The team celebrates their win on Monday night. Photo from Stony Brook Athletics
The Stony Brook women’s basketball team erased a 26-point deficit and came from behind to defeat Iona in thrilling fashion, 73-71, on Nov. 14 at Island Federal Arena.After being down 38-12 with 6:14 to play in the second quarter, the Seawolves outscored the Gaels 61-33 to earn their second win of the season.
Sophomore forward Sherese Pittman grabbed an offensive rebound with less than 10 seconds left in the game and went back up over four Iona defenders to score and give Stony Brook a 73-71 lead.
The Seawolves’ defense stood strong as Pittman locked up Iona’s Ketsia Athias on the final possession and held off the Gaels’ final chance to secure the win for Stony Brook. The team was led by graduate guard Anastasia Warren and senior guard Gigi Gonzalez, who both had career nights.
With less than one-minute remaining in the third quarter, Warren drilled a three-pointer to cut Stony Brook’s deficit back to six points. It got her up to 23 points on the night, as she eclipsed the 1,000-career point mark. Warren is the 19th player in Stony Brook women’s basketball program history to score at least 1,000 points in her career. She finished the game with a game-high 28 points, along with seven rebounds, three steals, and two assists. Gonzalez scored a career-high 24 points with three rebounds, three assists, and three steals.
Graduate forward Nairimar Vargas-Reyes put forth a valiant effort with her second career double-double. She scored 10 points and hauled in 11 rebounds.
Stony Brook led for just 31 seconds, but was able to come out victorious with its astounding comeback. The Seawolves now hold a 10-5 record over Iona in the all-time series. Stony Brook has won five-straight games against the Gaels.
The team hits the road again to take on the St. John’s Red Storm at Carnesecca Arena in Queens on Nov. 19. Tip-off is set for 2 p.m. and the game will be broadcast live on FloHoops.
A study of more than 8,000 women from seven countries revealed that at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, stress experienced by pregnant women predicted more frequent anxiety and depressive symptoms.
Photo provided by Marci Lobel, Stony Brook University
Published study of more than 8,000 women from seven Western countries reveals mental health risks at onset of pandemic
A study that assessed stress, anxiety and depressive symptoms in pregnant women from seven Western countries during the first major wave of the Covid-19 pandemic (April 17 to May 31, 2020) shows that stress from fears about Covid-19 led to anxiety and depressive symptoms above normal levels. Led by Stony Brook University Professor Marci Lobel, PhD, the findings are part of the International Covid-19 Pregnancy Experiences (I-COPE) Study and are published in Social Science & Medicine.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had unprecedented impact on public health, including mental health, and has affected social and economic conditions of people worldwide. The onset of the pandemic was especially stressful for pregnant women because of the initially unknown effects of the virus on fetuses, and because prenatal care and labor and delivery practices were greatly altered. The I-COPE Study is the first major research project to compare stress and mental health in pregnant women across these Western countries.
The study involved 8,148 pregnant women (on average about 27 weeks pregnant) from the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Poland, Italy and Israel. While the countries varied in magnitude of pandemic-related pregnancy stress – likely because of cultural differences and the specific impacts of the pandemic in each country – anxiety and depressive symptoms among the cohort were strongly predicted by pandemic-related and pregnancy-specific stress – a result the authors found was replicated within the individual countries.
”Our findings show that the stress experienced by pregnant women predicted more frequent anxiety and depressive symptoms, including symptom levels above clinically defined thresholds for poor mental health,” explains Lobel, Director of I-COPE, and a Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Medicine at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University.
Among the seven countries, rates of moderate and severe anxiety symptoms ranged from 14.2 percent to 36 percent, and rates of likely depressive disorder ranged from 10.8 percent to 30.5 percent. Rates of both types of mood disturbance among women in Germany, Poland and the U.S. exceeded global ranges reported by analyses prior to the pandemic. Pregnant women who were younger or pregnant with their first child, those with high risk conditions, and those with limited access to the outdoors reported higher stress, and high stress in turn predicted the mood disturbances examined in this study.
Lobel and colleagues point out that many pre-pandemic studies – including those centered around other traumatic communal events such as the aftermath of natural disasters or terrorist attacks – also find evidence that prenatal stress is a risk factor for adverse maternal, fetal, infant, and child outcomes. Yet comparisons of these effects across multiple countries are rare, and the ability to examine them in the context of a global health crisis, when stress and its consequences are heightened, is unparalleled.
In 2021, Lobel and colleagues showed in another published study of women in the U.S. that prenatal stress during the pandemic onset also predicted worse birth outcomes, including greater likelihood of preterm birth or delivery of a newborn small for gestational age.
The authors conclude that results of the I-COPE Study confirm that stress from the pandemic is a strong, common predictor of anxiety and depressive symptoms in pregnant women. They add that the results “can be used to inform research and clinical interventions to protect against adverse consequences of prenatal stress, anxiety, and depression, as these mental health impacts pose longer-term threats to the health and well-being of women and their offspring.”
Stony Brook’s LCM facility will use $3 million of NIH funding for equipment and structural upgrades
The Laboratory for Comparative Medicine (LCM) at the Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University has received a $3 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for facility upgrades and new instrumentation to support advanced research on virulent and emerging pathogens.
David Thanassi, PhD, Scientific Director of the LCM. Photo from SBU
The grant was in response to a call for “Emergency Awards: Biocontainment Facility Improvements and Building System Upgrades to Support Pandemic Preparedness” from the NIAID. The one-time NIH funding allotment will help support research on the current COVID-19 pandemic and future investigations centering on antiviral programs, antimicrobial approaches, and therapeutic measures to prevent or mitigate infectious disease outbreaks or future pandemics.
The LCM is engaged in basic, translational, and preclinical research on SARS-CoV-2, the viral agent of COVID-19, as well as other infectious agents. During the past five years, researchers at Stony Brook University have conducted work investigating three different RNA virus families relevant under the American Pandemic Preparedness efforts. In addition, the LCM is being used for research on tick-borne pathogens, which are critical to our area, and for studies on tuberculosis, a global infection.
“This award enables us to make infrastructure improvements and acquire new scientific instrumentation to expand our capabilities to perform research on highly pathogenic agents,” says David Thanassi, PhD, Principal Investigator, Scientific Director of the LCM, and Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. “This is truly a key step toward pandemic-preparedness and provides enhanced resources to not only Stony Brook researchers from multiple school of medicine and other scientific departments, but also state and regional investigators working to combat current and future pandemic threats.”
Stony Brook has a long history of conducting microbial pathogenesis research on emerging pathogens and those that cause common and widespread infection globally. The LCM is a biocontainment facility working on a variety of microbial agents, including viruses and bacteria. Research in the LCM serves multiple academic investigators and groups, as well as biotechnology companies, both within and outside of Stony Brook University.
Ke Jian “Jim” Liu, who arrived at Stony Brook University in late July, plans to help build effective, interdisciplinary research teams.
Ke Jian Liu
Most recently at the University of New Mexico, Liu joins Stony Brook as a Professor in the Renaissance School of Medicine’s Department of Pathology and Associate Director of Basic Science at the Stony Brook Cancer Center.
“In my mind, Stony Brook, research wise, is outstanding,” Liu said in an interview. “The quality of the faculty is excellent.”
Liu will rely on the team building experience he honed while serving as Distinguished Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Pharmacy at the University of New Mexico. He also worked for eight years at Dartmouth Medical School, where he focused on developing larger collaborations.
“I really enjoy working with people and building teams,” Liu said.
In a note announcing Liu’s arrival, Kenneth Shroyer, chair in the Department of Pathology, recognized Liu’s multidisciplinary approaches in his research. Shroyer explained that Liu has used techniques ranging from chemical to biochemical to biophysical, and from the molecular and cellular level to animal models, to answer specific biological questions.
Shroyer wrote that Liu would focus on opportunities for grant development within several programs.
At the Cancer Center, Liu said he plans to continue the effort to help Stony Brook earn National Cancer Institute designation.
To achieve that designation, Stony Brook will need to continue to provide outstanding medical care, demonstrate community engagement and highlight what makes Stony Brook different from everyone else, he said.
“It takes a village to do that,” Liu said.
He praised the efforts of current Cancer Center Director Yusuf Hannun, who recently announced his plans to step down as head of the center, triggering a nationwide search for a replacement.
Liu said an ideal candidate for that position would have clinical experience.
Player coach
With a busy research effort and lofty leadership goals, Liu explained that he’s able to tackle numerous challenges at once.
“I consider myself a player coach,” he said. “I enjoy research. I have my own research grant and am working with my students and post docs.”
Liu typically maintains a lab with five to six people at different levels. His research has two branches, cancer and stroke, that most people likely consider unrelated, but for which he has found connections.
“People always think, ‘Cancer is cancer and stroke is stroke and they are two entirely different diseases,” Liusaid. As a basic researcher, however, he looks at the cells and the molecules involved in both conditions.
“At a molecular level, a molecule doesn’t care where it is,” he said. “When a disease develops, the biological fundamental process is the same. For me, it’s interesting to look at [whether] certain processes that occur in the brain also occur in cancer.”
Liu’s cancer research focuses specifically on the molecular processes that become carcinogenic when metals like arsenic enter people’s bodies. A well-described poison in numerous murder mysteries, arsenic can contaminate drinking water, get incorporated into crops like rice, or can appear in fruit juices.
When metal enters the body, it doesn’t just cause damage everywhere. It has to find a certain molecular target with which to interact.
What Liu and researchers in his lab have discovered is that the target for arsenic is often the same pathways the body uses in zinc. A transition metal, zinc provides an important element as a part of transcription factors that are critical in biological processes.
Arsenic, however, replaces zinc, which is “one of the major mechanisms for carcinogenesis,” Liu said.
Fortunately for residents of Long Island, arsenic isn’t as prevalent as it is in the midwest and the southwest.
“Long Island doesn’t have too much arsenic in drinking water,” Liu said, although people are still exposed to it through fruit juices, rice and other products.
Arsenic also causes vascular disease issues and anemia. People who develop these other conditions in response to arsenic are also at higher risk to develop cancer. The specific types of cancers arsenic causes are lung, skin and bladder cancer.
“Arsenic is the dirty bomb” in the body as it creates multiple problems, Liu said. “Arsenic interacts with those key zinc molecules.”
Overlap between stroke and cancer
In highlighting the overlaps between the two fields of research, Liu related how the brain has one of the highest concentrations of zinc in the body.
When people have strokes, their brain cells have oxidative stress, which causes a flood of zinc into the brain tissue that also damages cells.
“We are trying to understand how zinc is released and how zinc causes damage to the brain,” Liu said.
Stroke and cancer also have molecular overlaps regarding oxygen. In a stroke, a blood clot causes a blockage of blood flow. Without oxygen, a situation called hypoxia, neurons start to die.
By contrast, a tumor grows in a hypoxic environment, using energy from sugars like glucose, rather than relying on oxygen for its growth.
Liu emphasized the importance of continuing to provide oxygen to brain regions around a clot even before trying to remove the clot or restore blood flow.
A goal for his 100th year
Originally from Beijing, China, Liu and his wife Jiao Ding enjoy traveling. Their daughter Sarah Liu is a resident at Vermont Medical Center and their son Evan Liu is a PhD student at Stanford.
An avid tennis player who plays the sport at least twice a week, Liu is looking forward to attending his first U.S. Open next year.
He and his former tennis partner in New Mexico joked that their goal is to be in the top 20 in the United States when they are 100 years old.
Liu chose the American name “Jim” because it sounds similar to the second syllable of his given name, Ke Jian.
“If people can’t pronounce your name, they shy away,” he said. He believes it’s important to “make yourself adaptable.”
The Stony Brook volleyball team fought hard in a back-and-forth battle, but ultimately fell to CAA foe Northeastern in five sets in Boston on Oct. 23. The team started out strong, claiming the first set, 26-24. With the match tied at 20-20, the Seawolves and the Huskies engaged in a back-and-forth contest that saw the Seawolves victorious.
The Huskies took control of the next two sets, with the second set ending in a close finish, 25-21, and the third in a dominating 25-9 win. The Seawolves then bounced back with a gritty effort to take the fourth, 27-25. Stony Brook was unable to keep the momentum rolling as Northeastern secured the final set, 15-9.
The Seawolves were led offensively by junior outside hitter Leoni Kunz, who tallied a game-high 16 kills, and sophomore outside hitter Erin Garr, who totaled 10.
“Northeastern does a lot of things to make you uncomfortable and they did that with their serving and tempo today. We were trailing the play too often and that forced us to make decisions under stress. That said, I thought our fight was good and that we bounced back after a tough third and start to the fourth set. We need to make some adjustments tomorrow, but we mostly need to manage the serve-and-pass game better and stop Northeastern from going on runs,” said head coach Kristin Belzung.
The Stony Brook University volleyball team concluded play at Delaware with a weekend split, defeating the Blue Hens in a five-set thriller on Oct. 16.
After securing the first set, Stony Brook dropped the next two in close deficits, with the second set resulting in a four point defeat (25-21) and the third set culminating in a three point loss (25-22). The Seawolves then bounced back with a gritty effort to secure the fourth and fifth sets, closing them out 27-25 and 15-9, respectively.
Stony Brook’s offense was fueled by the trio of Kali Moore, Abby Campbell, and Erin Garr who all finished the match with 10 or more kills. Defensively, the Seawolves were led by Julia Patsos and Moore who tallied 30 and 22 digs, respectively.
“So proud of this group! We approached this match with a different competitive spirit and it was a full team win. We were able to execute adjustments both offensively and defensively throughout the entire match and that showed grit. Every road win is big and this one is better because I thought we played at a high-level. We have another important road weekend coming up and will need this same level of focus,” said head coach Kristin Belzung.
Up next, the team heads to Boston to take on conference rival Northeastern on Oct. 22 and 23.
The Stony Brook football team fell to Fordham, 45-14, on Oct. 15 at Jack Coffey Field in the Bronx. Freshman quarterback Charlie McKee earned his first-career start for the Seawolves and tossed two touchdown passes in his second collegiate game.
Stony Brook got on the board with 10:36 to play in the fourth quarter when freshman quarterback Charlie McKee found redshirt sophomore Tedy Afful for a 30-yard touchdown pitch and catch on fourth and six. It was Afful’s first career touchdown catch as he became the fourth different Seawolf to haul in a touchdown pass this season.
McKee threw his second touchdown of the night late in the fourth quarter when he found graduate wide receiver Khalil Newton from four yards out. For Newton, it was his second touchdown catch of the season and fifth of his career.
On the defensive side of the ball, Stony Brook was able to force one turnover. Redshirt senior defensive back Isaiah Givens laid a hit on Fordham’s Trey Sneed that jarred the ball loose and was recovered by graduate linebacker Reidgee Dimanche.
“Fordham is a very good football team and we didn’t represent ourselves correctly. Offensively, we continued to struggle. Defensively, we played well early, but it was hard to hang on. We went up against an offense that has performed to this level all season,” said head coach Chuck Priore.It’s tough, but our kids will play hard in between the white lines,” he added.
Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY: Fall on campus
Stony Brook University has welcomed a trio of new leaders to its campus over the last several months. Provost Carl Lejuez, Vice President for Marketing and Communications William Warren, and Senior Vice President for Finance and Administration Jed Shivers recently shared their goals for Stony Brook and their excitement at joining a flagship university for the State University of New York educational system.
Carl Lejuez. Photo from Stony Brook University
Provost Lejuez
As provost, Carl Lejuez is responsible for the faculty, staff and students at Stony Brook University.
Lejuez, who has asked that people call him by his first name instead of trying to pronounce his last name — which, by the way, is Lejh way— makes a concerted effort to forge connections on campus.
“Whenever I introduce myself, I don’t say, ‘Provost,’” he said. “I say, ‘Professor in the Department of Psychology.’ I don’t believe I can be a credible leader of the faculty if there’s not a sense of sitting in their shoes and understanding the implications of the strategic and practical decisions we make.”
Lejuez, who grew up in Secaucus, New Jersey, earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Emory University and his Master of Arts and PhD in clinical psychology from the University of West Virginia.
As a first-generation college student, Lejuez feels inspired by the opportunity for students to come through a place with world-class research in an environment that cares about student success.
For first-generation students, in particular, he recognizes the need to forge connections with professors.
These close bonds help “take what’s happening in the classroom, which may be esoteric knowledge, and turn it into a passion and understanding,” providing students with the opportunity to see how what they’re learning in a textbook applies to the world.
He wants to expand the scope and reach of these hands-on experiences for students, while recognizing “how much goes into it from faculty and staff,” he said.
Lejuez believes the ability of professors to conduct extraordinary and groundbreaking research should dovetail with their commitment to being accomplished educators.
“We are setting the expectation from the start,” he said. “When you are tenured here, when you are progressing and doing well, you are excellent in both research and teaching.”
Stony Brook has a Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching that provides support for professors who may need polishing or improvement in inspiring and educating students.
Stony Brook looks closely at student evaluations, while also examining other data in assessing its teachers.
Lejuez, who recently served as provost and executive vice president for academic affairs at the University of Connecticut, supports strong and growing areas for the university, including clinical psychology, quantum information systems, and climate science, among others.
“These are areas that Stony Brook has a real opportunity to develop and part of my role has been thinking about how do we identify incredibly strong areas and areas that are able to emerge that way and fuse it with growing fields,” he said.
Lejuez believes in academic excellence and in diversity and equity.
He hopes to broaden the range of countries and regions from which the university is recruiting students and faculty.
Lejuez describes Stony Brook as “one of the best kept secrets of public universities,” ranking first in the state in public schools, according to the 2022-2023 US News and World Report ranking.
“Our goal is now to remove the best kept secret part,” Lejuez said.
William Warren. Photo from Stony Brook University Marketing
Raising SBU’s profile
This is where William Warren, vice president for Marketing and Communications, comes in.
Warren has worked in numerous corporate and academic jobs, including most recently as the chief marketing and communications officer at the University of Utah.
Warren hopes to raise “the profile of Stony Brook and really claim the sort of credit and attention this institution deserves,” he said.
Previously at Coca Cola, among others, Warren welcomes the opportunity to support Stony Brook.
“You want a challenge that’s exciting and doable,” he said. “That means having a fabulous thing to market that is possibly undervalued.”
Warren divides marketing into earned and paid media. For the former, he hopes to do the hard work of building relationships with national reporters, who can spread the word about the achievements and experts available at Stony Brook.
Warren plans to continue to work with regional and local reporters, while engaging in an ongoing effort to share the Stony Brook story, including publicizing initiatives such as the Simons Stem Scholars Program that supports minority students entering the scientific fields.
As for the paid piece, Warren sees opportunities in several dimensions.
“The great thing about the paid marketing campaign is that it’s adaptable to all kinds of purposes,” he said. “Student recruitment can use the campaign to get the right students. We can use the campaign to help us recruit great faculty.” It can also be adapted to “attract more donor support.”
Any marketing effort, however, needs to remain grounded in truth.
“You want to go out there with a message that resonates and that faculty will see and say, ‘That’s what we offer,’” Warren said. “We are not blowing smoke.”
A marketing campaign includes a host of elements, such as the best execution and photography that supports the message.
An evolved campaign could include a new slogan for the school.
The “Coke is it” campaign reinforces the idea of authenticity, as consumers can be sure it is “exactly what you think it is,” Warren said. “It never disappoints. It’s always consistent and is part of the American culture.”
In developing a slogan for Stony Brook, which Warren said is less important than the message behind it, he wants to hone in on the handful of characteristics that capture the personality of the university.
In reflecting on the differences between commercial and academic marketing, Warren noticed that academics tend to be more skeptical.
“You have to work to make them allies,” he said.
Outside of his marketing role, Warren, who had initially pursued a PhD in history at Rice University, shared an interest in teaching. At the University of Utah, he taught an American economic history class and, at some point, would also consider teaching at Stony Brook.
Since arriving on Long Island, Warren has enjoyed kayaking. He is also a former violinist and enjoys the opportunity to relax with music.
A return to the Northeast
After over four years as vice president for finance and operations/ chief operating officer at the University of North Dakota, Jed Shivers is returning to the Northeast, which is similar to the cultural and environmental feel of his childhood home in Storrs, Connecticut.
Shivers, who is senior vice president for finance and administration at Stony Brook, enjoys walking through the quad and in wooded areas around campus.
After living in the plains, which has “its own beauty,” Shivers appreciates the SB campus, which has “more trees,” and includes a view of the fall foliage outside his office window in the Administration Building.
Ready to embrace the opportunities and challenges of his job, Shivers said the university community is preparing a strategic plan for the next five years or so, which he will follow with a campus master plan.
In preparing for that plan, he is working with a firm that will survey all research space on campus and determine its current functional use, occupants and intensity of use.
He is also focusing on facilities that assist with the delivery of education and is hoping to conduct a similar survey of educational spaces.
To provide managers and executives with actionable financial information, the university is also engaged in a process to improve its business systems in human resources, budgeting, accounting and financial management.
With a “ high rate of system failures around campus” creating a “significant problem” for the university, the building and infrastructure at Stony Brook are all aging at the same time, Shivers said.
Campus Planning, Design and Construction and Campus Operations and Maintenance work constantly to deal with these issues and fix problems as quickly as they can, Shivers added.
The immediate need for deferred maintenance issues is over $1.5 billion, which dwarfs any campus close to comparable size in the SUNY system.
The SUNY Construction Fund and SUNY leadership has provided funds to alleviate a small but substantial part of those critical issues, he said. The university is also engaged in conversations with the Construction Fund and the Division of Budget on ways to use funds for optimal results.
Shivers was delighted for the chance to “get into a place where president [Maurie Mcinnis] was forming her team,” he said. He saw this opportunity as a chance to be a part of leadership “on a ground floor-ish kind of a way.”
He embraces the challenge of working through the SUNY system.
Consistent with mandates from McInnis since her arrival, Shivers would like to create a consolidated financial statement for Stony Brook and all its affiliated entities.
In addition to enjoying his strolls through the quad, Shivers has appreciated the opportunity to join other sports and school enthusiasts in supporting college teams and cultural life on campus. He and his wife Sandee have been married for almost 30 years.
Outside of work, Shivers said he does “everything badly,” but is enthusiastic about it. That includes golf, tennis, skiing and bike riding. To get in shape for the 100-mile North Fork ride, which he’s never done, he has started riding his indoor bike close to five days per week.
Even she, however, would have had a hard time worrying about other major challenges, problems and threats during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
That, it turns out, was also true for the world during COVID when it came to discussions about the threat from climate change.
In a recent study published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Oleg Smirnov, associate professor in the Department of Political Science at Stony Brook University, examined the level of concern on Twitter about climate change during 2020 and 2021 and compared those numbers to 2019, the last year before COVID.
According to the pool of finite worry, which Princeton professor of Psychology Elke Weber developed, environmental and climate concerns decline amid worries about other major threats.
Smirnov found that the total number of tweets that mention climate change dropped to 5.6 million in 2020 and 5.3 million in 2021, from 8 million in 2019. This, Smirnov points out, occurred despite an increase in Twitter users, more climate disasters and more climate news in 2021.
“The psychological foundation tell us that people may only really respond to one threat at a time,” Smirnov said in an interview. The anxiety and the reaction to that threat may be limited because it requires major energy.
“Maybe, for biological reasons, [people] put all their energy into responding to the most immediate threat,” Smirnov added.
By tracking daily tweets and various measures of COVID cases, Smirnov found on a finer scale as well that discussions of climate change diminished amid higher infections and mortality.
For every thousand new COVID-19 cases in the United States, climate change tweets decreased by about 40.5 tweets per day. Every thousand new deaths resulted in 3,308 fewer climate tweets.
While Smirnov understood the need to focus on the pandemic, he suggested a lack of concern about climate change could disrupt efforts to protect the planet
“This has profound implications,” Smirnov said. “Without a focus on climate change, without an emphasis on its importance, there is less urgency and less pressure on politicians to do something about it.”
Even in better times, climate change efforts are “fragile,” he said, which adds to the uncertainty about the ability to address the challenge adequately.
Indeed, even the sentiment analysis, in which Smirnov reviewed the emotional content of words used to describe climate change and the threat to the planet and humanity, became less negative during the worst of the pandemic.
When asked about the possibility that climate change concerns might have declined during COVID in part because the carbon footprint declined amid travel restrictions and slowdowns in industrial production, Smirnov likened such an approach to short-term fasting or extreme dieting.
While spending a few days on these extreme diets can reduce a person’s weight over the course of days, such an approach provides “no substantial improvement in your health” longer term, he said.
So, what about now, as concerns about the pandemic abate, people have stopped wearing masks and schools and stadiums are full?
Smirnov plans to continue to collect Twitter data for the remainder of this year, to see whether a return to normalcy brings the focus back to the threat from climate change.
As for his own experience, Smirnov recognized that climate change took a back burner amid the worst of the pandemic.
“My attention certainly was hijacked by COVID-19, despite the fact that climate change is part of my work,” Smirnov said. In April of 2020, Smirnov recalled worrying about where his family would find food instead of thinking about greenhouse gases and rising sea levels.
In the present, Smirnov remains concerned about the kind of tipping points and climate inertia that threatens the future.
Ever the worrier, my grandmother might be relieved enough by the less virulent form of the virus and the availability of vaccines and treatment to return to worrying about the threat climate change poses.
Pending approval from the village's Board of Trustees, the East Beach bluff, pictured above, could soon undergo significant transformation. File photo by Raymond Janis
As the clubhouse facility at Port Jefferson Country Club dangles precariously upon the edge of the East Beach bluff, coastal engineers are discussing a proper course of action.
Coastal erosion has encroached dangerously near the clubhouse facility which, without intervention, could fall off the cliff within years. The Village of Port Jefferson Board of Trustees is working to curtail the issue in a two-phased effort. Construction of a toe wall at the bottom of the slope began in August and is ongoing [See video, below].
GEI Consultants is a Huntington Station-based consultancy firm that produced the engineering drawings for the upper wall. In a detailed email statement, Rachel Sa, GEI’s director of communications, summarized the plans for the project.
“The proposed wall at the top of the bluff will be effective at preventing further erosion and providing protection around the country club building,” Sa said. “The proposed wall consists of a new anchored steel sheet pile that is greater than 50 feet in vertical length and has been designed for an exposed height of up to 15 feet. The new steel sheet pile will be reinforced with new drilled soil anchors and a continuous wale system.” She added, “The proposed wall at the top of the bluff is, at minimum, designed to wrap around the perimeter of the country club building.”
If approved, the upper wall would be part of an integrated system, designed to work with the lower wall currently under construction at the toe. While critics have cited the limited shelf life of the upper wall, Sa contends the plan represents a long-term solution, even if the bluff erosion continues.
“The proposed Phase I and Phase II stabilization systems have been designed and are being constructed as a long-term solution to the observed erosion of the East Beach bluff,” she said. “If any further erosion does occur, the proposed wall system has the structural and geotechnical capacity to support and protect the country club building.”
But these plans are not without criticism. Ali Farhadzadeh is an assistant professor in the civil engineering department at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. He became familiar with the erosion issue near PJCC about a year ago when he and a team of colleagues met with village officials.
Over the last half decade, the East Beach bluff has lost considerable vegetation. Now coastal engineers are evaluating the village’s revegatation plans and how those plantings will work with the proposed upper wall. File photos from the Suffolk County Department of Information Technology, GIS Division
Farhadzadeh said the village is engaged in a two-front effort, with waves striking at the toe as precipitation upland generates substantial surface and internal runoff. While both forms of runoff contribute to the bluff’s erosion, his concerns center on the internal runoff, or water penetrating the soil and exiting through the bluff face.
“My engineering judgment was that [the bluff erosion at East Beach] is most likely because of the runoff water from the parking lot and the tennis court going to the bluff soil,” he said. “Based on what we see, there is a large parking lot on top, which will generate a lot of runoff. There might be some evidence of erosion from the toe, but based on the pictures of the failure, my engineering judgment tells me that this is happening from the top.”
Sa says GEI’s proposed stabilization initiative adequately addresses these runoff concerns.
“The proposed Phase II project (upper wall) also involves a significant landscaping scope,” she said, adding, “This proposed work involves removing most of the tennis courts and replacing them with soil, native grasses, wildflowers and shrubs. This will significantly reduce the amount of impermeable surface, improve site drainage, and therefore help reduce runoff over the top edge of the bluff.”
Farhadzadeh acknowledges that the revegetation work will slow the erosion of the slope. However, the internal runoff penetrating through the bluff face will likely continue, leading to continued loosening of the soil and further failure of the cliff.
“These are going to extensively improve the situation,” the SBU assistant professor said, referring to the proposed plantings. “If you do that implementation, if you take care of the surface erosion, the toe erosion and also the internal erosion, that steel structure could stabilize the soil — basically stopping the soil underneath the structure from moving naturally. But if the failure continues, then the wall itself is going to fail.”
‘The proposed steel sheet pile walls will address potentially detrimental permeability conditions at the locations where they are installed.’
— Rachel Sa
Responding to this argument, Sa believes that the vegetation work will be sufficient to prevent further erosion, citing this approach as standard industry practice.
“The proposed steel sheet pile walls will address potentially detrimental permeability conditions at the locations where they are installed,” she said. “It is common practice to use steel sheet pile structures to address these types of conditions — for example, constructing cofferdams to facilitate the dry construction of normally submerged structures/repairs. The remainder of the bluff slope will be protected against permeability conditions with the proposed vegetation and stabilization measures noted above.”
Given how close the clubhouse has come to the bluff’s edge, the village government is working with a sense of urgency. Mayor Margot Garant has stated that if the Board of Trustees favors the upper wall option, she would like to move forward quickly with a vote.
Farhadzadeh prefers a trial-and-error approach over rapid intervention. According to him, it would be wise for the village to install the vegetation and other mitigation measures, evaluate their efficacy in conjunction with the toe wall, and reassess the upper wall plans at a later time.
“From an engineering perspective, it doesn’t make sense to be rushing to the wall and building without making sure the recession [of the bluff] is reduced,” he said. “The wall is not going to stop the recession. The recession is going to be stopped by removing the water from the soil.”
On the other hand, Sa considers the upper wall a necessary measure that would act as a buffer to shield the clubhouse from further erosion. “In the event of areas of further erosion at the top of the bluff, the proposed wall will retain the soils beneath and around the country club building and protect this structure from the potential effects of this erosion,” she said.
‘The fact is you should stay away from the edge of the bluff.’ — Ali Farhadzadeh
In contrast to the upper wall plan, the village board is also contemplating whether to demolish the clubhouse and relocate the facility inland. Farhadzadeh prefers retreating away from the bluff.
“The fact is you should stay away from the edge of the bluff,” he said. “Based on what I’ve seen, it is probably too risky to maintain the existing facility.”
Sa disagrees with this assessment. Citing the village’s internal cost projections, she views the upper wall proposal as a cost-sensitive, viable alternative to managed retreat.
“The village is considering retreat/removal and replacement of the country club building at another inland location,” she said. “Rough initial estimates indicate that this may not be economically feasible. Therefore, GEI’s geotechnical engineers conducted bluff slope stability analyses and developed the double wall system as the best alternative given the site constraints.”
The village board will reconvene for a morning meeting on Monday, Oct. 17, at 9 a.m. Further discussion on the upper wall is anticipated during that meeting.
A return to the Northeast
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