Friday, October 29th, 3 - 5 pm EST - Workshop Session 1 - Healthy Soils for Healthy Communities Initiative: A Perspective from Community Surveys and Focus Groups in Los Angeles (Virtual)

Presentations (60 minutes)

Project Overview and Future Directions by Yujuan Chen, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, TreePeople & Richard Pouyat, Ph.D., Emeritus Scientist, U.S. Forest Service

Findings from Online Surveys by, Erica L. Wohldmann, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology, California State University, Northridge

Findings from Focus Groups, by Kirsten Schwarz, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Health Sciences, UCLA

Is the Public Making the Link Between Brown and Green Infrastructure?—Insights from the Surveys, by Susan Day, Ph.D., Professor and Program Director, Urban Forestry, UBC

Q&A Session (60 minutes)

Waste Not; The Cycle of Life - Live Session meeting virtually on Thursday, October 28

Through construction, New York City alone introduces over 16,500 tons of soil, rocks, concrete, brick and other material into our waste stream each and every day. The creation of a sustainable urban landscape requires an adaptive re-use of resources, and urban soils play a central role in this equation. In this session, we will we explore the role of soils as a primary driver of circularity, and its potential to disrupt an otherwise linear waste stream. How do we turn soil waste into a soil resource, and what implications will it have on economies, quality of life, innovation, culture, and urban space? What historical, contemporary and future contexts does soil play as a common resource, and the lessons that emerge?

Schedule

12:00 - Sensing and Showing Climate Change, Part two of three: Science and magic, carbon and soil by Dr. Margot Lystra, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture, Université de Montréal

12:15 - Effect of soil properties on the state of urban lawns by Dr. Olga Bezuglova, Professor, Department of Soil Science & Land Assessment, Southern Federal University (Russia)

12:40 - Garden of Ashes by Jason Smith, Director of Northern Manhattan Parks for the NY Restoration Project

1:00 - Factors Affecting Carcinogenic PAHs and Select Metals in Urban Soil in NYC by Raphael Rosenbaum, Remediation Scientist

1:20 - How much urban soil do we need? by Moreen Willaredt, PhD Candidate, Department of Ecohydrology and Landscape Evaluation, Technische Universität Berlin

1:50 - Mine All Mine by Stephanie Garon, Artist & Sculptor

2:10 - Soil, Environmental Justice and the Law by Joel Kupferman, Attorney, New York Environmental Law and Justice Project - Environmental Justice Initiative

2:30 - Resilient Metabolism of Urban Wastes: Past, Present and Prospects for the Future by Dr. Daniel Walsh, Founding Director of NYC Mayor's Office of Environmental Remediation, Founder of Clean Soil Bank, NYC Voluntary Cleanup Program and NYC Green Property Certification Program

2:50 - Open Discussion between Speakers and Audience

Tuesday, October 26th, 12 noon - 4:30 pm EST - 2nd Los Angeles Urban Soil Symposium, hosted by TreePeople, a USI symposium partner (Virtual)

Registration link available on the Whova App

Workshop Session 2 - Virtual workshop on Saturday, October 23 from 6 pm to 9 pm.

Hosted by Dr. Olga Bezuglova, Professor, Department of Soil Science & Land Assessment, Southern Federal University (Russia)

Workshop Session 1 - In-person at the NYC Parks 5-Borough Maintenance Facility at Randall's Island, on Friday, October 22 from 12 noon to 2 pm.

A green infrastructure tour of the 5-Borough Maintenance Facility on Randall's Island, which hosts the largest collection of individual green roofs found anywhere in the world, hosted by Max Lerner, Sustainability Project Development Coordinator, NYC Department of Parks & Recreation

Please arrive at the NYC Parks 5-Borough Maintenance Facility at 20 Bronx Shore Road, Randall's Island, New York, NY at 12 noon. The location is marked on the map below.

The easiest way to get here via public transportation is by taking the 4, 5 or 6 train to 125 st, then taking the M35 bus headed towards Sunken Garden Loop/Charles Gay Ctr for 3 stops, followed by a 10 minute walk on Randall's Island. Once the bus crosses the RFK bridge unto Randall's Island, you can get off on the first stop and walk from there.

Be sure to check event location!

Soils Engineers: Soil Biology, Processes, Cycles, Humans, Time - Live Session meeting virtually on Thursday, October 21

Until very recently, "soil building" has been left in the hands of the environment, however through passive anthropogenic processes and active technological optimization of soil properties, a new classification of anthropogenically-modified soils has emerged: engineered soils. More common than you think, engineered soils have begun to dominate urban landscapes and offer us new and emerging insight into the capabilities of soil. This session will explore the role of us humans in soil development, and how our adaptations of nature’s workings in the process of creating sustainable cities bridges our boundaries between land forms and landscapes.

Features

• Dr. Paul Mankiewicz, Ecological Engineer, Co-Founder of Leaf Island, Co-Founger of The Gaia Institute

• Igor Bronz, Co-Founder & Head of Design at Leaf Island

• Ashley Pirovano, Senior Scientist, BioBus & Maria Mazin, Lead Scientist & Program Manager, BioBus

• Xinan (Helen) Ran, Artist & Co-Founder of Tuft Love

• Matt Levy, Artist & Ceramicist

• Dr. Remigio Paradelo Núñez, Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (Spain)

• William Bryant Logan, Author of Sprout Lands, Oak, Air, and Dirt; Faculty, New York Botanical Garden

• Open Discussion between Speakers and Audience

Wildflower Farm Microbiome Sampling Workshop, by Jason Sinopoli & Seth August on Sunday, October 17th, 11 am - 2 pm, located at Ecology Village, Floyd Bennett Field.

Be sure to check event location!

Workshop Session 2 - In-person at Swale House, Nolan Park, Governors Island on Saturday, October 16 from 12 noon to 3 pm.

Hosted by Dr. Anya Paltseva, Assistant Professor, School of Geosciences, University of Louisiana - Lafayette, this workshop will feature a hands-on look into urban soils contamination, best practices for soil remediation, and Dr. Paltseva’s experiences with urban soils contamination between two comparative locations: New York City and Lafayette, Louisiana. Also features a discussion with Dr. Elvira Dovletyarova, Director, Department of Landscape Design and Sustainable Ecosystems, RUDN University, a roundtable event between RUDN University & USI on global collaborative research objectives within urban soils.

Be sure to check event location!

Please note: The Friday, October 15th workshop with Dr. Elvira Dovletyarova had been cancelled. Instead, the Friday workshop has been combined with this Saturday, October 16th in-person event

Soils contain most of Earth's genetic diversity, with a single gram of soil containing billions of microorganisms belonging to thousands of species - a microbial density an order of magnitude greater than our oceans - however these microorganisms remain largely unexplored. Through the lens of soils, lets walk through “a day in the life of the microbe” to get an inside view of what urban soils are trying to teach us. This session will explore and re-examine not only the dynamic microbial processes found in soils, but also their broader implications on the biosphere and the feedback loops between microbiota, the rest of the environment, and of course, humans.

Features

• Moderated by Dr. Richard Pouyat, Emeritus Scientist, U.S. Forest Service

• Dr. Paul Mankiewicz, Ecological Engineer, Co-Founder of Leaf Island, Co-Founder of The Gaia Institute

• Dr. Maha Deeb-Collet, Lecturer, Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Environnements Continentaux (LIEC), University of Lorraine

• Dr. Elizabeth Marie Hénaff, Assistant Professor, NYU Tandon School of Engineering

• Dr. Elvira Dovletyarova, Director, Department of Landscape Design and Sustainable Ecosystems, RUDN University Dr. Viacheslav Vasenev, Senior Researcher, Department of Landscape Design and Sustainable Ecosystems, RUDN University*

• Vlad Plyushchikov, Researcher, RUDN University

• Suzanne Lipton, Graduate Student, University of California - Santa Cruz

• Alberto Acedo, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Biome Markers Inc.

• Dr. Geoffrey Gadd, Professor, School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee

• Jason Sinopoli, Soils Researcher

• Open Discussion between Speakers and Audience

Brought to you by the NYC Soil & Water Conservation District

Because we are not quite ready for a bus tour, we are hosting a walking tour on the Lower East Side this year. Please see the locations of our stops. You can join us for the whole walk or meet us at any of the sites. The green infrastructure walking tour will include site visits led by the NYC DEP, Parks Department, Lower East Side Ecology Center, NYCHA, and the Trust for Public Land. We hope you'll be able to join us!

Register here today to reserve your spot!

Tickets are $5 and lunch will be provided. We will be meeting at the Vladeck Houses (365 Madison St)
Contact shino@nycswcd.net for more information.

A book launch and installation.

I grew up in an area where a significant amount of our communication technology was invented and developed. Recently I’ve been returning to document the changing landscape now that the organizations there have been shut down, and to study the uneasy relationship to surveillance culture. This comes at a time when my family members have been aging, and stories of their involvement in the industry are creeping into the project—what does it mean to work on research that helped to blow up your ancestors? The project consists of a book and an installation.

The book, "What Happened Here," exposes the locations of 28 sites that were occupied by both Bell Labs and the U.S Army in the early 20th century. Architectural evidence from the experimentation that occurred remains on the land today. These places laid the groundwork for our communication technology today, and remind us that our communication systems were originally intended for warfare.

The installation, "The Laboratory For What's Possible," expands upon two of the sites. One is a nuclear missile site just south of NYC. The other is the location where radar was invented that was used to bomb Prague during WWII. The installation situates the early telecommunications industry next to Slavic migration history, intergenerational trauma, and queer family. It includes interactive software that will allow viewers to experience the decommissioned industrial sites; tools and items that were built for testing the landscape; and medicinal plants collected from the nuclear missile site and tested by the Urban Soils Institute, as nature has begun to take back the land.

This project is by Amelia Marzec, and is supported by the Research Foundation of CUNY. The exhibition will be in the Project: Soils Room at Swale House.

Opening and Book Launch: Saturday, October 9th 2021, 2-5pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, October 9th 2021, 3pm
Exhibition Hours: October 5-10, 2021, noon-5pm

Event link/info:
www.facebook.com/events/1008133783281246

The Symposium is for a community of people as diverse as soils. We come together through our experiences, relationships, and interactions with soils. Biospheric workings sculpt crustal fragments of the earth into matrices of crumbs, pores & capillaries. Microbial films & branching hyphae establish a membrane circuitry, through which carbon flows, powering the biogeochemical cycles, dynamic workings of soils. Let’s look together to redefine, to rediscover, dynamic workings of soils What is your definition of soils? What are soils to you?

Featured Events:

• Welcome by USI and Co-hosts RUDN & TreePeople

• Meeting Ground, a performance by Susan Main and MJ Neuberger

• Questions for Soils: Mission and layout of the symposium & workshops for this month and year; objectives and strategies. An invitation for your feedback

• Walking through Layered Histories and Emergent Horizons with Dr. Margot Lystra

• Karen Vaughan, Associate Professor of Soil Pedology, University of Wyoming

• Discussion with Happy Hour and Special Appearance by FunGuy