Join us for the Parks and Natural Areas (PNA) Roundtable on Monday, July 8, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at H-GAC Conference Room A, Second Floor.

The PNA Roundtable serves as a forum for discussion of issues related to parks and natural areas, promotes the PNA Award Program, and maintains a regional inventory of parks. The PNA roundtable facilitates information exchange and planning efforts between various stakeholders and collaborators to protect and preserve parks and natural areas across the region. To register visit events.r20.constantcontact.com/register.

Free to attend, donations appreciated. Work on your bird watching skills while helping the Arboretum monitor bird populations on a fun, relaxed morning walk. Join the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center on the second Saturday of each month at the front door of the building for a two-hour bird walk led by Kelsey Low and Theo Ostler, a resident bird enthusiast. We welcome all levels of bird watching skill and all ages (as long as you’re quiet) – but no dogs, please! If you have binoculars of your own, please bring them. We do have some binoculars available to borrow. For more events with the Houston Arboretum & Nature Center, visit their Events Calendar!

What’s new with solar?  Time for an update.  A solar farm is in development for Houston, and Tesla will tell us what their solar offering is these days. In addition, we’ll have a bit of permit data about solar installations in Houston.

Dori Wolfe, founder of Wolfe Energy, will discuss her C-40 proposal to the City of Houston to convert a brownfield landfill to a solar farm including systems thinking and recent progress in the community solar movement.  Mark Mason, market manager of Houston Metro/Mexico of TESLA, will fill you in on the various solar products offered by Tesla, such as those solar roof tiles you’ve heard about, and how those are different from the other products on the market.

The City of Houston—Public Works & Engineering Code Enforcement Green Building Resource Center presents this Education Seminar in partnership with the Texas Chapter of the US Green Building Council.  This 2019 series is generously underwritten by Rockwool.

CEUs available.  Please RSVP to steve.stelzer@houstontx.gov. Free parking.  Bus stop: Preston@Elder.

The Texas Environmental Excellence Awards is an annual awards program that honors achievements in environmental preservation and protection. There are ten diverse award categories that provide citizens, communities, businesses, and organizations an opportunity to obtain the state’s highest environmental honor and be recognized for their environmental projects. The deadline for submission is September 27th.

Since 1993, they have honored more than 250 successful environmental projects and efforts. By honoring these winners, the TCEQ hopes to encourage others to initiate like-minded projects and reinforce a spirit of environmental stewardship. These are the categories:

• Agriculture
• Civic/Community
• Education
• Environmental Educator of the Year
• Individual
• Innovative Operations/Management
• Pollution Prevention
• Technical/Technology
• Water Conservation
• Youth

Meet count leader Jason Bonilla in the parking lot of Woodland Park. Please note that the park does not have a maintained trail system. As such, there is a lot of poison ivy that is somewhat unavoidable when walking the park and looking for birds. Additionally, there are terrain changes and unstable areas. Participants should wear long pants and closed-toe shoes. They usually meet on the fourth Saturday of the month.

Please join the Houston Chapter of Native Prairies Association of Texas for their Fall Wildflower Day to enjoy the fall blooms and wildlife at the Lawther-Deer Park Prairie Preserve.

See prairie plants that you can use in your garden to attract pollinators, learn seed collecting techniques and take some Deer Park Prairie seeds home. Experience the beauty of insects through Chuck Duplant’s photos at tinyurl.com/CDuplant; then come and learn about them from him in person.  Bring your camera or smartphone to take photos of plants and animals that you see and post on the Deer Park Prairie Project on Naturalist.org.  Activities include:

● Bird Survey (tentative)
● Insect Net Sweeping – by Chuck DuPlant at the Insect Popup Tent
● Wildflower Walk – learn plant identification techniques, including taking photos
● Seed Collecting / Prairie History walk
● Complimentary lunch

Since lunch will be provided, RSVP IS REQUIRED, at https://tinyurl.com/DPP190928, so they can have a food count.

The 2019 annual symposium will focus on conserving native plants in the upper Texas coastal prairies, also known as the Northern Humid Gulf Coastal Prairies in the EPA Level IV ecoregion map.

Quaternary-age deltaic sands, silts, and clays underlie much of this gently sloping coastal plain. The original vegetation was mostly grasslands with a few clusters of oaks, known as oak mottes or maritime woodlands. Little bluestem, yellow Indiangrass, brownseed paspalum, gulf muhly, and switchgrass were the dominant grassland species, with some similarities to the grasslands of the Blackland Prairies. Almost all of the coastal prairies have been converted to cropland, rangeland, pasture, or urban land uses. The exotic Chinese tallow tree and Chinese privet have invaded large areas in this region. Some loblolly pine occurs in the northern part of the region in the transition to the South Central Plains. Soils are mostly fine-textured: clay, clay loam, or sandy clay loam. Within the region, there are some differences from the higher Lissie Formation to the lower Beaumont Formation, both of Pleistocene age. The Lissie Formation has lighter colored soils, mostly Alfisols with sandy clay loam surface texture, while darker, clayey soils associated with Vertisols are more typical of the Beaumont Formation. Annual precipitation varies from 37 inches in the southwest portion to 58 inches in the northeast, with a summer maximum.

The symposium headquarters will be in League City, between Houston and Galveston. at the South Shore Harbour Resort and Conference Center, which is on the south side of Clear Lake across the lake from the Johnson Space Center. The event begins with a reception on Thursday evening for those arriving early, speakers on Friday morning with a choice of field trips in the afternoon, more speakers and breakout sessions on Saturday, and an awards banquet on Saturday night. A social event is planned for Friday night on the Kemah Boardwalk. In addition they have prepared a list of suggested side stops and field trips for those traveling on Thursday and Sunday.

Registration prices vary depending on your level of participation.

Free to attend, donations appreciated. Work on your bird watching skills while helping the Arboretum monitor bird populations on a fun, relaxed morning walk. Join the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center on the second Saturday of each month at the front door of the building for a two-hour bird walk led by Kelsey Low and Theo Ostler, a resident bird enthusiast. We welcome all levels of bird watching skill and all ages (as long as you’re quiet) – but no dogs, please! If you have binoculars of your own, please bring them. We do have some binoculars available to borrow. For more events with the Houston Arboretum & Nature Center, visit their Events Calendar!

Meet count leader Jason Bonilla in the parking lot of Woodland Park. Please note that the park does not have a maintained trail system. As such, there is a lot of poison ivy that is somewhat unavoidable when walking the park and looking for birds. Additionally, there are terrain changes and unstable areas. Participants should wear long pants and closed-toe shoes. They usually meet on the fourth Saturday of the month.

UH Energy invites you to attend the second event in the 2019-2020 Energy Symposium Series | Critical Issues in Energy, “Future of Plastics: Designed Sustainability or Recycling.”

The production and use of plastics has defined the modern era and since the early 1950s they have substantially grown to be the material of choice in diverse applications. The production of plastics was projected to grow by a factor of five over the next twenty five years and the chemicals industry has been preparing for this by expanding production facilities worldwide. However, most plastics have their origins are in fossil based oil and gas and they have increasingly come under public scrutiny because of the preponderance of single use plastics in consumer products, their poor recycling rates (less than 10% globally) and their high-profile observation in unexpected parts of the ecosystem due to their improper disposal. The future of plastics is being formulated and issues of designed-in sustainability, bio-based replacements, and improved recycling are at the core and will be discussed in this symposium.

Speakers

Nichole Fitzgerald, Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) Technology Manager, U.S. Department of Energy

Jill Martin, Global Sustainability Fellow, Dow Chemical Company

Ganesh Nagarajan, Associate Director for Polymers Business Development and Projects, LyondellBasell Industries

Susannah Scott, Distinguished Professor, University of California – Santa Barbara

Moderator

Dr. Megan Robertson, Associate Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston

For more information about our speakers and moderator, please click here.