Environmental Studies Commons^™

The Road Ahead, Chloe Tilley

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

The creative project that I chose to make is a visual representation on the website “Creately” where I created a map of categorizations. I call the map that I created “The Road Ahead.” There are three sections, “where we were”, “where we are”, and “where we’re going”, and within these grounds I made a bank of major concepts and key terms that we have studied and explored throughout this semester; the map is essentially a word bank and concept organization of all the ideas from this course that were discussed and were threaded through the readings. The structure that I …

Living In The Plantationocene, Joshua Turner

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

Preceding centuries of exploitation and commodification of all life and the natural world have led us to the crises we face today. To describe the dramatic changes our species has forced upon the planet, in 2000, scientists Eugene Stormer and Paul Crutzen dubbed the geological epoch we inhabit the Anthropocene (Global Change Newsletter). Although the term is useful to distinguish the altered composition of the atmosphere, soil, and oceans that human activity has produced from the ecological baseline of the Holocene, some scholars are critical of the term. Not all humans are equally to blame for the environmental degradation which …

Life As It Is, And Where I Want It To Be, Christopher Black

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

Are you living a purposeful life? Ask yourself this regularly, and you will find yourself embarking on an expedition for passion; Is this not what we should be searching for each and every day? The word “purpose” can be defined as the reason why we do things. Without purpose we are essentially blind in all of our endeavors. At the beginning of every executive summary, at the forefront of every entrepreneurial venture, and within the crux of our hearts, lies purpose. Discovering your purpose is said to harvest empowerment, fluffiness, and happiness.

The Complicated Family Reunion, Cameron Chabot

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

Plastic has a complicated beginning and an even more complicated future. It is made from substances call polymers and while some can be made from plant cellulose, many now are synthetic polymers made up of petroleum and other fossil fuels. Most fossil fuels are formed from the fossilized, buried remains of plants and animals that lived millions of years ago, so it is quite disturbing that they are being used for plastics that get thrown away after one use. This story follows a six pack of bottles (The Cola Family) and their different journeys around the world after being discarded.

Bipoc Communities And Environmental Humanities, Liza Gonzalez

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

No abstract provided.

Shannon Soundscape, Satrina-Mae Shannon

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

As a commuter student who does not live on campus, I elected to sit on my back patio for this listening exercise. While I had initially thought that staying relatively close to my house would be somewhat redundant in terms of what I would hear, I was pleasantly shocked to hear just how many sounds, be it human or nonhuman, ring out on my street in a given moment. Looking back, I think I had just never taken the time to actually listen to them.

I live near many trees, so the sound of birds chirping, or squirrels climbing is …

Morrison Soundscape, Ellie Morrison

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

I am staying in an apartment in the Museum District of Philadelphia, so I went to the courtyard in the middle of the property. I took some snacks with me, took the elevator to the ground floor, then walked outside and chose a white Adirondack chair in the middle of the grass. Being in a big city, I heard much more man-made, urban sounds than I did clean, natural sounds.

The first thing I noticed was the low, almost throaty, rumble of motorcycles on the freeway not even 200 yards away. It came in non-metrical bursts for the first minute …

Leszczynski Soundscape, Joseph Leszczynski

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

Sitting outside of the Fisher Student Center, on black lacquered chairs, was the location of my soundscape experience. Being outside and an epicenter of activity, the amount of noise there was abundant. I was still outdoors, thus explaining the neutral noise of the environment. Some of the natural, non-human sounds I heard were from insects. A distinct, crescendo buzz came from above in the trees. The timbre was brash, like a trumpet that hit a high pitch note with vibrato. In addition, there were occasions where dried leaves would hit the ground from falling off a branch. This noise was …

Donlan Soundscape, Christopher Donlan

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

To capture the soundscape, I spent some time on the patio behind my apartment building and was able to identify a number of sounds, both natural and manmade. The location I was at sits right along the Blackstone River however, so the sound of the running water generates lots of white noise. While not changing in rhythm or pitch, the water produced a smooth and subtle tone that slightly masks the other sounds.

The most prominent sound I heard was the chirping from crickets. Their sound has a very fast paced rhythm that occurs in a steady pattern, however the …

A Typical Afternoon In The Hustling Streets Of Mumbai, Ishan Mehta

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

This soundscape activity is going to give you an experience of a typical afternoon in the hustling streets of Mumbai. I live on the 18^th floor of an apartment building in a suburb called Versova. One may think that staying at a higher floor would mean that there would be less sound, but in reality sound travels up through the building and you can hear everything. Since I could not go out of the house I walked around in my balcony which faces the ocean and right under is the main street, this is what I could hear. As …

Quarantine Adventures, Sarah Ragnauth

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

“Quarantine Adventures'' is a museum made entirely out of objects brought back from travels abroad…. before Corona hit. The pieces are from the Dominican Republic, Punta Cana, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Jordan, and Istanbul. The museum is broken up into two main parts. The first part contains pieces that were brought back from the Caribbean, while the second part features work from the Middle East. Each piece has a different story to tell.

The mission of this museum is to provide a little sunshine during this dark time. Being quarantined …

The Choata Mandir Museum - Lord Buddha, Ryan Kilcoyne

Bryant University Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

The mission of The Choata Mandir Museum is to embrace the aesthetic quality in Hindu art while bringing peace an offering to anyone who visits. We respect the viewpoints of all religions while guiding artistic appreciation through Hindu religion.

“Lord Buddha is a prince, and he was my favorite prince to worship when I was a child. Buddha is one of the most famous lords in the world, even in common American culture.

My sisters and I would follow the many teaching of Buddha and take time in our daily life to reflect with Buddha to become better Hindus. I …

Information Perception And Climate Change Adaptation, Ji Won Sung

Undergraduate Economic Review

Despite 97% of scientists believing that climate change is occurring, a far smaller proportion of ordinary citizens agree with this statement and the proportion of those who do greatly diverge by political affiliation. This paper lays out a dynamic information updating model with adaptation choice as the final outcome, linking information perception, belief perception, and behavioral implementation. Furthermore, this paper examines how various behavioral and environmental factors affect the agent’s adaptation choices by means of such cognitive processes. This research has implications for further research on climate change preference formation and effective communication strategies, such as informative or normative nudges.

A New Agent-Based Model Provides Insight Into Assumptions In Modeling Forest Management Under Deep Uncertainty, Garry Sotnik, Robert M. Scheller, Brooke Alyce Cassell, Matthew Joshua Duveneck

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Context: Exploratory modeling in forestry uses a variety of approaches to study forest management questions. One key assumption that every approach makes is about the degree of deep uncertainty—the lack of knowledge required for making an informed decision—that future forest managers will face. This assumption can strongly influence simulation results and the conclusions drawn from them, but is rarely studied.

Objectives: Our objective was to measure the degree of deep uncertainty within a forest management simulation to compare alternative modeling approaches and improve understanding of when a specific approach should be applied. Methods We first developed a method for measuring …

Picking Up Where The Tmdl Leaves Off: Using The Partnership Wild And Scenic River Framework For Collaborative River Restoration, Alan R. Hunt, Meiyin Wu, Tsung-Ta David Hsu, Nancy Roberts-Lawler, Jessica T. Miller, Alessandra Rossi, Lee Lee

Department of Biology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act protects less than ¼ of a percent of the United States’ river miles, focusing on free-flowing rivers of good water quality with outstandingly remarkable values for recreation, scenery, and other unique river attributes. It predates the enactment of the Clean Water Act, yet includes a clear anti-degradation principle, that pollution should be reduced and eliminated on designated rivers, in cooperation with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state pollution control agencies. However, the federal Clean Water Act lacks a clear management framework for implementing restoration activities to reduce non-point source pollution, of which …

University Role In Developing The Environmental Awareness Among Najran University Students, Muhammad Yahya Hussein Al-Maafa

Journal of the Association of Arab Universities for Research in Higher Education (مجلة اتحاد الجامعات العربية (للبحوث في التعليم العالي

The present study aimed to identify students' environmental awareness level and the role of Najran University in developing it. The descriptive analytical approach was used. The sample consisted of (560) students about (34%) of the study population who were all studying at varied colleges at Najran University. Moreover, a scale of (30) items distributed to four main aspects for the environmental awareness was developed. In addition, a questionnaire of (20) items about the university role in developing students' environmental awareness was developed and applied to participants. Results indicated that the level of university students' environmental awareness was low in each …

The Feasibility Of Renewable Natural Gas In New Jersey, Anneliese Dyer, Amelia Christine Miller, Brianna Chandra, Juan Galindo Maza, Carley Tran, Justin Bates, Vicky Olivier, Amy Tuininga

Publications

With traditional natural gas being one of the top options for heating in the United States and the present threat of climate change, there is a demand for an alternative clean fuel source. A Renewable Natural Gas Implementation Decision-Making Conceptual Model was created to provide a framework for considering the feasibility of renewable natural gas (RNG) projects and applied to New Jersey, specifically investigating landfills and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). Data from the US EPA’s Landfill Methane Outreach Program and New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection Sewage Sludge databases were used to identify seven landfills and 22 WWTPs as possible …

Protocol For Monitoring Aquatic Invertebrates Of Small Streams In The Heartland Inventory & Monitoring Network, Version 2.1, David E. Bowles, Michael H. Williams, Hope R. Dodd, Lloyd W. Morrison, Janice A. Hinsey, J. Tyler Cribbs, Gareth A. Rowell, Michael D. Debecker, Jennifer L. Haack-Gaynor, Jeffrey M. Williams

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

The Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network (HTLN) is a component of the National Park Service’s (NPS) strategy to improve park management through greater reliance on scientific information. The purposes of this program are to design and implement long-term ecological monitoring and provide information for park managers to evaluate the integrity of park ecosystems and better understand ecosystem processes. Concerns over declining surface water quality have led to the development of various monitoring approaches to assess stream water quality. Freshwater streams in network parks are threatened by numerous stressors, most of which originate outside park boundaries. Stream condition and …

The Material Culture Of Temperature: Measurement, Capital And Semiotics, Scott W. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Temperature was invented in the 17th century. While cosmologists affirm that fluctuations in heat are as old as the universe, the intensive quantified scale marking these fluctuations has a relatively short history. This dissertation analyzes why temperature developed when it did and what temperature does for and to its users. I demonstrate that the ubiquitous and quotidian epistemological artifact temperature epitomizes capitalized methods of seeing, measuring, and knowing. At its broadest, the concern of this dissertation is the material culture of knowledge production among capitalizing populations—those that believe in and practice the perpetually accelerating asymmetrical growth of wealth.

In this …

The Lodge In The Wilderness: Ecologies Of Contemplation In British Romantic Poetry, Sean M. Nolan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that contemplation is often overlooked in studies of British Romantic poetry. By the late 1700s, changing commercial and agricultural practices, industrialism, secularization, and utilitarianism emphasizing industriousness coalesced to uproot established discourses of selfhood and leisure, and effected crises of individuation in Romantic poetry and poetics. Closely reading poems and writing about poetry composed between the 1780s and 1830s by William Cowper, George Crabbe, Robert Bloomfield, Charlotte Smith, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Stuart Mill, I probe the relationship between aesthetic, ethical, and emotional responses to depictions of toil, idleness, and leisure. I argue that ecologies …