Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Heat Is On! Perspectives And Practices Regarding Extreme Heat Risk, Emily D. Esplin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Remembering negative experiences with extreme heat may promote future protective actions and provide insight to improve heat risk awareness and communication practices. This two-part thesis found 1) that experiencing heat-related health symptoms predicted what Americans would do to protect themselves and others during subsequent heat waves; and 2) that Utah professionals regard heat-related experience as an important factor in how they responded to extreme heat events.

In the first study, a US national survey showed that personal experience with heat-related health symptoms was related to the tendency to say that one engaged in different protective behaviors, while other factors like …

Efficient Sampling For Ecosystem Service Supply Assessment At A Landscape Scale, Franfisco Javier Ancin-Murguzer, Lorena Muñoz, Christopher Monz, Per Fauchald, Vera Helene Hausner

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Decision makers and stakeholders need high-quality data to manage ecosystem services (ES) efficiently. Landscape-level data on ES that are of sufficient quality to identify spatial tradeoffs, co-occurrence and hotspots of ES are costly to collect, and it is therefore important to increase the efficiency of sampling of primary data. We demonstrate how ES could be assessed more efficiently through image-based point intercept method and determine the tradeoff between the number of sample points (pins) used per image and the robustness of the measurements. We performed a permutation study to assess the reliability implications of reducing the number of pins per …

Humans As Sensors: The Influence Of Extreme Heat Vulnerability Factors On Risk Perceptions Across The Contiguous United States, Forrest Scott Schoessow

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Extreme heat events are the deadliest natural hazard in the United States and will continue to get worse in the coming years due to the effects of climate change. As a result, more people will experience deadly heat conditions. This highlights the need for decision-makers to develop better strategies for preventing future losses. How badly individuals are affected by extreme heat depends on many circumstances, such as how high temperatures actually are, weather conditions, and location. For example, a dry 90 °F day in Phoenix is probably more tolerable than a humid 90 °F day in New Orleans for most …

Stories Behind The Berlin Wall: Lesson Modules, Nicholas Redmon

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

I have grappled with my primary collection just as scholars and popular authors have with bringing these stories together with political histories. My goal is to create a digital map and analysis on specific themes like education and guard duty from the lives lived behind the Wall and their discourse with the government. I would like to explore how the divide impacted lives in 1961, created a GDR Society, and produced a division still felt in Germany today. The target audience of this project is U.S. students in high school and higher education. Students will be able to access timely …

Assessing Variation In Air Quality Perception: A Case Study In Utah, Karen Jayne Mendenhall

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In recent years, Utah has experienced poor air quality due to pollution-trapping winter inversions and summer ozone pollution. The resulting impacts of poor air quality include health issues, reduced visibility, economic impacts and ecological impacts. Utah’s topography and exploding urban population are factors which increase human exposure to these adverse impacts of air pollution. It is important for State and local governments to understand how people perceive air quality so that clean air campaigns target those who are most likely to foster pro-environmental behaviors. An analysis was conducted using data from a state-wide survey conducted in July 2017. The survey …

Assessment Of Potential Changes In Crop Yields In The Central United States Under Climate Change Regimes, Neil Matthews-Pennanen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Climate change is one of the great challenges facing agriculture in the 21^st century. The goal of this study was to produce projections of crop yields for the central United States in the 2030s, 2060s, and 2090s based on the relationship between weather and yield from historical crop yields from 1980 to 2010. These projections were made across 16 states in the US, from Louisiana in the south to Minnesota in the north. They include projections for maize, soybeans, cotton, spring wheat, and winter wheat.

Simulated weather variables based on three climate scenarios were used to project future crop …