Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Perception Of Natural Resource Management In Nebraska: Efforts For Cross-Boundary Collaborative Management, Daniel Morales

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Nebraska’s agricultural landscapes are rapidly changing, affecting natural resources and their successful management. I utilized two surveys and scenario planning (Chapters 1: statewide survey, 2: local survey, and 3: scenario-planning workshop) to investigate attitudes and perceptions of natural resource management and cross-boundary collaboration. My first objective focused on determining what prevents Nebraskans from addressing natural resources challenges, considering demographics amongst generations and the type of areas they live in (rural versus urban). The second objective focused on whether landowners engaged with their community in managing natural resources. The third objective was to develop alternative future scenarios for the Denton Hills …

A Climate Resilience Research Renewal Agenda: Learning Lessons From The Covid-19 Pandemic For Urban Climate Resilience, Mark Pelling, Winston T. L. Chow, Eric Chu, Richard Dawson, David Dodman, Arabella Fraser, Bronwyn Hayward, Luna Khirfan, Timon Mcphearson, Anjal Prakash, Gina Ziervogel

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Learning lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic opens an opportunity for enhanced research and action on inclusive urban resilience to climate change. Lessons and their implications are used to describe a climate resilience research renewal agenda. Three key lessons are identified. The first lesson is generic, that climate change risk coexists and interacts with other risks through overlapping social processes, conditions and decision-making contexts. Two further lessons are urban specific: that networks of connectivity bring risk as well as resilience and that overcrowding is a key indicator of the multiple determinants of vulnerability to both COVID-19 and climate change impacts. From …

Disturbance Reduces Fungal White-Rot Litter Mat Cover In A Wet Subtropical Forest, D. Jean Lodge, Ashley E. Van Beusekom, Grizelle González, Mareli Sánchez-Julia, Sarah Stankavich

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Fungi that bind leaf litter into mats and produce white-rot via degradation of lignin and other aromatic compounds influence forest nutrient cycling and soil fertility. Extent of white-rot litter mats formed by basidiomycete fungi in Puerto Rico decreased in response to disturbances—a simulated hurricane treatment executed by canopy trimming and debris addition in 2014, a drought in 2015, a treefall, and two hurricanes 10 days apart in September 2017. Percent fungal litter mat cover ranged from 0.4% after Hurricanes Irma and Maria to a high of 53% in forest with undisturbed canopy prior to the 2017 hurricanes, with means mostly …

Connecting Communities To Coastal Resilience: Enhancing Sustainability Through Public Participation In Salt Marsh Management And Restoration In Suffolk County, Ny, Jennifer L. Mcgivern

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Coastal resiliency is becoming significantly more critical to the livelihood of coastal communities as the frequency and intensity of storm events increases and is exacerbated by rising sea levels due to climate change. In October 2012 Superstorm Sandy impacted the New York-New Jersey area costing over $70 billion in storm damages and 147 lives lost, as storm surges surpassed record highs for the region. Protruding more than 100 miles into the Atlantic Ocean with over 1,000 miles of shoreline, Long Island is particularly vulnerable to the increasingly ferocious and numerous storms as well as the rising sea levels that climate …

Learning From The Seed: Illuminating Black Girlhood In Sustainable Living Paradigms, Toni Powell Powell Young

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The contemporary image of sustainable living presents a culturally narrow view of its participants and the manner of engaging in sustainable living paradigms. Through crystallization (Ellingson, 2009) I present a mixed methods approach that emphasizes participant observation, visual, mediated, and discursive analyses, as well as demonstrates the efficacy of Culture Centered Black Feminist Auto/Ethnography. This project seeks to highlight and place within historical context, the ways in which African American girls, who are largely left out of the prevailing image of sustainability, perform and articulate sustainability for themselves, in their homes, and throughout their home communities.

In their everyday lives, …

Intangible Cultural Heritage: A Benefit To Climate-Displaced And Host Communities, Gül Aktürk, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Climate change is borderless, and its impacts are not shared equally by all communities. It causes an imbalance between people by creating a more desirable living environment for some societies while erasing settlements and shelters of some others. Due to floods, sea level rise, destructive storms, drought, and slow-onset factors such as salinization of water and soil, people lose their lands, homes, and natural resources. Catastrophic events force people to move voluntarily or involuntarily. The relocation of communities is a debatable climate adaptation measure which requires utmost care with human rights, ethics, and psychological well-being of individuals upon the issues …

Gather, Educate, Prepare: Libraries As Champions To Build Informed And Climate-Resilient Communities, Adrian K. Ho, René Tanner, Monika Antonelli

Library Presentations

The past few years have witnessed increasing numbers of discussions and programs about the impacts of climate change, addressing topics from the devastating wildfires in California, relentless heat waves in Europe, to the accelerating thaw of the ice sheet in Greenland. The media has described the social atmosphere using such terms as climate angst, ecological grief, and existential crisis. Weighed down by a steady stream of climate news, some people have sought professional help for guidance on tackling emotional responses to natural disasters and climate trauma. Meanwhile, many of us are wondering what can be done. As a central player …

A Review Of Nyoongar Responses To Severe Climate Change And The Threat Of Epidemic Disease—Lessons From Their Past, Francesca Robertson, Jason Barrow

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

Nyoongar people have lived in the South West of Western Australia for at least 50,000 years. During that time, they experienced significant climate change, including wide variations in temperature and rainfall, and hundreds of metres’ difference in sea levels. Nyoongar people have a long memory, and climate change is described in their stories and in the knowledge they hold about how life was lived in earlier times. There are artifacts and places that have been manipulated to be productive despite severe drought. COVID-19 disrupted the writing of this article, and the authors felt it appropriate to include Nyoongar responses to …

Wildland Fire Disturbance - Recovery Dynamics In Upland Forests At Acadia National Park, Maine, Jessica E. Charpentier

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

The overall goal of this study was to evaluate whether coastal Maine (USA) forests are resilient to changing climate and fire regimes. The occurrence of a catastrophic wildfire at Acadia National Park (ANP) in 1947 provided a unique opportunity to examine the impacts of wildfire on forest dynamics in upland communities of coastal spruce-fir and northern hardwood forests of the Maine coast. This study, conducted 68 years after the stand-replacing 1947 Bar Harbor Fire, builds on studies by W.A. Patterson conducted in 1980 and 1992-1994, 33 and 45-47 years after the fire. There were two lines of investigation in this …

Arising: Hurricane (Superstorm) Sandy’S Impact On Design/Planning Professionals, Maxinne R. Leighton

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

Standing by my bedroom window, looking out at the ocean, a huge wave comes and swallows up my building. Everything around me is gone, including me. I wake up. I am 13 years old and living in the Coney Island Houses on Surf Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. With ongoing anthropogenic changes to the natural environment such as sea level rise and intensifying storms, coastal communities, especially ones segregated by class and culture, are particularly vulnerable in this context that challenges a way of life, and in some instances, threatens that life's survival. This dissertation focuses specifically on what one massive …

Sustainable Solutions, Fall/Winter 2020, Issue 41

Sustain Magazine

No abstract provided.

Fostering University Collaboration And Building Capacity To Respond To Coastal Resilience Challenges In Virginia: Findings From The Rotating Resilience Roundtables Workshop Spring 2019, Wie Yusuf, Michelle Covi, Anamaria Bukvic, Tom Allen, Taiwo Oguntuyo

Presentations, Lectures, Posters, Reports

[from Background and Overview]

Communities in coastal Virginia, particularly in the urban region of Hampton Roads and the rural Eastern Shore peninsula, are experiencing the impacts of climate change as part of everyday life. Among the most apparent impacts are sea level rise and associated flooding, but increasingly residents of the region are observing changing ecosystems, health impacts and complex social challenges are made more difficult. The region is experiencing the fastest rate of relative sea level rise on the U.S. east coast due to interactions between ocean currents, global sea level rise, high-water tables and ground subsidence (Adapt Virginia …

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 …

Weathering Climate Change: Provisions For Climate Change Resiliency In Transboundary River Treaties, Emily Joan Zmak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Climate change will be most apparent in alterations to the hydrologic system - shifts in movement, variations in extremes - thereby defining many resource disputes in the coming decades. Water is a boundaryless resource; as its hydrologic patterns shift within and without borders, so too will preexisting agreements on its use and allocation. The question for transboundary water agreements is: how can agreements both satisfy parties' needs and account for future uncertainties of climate-induced changes to their basins' hydrologic systems?

From examining literature and water agreements, this thesis develops a list of provisions identified as foundational to resiliency in transboundary …

Proposed Legislation Seeks To Stimulate Investment In Coastal Resiliency, Jon Cawley

News Items

No abstract provided.

Emily Steinhilber Column: Virginia's Leadership In Flood Resilience, Emily E. Steinhilber

News Items

No abstract provided.

Community Conversation About Sea Level Rise Continues At Odu-Hosted Resilience Forum, Public Affairs & News Bureau, Old Dominion University

News Items

No abstract provided.

Ecodistricts In San Francisco: The Implementation Of Neighborhood Regional Planning And Its Potential Effects On Environmental Resilience, Elizabeth M. Juvera

Master's Projects and Capstones

Ecodistricts, or neighborhood-scale, community-driven areas of sustainable development, have emerged internationally and within the U.S. to create models of adaptive environmental design and advanced urban infrastructure. Central SoMa is the first ecodistrict to be planned and implemented in San Francisco, with the intention of revitalizing and greening this urbanized region of the city. At this time, the Central SoMa area has very low biodiversity levels, inefficient infrastructure, and poor water management capabilities. Through the implementation of ecodistricts in San Francisco, the city can integrate physical and behavioral sustainability measures from existing ecodistricts such as permeable surfaces, green roofs, stormwater management, …

Relationships, Knowledge, And Resilience: A Comparative Study Of Stakeholder Participation In Great Lakes Areas Of Concern, Kathleen Colin Williams

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the current practices of environmental governance in the Great Lakes region, where at one time the rivers that fed the Great Lakes were choked with debris and on fire. The Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1978 and the 1987 updates inspired collective action to remediate and restore the rivers and nearshore zones of the lakes through the implementation of an ecosystem approach, which included a public participation dimension. While funding and momentum has fluctuated, the constructs – Areas of Concern (AOC), Remedial Action Plans (RAP), and Public Advisory Councils (PAC) persist. In 2010, the Great Lakes …

Understanding Vulnerability In Alaska Fishing Communities: A Validation Methodology For Rapid Assessment Of Well-Being Indices, Conor M. Maguire

All Master's Theses

Social well-being indices measure how fishing communities are likely to be affected by social-ecological perturbations, and are a significant tool to identify the primary issues influencing communities’ sustained participation in fishing activities. In an attempt to further our understanding of how communities are affected by such perturbations, we have developed a rapid assessment methodology to test the external validity of a set of well-being indices that measure community vulnerability. This methodology informs how well such indices reflect the communities they represent by measuring elements of well-being through field observations, and comparing them to corresponding index components created from secondary data …

Transition Network: Exploring Intersections Between Culture, The Climate Crisis, And A Digital Network In A Community - Driven Global Social Movement, Emily Polk

Open Access Dissertations

The core aim of this research is to explore the communication processes of the Transition movement, a community-led global social movement as it adapted in a local context. The Transition movement facilitates community-led responses to the current global financial and climate crisis via the Transition Network, an online network that began in 2006, and is comprised of more than 2000 initiatives in 35 countries that have used the Transition model to start projects that use small-scale solutions to achieve greater sustainability. This research uses qualitative ethnographic methods and a theoretical framework based on actor network theory to better understand how …

Resilient Environmental Governance: Protecting Changing Ecosystems Through Multilevel Governance, Casey Stevens

Open Access Dissertations

International governance is increasingly defined by multilevel governance; with short-term projects, transnational cooperation between different groups, and unclear institutional space. In this situation, a key issue is the resilience of governance arrangements or the ability of governance arrangements to respond to political and ecological shocks to the system. Using international biodiversity governance, this study explores the question: What social and political processes produce resilient governance?

This study argues that the key to understanding resilient governance is the network structure within and outside of the governance arrangement. Modular network structures are able to generate ideas from multiple sources, able to solve …

The Place Of Education In Building Disaster Resilience: A Strategic Examination, Neil Dufty

Neil Dufty

No abstract provided.

The Importance Of Connected Communities To Flood Resilience, Neil Dufty

Neil Dufty

No abstract provided.

Reviewing Total Flood Warning Systems, Neil Dufty, Steven Molino

Neil Dufty

No abstract provided.

Critical Research Needs For Successful Food Systems Adaptation To Climate Change, Michelle Miller, Molly Anderson, Charles A. Francis, Chad Kruger, Carol Barford, Jacob Park, Brent H. Mccown

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

There is a growing sense of the fragility of agricultural production in the Global North and South and of increasing risks to food security, as scientific observations confirm significant changes in the Gulf Stream, polar ice, atmospheric CO₂, methane release, and other measures of climate change. This sense is heightened as each of us experiences extreme weather, such as the increasing frequency of droughts, floods, unseasonal temperatures, and erratic seasonality. The central research challenge before us is how global, national, regional, and local food systems may adapt to accelerating climate change stresses and uncertainties to ensure the availability, …

Towards A Resilient Sydney: Research Into The Role Of Emergency Management In Climate Change Adaptation (Research Summary), Neil Dufty, Tim Morrison

Neil Dufty

No abstract provided.

Community Flood Education And Awareness In Fairfield City (Report), Neil Dufty

Neil Dufty

No abstract provided.

Sea No Evil, Hear No Evil - Community Engagement On Adaptation To Sea Level Change, Neil Dufty, Heather Stevens, Stuart Waters, Greg Giles

Neil Dufty

No abstract provided.

Regimes And Resilience In The Modern Global Food System, Sara W. Tower

Student Publications

Much public discourse surrounding the modern global food system operates on the assumption of the primary agency of individual consumers in ensuring an equitable and sustainable food supply. However, this approach fails to account for the larger structural forces of the system which frame the limits of how we interact with and are affected by our food system. Taking a closer look at the global economic, political, cultural, and environmental forces that have collectively shaped historical food regimes reveals the deeper structural patterns that currently determine how we produce, distribute, and consume food around the world. Due to the underlying …