Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The River Process Corridor: A Modular River Assessment Method Based On Process Units And Widely Available Data In The Northeast Us., John D. Gartner, Christine E. Hatch, Eve Vogel, Et. Al.

Water Reports

We define the river process corridor (RPC) as the area adjacent to a river that is likely to affect and be affected by river and floodplain processes. Here we present a novel approach for delineating the RPC that utilizes widely available geospatial data, can be applied uniformly across broad and multi-scalar spatial extents, requires relatively low levels of expertise and cost, and allows for modular additions and adaptations using additional data that is available in particular areas. Land managers are increasingly using a variety of delineated river and floodplain areas for applied purposes such as hazard avoidance, ecological conservation, and …

Clean Energy And Climate Policy In Massachusetts, Dwayne Breger

Sustainability Education Resources

Over the past 20 years, Massachusetts has evolved as a leader in clean energy policy, which has led to market development, job and economic growth, and reductions in greenhouse gas and other emissions. This course will provide direct insights into the brief history of these policy developments, including policy objectives, legislative and regulatory roles, tradeoffs of costs and benefits, the use of analytical methods to establish program design, and stakeholder perspectives and engagement. The course will explore the market and economic development and challenges that have resulted from the policy, and explore the economic tradeoffs and distributional impacts that may …

Environmental Decision-Making (Nrc 494 Ei), Ezra Markowitz

Sustainability Education Resources

Over the past 30 years, there has been a growing recognition amongst environmental advocates, resource managers, policymakers and researchers that the underlying cause of most environmental, conservation and sustainability issues is human behavior. As NRC and ENVIRSCI majors, you have received extensive technical training in how natural systems operate yet relatively little training when it comes to influencing or understanding how people make environmental decisions that affect those natural systems. Recognizing the fundamental role that human decision-making plays in shaping the environment reveals a new set of tools and approaches for both understanding the challenges we face and confronting those …

Analytical Methods For Energy And Climate Policy, Dwayne Breger

Sustainability Education Resources

Course Description

The course will introduce students to analytical methods applicable to the evaluation of energy and climate problems and policy solutions. The methods include ethical analysis, spreadsheet analysis, lifecycle analysis, optimization and systems analysis. While applicable across many fields, the methods will be applied through class and assignments to current issues in clean energy and climate policy.

Learning Objectives

The course will provide students with the understanding and skills to analytically address issues of policy pertaining to clean energy and climate policy. Students will understand the theory and practice associated with conducting economic cost benefit analysis, optimization under constraints …

Food Writing, Carol Ann Connare Ms

Sustainability Education Resources

This advanced writing four-credit course approaches food writing from a news reporting perspective. The Pioneer Valley is home to a network of food producers, from farmers and cheesemakers to brewers and beekeepers. Students will travel into the field to meet people who make and grow what we eat, conducting interviews and collecting information to synthesize into multimedia stories for publication around themes such as health, history, travel, ecology, animal welfare, social change, nutrition, and home cooking. Students will experience the full spectrum of food writing—blogs, magazine articles, personal essays, reviews, recipes, social and cultural commentary—and create stories in a variety …

Architecture Now: A History Of Sustainable Architecture, Meg Vickery

Sustainability Education Resources

As we move further into the 21st century, architects, planners, landscape architects and the general public are increasingly concerned with climate change, environmental degradation, energy and water consumption and the role the built environment plays in contributing to or addressing these issues. Buildings consume almost 40% of the energy used in this country. The way we access buildings, the materials used to construct them, the demands of users within the building all require the earth’s increasingly precious resources. So how did we get here? How did our built environment evolve to require so much energy, water and so many resources? …

Fy 2019 Umass Amherst Water & Steam Data By Building, Ezra Small

Campus Data

Each year, UMass Amherst Utilities publishes this spreadsheet which has the monthly and annual building water and steam consumption of each metered building on campus.

Fy 2019 Umass Amherst Electricity Data By Building, Ezra Small

Campus Data

Each year, UMass Amherst Utilities publishes this spreadsheet which has the monthly and annual building energy consumption of each metered building on campus. Cost data and production vs. purchased electricity data are also provided.

Umass Amherst Fy 2019 Scope 1 And 2 Emissions Inventory, Ezra Small

Campus Data

This is a complete inventory of all scope 1 and scope 2 emissions of UMass Amherst fiscal year (FY) 2019.

Fy 2019 Umass Amherst Waste Management Report, Ezra Small

Campus Data

Each year the Office of Waste Management publishes this report which totals recycling and refuse data for the campus.

Disentangling The Abundance–Impact Relationship For Invasive Species, Bethany A. Bradley, Brittany B. Laginhas, Raj Whitlock, Jenica M. Allen, Amanda E. Bates, Genevieve Bernatchez, Jeffrey M. Diez, Regan Early, Jonathan Lenoir, Montserrat Vilà, Cascade J.B. Sorte

Environmental Conservation Faculty Publication Series

To predict the threat of biological invasions to native species, it is critical that we understand how increasing abundance of invasive alien species (IAS) affects native populations and communities. The form of this relationship across taxa and ecosystems is unknown, but is expected to depend strongly on the trophic position of the IAS relative to the native species. Using a global metaanalysis based on 1,258 empirical studies presented in 201 scientific publications, we assessed the shape, direction, and strength of native responses to increasing invader abundance. We also tested how native responses varied with relative trophic position and for responses …

Effects Of Urbanization On Native Bird Species In Three Southwestern Us Cities, Christopher B. Hensley, Christopher H. Trisos, Paige S. Warren, Jennie Macfarland, Steve Blumenshine, Joshua Reece, Madhusudan Katti

Environmental Conservation Faculty Publication Series

Urbanization presents novel challenges to native species by altering both the biotic and abiotic environment. Studies have attempted to make generalizations about how species with similar traits respond to urbanization, although existing results are idiosyncratic across cities and often fail to account for seasonality. Here, we present a comparative study in three US cities: Fresno, California; Tucson, Arizona; and Phoenix, Arizona. Using presence-absence data to define regional bird species pools and urban assemblages in non-breeding (winter) and breeding (spring) seasons, we tested whether urban avian assemblages were a random subset of regional assemblages on the basis of both traits and …

Visual Head Counts: A Promising Method For Efficient Monitoring Of Diamondback Terrapins, Patricia Levasseur, Sean Sterrett, Chris Sutherland

Environmental Conservation Faculty Publication Series

Determining the population status of the diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin spp.) is challenging due to their ecology and limitations associated with traditional sampling methods. Visual counting of emergent heads offers a promising, efficient, and non-invasive method for generating abundance estimates of terrapin populations across broader spatial scales than has been achieved using capture–recapture, and can be used to quantify determinants of spatial variation in abundance. We conducted repeated visual head count surveys along the shoreline of Wellfleet Bay in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and analyzed the count data using a hierarchical modeling framework designed specifically for repeated count data: the N-mixture model. …

Accounting For Aboveground Carbon Storage In Shrubland And Woodland Ecosystems In The Great Basin, Emily J. Fusco, Benjamin M. Rau, Michael Falkowski, Steven Filippelli, Bethany A. Bradley

Environmental Conservation Faculty Publication Series

Improving the accuracy of carbon accounting in terrestrial ecosystems is critical for understanding carbon fluxes associated with land cover change, with significant implications for global carbon cycling and climate change. Semi‐arid ecosystems account for an estimated 45% of global terrestrial ecosystem area and are in many locations experiencing high degrees of degradation. However, aboveground carbon accounting has largely focused on tropical and forested ecosystems, while drylands have been relatively neglected. Here, we used a combination of field estimates, remotely sensed data, and existing land cover maps to create a spatially explicit estimate of aboveground carbon storage within the Great Basin, …

Math 456 Student Project Reports For Valleybike Operations Optimization, Ezra Small

Student Showcase

In the fall semester of 2019 UMass Amherst students in Professor Annie Raymond's MATH 456 course used ValleyBike share route data and applied mathematic algorithms to develop recommendations to the system operators and participating communities on how to optimize bike balancing operations, maintenance, station dock allocation, station locations, incentive programs, etc.