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Environmental Policy

Theses/Dissertations

2010

Institution
Keyword
Publication

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Perceptions And Evaluation Of An Urban Environment For Pedestrian Friendliness: A Case Study, Elizabeth H. Lee Oct 2010

Perceptions And Evaluation Of An Urban Environment For Pedestrian Friendliness: A Case Study, Elizabeth H. Lee

Master's Theses

Public health is an increasingly important issue addressed from both environmental and public health sectors for the future development of urban environments. From a planning perspective, one possible solution is to increase walkability throughout the cities. Many assessment methods are being developed and administered to evaluate the quality of existing urban environments to promote walkable cities/communities. The results from using these methods provide policymakers and stakeholders with valuable information regarding the existing physical conditions of the environment. Although several US cities started to develop and refocus plans toward pedestrian-oriented policies approaches, results from this particular study determined that the quality …

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Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Greening An Older Modest-Sized Home, Delilah Zoe Leval Oct 2010

Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Greening An Older Modest-Sized Home, Delilah Zoe Leval

Master's Theses

This professional project estimates the upfront costs and utility savings expected from greening an approximately 1,100 square foot home built in the 1950s in the San Francisco Bay Area. Two sets of upgrades (alternative and original) were compared for costs and benefits. The alternative set (which included ceiling insulation and omitted upgrading to dual-pane windows) clearly out performed the original set. The alternative set would be expected to reduce resident utility bills by 28% annually, and to prevent approximately 2,700 lbs of carbon dioxide emissions annually. The water efficiency upgrades were the best performing group of upgrades, as they had …

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Environmental Management Reform Through The Watershed Approach: A Multi-Case Study Of State Agency Implementation, Julie H. Mawhorter Aug 2010

Environmental Management Reform Through The Watershed Approach: A Multi-Case Study Of State Agency Implementation, Julie H. Mawhorter

Doctoral Dissertations

In the past two decades, there has been a growing consensus regarding the inadequacies of the existing environmental policy regime and the need for reform to address complex, cross-jurisdictional sustainability challenges, such as nonpoint source pollution. Reform theory has focused on the need for more integrated, collaborative, adaptive, and results-oriented environmental management, while empirical studies have highlighted the wide implementation gap due to an array of institutional obstacles. Key principles and challenges of these four reform dimensions were synthesized in this study and used to assess implementation of the watershed approach by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and states since …

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Perception Of Ecological Risk To Water Environments And How It Affects Water Consumption And Water Resource Management In Southern Nevada, Tanju Kiriscioglu Jul 2010

Perception Of Ecological Risk To Water Environments And How It Affects Water Consumption And Water Resource Management In Southern Nevada, Tanju Kiriscioglu

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Climate is harsh in southern Nevada where there is (and has been) a drought alert in effect for over a decade now (Kerr, 2007; Southern Nevada Water Authority, 2009). Las Vegas Valley is a major center of population in the region (1.9 million people), receiving only 4.5 inches of average annual precipitation yet in need of securing more water resources in the near future (SNWA, 2009). Water resource management in southern Nevada is a challenge, especially when 90% of the area’s water needs are met by a single source, the Colorado River, the flow rates of which have been in …

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Adaptive Management Of Complex Environmental Problems – Comparison Of National Nuclear Waste Management Policies, Carmel Letourneau May 2010

Adaptive Management Of Complex Environmental Problems – Comparison Of National Nuclear Waste Management Policies, Carmel Letourneau

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Many of today's challenging environmental problems, to the point of manifesting themselves on a scale that has global, political consequences, likely result from long-term evolutionary developmental processes. The degree to which humans can manage the evolution of these problems remains an open question. Faced with such challenges, since the mid 1980s, an increasing number of scholars have developed other forms of management, in particular, adaptive management. Scholars suggest that improving the performance of adaptive management requires that environmental problems be understood as 'complex', open, evolving systems of interacting social and environmental subsystems. To date, narrative has been the primary approach …

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Transforming Space Into Place: Development, Rock Climbing, And Interpretation In Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, 1960-2010, Megan Sharp Weatherly May 2010

Transforming Space Into Place: Development, Rock Climbing, And Interpretation In Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, 1960-2010, Megan Sharp Weatherly

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Though Americans tend to view wilderness as separate from nature, environmental historians have argued that wilderness is a cultural construct more than a quantifiable geographic category. Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area (NCA), a 195,000-acre tract located west of Las Vegas, Nevada, is one such cultural construction. Since 1960, this BLM-managed parcel has served as a local and regional expression of broader, national trends in outdoor recreation, interpretation, and development and thereby forced visitors to engage (often unknowingly) in a cultural dialogue about consumerism, technology, and identity. With information from newspapers, archival collections, oral histories, and government documents, this thesis …

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Balancing Wildlife And Bioenergy Values On Private Forestlands In The Eastern Upper Peninsula Of Michigan, Karl Makinen Jan 2010

Balancing Wildlife And Bioenergy Values On Private Forestlands In The Eastern Upper Peninsula Of Michigan, Karl Makinen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

There is interest in developing a reliable, sustainable, domestic U.S. biofuels industry. A domestic biofuels industry has the potential to provide economic, environmental, and national security benefits on a local, regional, national, and global level. The Mascoma Corporation plans to develop a cellulosic ethanol facility in Michigan’s eastern Upper Peninsula. The primary feedstock of the plant site would be trees sourced within a 150 mile supply radius. In the eastern Upper Peninsula, this radius encompasses Alger, Chippewa, Delta, Luce, Mackinac, and Schoolcraft counties. In these six counties there are 1,320,500 acres of NIPF (non-industrial private forestlands). These acres account for …

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