Lydia Olander, director of the Nicholas Institute's Ecosystem Services Program, spoke with The Chronicle about Duke University's new partnership with the Network for Engineering With Nature (N-EWN). Olander explained how existing Duke programs will benefit from N-EWN, how Duke's expertise can contribute to other partners in the network, and why nature-based solutions are critical to addressing the climate crisis.

Duke University is bringing its expertise in environmental management, policy and engineering to an active community of researchers, practitioners and educators who are addressing major infrastructure challenges in the United States through “Engineering With Nature®.” The Nicholas Institute will lead Duke’s involvement in the Network for Engineering With Nature, working with faculty, staff and students across the university.

Duke University is one of 11 consortium members of the Southeast Climate Adaptation Science Center. Hosted by North Carolina State University for the next five years, the center provides actionable science to help Southeastern communities and ecosystems adapt to a changing climate.

In the first post of a series on the Latitude blog, PLOS is highlighting how peer-reviewed research in its journals is helping to fill knowledge gaps identified by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Featured articles include a June 2022 study, by Nicholas Institute experts Katie Warnell and Lydia Olander and coauthor Carolyn Currin, that models how sea level rise in mid-Atlantic states could drive coastal marshes inland and release carbon in the process.

NESP engages more than 2,000 public and private sector stakeholders to enhance collaboration within the ecosystem services community and strengthen coordination of policy, market implementation, and research at the national level. NESP’s research, products, and regular webinars help advance innovative, sustainable approaches to managing natural resources.

An international group of sustainability scholars—including some from Duke University—has published a new guidebook that offers a “vision and a roadmap to a more impactful future” for higher education.

As rising sea levels cause marshes to move inland in six mid-Atlantic states, the coastal zone will not continue to serve as a carbon sink but release more carbon into the atmosphere, a new modeling study led by researchers at Duke University finds.

The Nicholas Institute has developed three online dashboards that make detailed data about North Carolina's forests, farmlands, and wetlands easily accessible to communities, land managers, non-governmental organizations, and the general public.

Lydia Olander, Ph.D. was cited by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for “Distinguished contributions of the field of ecosystem services, particularly for developing and promulgating methods to enhance environmental sustainability.”

Under normal circumstances, the Duke Leadership Academy offers participants a chance to challenge themselves, build connections and harness their collective brain power to offer Duke leaders insights into how Duke can work better.

But the academy’s 2020–21 class, which graduated from the program in December 2021, operated under nothing close to normal circumstances, convening in early 2020, prior to the pandemic, but then COVID-19 arrived, which put the academy on pause.