Life Sciences Commons^™

Ancient Wisdom, Modern Prosperity: Harnessing Traditional Ecological Knowledge To Revitalize Australia's Economy, Environment, And Human Wellbeing, Annabelle L. Baulch

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper explores the traditional knowledge of Australia’s Indigenous people and how it can improve Australia's environment, health, and economic prosperity to shape a more sustainable future. Indigenous Australians managed the land for thousands of years; however, being forced off the land following European colonization resulted in terrible cultural, social, and environmental disruption for Aboriginal Australians and made conservation efforts difficult. Wildfires, imported species, mining, and agriculture is steadily destroying the Australian ecosystem, contributing to climate change, species extinction, and gaps in our cultural and ancestral knowledge. Chapter One overviews Australia's environmental issues; it uses quantitative data to explore the …

Los Impactos Del Cambio Climático En Las Comunidades Aymaras En Putre, El Valle De Azapa Y Arica, Lindsey Kaufman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Research Question: How is climate change affecting Aymara communities in Putre, the valley of Azapa, and Putre?

Objectives: To understand the effects of climate on communities by 1) describing which environmental problems exist and their impact on agriculture and ranching, 2) understanding the patterns of migration away from the ancestral land, 3) exploring the connections to the social determinants of health that exist with these change, and 4) analyzing the significance of these changes in the agriculture for the communities’ traditions and connection to the land.

Background: Aymara communities have historically inhabited agricultural and ranching lands in …

A Call For The Library Community To Deploy Best Practices Toward A Database For Biocultural Knowledge Relating To Climate Change, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Abstract

Purpose – In this paper, a call to the library and information science community to support documentation and conservation of cultural and biocultural heritage has been presented.

Design/methodology/approach – Based in existing Literature, this proposal is generative and descriptive— rather than prescriptive—regarding precisely how libraries should collaborate to employ technical and ethical best practices to provide access to vital data, research and cultural narratives relating to climate.

Findings – COVID-19 and climate destruction signal urgent global challenges. Library best practices are positioned to respond to climate change. Literature indicates how libraries preserve, share and cross-link cultural and scientific knowledge. …

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Benefit To Climate-Displaced And Host Communities, Gül Aktürk, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Climate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues …

Understanding Global Change: From Documentation And Collaboration To Social Transformation, Karen E. Pennesi

Anthropology Publications

The conclusion to the book situates the chapters within four programs of anthropological research on climate change: (1) documentation of local impacts of and adaptations to climate change, (2) connections to socioeconomic and political contexts, (3) collaborations with nonanthropologists, and (4) activism and social transformation. The final section notes the persistent challenges to creating positive change and meaningful research outcomes. It highlights some examples of success and outlines future directions for politically engaged anthropological work around climate change.

Political Ecology Of Medicinal Plant Use In Rural Nepal: Globalization, Environmental Degradation, And Cultural Transformation, Emily Dovydaitis

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Prior to the advent of biomedicine, rural communities in Nepal relied on phytochemically active compounds in medicinal plants as their primary source of medicine; however, ethnobotanical practices have shifted over time due to economic, environmental, and sociocultural stimuli. Findings from 2016 fieldwork conducted in Dumrikharka, Nepal and Tutung, Nepal are compared to existing literature to describe the political ecology of medicinal plants in rural Nepal.

Anthropogenic climate change threatens individual plant species and ecosystem biodiversity. Globalized markets unabated by weak conservation programs place increasing demands on medicinal plants. As indigenous plants become overharvested and more difficult to access, Nepalis incorporate …

Collapse Of An Ecological Network In Ancient Egypt, Justin Yeakel, Mathias Pires, Lars Rudolf, Nathaniel Dominy

Dartmouth Scholarship

The dynamics of ecosystem collapse are fundamental to determining how and why biological communities change through time, as well as the potential effects of extinctions on ecosystems. Here, we integrate depictions of mammals from Egyptian antiquity with direct lines of paleontological and archeological evidence to infer local extinctions and community dynamics over a 6,000-y span. The unprecedented temporal resolution of this dataset enables examination of how the tandem effects of human population growth and climate change can disrupt mammalian communities. We show that the extinctions of mammals in Egypt were nonrandom and that destabilizing changes in community composition coincided with …

Genetic Signatures Of A Demographic Collapse In A Large-Bodied Forest Dwelling Primate (Mandrillus Leucophaeus), Nelson Ting, Christos Astaras, Gail Hearn, Shaya Honarvar, Joel Corush, Andrew S. Burrell, Naomi Phillips, Bethan J. Morgan, Elizabeth L. Gadsby, Ryan L. Raaum, Christian Roos

Publications and Research

It is difficult to predict how current climate change will affect wildlife species adapted to a tropical rainforest environment. Understanding how population dynamics fluctuated in such species throughout periods of past climatic change can provide insight into this issue. The drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) is a large-bodied rainforest adapted mammal found in West Central Africa. In the middle of this endangered monkey’s geographic range is Lake Barombi Mbo, which has a well-documented palynological record of environmental change that dates to the Late Pleistocene. We used a Bayesian coalescent-based framework to analyze 2,076 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA across wild drill populations …

Current Status Of Lichen Diversity In Iowa, James T. Colbert

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

No abstract provided.

Cultural Responses To Climate Change In The Holocene, Richard Prentice

Anthós

Variable Holocene climate conditions have caused cultures to thrive, adapt or fail. The invention of agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals allowed sedentary societies to develop and are the result of the climate becoming warmer after the last glaciation. The subsequent cooling of the Younger Dryas forced humans to concentrate into geographic areas that had an abundant water supply and ultimately favorable conditions for the use of agriculture and widespread domestication of plants and animals. Population densities would have reached a threshold and forced a return to foraging, however the end of the Younger Dryas at 10,000 BP …

Artists' Depictions Of Catsteps In The Loess Hills Of Iowa: Evidence For Mid-Nineteenth Century Climate Change, Kimberly R. Dillon, Steven H. Emerman, Pamela K. Wilcox

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

Catsteps are the staircase-like features common on hillslopes of the Loess Hills of western Iowa. The record of artistic depictions of the Loess Hills was examined to determine when catsteps appeared. George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, and John James Audubon traveled up the Missouri River m 1832, 1833 and 1843, respectively, and between them, produced 31 works of art depicting either the Loess Hills or the loess bluffs on the Nebraska side of the river. Only three works by Bodmer of Blackbird Hill on the Nebraska side possibly show catsteps. The Assistant State Geologist, Orestes St. John, produced six sketches of …

Iowa's Declining Flora And Fauna: A Review Of Changes Since 1980 And An Outlook For The Future, Neil P. Bernstein

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

The status of Iowa's biodiversity was first summarized at a 1980 Iowa Academy of Science (IAS) symposium that was published in The Proceedings of the Iowa Academy of Science (Vol. 88, No. 1) in 1981. The 1980 symposium was updated in a recent IAS symposium, and the proceedings from this symposium are published, for the most part, in volume 105 of this journal. Most of the authors noted some positive trends, but, overall, species declines and habitat destruction remained a concern.

A Search For Average, Extremes, And Runs Of Unusual Weather In Iowa, R. E. Carlson, D. P. Todey

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

Temperature and precipitation during the past decade have exhibited wide variation throughout Iowa. Is this unusual? An attempt was made to answer this question by computing various statistical parameters that characterize variation in Iowa's long term climatic record. Absolute deviations were used to identify the most and least variable months and years since 1900. Overall, 1936 with a very cold winter and very warm summer was the least normal year. Runs of daily weather showed that heat and cold stress could often persist for more than 1 month. Runs of dry days were much longer than runs of wet days. …

Analysis Of An Iowa Aridity Index In Relationship To Climate And Crop Yield, Soumare Harouna, R. E. Carlson

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

An aridity index and its components, temperature and precipitation, for the period from 1900 through April 1993 were defined and characterized. This index describes the anomalous behavior of both temperature and precipitation over time. Our intent was to examine climate variability in Iowa. Moving mean and standard deviations over various lengths of time were calculated from three time series. We found that these indices fluctuate considerably from year to year and from month to month. The lowest aridity index values occurred in the recent summer of 1992, and the highest occurred during the very drought-prone 1930s. The 12-month moving mean …

Iowa's Climate As Projected By The Global Climate Model Of The Goddard Institute For Space Studies For A Doubling Of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide, E. S. Takle, S. Zhong

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

Results of a global climate model that simulates climate under a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (estimated to occur by the latter half of the twenty first century) have been interpolated to Iowa. Summer temperatures under such a doubling are projected to rise by 4 to 7°F (2.2 to 3.9°C) and winter temperatures by 10 to 11° (5.6 to 6.1°C). Estimates of space heating and cooling demands from these data suggest a 30 to 35% decrease in space heat demand and a 200 to 300% increase in space cooling demand. Temperature variability is projected to decrease. Precipitation estimates from global …

Heating Degree Days In Iowa Relative To Home Natural Gas Consumption, Conservation Efforts, And Long-Term Trends, Richard E. Carlson

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

A methodology is presented to assess the effectiveness of conservation efforts relative to home heating. Billing period heating degree days and natural gas consumption relationships are established for a typical household for nineteen heating seasons using simple linear regression. Associated correlations (r² values) were greater than 0. 95 for nineteen different seasons. Regression coefficients (b₀ and b₁) were found to decrease with time indicating reduced natural gas consumption due to conservation efforts. Procedures are presented to illustrate dollar savings relative to conservation efforts using the regression relationships. Long-term trends for heating degree days at the Ames, …

Atmospheric Response To 1988 Drought Conditions And Future Climate Implications, Michael D. Mccorcle

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

Plentiful precipitation in the central United States is one of the basic components of the successful agricultural industry in the Corn Belt. A combination of moisture, wind, and topographic factors creates an ideal condition for rainfall over most of the region during the late spring and early summer. In 1988, many ingredients necessary for wet weather were absent. The region experienced a drought unequalled since the 1930's. The drought of 1988 demonstrated chat the symptom of drought, namely, dry soils, can exacerbate and even perpetuate drought conditions by decreasing available moisture, altering circulation patterns vital to storm development, and increasing …

Climate Change And The Potential Impact On The Soil Resource, J. L. Hatfield

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

Climatic change will lead to changes in the carbon dioxide C0_2, temperature, and precipitation. There have been many predictions of the effect of climatic change on plant growth but none on the soil parameters or water use. To fully understand the implications on soil management from climate change the expected changes in soil temperature, water use, and water and nutrient use efficiency need quantification.

Climate Trends In Iowa, Richard E. Carlson

Journal of the Iowa Academy of Science: JIAS

Long-term trends for various weather elements are presented for the period 1900-1988. Summer and winter season, and annual air temperature patterns are statistically weak because of large inrerannual variability, but trends are evident. There was a general warming from 1900 until the 40's, with a leveling or slight cooling following. Since the mid-70's, a warming trend seems to be taking place, but this cannot be confirmed. Spring season air temperatures showed no trend except that the most recent 4 years (1985-1988) were decidedly warmer than normal. Winter season air temperatures showed a change in trend in the 30's, but the …