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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Why Georeferencing Matters: Introducing A Practical Protocol To Prepare Species Occurrence Records For Spatial Analysis, Trevor D.S. Bloom, Aquila Flower, Eric G. Dechaine
Why Georeferencing Matters: Introducing A Practical Protocol To Prepare Species Occurrence Records For Spatial Analysis, Trevor D.S. Bloom, Aquila Flower, Eric G. Dechaine
Environmental Studies Faculty and Staff Publications
Species Distribution Models (SDMs) are widely used to understand environmental controls on species’ ranges and to forecast species range shifts in response to climatic changes. The quality of input data is crucial determinant of the model’s accuracy. While museum records can be useful sources of presence data for many species, they do not always include accurate geographic coordinates. Therefore, actual locations must be verified through the process of georeferencing. We present a practical, standardized manual georeferencing method (the Spatial Analysis Georeferencing Accuracy (SAGA) protocol) to classify the spatial resolution of museum records specifically for building improved SDMs. We used the …
Stability, Sustainability, And Catastrophe: Applying Resilience Thinking To U.S. Agriculture, Gigi M. Berardi, Rebekah Paci-Green, Bryant Hammond
Stability, Sustainability, And Catastrophe: Applying Resilience Thinking To U.S. Agriculture, Gigi M. Berardi, Rebekah Paci-Green, Bryant Hammond
Environmental Studies Faculty and Staff Publications
Resilience is closely related to notions of sustainability, but emphasizes unpredictable, dynamic environments. As conceptualized in engineering, hazards management, and ecology literature, part of resilience is adaptive capacity, the ability to react effectively to change over time in order to maintain a desirable system state. Agricultural policy has had the effect of undermining such adaptive capacity with its emphasis on stabilization. Using a resilience framework and Hurricane Katrina as an analogy, we suggest that the emphasis on stability and efficiency degrades agricultural system resilience in two ways: through reduced diversity in size and type of production, as well …
Energy, Agriculture, And Food: National, County, City Considerations, Gigi M. Berardi
Energy, Agriculture, And Food: National, County, City Considerations, Gigi M. Berardi
Environmental Studies Faculty and Staff Publications
The objective of this paper is to evaluate the available information, assess the specific situation in Whatcom County, and make recommendations on reducing vulnerability to peak oil. The paper includes a discussion of energy use in agriculture, identification of particularly vulnerable areas, and suggestion of ways to reduce the vulnerability of the county‘s agriculture and, indeed, the entire food system to peak oil and volatile energy prices.
Kenya — Starvation And Food Insecurity In The Land Of Plenty, Gigi M. Berardi
Kenya — Starvation And Food Insecurity In The Land Of Plenty, Gigi M. Berardi
Environmental Studies Faculty and Staff Publications
My last month in Kenya has been sobering. Ten million Kenyans were reportedly facing starvation. There were daily reports on affected districts, those most vulnerable, and the government’s mishandling of the disaster. Newspapers reported heavily on the incompetency of the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB), which is responsible, under the guidance of Trustees, in maintaining a Strategic Grain Reserve of about 6 million bags of maize cereal. How best to do this? An obvious way is through purchase of local grain supplies. Despite drought and resultant famine, poor infrastructure, high farm input costs, serious planting disruption after last year’s …
Changing The Way America Farms: Knowledge And Community In The Sustainable Agriculture Movement, Gigi M. Berardi
Changing The Way America Farms: Knowledge And Community In The Sustainable Agriculture Movement, Gigi M. Berardi
Environmental Studies Faculty and Staff Publications
If agricultural information is tightly bound to place, then local farming networks have a major role to play in understanding and negotiating competing knowledge systems. In Changing the Way America Farms, Neva Hassanein addresses questions concerning why certain agricultural knowledge systems are promoted and in what kinds of environment are they produced and exchanged.