> environmental damage costs and the generation of
> environmental impact
> assessment maps that can be used to forecast future
> impacts on the
> environment due to the development of industrial
> processes. Dr. Fleet
> has also spent the last 15 years of his career
> working in Asia and will
> address the critical issue facing the industrialised
> vs. developing
> world question of the barriers to governments and
> private firms to
> adopting sustainable policies in the absence of
> strict legislation.
>
>
> REMAINING FALL SEMINARS:
>
> WED NOVEMBER 20 2002, 4:00 p.m.
> Stanley Griffin, President and CEO, Insurance Bureau
> of Canada
> Natural disasters: what are insurers doing?
> The number of natural disasters worldwide has
> tripled over the last ten
> years. Their impact, both in terms of lives lost
> and economics, also
> keeps rising. While Canada has so far been
> fortunate enough not to be
> directly involved in any of the recent major
> disasters, our population
> is clustered in a manner that invites disaster.
> Canada does a great job responding to natural
> disasters, but our
> preparation and prevention needs to improve.
> Foresight, planning and
> timely investment are the hallmarks that we need to
> pursue in order to
> help save lives and property. The property and
> casualty insurance
> industry has been a leader in promoting cooperative
> work with the
> government, in which we are able to help assess
> potential danger spots
> and design solutions, such as the formation and
> activities of the
> Institute for Catastrophic Loss. Mr. Griffin will
> outline the reasons
> that disasters have become more prevalent in the
> last decade and what
> the property and casualty insurance industry has
> been doing to help
> reduce some of the risks.
> WED NOVEMBER 27 2002, 4:00 p.m.
> Kimberly Strong, Associate Professor , Physics
> University of Toronto
> Stratospheric ozone loss in the Arctic as measured
> by ground-based
> remote sounding
> Stratospheric ozone concentrations have declined
> significantly since
> about 1980, particularly in the polar regions, in
> response to enhanced
> levels of chlorine resulting from anthropogenic
> emissions of
> chlorofluorocarbons. During the 1990s, springtime
> losses in lower
> stratospheric ozone have frequently been observed
> over the Arctic, but
> long-term trends in Arctic ozone can be difficult to
> distinguish from
> meteorological variability. A number of
> international field campaigns
> have been undertaken in the past decade in order to
> investigate the
> extent of and mechanisms for Arctic ozone loss,
> including THESEO/SOLVE
> conducted during winter 1999-2000. Although the
> basic mechanism for
> polar ozone loss is generally understood, models
> vary in their ability
> to reproduce observations of Arctic ozone. The
> coupling between
> transport, temperature, formation of solid and
> liquid aerosols, and
> halogen activation makes the unravelling of Arctic
> processes
> challenging. Given the temperature dependence of
> halogen activation, a
> key issue is the extent to which rising greenhouse
> gas concentrations
> will lower stratospheric temperatures and exacerbate
> Arctic ozone loss
> in the coming decades. This talk will begin with an
> overview of our
> current knowledge of Arctic ozone depletion,
> including results from the
> THESEO/SOLVE campaign.
> In order to investigate the influence of chemical
> processes on Arctic
> ozone loss, a UV-visible spectrometer was deployed
> at Environment
> Canada's Arctic Stratospheric Observatory, located
> at Eureka, Nunavut
> (80.1oN, 86.4oW). Four years (1999-2002) of
> observations have been
> obtained during the crucial winter/spring period
> when the perturbed
> conditions leading to chemical ozone depletion
> occur. The spectra have
> been used to retrieve ozone and NO2 total columns,
> as well as NO2
> vertical profiles. The profiles are of particular
> interest because NO2
> is one of the key chemical species in the
> photochemistry of ozone, with
> its role strongly dependent on altitude. The
> UV-visible spectrometer
> and the retrieval techniques will be briefly
> described and the four-year
> data set of springtime Arctic ozone and NO2
> measurements will be
> presented and discussed.
>
>
______________________________________________________________________
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