Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Mapping For Accountability: Decolonizing Land Acknowledgment Initiatives, Salma Monani, Sarah E. Gilsoul

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

What does it mean to map Indigenous presence onto lands that have been appropriated by settler colonial nation states? This chapter examines the challenges and potentials of re-inscribing Indigenous land relations through a digital mapping project, Indigenous Pennsylvania: Past, Present and Future. Situating itself within the growing scholarship of Indigenous cartographies, the chapter presents Indigenous Pennsylvania as an example of d-ecomedia, a shorthand we offer for ecomedia projects that foreground decolonial methodologies. Such methodologies prompt us to attend to a storied sense of Indigenous place-based relations through attention to Indigenous spatial and temporal modes of mediation.

Closing The Concern-Action Gap Through Relational Climate Conversations: Insights From Us Climate Activists, Julia Coombs Fine

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Several studies have found that relational climate conversations can be an effective method of increasing conversational participants’ concern about the climate crisis and encouraging them to take collective action. However, little work has yet examined how such conversations are practiced by climate activists, a group with expertise in relational organizing. Drawing on surveys and semi-structured interviews with climate activists across the USA, this analysis finds that activists frequently have climate conversations with friends and family, most of whom are politically progressive and somewhat to very concerned about the climate crisis. These findings might seem to suggest that climate activists only …

Resistance To Petro-Hegemony: A Three Terrains Of Power Analysis Of The Line 3 Tar Sands Pipeline In Minnesota, Melissa Burrell, Corrie Grosse, Brigid Mark

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

In northern Minnesota, the Line 3 tar sands pipeline crosses Indigenous treaty territory, the Mississippi River, and wild rice lakes. Despite the severity of climate crisis and widespread public opposition, Canadian pipeline company Enbridge succeeded in securing permits for, constructing, and ultimately running oil in the pipeline in fall 2021. How was this possible and how did the climate justice movement try to resist? Drawing on participant observation and interviews in the Stop Line 3 movement, this article employs LeQuesne's (2019) concepts of petro-hegemony and carbon rebellion to explain why Line 3 was approved and to assess water protectors' resistance. …

Language And Social Justice In Us Climate Movements: Barriers And Ways Forward, Julia Coombs Fine

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Climate movements increasingly conceptualize the climate crisis as an issue of social injustice, both in terms of its root causes and its present and future effects. Climate justice calls for participatory decision-making within climate movements, which, as communication scholars have pointed out, necessitates inclusive and accessible communicative practices. Within sociocultural linguistics, a growing body of research has explored sociolinguistic justice, or marginalized groups' struggle for self-determined language use. This analysis interweaves these two research areas, applying the theory of sociolinguistic justice to climate communication in organizing contexts. Drawing on 67 semi-structured interviews and 112 online surveys with climate activists from …

A Colonized Cop: Indigenous Exclusion And Youth Climate Justice Activism At The United Nations Climate Change Negotiations, Corrie Grosse, Brigid Mark

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Youth activists around the world are demanding urgent climate action from elected leaders. The annual United Nations climate change negotiations, known as COPs, are key sites of global organizing and hope for a comprehensive approach to climate policy. Drawing on participant observation and in-depth interviews at COP25 in 2019, this research examines youth climate activists’ priorities, frustrations and hopes for creating just climate policy. Youth are disillusioned with the COP process and highlight a variety of ways through which the COP perpetuates colonial power structures that marginalize Indigenous peoples and others fighting for justice. This is intersectional exclusion - the …

Intersections Of Climate Justice, Brigid Mark, Alejandra Gallardo, Jack Pieper, Danielle Voss, Corrie Grosse, Leonardo Cumplido, Elena Lozano

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

This packet covers current information on climate justice issues in Minnesota including: Latinx immigration, public health, Black Lives Matter, native rights, LGBTQIA+ community, Somali livelihoods, and just transition.

We hope to help realize how we are connected to the climate crisis, identify action items for individuals, and build an understanding of how the crisis may affect our neighbors with different experiences. We believe that exchanging knowledge and raising awareness of local issues are essential to build a lasting and welcoming movement to secure healthy and happy livelihoods for all.

Climate Change Perceptions, Data, And Adaptation In The Garhwal Himalayas Of India, Rutherford V. Platt, Monica V. Ogra, Natalie A. Kisak, Upma Manral, Ruchi Badola

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Himalayan communities that depend on rain-fed agriculture are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change. In this study, we compare local perceptions of climate change from a household survey (n = 251) to climate data obtained from the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS 2.1) and MODIS Terra Snow Cover data product datasets. The study is situated in and around the Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, which is located within the Garhwal Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. We found that a large majority of respondents perceive that rainfall is increasing and that snowfall is decreasing, while a smaller majority perceives an …

Climate Justice Movement Building: Values And Cultures Of Creation In Santa Barbara, California, Corrie Grosse

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

This article analyzes how young people in the climate justice movement cultivate a prefigurative culture centered on justice as a response to the threat of climate change. Employing grounded theory and drawing on data from in-depth interviews with 29 youth activists and participant observation in Santa Barbara County, California, the birthplace of both the environmental movement and offshore oil drilling, I argue that four key values—relationships, accessibility, intersectionality, and community—enable movement building, a stated goal of the climate justice movement. These values emerge from interviewees’ words and practices. Drawing on John Foran’s (2014) notion of political cultures of creation, I …

Spatial Analysis Of Cirques From Three Regions Of Iceland: Implications For Cirque Formation And Palaeoclimate, Heather A. Ipsen, Sarah M. Principato, Rachael E. Grube, Jessica F. Lee

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

This study is a quantitative analysis of cirques in three regions of Iceland: Tröllaskagi, the East Fjords and Vestfirðir. Using Google Earth and the National Land Survey of Iceland Map Viewer, we identified 347 new cirques on Tröllaskagi and the East Fjords region, and combined these data with 100 cirques previously identified on Vestfirðir. We used ArcGIS to measure length, width, aspect, latitude and distance to coastline of each cirque. Palaeo‐equilibrium‐line altitudes (palaeo‐ELAs) of palaeo‐cirque glaciers were calculated using the altitude‐ratio method, cirque‐floor method and minimum‐point method. The mean palaeo‐ELA values in Tröllaskagi, the East Fjords and Vestfirðir are 788, …

This Will Change Everything: Teaching The Climate Crisis, John Foran, Summer Gray, Corrie Grosse, Theo Lequesne

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

We argue that U.S. sociologists have been woefully remiss in incorporating the climate crisis into our research agendas and even more, into our teaching. After laying out the gravity of the situation we issue a call for sociologists to consider whether they wish to continue this striking denial of responsibility to our students and to knowledge production. We then present four ways that we have infused our understanding of climate change, climate crisis, and climate justice into courses on global issues, social movements, inequality, and much more. We believe that “climate justice” – the key concept that drives our concern …

Megaloads And Mobilization: The Rural People Of Idaho Stand Against Big Oil, Corrie Grosse

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

From 2011 to 2014 fossil fuel corporations trucked tar sands processing machinery along rural Idaho highways. The machinery was bound for the world's largest deposits of tar or oil sands, a heavy crude oil substance called bitumen, located in the western Canadian province of Alberta. These loads of machinery, what became known as megaloads, encountered much resistance. Throughout Idaho and the surrounding region, a network organized opposition. Neighbors, grassroots organizations, nonprofits, and the Nez Perce and other tribes all collaborated. They held information sessions, protested, waged legal battles, monitored the loads, and blockaded highways. What oil companies hoped would be …

"Not Yet The End Of The World": Political Cultures Of Opposition And Creation In The Global Youth Climate Justice Movement, John Foran, Summer Gray, Corrie Grosse

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with two dozen young climate justice activists at the U.N. climate summit COP19 in Warsaw, Poland, in November 2013, this research uses the concepts of “political cultures of opposition and of creation” to analyze the political orientations, discourse, and actions of global climate justice activists attempting to impact the negotiation of a universal climate treaty. Capturing relationships among experience, emotions, ideology, idioms, and organization, the concepts of political cultures of opposition and of creation shed light on the ability of these actors to fashion social movements of their own making. Through an analysis …

Spatial Models To Account For Variation In Observer Effort In Bird Atlases, Andrew M. Wilson, Daniel W. Brauning, Caitlin Carey, Robert S. Mulvihill

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

To assess the importance of variation in observer effort between and within bird atlas projects and demonstrate the use of relatively simple conditional autoregressive (CAR) models for analyzing grid-based atlas data with varying effort. Pennsylvania and West Virginia, United States of America. We used varying proportions of randomly selected training data to assess whether variations in observer effort can be accounted for using CAR models and whether such models would still be useful for atlases with incomplete data. We then evaluated whether the application of these models influenced our assessment of distribution change between two atlas projects separated by twenty …

Book Review: Peak Oil: Apocalyptic Environmentalism And Libertarian Political Culture, Matthew Schneider-Mayerson, The University Of Chicago Press, Chicago And London (2015), Corrie Grosse

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Geographic Variation Of Cirques On Iceland: Factors Influencing Cirque Morphology, Heather A. Ipsen, Rachael E. Grube, Jessica F. Lee, Sarah M. Principato

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Cirques are one of the most common glacial landforms in alpine settings. They also provide important paleoclimate information (e.g. Meierding 1984; Evans 2006). The purpose of this study is to fill in gaps in the climate record of Iceland by conducting a quantitative analysis of cirques in three regions in Iceland: Tröllaskagi, the East Fjords, and Vestfirðir. Iceland, located in the center of the North Atlantic Ocean, contains many small glaciers, in addition to large ice caps. The glaciers on Iceland are particularly sensitive to variations in oceanic and atmospheric circulation (Andresen et al. 2005; Geirsdóttir et al., 2009; Ólafsdóttir …

New Constraints On The Timing And Pattern Of Deglaciation In The Húnaflói Bay Region Of Northwest Iceland Using Cosmogenic 36ca Dating And Geomorphic Mapping, Amanda N. Houts, Joseph M. Licciardi, Sarah M. Principato, Susan H. Zimmerman, Robert C. Finkel

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Understanding the evolution and timing of changes in ice sheet geometry and extent in Iceland during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and subsequent deglaciation continues to stimulate much active research. Though many previous studies have advanced our knowledge of Icelandic ice sheet history preserved in marine and terrestrial settings (e.g., Andrews et al., 2000; Norðdahl et al., 2008), the timing of ice margin retreat remains largely unknown in several key regions. Recently published 36Cl surface exposure ages of bedrock surfaces and moraines in the West Fjords (Brynjólfsson et al., 2015) contribute important progress in establishing more precise age control of …

How The Federal Government Went From Realtor To Landlord In The American West, Randall K. Wilson

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Disputes over public land rights have a long history in the United States. But the past 18 months have seen a growing number of confrontations over Western federal lands, culminating in the current standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. [excerpt]

Seismic Surveys And Marine Turtles: An Underestimated Global Threat?, Sarah E. Nelms, Wendy Dow Piniak, Caroline R. Weir, Brendan J. Godley

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Seismic surveys are widely used in marine geophysical oil and gas exploration, employing airguns to produce sound-waves capable of penetrating the sea floor. In recent years, concerns have been raised over the biological impacts of this activity, particularly for marine mammals. While exploration occurs in the waters of at least fifty countries where marine turtles are present, the degree of threat posed by seismic surveys is almost entirely unknown. To investigate this issue, a mixed-methods approach involving a systematic review, policy comparison and stakeholder analysis was employed and recommendations for future research were identified. This study found that turtles have …

Eco-Nostalgia In Popular Turkish Cinema, Ekin Gündüz Özdemirci, Salma Monani

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Book Summary: Ecomedia: Key Issues is a comprehensive textbook introducing the burgeoning field of ecomedia studies to provide an overview of the interface between environmental issues and the media globally. Linking the world of media production, distribution, and consumption to environmental understandings, the book addresses ecological meanings encoded in media texts, the environmental impacts of media production, and the relationships between media and cultural perceptions of the environment. [From the publisher]

Gender And Climate Change In The Indian Himalayas: Global Threats, Local Vulnerabilities, And Livelihood Diversification At The Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, Monica V. Ogra, Ruchi Badola

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Global climate change has numerous implications for members of mountain communities who feel the impacts in both physical and social dimensions. In the western Himalayas of India, a majority of residents maintain a livelihood strategy that includes a combination of subsistence or small-scale agriculture, livestock rearing, seasonal or long-term migration, and localized natural resource extraction. While warming temperatures, irregular patterns of precipitation and snowmelt, and changing biological systems present challenges to the viability of these traditional livelihood portfolios in general, we find that climate change is also undermining local communities’ livelihood assets in gender-specific ways. In this paper, we present …

An Interview With Julian Agyeman: Just Sustainability And Ecopedagogy, Salma Monani

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

This interview with Julian Agyeman, a key originator of the concept of just sustainability, engages Agyeman in discussion of how just sustainability evolved, and how its theoretical and practical dimensions relate to the principles of ecopedagogy.

Human–Wildlife Conflict And Gender In Protected Area Borderlands: A Case Study Of Costs, Perceptions, And Vulnerabilities From Uttarakhand (Uttaranchal), India, Monica V. Ogra

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Human–wildlife conflict (HWC) is a growing problem for communities located at the borders of protected areas. Such conflicts commonly take place as crop-raiding events and as attack by wild animals, among other forms. This paper uses a feminist political ecology approach to examine these two problems in an agricultural village located at the border of Rajaji National Park in Uttarakhand (formerly Uttaranchal), India. Specifically, it investigates the following three questions: What are the “visible” and “hidden” costs of such conflict with wildlife? To what extent are these costs differentially borne by men and women? How do villagers perceive any such …

Collaborative Learning Guide For Ecosystem Management, Christine Baumann Feurt

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Community-based ecosystem management is an approach to getting things done. It manifests as actions that collectively maintain or restore nature’s ability to provide clean water, clean air and support for living systems. Sustaining the earth’s natural capital requires integration within the system of social capital. Through collaboration, people can accomplish the first step toward sustainability – the development of a collective vision of desired future outcomes for the places where they live, work and play. The individual perspectives that shape these visions take many forms. They are present in town Comprehensive and Open Space plans, in mission statements for organizations …