By Rob Melnick
Executive Dean, Global Institute of Sustainability and
Presidential Professor of Practice, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
Strolling down one of our world-famous canal banks in 2025, it’s hard to imagine that a renaissance of greater Phoenix was launched in 2009 during the nation’s economic meltdown. With the financial and real estate industries in tatters and major infrastructure in decline, Valley leaders nevertheless joined forces and seized the opportunity to implement bold, yet practical new ideas for creating a truly sustainable urban place.
Five new solar initiatives totaling $4 million dollars to advance Arizona’s renewable energy leadership
PHOENIX – Science Foundation Arizona announced its new solar technology initiatives and the opening of the Solar Technology Institute (STI) on April 17, with simultaneous events at the APS Star Facility in Phoenix and Global Solar in Tucson.
In a collaborative effort, STI is deploying Arizona’s significant solar resources with industry and the research strengths of Arizona State University (ASU) and the University of Arizona (UA) to grow the state’s global leadership in renewable energy. STI is being led by two pioneers in the solar field, Robert “Bud” Annan and Richard Powell, to serve as co-directors. The Stardust Foundation is assisting in the financial support of the investments. Read more »
Communication is the basis of all social relationships between animals. Birds use acoustic signals (calls and songs) to attract and bond with mates, defend territories and warn of danger from approaching predators. Background noise reduces the distance over which a call or song can be heard. As well as natural noises (e.g. wind and rain), birds in urban habitats must compete with human-generated noise such as road-traffic noise, much of which occurs in the lower-frequency bands below 2,000 Hz. Birds in cities have been known to use a number of strategies for overcoming noise, such as singing at a higher pitch to reduce masking by the low-frequency noise, singing more loudly, or singing at night time when traffic noise is at its lowest.
I travelled to Phoenix to investigate the how birds there respond to traffic noise. In a collaborative project with researchers from GIOS and SoLS at ASU, I recorded the calls and songs of birds and measured noise levels at 24 neighbourhood parks around the city. We are particularly interested to see whether doves such as the Inca dove and mourning dove are calling at a higher pitch in noisy areas. Of all the birds that live in cities, we would expect them to have the most difficulty hearing each other in traffic noise. This is because they have very low-pitched calls that are overlapped by the low-pitched traffic noise. But these species are very common around Phoenix, which suggests that they can still attract mates and breed successfully in noisy urban environments. In the future, we would like to investigate the breeding success of doves in noisy and quiet locations, to see whether urban noise is actually having an impact on their populations.
