South Mountain Company's high-performance building engineer Marc Rosenbaum gave a presentation on Innovative Mechanical Systems for Low Heating Load Buildings at the fifth annual North American Passive House conference in Portland, Ore. Passive House is a German standard that was designed to make the world's most energy efficient buildings.

His case studies included a recent South Mountain deep-energy retrofit of a century-old carriage house for the Woods Hole Research Center.

Lloyd Raleigh is bent double , trying to negotiate his way through a dense thicket of catbriar in the moist wetands of Brookside Farm. As thorns entangle his jacket, a soup of leaf mold and sphagnum moss sucks his boots deeper into the mud.

“I kind of like this spot,” he says. “It tells us a lot about the land.”

Due to a combination of climate change creating warmer water conditions and continued pressure from fishing, lobster stocks in southern New England have been badly depleted, and a five-year moratorium is needed for recovery.

This is the recommendation of a technical panel for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in a report discussed last week.

“Overwhelming environmental and biological changes coupled with continued fishing greatly reduce the likelihood of southern New England stock rebuilding,” the report said.

The Value of Forestlands

The local chapter of Ducks Unlimited, a conservation nonprofit dedicated to preserving habitat, hosted its 34th annual dinner last Saturday at the Harbor View Hotel in Edgartown. And though turnout may have been the smallest in the organization’s long Island history, the group felt good about the evening, according to chairman Cliff Meehan.

The Stone Soup Leadership Institute announced this week that the Menemsha Inn will host the Vineyard’s first youth summit for sustainable development. The summit will be held from June 26 to July 2; 50 young people aged 16 to 23 will envision their future and learn to become leaders of a more sustainable world.

The first youth delegates to the Vineyard Youth Summit for Sustainable Development have been named and will meet this week ahead of their June summit.

Delegates include Oscar Thompson, nominated by the Martha’s Vineyard Charter School, who is interested in the environmental challenges facing the Island, specifically nitrogen runoff from fertilizers and septic systems.

Teenagers and young adults, some from the Vineyard, others from the Caribbean, were on an unusual bus tour of the Island last week, taking in the Dumptique, school gardens, Island Cohousing, the Farm Institute and Morning Glory Farm. The young group was part of the Stone Soup for the World Youth Summit, and the sight-seeing was designed to coax them in their contemplation of how they could build a more sustainable future.

Colorful cocktail dresses and navy blazers stood out against the dusty brown parking lots of the West Tisbury Agricultural Hall Monday night, as Islanders flocked to honor former Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation president, the late Stephen R. Crampton, at the foundation’s annual summer benefit.

The world’s oceans need protection, a globe-traveling National Geographic underwater photographer told a large audience at the Tabernacle last Saturday.

After 35 years of photographing the oceans, Brian Skerry, 49, said he is troubled by growing evidence of degradation of habitat and the waste and loss of sea life. “I think the oceans are dying a death of a thousand cuts,” he said.