Environmental Sciences Commons^™

Georeferencing The Macconnell Aerial Photo Collection, Alex Heilmann, Matthew Martin, Camille Barchers, Forrest J. Bowlick, Rebecca M. Seifried

Massachusetts GIS Day

In the 1950s, Professor William P. MacConnell from the University of Massachusetts Forestry Department began working with his students to map the land cover in Massachusetts via the state’s earliest aerial photography program. These individual photographs are now part of the Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries, and although they have been digitized and made available online, they have not yet been georeferenced.

In Spring 2021, our team (Alex and Matthew) began manually georeferencing the photos in ArcMap 10.8 software onto USGS 2019 color orthoimagery of Massachusetts available from MassGIS. Ideal ground control points …

United States Household Carbon Footprints: Quantifying The Relationship Between Household-Level Income Inequality And Greenhouse Gas Emissions (1996-2015), Jared Starr

Doctoral Dissertations

As long as humanity has existed, we have altered our environment to provide goods, services, and (more recently) wealth to people. Over the last several centuries, the scope and pace of this transformation has accelerated with the onset of technological innovation, social and economic reorganization, and an ensuing population boom. Today, humanity’s demands on nature have become the dominant force shaping the critical earth systems upon which all life depends. From local land-use change to the global climate many of these anthropogenic pressures pose an existential threat to nature and the dependent social systems that rely on them. Yet, extreme …

Assessing The Impacts To Society Associated With The Use Of Alternative Ammunition For Hunting On National Wildlife Refuges, Christopher Cahill

Masters Theses

Attempts to eliminate lead ammunition use for hunting through regulatory approaches can be controversial and contentious, despite extensive scientific evidence of the detrimental effect of lead on wildlife species. In the United States, voluntary approaches to non-lead use that have used outreach and education in place of regulatory approaches have achieved sustained behavioral change in hunter ammunition choice. However, voluntary approaches to alternative ammunition use can be confronted with both practical and social barriers. In collaboration with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey Cooperative Research Units Program, this study assessed the practical and social barriers associated with …

Towards Equity In Energy Efficiency Analyses, John Wamburu, Emma Grazier, David Irwin, Christine Crago, Prashant Shenoy

Publications

The electric grid has begun a profound transition from primarily using carbon-intensive energy to instead using carbon-free renewable energy. In parallel, smart meters and other sensors are now providing us unparalleled visibility into the energy-efficiency of building and grid operations. Researchers are actively using building and grid energy data from these sensors to develop analytics techniques, e.g., using machine learning, that can improve energy-efficiency and facilitate the energy transition. Unfortunately, much of this research ignores the impact of these analytics on equity. That is, while current data analytics techniques may accurately identify energy-inefficiencies, they generally do not contextualize the underlying …

Diversity, Globalization, And Sustainability: Introduction To Human Geography, Toby Applegate

Sustainability Education Resources

Diversity, Globalization, and Sustainability is a wide-ranging introduction to the ways people shape the world they live in. We will study the themes and concepts of human geography through the current issues and large questions that guide them. Lectures and reading will focus on the geographic aspects of cultural diversity, population issues, states vs. nations, the global economy, development, urbanization and the human transformation of the earth. We will cover major subdivisions of human geography including cultural geography, population geography, economic geography, social geography, political geography and environmental geography.

Environmental Decision-Making, 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 …

Fy 2021 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.

Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactors As A Treatment For Wastewater And Biogas Production At University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Marley Norton, Brady Bell, Ariel Fine

Student Showcase

Achieving carbon net neutrality at UMass by the year 2032 would require an unprecedented scale of renovation. However, we stand before an opportunity to set a nationwide standard in college campus sustainability. The usage of water also requires energy, as both are inextricable commodities, high in demand and often non-renewable. The central heating plant (CHP) distributes heat across the 1,400+ acre campus and consumes copious amounts of natural gas. A viable solution to relieving the dominant reliance on non-renewable energy without leaving the CHP as a stranded asset revolves around the implementation of a hybrid low temperature hot water system …