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WVPE is your gateway to green and sustainable resources in Michiana. Sustainability is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. This is accomplished by finding a balance between businesses, the environment, and our society (people, planet, and profit).State, National and International resources on sustainability include:The Environmental Protection AgencyThe Natural StepSustainability Dictionary45 Sustainability Resources You Need to Know Explore ways to support sustainability in the Michiana area through the Green Links Directory.Sept. 17, 2019 from 2-3:30pm"Global Warming: A Hot Topic"Sept. 17, 19, 24, and 26All sessions are from 2-3:30pmGreencroft Goshen Community Center in the Jennings Auditorium1820 Greencroft Blvd.Goshen, IN 46526The event will look at possible solutions and suffering as well as consequences beyond warmer weather. The event will examine what other civilizations have or haven’t done when faced with environmental problems. Plus there will be an exploration of the biggest unknown in the climate system: What will the humans do? Paul Meyer Reimer teaches physics, math and climate change at Goshen College. The events are presented by the Lifelong Learning Institute. The Institute can be reached at: (574) 536-8244lifelonglearning@live.comhttp://life-learn.org/

Ready, Set, Watch: The Great Backyard Bird Count Starts Today

By Laura Wagner

Published February 12, 2016 at 3:59 PM EST

A maroon oriole rests on a branch in a rain forest in Fuyuan in Taiwan's eastern county of Hualien.

Find your binoculars and fill up the bird feeders, because the Great Backyard Bird Count starts today.

The annual event invites bird-watchers of all levels to count the birds in their backyards, wherever that may be, and submit the data to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, which launched the project in 1998.

This year, the four-day event runs from Feb. 12 to Feb. 15. To participate, sign up online and then tally the numbers and kinds of birds you see for at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the count, the GBBC website instructs.

More than 100,000 people from all across the world participate in the event, which the website says is "the first online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real-time." Last year, it says, participants in more than 100 countries counted 5,090 species of birds.

"This count is so fun because anyone can take part — we all learn and watch birds together — whether you are an expert, novice, or feeder watcher," chief scientist Gary Langham said on Audubon.org. "I like to invite new birders to join me and share the experience. Get involved, invite your friends and see how your favorite spot stacks up."

The GBBC helps researchers learn about ever-shifting bird populations and how to protect them and their environments. While relying on citizen tallies might not be the perfect methodology for pinpointing precise numbers of bird populations, the project is useful in other ways. As The Christian Science Monitor puts it:

"Researchers from the Swedish University of Agricultural Science studied the reliability of citizen science bird counts and determined that volunteers frequently neglect to count common bird species accurately, so the data is less useful for population studies. It is generally more consistent for rare species though, and researchers pointed out that data-gathering is not the only benefit of bird counts.

" 'Voluntary citizen-based platforms are not only tools for collecting great amounts of data, they also engage the public, something that forms a basis for future interest in biodiversity and conservation,' researchers wrote in the journal Biological Conservation."