The Elusive Sweet Spot
Posted on May 14, 2026
Why saving our streams is a wicked problem. Coastal communities across the globe are facing a silent, invisible threat: nitrogen. While it’s a vital nutrient for plants, too much nitrogen, often from fertilizers and urban runoff, pollutes in our oceans and creates dead zones where aquatic life cannot survive. Scientists have been investigating targeting “sweet Read More [...]
From Farm to River: How Climate Extremes Are Redirecting Nitrogen Pollution
Posted on March 26, 2026
Nitrogen is essential for plant growth, and modern agriculture depends heavily on fertilizers to sustain crop yields. But excess reactive nitrogen doesn’t always stay put. It can wash into rivers and coastal waters where it fuels harmful algal blooms and contributes to low-oxygen dead zones such as those in the Gulf of Mexico. A new Read More [...]
From Cancer Breakthroughs to Global Water Solutions, Two CUNY Scientists Earn Top Lifetime Honor
Posted on March 26, 2026
This spring, two of the ASRC’s founding initiative directors are being honored for work that is shaping STEM fields from medicine to environmental science. CUNY ASRC Structural Biology Initiative Founding Director Kevin H. Gardner and Environmental Sciences Initiative Founding Director Charles Vörösmarty have been named 2025 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Read More [...]
Rethinking the Tap: Why US Cities Need a Water Revolution
Posted on March 10, 2026
A recently published paper outlines an adaptive, sustainable, and equitable approach to urban water management. In the American West, we’ve long built cities to survive drought. In the East, we’ve built them to drain away floods. But as climate change accelerates, a new paper authored by a multi-institutional research team, including scientists from the ASRC Read More [...]
A Novel Climate BioStress Model and Sentinel System Seeks to Track Global Climate Impacts
Posted on November 10, 2025
Published in Cell Reports Sustainability, the paper presents an interdisciplinary framework for detecting and responding to the biological signatures of climate change. NEW YORK, NY, November 10, 2025 – An interdisciplinary team of scientists at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) has unveiled a groundbreaking conceptual model and integrative Read More [...]
(Not So) Spooky Science
Posted on November 7, 2025
Ghosts, ghouls and goblins uncovered scientific mysteries on a recent visit to the IlluminationSpace Science can be mysterious, but this past Halloween curious young ghosts and goblins gathered inside the CUNY ASRC IlluminationSpace to call forth the spirit of scientific understanding during a free, open-to-the-public community night event. The event invited families and neighborhood youth Read More [...]
FloodNet NYC Goes International
Posted on July 9, 2025
Urban flood-monitoring system, co-led by Graduate Center scientists, is being used as a model for new projects in Brazil and Puerto Rico. An innovative flood-monitoring network, co-led by scientists at the CUNY Graduate Center with colleagues at New York University, tracks water levels in flood-prone areas of New York City. FloodNet NYC monitors urban flooding using ultrasonic Read More [...]
Student Spotlight: Georgie Humphries’ research on the association between urbanization and estuarine microbes
Posted on March 10, 2025
Georgie Humphries is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Earth and Environmental Sciences program at the CUNY Graduate Center, based at the Environmental Sciences Initiative at the CUNY ASRC, and affiliated with the Queens College School of Earth and Environmental Sciences (SEES). Before joining the CUNY ASRC as a master’s student, she earned her bachelor's Read More [...]
ESI Student Spotlight: Nicolas Maxfield
Posted on December 6, 2024
Nicolas Maxfield is a graduate student in the lab of Professor Charles Vörösmarty, director of the Environmental Sciences Initiative at the CUNY ASRC, whose doctoral work focuses on modeling various factors that affect the movement of nitrogen across land and water. Maxfield and Vörösmarty’s work has been supported by two major grants in the last Read More [...]
Stressed Out Soils: Understanding Soil Health In An era of Multiple Global Change Factors
Posted on November 11, 2024
Soils are the foundation of terrestrial ecosystems, performing a variety of functions that range from supporting agricultural industries and regulating nutrient cycles to storing most of Earth’s terrestrial carbon. However, soil communities and their associated functions are at risk because of increased climatic and anthropogenic pressures that are acting on soil ecosystems simultaneously. Many previous Read More [...]
