Digital Commons Network^™

The Pinchot Wire: Private Cash, Public Lands - Why The Katahdin Woods And Waters National Monument Matters, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Here’s how President Obama celebrated the National Park Service’s 100th birthday: with the stroke of his pen, he established the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument in Maine, one of the most innovative initiatives in U.S. environmental history. That’s because the 87,500-acre park, which encompasses some of the Pine Tree State’s most remarkable forests and waterways, is a gift of the Quimby family and comes with a $40 million endowment, a private-public partnership without parallel.

Embers, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

After living in Southern California for nine years, I should be used to fire season—and the fact that there is something called fire season—but I’m not.

My wife and I moved to the Southland in late summer 2007, and within the month we saw some of the region’s most horrific firestorms consume vast stretches of chaparral-cloaked foothills, deep canyons filled with alder and oak and, at higher elevations, thick stands of pine and cedar.

One View: Fire Fuels Regeneration In Eastern Sierra, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Sometimes it’s the small things that can best tell big stories.

Like the Marina Fire, which currently has burned a modest 800 acres to the north of Lee Vining, threatened but did not burn any structures, and whose greatest disruption has been periodically to shut down US 395. It hardly seems worth much attention.

Dead Trees Don’T Mean Catastrophe For California, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Nature knows what it’s doing. You’d never know that, though, from the panicked reaction to news that 66 million trees in California have died since 2005, including 26 million said to have perished just in the last few months.

The Erskine Fire And Public-Lands Management In The American West, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The Erskine Fire is big, fast and dangerous. Its power is evident in the tragic loss of life, the incineration of an estimated 150 structures and its rapid growth — more than 36,000 acres burned in its first 30 hours.

Fire Inevitable, Despite Attempts To Tame Chaparral, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

You didn’t need to fly into Ontario International Airport this past week to know that Southern California’s fire season had begun. But the view from 10,000 feet offered a unique perspective on how wildfires impact the region.

Bioswales For Stormwater Remediation And Infiltration: Assessing Regulatory Climate And Quantifying Filtration Capacity Of A Claremont Bioswale, Skyler Lewis, Boyu Liu, Paul Picciano, Liana Solis, Char Miller

Environmental Analysis Program Senior Projects

Watershed management is critical in ensuring a sustainable water supply. This project is designed to assess the impact of bioswales in the context of Southern California’s climate. The patterns of droughts and floods make these green infrastructure appealing as they offer potential to boost water quality and regenerate local aquifers, while reducing the area of impermeable surfaces in our urban landscape. As bioswales have not been commonly incorporated into infrastructure development, our project focuses on a relatively new bioswale, added in 2012 and located on Pomona College’s campus, to serve as our case study in determining the viability of bioswales …

Rethinking La's Nature Through German Eyes, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Los Angeles might be more than 5700 miles from Berlin as a crow (or Luftansa) flies, but German culture—and most notably its varied perceptions of nature—have strongly influenced how those living in the Southland experience their environs.

Oft in the negative, to judge from the enduring legacy of Bertold Brecht’s sharp commentary about the City of Angeles in which he sheltered during the ravages of World War II. “They have nature here,” he jotted down in his diary in August 1941, and as “everything is so artificial, they even have an exaggerated feeling for nature, which becomes alienated.”

Rethinking: Wind, Wende, Wandel, Friederike Von Schwerin-High

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Umdenken: Von Der Natur Lernen (Rethinking: Learning From Nature): Some Personal Thoughts On The Goethe Institute Traveling Exhibition, Hans J. Rindisbacher

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Malheur Occupation In Oregon: Whose Land Is It Really?, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a 187,757-acre haven for greater sandhill cranes and other native birds in eastern Oregon, is usually a pretty peaceful place. But its calm was shattered on Saturday, January 2 when Ammon Bundy and a group of armed men broke into and occupied a number of federal buildings on the refuge, vowing to fight should the government try to arrest them. Their insurrectionary goal appears to be, simply put, to destroy the national system of public lands – our forests, parks and refuges – that was developed in the late 19th century to conserve these …

A Better Way To Restore Wildfire-Burned Forests, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Paul Faulstich’S Reflective Review Of Susan A. Phillips’ Essay, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

Paul Faulstich's review of Susan A. Phillips' essay titled, "Huerta del Valle: A New Nonprofit in a Neglected Landscape".

Pitzer College Outback Preserve Restoration Project, Paul Faulstich

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

A question we keep asking ourselves in environmental analysis at Pitzer College is whether it’s possible to create modern socionatural systems that are truly sustaining; that is, that avoid the features of contemporary systems in which the human factor dominates to the detriment of the environment. Any genuinely sustainable society must honor diversity— cultural and biological—and, at Pitzer, we’re committed to forging innovative directions for a healthy future. Toward this end, students, along with faculty and staff, have initiated a program of ecological restoration in the Pitzer College Outback Preserve.

Quantitative Approaches To Sustainability Seminars, Rachel Levy

All HMC Faculty Publications and Research

How can mathematicians contribute to education of about sustainability? Mathematicians study climate change, energy-related technologies, models of energy availability, production and consumption, and even the political and social aspects of sustainable legislation and practices. However, at this point, few courses on sustainability can be found in math department offerings. When we consider problems that our current and future students will face, energy sustainability certainly seems important. But how many of these ideas reach our classrooms?

Uncle Sam’S Badge: Identity And Representation In The Usda Forest Service, 1905–2013, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Howard Abbey could recall the exact moment when he learned that he had passed the forest ranger’s examination for the newly established USDA Forest Service (USFS). In the early morning of Aug. 1, 1905, while he was managing a team of horses pulling a mowing machine on the McIntosh Ranch in the northern Sierra Nevada Mountains, Allen Ray Powers, a Forest Assistant on the Plumas Forest Reserve, rode up and “informed me that I was wanted at the Forest Supervisor’s office in Quincy.” Abbey handed over the reins to his boss and walked the 2 miles to town where he …

Making Common Cause For Conservation: The Pinchot Institute And Grey Towers National Historic Site, 1963-2013, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation and the donation of the Pinchot family home Grey Towers to the U.S. Forest Service. In the following essay, historian and Pinchot biographer Char Miller discusses how the Institute is applying Gifford Pinchot’s principles to contemporary environmental issues. It is adapted from Seeking the Greatest Good: The Conservation Legacy of Gifford Pinchot, his new history of the Institute, and is published with kind permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Examining The Impact Of Pau Jacaré (Piptadenia Gonoacantha) Growth On Soil Fertility In The Brazilian Atlantic Rainforest, Aleksandra Ponomareva

Environmental Analysis Program Mellon Student Summer Research Reports

The Atlantic Rainforest of Brazil is an area of astounding diversity in both flora and fauna, taking its place among the top five “biodiversity hotspots” in the world. However, in the past 40 or 50 years the area has been increasingly threatened by the presence of humans – approximately 93% of the Rainforest has disappeared as a result of exploitation (Turner 2004). Unsustainable farming practices, as well as logging, cattle ranching and mining activities have caused soil infertility, water depletion, erosion and destruction of ecosystems. This project examines the effects of the Pau Jacaré, Piptadenia gonoacantha, tree on soil health …

Science With A Skew: The Nuclear Power Industry After Chernobyl And Fukushima, Gayle Greene

Scripps Faculty Publications and Research

It is one of the marvels of our time that the nuclear industry managed to resurrect itself from its ruins at the end of the last century, when it crumbled under its costs, inefficiencies, and mega-accidents. Chernobyl released hundreds of times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs combined, contaminating more than 40% of Europe and the entire Northern Hemisphere. But along came the nuclear lobby to breathe new life into the industry, passing off as “clean” this energy source that polluted half the globe. The “fresh look at nuclear”—in the words of a New York Times makeover piece …

Review: Robert H. Nelson, The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion Vs. Environmental Religion In Contemporary America, Andre Wakefield

Pitzer Faculty Publications and Research

This is a book review of Robert H. Nelson's The New Holy Wars: Economic Religion vs. Environmental Religion in Contemporary America. Nelson argues that environmentalism and economics represent competing religious worldviews. Within this framework, debates over issues like global warming and acid rain become veiled theological disputes between these two “secular religions.” Nelson paints with a broad, aggressive brush. This is both the strength and weakness of his book, as he conjures a world of epic battles between the economic faithful, who worship material progress, and the environmentally pious, who bemoan the corruption visited by humans upon the natural world. …

Emerging Solar Cell Technology: Advances In Solid-State Polymer Hybrid Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells, Andrew De Jong

Environmental Analysis Program Mellon Student Summer Research Reports

Mr. de Jong worked at Oxford University to extend solid-state solar cells’ photoresponse by taking advantage of a favorable energy-transfer mechanism.

Let It Be, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Subaerial Freshwater Stromatolites In Deer Cave, Sarawak – A Unique Geobiological Cave Formation, Joyce Lundberg, Donald A. Mcfarlane

WM Keck Science Faculty Papers

A suite of distinctive freshwater subaerial phosphatic stromatolites is developed close to the northeastern entrance of Deer Cave, Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, Borneo, in conditions of very low light but ample supply of nutrients from guano. These stromatolites are not particulate; they are composed of alternating layers of more porous and more dense amorphous hydroxylapatite. This biomineralization occurs as moulds of coccoid (the majority) and filamentous (less abundant) cyanobacteria. Mineralization occurs at a pH of ~ 7.0 in the extracellular sheaths and in micro-domains of varying carbonate content in the surrounding mucus of the biofilm. The most recent surfaces …

Trash Talk: A Case Study Of Waste Analysis At Pomona College, Char Miller, Bowen Close

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Purpose: This paper presents the pedagogical initiatives associated with and the practical outcomes of a multi-student independent study that analyzed the campus waste stream and developed real-world solutions in accord with the college’s sustainability commitments and goals.

Design/methodology: The paper reviews the course structure, presents research findings and the individual student-developed solutions, and assesses their ability to reduce the campus’s waste stream.

Findings: Developing a class to audit the campus waste stream offers students an unusual educational opportunity to apply theoretical insights to and test these against a real-world problem; their analyses and projects also has helped …

An Extraordinary Example Of Photokarren In A Sandstone Cave, Cueva Charles Brewer, Chimantá Plateau, Venezuela: Biogeomorphology On A Small Scale, Joyce Lundberg, Donald A. Mcfarlane, Charles Brewer-Carias

WM Keck Science Faculty Papers

A distinctive suite of small-scale erosional forms that are oriented towards the light occur close to the entrance of Cueva Charles Brewer, a large cave in a sandstone tepui, in SE Venezuela. These are the third example of photokarren ever studied in the world, the other two being from Borneo and Ireland. They are the only photokarren ever described from sandstone, and the only example from a non-carbonate environment. The host rock is a poorly-lithified unit of the Precambrian quartz arenite of the Roraima Supergroup. The forms are all oriented towards the light at 30° regardless of rock surface orientation. …

A Unique Population Of Cave Bears (Carnivora: Ursidae) From The Middle Pleistocene Of Kents Cavern, England, Based On Dental Morphometrics, Donald A. Mcfarlane, Martin Sabol, Joyce Lundberg

WM Keck Science Faculty Papers

The ‘breccia’ stratum from Kents (we follow local tradition in using the form ‘Kents’, without an apostrophe) Cavern, England, has been well known for its rich yield of cave-bear material since excavations began in the mid-19th century. Recent work has established that the bears are of latest MIS 12 or earliest MIS 11 age. A life table based on a collection of 67 molariform teeth is consistent with the use of the cave as a hibernaculum. Univariate and morphological assessment of the teeth shows an unusual range of primitive and more derived characters. Multivariate morphometric analysis of cave-bear teeth from …

An Undescribed Gecko (Gekkonidae: Cyrtodactylus) From Deer Cave, Gunung Mulu National Park, Sarawak, With Comments On The Distribution Of Bornean Cave Geckos, Donald A. Mcfarlane, Joyce Lundberg, Keith Christenson

WM Keck Science Faculty Papers

Geckos of the genus Cyrtodactylus are a speciose group in Southeast Asia, with at least nine species known from the island of Borneo (Das & Ismail, 2001; Das, 2006). Of these species, Cyrtodactylus cavernicolus has the smallest known range and is therefore the most vulnerable, a status that is reflected in the species having been designated a Totally Protected Species in Sarawak. Confirmed records of C. cavernicolus are known only from Niah Cave, located in an isolated limestone block known as the Gunung Subis massif, approximately 13 km² in extent. The Niah Cave Gecko is presumed to be dependent on …

Bats And Bell Holes: The Microclimatic Impact Of Bat Roosting, Using A Case Study From Runaway Bay Caves, Jamaica, Joyce Lundberg, Donald A. Mcfarlane

WM Keck Science Faculty Papers

The microclimatic effect of bats roosting in bell holes (blind vertical cylindrical cavities in cave roofs) in Runaway Bay Caves, Jamaica, was measured and the potential impact of their metabolism on dissolution modelled. Rock temperature measurements showed that bell holes with bats get significantly hotter than those without bats during bat roosting periods (by an average of 1.1 °C). The relationship is clearest for bell holes with more than about 300 g aggregate bat body mass and for bell holes that are moderately wide and deep, of W:D ratio between 0.8 and 1.6. Measurement of temperature decay after abandonment showed …

The Once And Future Forest Service: Land-Management Policies And Politics In Contemporary America, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The news from the Far North is not good. In the spring of 2007, University of Alberta scientists reported that portions of the Canadian tundra were transforming into new forests of spruce and shrubs much more rapidly than once was imaginable. "The conventional thinking on treeline dynamics has been that advances are very slow because conditions are so harsh at these high latitudes and altitudes," reported Dr. Ryan Danby, a member of the UA research team. "But what our data indicate is that there was an upslope surge of trees in response to warmer temperatures. It's like [the forest] waited …

At The Creation: The National Forest Commission Of 1896-97, Gerald W. Williams, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

Among the central forces in the creation of the legislation necessary to establish federal forestry was the National Forest Commission. Its members included some of the leading conservationists of the 1890s, including Charles Sprague Sargent and Gifford Pinchot; John Muir was an unofficial member. Its final report advocated the establishment of a national forest system and served as the basis for the so-called Organic Act, which cleared the way for active management on federal forests and grasslands. Unlike the other articles, this one contains several excerpted documents interspersed with exposition.