Sustainability Commons^™

Soil Media Co2 And N2O Fluxes Dynamics From Sand-Based Roadside Bioretention Systems, Paliza Shrestha, Stephanie E. Hurley, E. Carol Adair

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Green stormwater infrastructure such as bioretention is commonly implemented in urban areas for stormwater quality improvements. Although bioretention systems' soil media and vegetation have the potential to increase carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) storage for climate change mitigation, this storage potential has not been rigorously studied, and any analysis of it must consider the question of whether bioretention emits greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. We monitored eight roadside bioretention cells for CO2-C and N2O-N fluxes during two growing seasons (May through October) in Vermont, USA. C and N stocks in the soil media layers, microbes, and aboveground vegetation were also …

Spatial Analysis Of Ecosystem Service Relationships To Improve Targeting Of Payments For Hydrological Services, Pierre Mokondoko, Robert H. Manson, Taylor H. Ricketts, Daniel Geissert

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Payment for hydrological services (PHS) are popular tools for conserving ecosystems and their water-related services. However, improving the spatial targeting and impacts of PHS, as well as their ability to foster synergies with other ecosystem services (ES), remain challenging. We aimed at using spatial analyses to evaluate the targeting performance of Mexico's National PHS program in central Veracruz. We quantified the effectiveness of areas targeted for PHS in actually covering areas of high HS provision and social priority during 2003-2013. First, we quantified provisioning and spatial distributions of two target (water yield and soil retention), and one non-target ES (carbon …

A Cross-Country Analysis Of Climate Shocks And Smallholder Food Insecurity, Meredith T. Niles, Jonathan D. Salerno

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Future climate changes will affect smallholder farmers in the developing world, posing threats to household food security. Nevertheless, there remains limited comparable evidence across multiple countries and regions regarding the global extent of climate shocks affecting smallholder food security. We examine data from 5,299 household surveys across 15 countries in Latin America, Africa and South Asia to assess the extent of climate shocks and their association with food insecurity, as well as what strategies may help buffer against climate shocks. We find that 71% of households reported experiencing a climate shock in the previous five years. Fifty-four percent reported experiencing …

The Impact Of Salinity On Mycorrhizal Colonization Of A Rare Legume, Galactia Smallii, In South Florida Pine Rocklands, Klara Scharnagl, Vanessa Sanchez, Eric Von Wettberg

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Objectives: The success of restoration plantings depends on the capacity of transplanted individuals or seeds to establish and reproduce. It is increasingly recognized that restoration success depends quite heavily upon biotic interactions and belowground processes. Under stressful abiotic conditions, such as soils salinized by storm surge and sea level rise, symbiotic interactions with soil microbes such as mycorrhizae may be critically important. In this study, we investigate the impact of salinity on percent colonization of roots by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, in addition to the impacts of this colonization on plant fitness under saline conditions. Fifty Galactia smallii plants from an …

The Value Of Green Certification On Single-Family Houses In The Chicagoland Area, Raymond Bolton

Honors Projects

In the United States, residential buildings alone account for 33% of energy consumption. Rising concerns about environmental impacts due to human consumption, as well as health concerns related to pollution have caused a higher demand for environmentally conscious houses. Homebuilders have responded by providing green certifications for houses, attesting to a building’s efficiency in various aspects, such as site design and energy and water consumption. Using Multiple Listing Services real estate data on zero- to five-year-old houses sold between 2010 and 2017 in the Chicagoland area, this study examines whether there is a price premium associated with qualifying for green …

Energy And Complexity, Zofia Lukszo, Ettore Bompard, Paul Hines, Liz Varga

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Climate-Smart Village Approach: Framework Of An Integrative Strategy For Scaling Up Adaptation Options In Agriculture, Pramod K. Aggarwal, Andy Jarvis, Bruce M. Campbell, Robert B. Zougmoré, Arun Khatri-Chhetri, Sonja J. Vermeulen, Ana Maria Loboguerrero, Leocadio S. Sebastian, James Kinyangi, Osana Bonilla-Findji, Maren Radeny, John Recha, Deissy Martinez-Baron, Julian Ramirez-Villegas, Sophia Huyer, Philip Thornton, Eva Wollenberg, James Hansen, Patricia Alvarez-Toro, Andrés Aguilar-Ariza, David Arango-Londoño, Victor Patiño-Bravo, Ovidio Rivera, Mathieu Ouedraogo, Bui Tan Yen

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Increasing weather risks threaten agricultural production systems and food security across the world. Maintaining agricultural growth while minimizing climate shocks is crucial to building a resilient food production system and meeting developmental goals in vulnerable countries. Experts have proposed several technological, institutional, and policy interventions to help farmers adapt to current and future weather variability and to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper presents the climate-smart village (CSV) approach as a means of performing agricultural research for development that robustly tests technological and institutional options for dealing with climatic variability and climate change in agriculture using participatory methods. It …

Native Gardens In Southern California, Center For Urban Resilience

Module 10: Garden Ecology

No abstract provided.

University Of North Florida Environmental Center Annual Report 2018, Maria Mark, James W. Taylor, John Aloszka

Annual Reports

2018 Annual Report of the Environmental Center at the University of North Florida

Representing Wilderness In The Shaping Of America's National Parks: Aesthetics, Boundaries, And Cultures In The Works Of James Fenimore Cooper, John Muir, And Their Artistic Contemporaries, Alana Jajko

Master’s Theses

This project studies the works of James Fenimore Cooper, John Muir, and their artistic contemporaries in relation to the shaping of America’s national parks and what it means for the parks and their attending wilderness to be symbolic of the nation. It seeks to reveal the national parks as artistic representations of a constructed wilderness, while also emphasizing the physical experience of the natural world as a means of supplementing our subjective views. Through the lenses of aesthetics, boundaries, and cultures, I narrow my study to focus on three distinct perspectives by which we can understand the national parks and …

Place-Making And Sustainability, Bucknell Center For Sustainability And The Environment

Sponsored Events -- Materials

Promotional flyer advertising the Place-making and Sustainability Speaker Series presented by the Bucknell Center for Sustainability and the Environment under the leadership of Dr. Shaunna Barnhart. The series was held during the academic year 2017-2018 and featured faculty responses to the following prompts:

• How does your work relate to the concept of place-making?
• What are potential benefits and/or shortcomings you see for place-making in sustainability?
• What aspects of your work can we apply to a place-making approach to sustainability at Bucknell and in our local region?

Summaries of the discussions are available in the event Place-making and Sustainability Series.

Climate Change, Cattle, And The Challenge Of Sustainability In A Telecoupled System In Africa, Tara S. Easter, Alexander K. Killion, Neil H. Carter

Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior

Information, energy, and materials are flowing over greater distances than in the past, changing the structure and feedbacks within and across coupled human and natural systems worldwide. The telecoupling framework was recently developed to understand the feedbacks and multidirectional flows characterizing social and environmental interactions between distant systems. We extend the application of the telecoupling framework to illustrate how flows in beef affect and are affected by social-ecological processes occurring between distant systems in Africa, and how those dynamics will likely change over the next few decades because of climate-induced shifts in a major bovine disease, trypanosomosis. The disease is …

President Trump Tweets Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un On Nuclear Weapons: A Comparison With Climate Change, David E. Allen, Michael Mcaleer

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

A set of 125 tweets about North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un by President Trump from 2013 to 2018 are analysed by means of the data mining technique, sentiment analysis. The intention is to explore the contents and sentiments of the messages contained, the degree to which they differ, and their implications about President Trump's understanding and approach to international diplomacy. The results suggest a predominantly positive emotion in relation to tweets about North Korea, despite the use of questionable nicknames such as "Little Rocket Man". A comparison is made between the tweets on North Korea and climate change, madefrom …

Understanding The Food Water Nexus: Characterizing The Impact Of Climatological Anomalies On Agrosystems, Patrick M. Wurster Jr.

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Climate variability at global and regional scales is escalating with increased atmospheric carbon and is expected to magnify the intensity and duration of meteorological extremes, especially droughts. From the many environmental stresses that diminish crop production (e.g., soil salinity, frost, soil erosion) drought is one of the most prevalent. This study focuses on the sensitivity of three key crops produced in the northwestern United States to climatological anomalies, while controlling for attribution using anomalies in price. The study differs from similar studies in that we focus on variability in production which captures both yield (tonnes/ha) and cropping area (ha), as …

Evaluating Wildlife Vulnerability To Mercury Pollution From Artisanal And Small-Scale Gold Mining In Madre De Dios, Peru, K. E. Markham, Florencia Sangermano

Geography

Illegal, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) often occurs in remote highly biodiverse areas, such as the Madre de Dios region of Peru. Mercury used in gold mining bioaccumulates in the environment and poses developmental, hormonal, and neurological threats to wildlife. The impact of ASGM on biodiversity remains largely unknown. We used geographic information science to create a spatial model of pollution risk from mining sites, in order to predict locations and species assemblages at risk. Multicriteria evaluation was used to determine how flow accumulation, distance from mining areas, total suspended sediment load, and soil porosity influenced the vulnerability of …

The Impact Of Genetic Changes During Crop Domestication On Healthy Food Development, Petr Smýkal, Matthew N. Nelson, Jens D. Berger, Eric J.B. Von Wettberg

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Genetic Changes During Crop Domestication, Petr Smýkal, Matthew N. Nelson, Jens D. Berger, Eric J.B. Von Wettberg

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Humans have domesticated hundreds of plant and animal species as sources of food, fiber, forage, and tools over the past 12,000 years, with manifold effects on both human society and the genetic structure of the domesticated species. The outcomes of crop domestication were shaped by selection driven by human preferences, cultivation practices, and agricultural environments, as well as other population genetic processes flowing from the ensuing reduction in effective population size. It is obvious that any selection imposes a reduction of diversity, favoring preferred genotypes, such as nonshattering seeds or increased palatability. Furthermore, agricultural practices greatly reduced effective population sizes …

Stormwater Capture In The Built Watershed: Fostering Public Awareness Of Water Conservation Through A Parcel-Level Approach To Stormwater Management, Benjamin Rigby

Pitzer Senior Theses

As California contends with climate change and more extreme cycles of drought and deluge, water management agencies and conservation groups are looking towards solutions to the decreasing reliability of imported water supplies. Stormwater has historically been perceived as a threat to development but when captured properly, it presents a resource that can augment local water supplies. Solutions to water supply issues in California have traditionally employed technical and centrally controlled methods for importing water, but there is a growing understanding that parcel-level capture through vegetated swales presents an opportunity for reducing the impact that development has on California’s hydrology. Vegetated …

Sustainability-Efficiency Paradox: The Efficacy Of State Energy Plans In Building A More Sustainable Energy Future, Austin Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

State energy plans are created at the request of a sitting governor or State Legislature in order to provide guidance set goals for the state’s energy sector. These plans will be critical indicators of energy trends such as the future market share of coal, natural gas, and renewables. If the future of energy in the United States is to be remotely sustainable, low-carbon policies must headline state plans. The strength of a state’s energy plan in terms of sustainability is directly related to that state’s willingness to prioritize and commit to incorporating energy sources that produce negligible carbon emissions. Questions …

Sustainability At Sit: A Look At The Past, A Plan For The Future, Taliesin Haugh

Capstone Collection

Climate change threatens our world and way of life. Intelligent development and investment could mitigate the worst threats of climate change, while simultaneously providing continuous growth for the global economy. The New Climate Economy proposes efforts to combat this ecological collapse that would result in $30 trillion in new annual economic growth by 2030. Stockholm Resilience Center agrees, giving a framework based on global ecological systems that calls for five critical tasks that can bring growth and stability: Renewable energy

Sustainable local food production

New development models, based on what has worked globally

Reduction of wealth inequity

Education, health, and …

Low Income Housing Energy Efficiency Improvement Program For The Yurok Tribe Of Northern California, Keivan Branson

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Housing on the Yurok reservation in California is a major concern for the local Tribal Government. This report details a study of the energy situation for housing of the Yurok Tribe to provide a framework for implementing housing energy efficiency to benefit low-income members of the Tribal community residing in substandard housing. The report briefly details the history of the reservation as it pertains to the current housing situation, as well as the authors personal context of living for 16 years in the reservation town of Klamath, CA. The analysis draws on information obtained from mixed methods, including information collected …

Managing Supply Chain Disruptions In Nigerian Seaport Companies, Henry Oguche

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

In Nigeria, seaport companies have lost significant revenue since 2000 because of supply chain disruptions. If not mitigated, supply chain disruptions at Nigerian seaports will significantly affect organizational output and profitability. The purpose of this research was to explore strategies some seaport business leaders use to mitigate supply chain disruptions in Lagos, Nigeria. Supply chain management theory was the conceptual framework for this single case study. Data were collected using semistructured interviews with 4 participants from a Nigerian seaport company tbat adopted successful strategies to mitigate supply chain disruptions and review of company documents for methodological triangulation. Using thematic analysis, …

Consumer Engagement With Efficient And Renewable Energy Technology: Case Studies On Smart Meter Utilization And Support For A Community Anaerobic Biodigester System In Vermont, Samantha Whitney Lewandowski

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Residential electricity consumption in the United States has many adverse impacts, such as greenhouse gas emissions, dependence on fossil fuels, and costs. Efficient and renewable energy technologies have the potential to help mitigate some of these impacts, but appear to be under-utilized in the United States. One major barrier to expanding the deployment of these kinds of technologies and maximizing the benefits they can provide is a lack of consumer engagement. The overall purpose of this thesis is to better understand the extent to which efficient and renewable energy technologies are being engaged with and what factors may influence such …