Digital Commons Network^™

Editorial, Kari Kloos

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

No abstract provided.

Low Income Urban Forestry Program In Tucson, Arizona, Usa, Theresa Foley Phd, Ann Marie Wolf, Palmira Henriquez, Flor Sandoval, Alix Rogstad

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Tucson is located in the Sonoran Desert, 117 km north of the US-Mexico border. The borderland region is an area experiencing increased temperatures and changing precipitation patterns caused by the combustion of greenhouse gases. Planting drought-tolerant trees to provide cooling shade has been an important mitigation strategy for Tucson and other arid cities. From 2007 to 2013, the Sonora Environmental Research Institute, Inc. (SERI) collaborated with Trees for Tucson (TFT) to distribute drought-resistant trees to low income families in south metropolitan Tucson. The Pima Association of Governments has found that this area has significantly less green spaces than other areas …

Resilience And Pedagogy: Learning From International Field Studies In Urban Resilience In Canada And Germany, Meg Holden, Robin Chang, Rebecca Gunderson

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

What impact does an immersive, international field school experience have on learning about urban resilience; and conversely, what impact does a framing concept of urban resilience have on international field schools in environmental and planning studies? This article reports on qualitative analysis of learning outcomes related to a novel pair of international field schools on the theme of urban resilience. Our field schools took place with German and Canadian students seeking to understand urban resilience in two different contexts, one a context of urban decline and post-industrial transformation, the other a context of urban growth encountering new climate change-related constraints. …

Urban Green Space Availability, Accessibility And Attractiveness, And The Delivery Of Ecosystem Services, Magdalena Biernacka, Jakub Kronenberg

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

The main goal of this article is to analyze how different barriers which restrict urban green space (UGS) provision – notably their availability, accessibility and attractiveness – affect the delivery of ecosystem services (ESs). Our analysis involves three case studies in Lodz, Poland: the removal of trees in private properties following the liberalization of the Nature Conservation Act (availability); the replacement of allotment gardens with a city beach (accessibility); and the organization of entertainment events in the forest (attractiveness). The analyzed barriers include governmental failures, insufficient social support for the existence of certain UGSs, changes in spatial planning and activities …

Exploring Preferences For Urban Greening, Jane A. Buxton, Robert L. Ryan, Nancy M. Wells Phd

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Sustainable responses to urban development point to the need for higher density neighborhoods coupled with extensive urban tree canopy and greening. However, little research has been conducted with urban residents to ascertain if these urban forms match their preferred setting. This study sought to understand whether higher levels of greening could moderate preference for lower density residential settings when 212 participants rated images for preference. Each of the independent variables, greening and density, made a difference in preference: greener settings were more preferred than less green settings overall, and perceived density was marginally significant in relation to preference. A factor …

Socioeconomic Factors Associated With Increasing Street Tree Density And Diversity In Central Indianapolis, Ben Lockwood, Adam Berland

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Urban trees provide an abundance of benefits to city residents. Information about the geographic distribution of urban trees is critical to ensure equitable access to these benefits. Street trees are unique among urban trees because they are often managed by municipalities as a public resource, but they are challenging to manage in part because they are spatially dispersed across a city in close proximity to private property. While street tree inventory data sets are costly to generate, they provide important information to understand the spatial distribution of trees in the city and to plan for ongoing street tree management. Here, …

Context Matters: Influence Of Organizational, Environmental, And Social Factors On Civic Environmental Stewardship Group Intensity, Michelle L. Johnson, Dexter H. Locke, Erika Svendsen, Lindsay K. Campbell, Lynne M. Westphal, Michele Romolini, J. Morgan Grove

Center for Urban Resilience Scholarship

Civic environmental stewardship groups actively take care of their local environment and are known to work in urban contexts. Research on the geographies of this urban environmental stewardship is young. Understanding where stewardship groups work and the associated organizational and neighborhood contexts advances the understanding of the environmental outcomes of stewardship efforts. We examine the organizational, socioeconomic, and environmental contexts associated with the number of stewardship groups at the Census block group and neighborhood scales for four diverse U.S. cities (Baltimore, MD; Chicago, IL; New York, NY; and Seattle, WA). We found relatively consistent and strong relationships with both average …

Using Head, Heart And Hands To (De)Construct Community Development In Tijuana, Mexico, Audrey Hudgins, Hillary Sturgeon, Felicia Islas, Tammy Liddell, Paul Milan, Alexa Montenegro, Ernesto Aguilar S.

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

Short-term international service-learning immersions can provide accessible ways for students to experience other countries and cultures, creating the possibility for development of the whole person in a global context. These programs often involve the physical labor of students, through building houses, serving food to migrants, and the like. As Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, S.J. has observed, such service can be valued by the recipient community and for the participating student, and can challenge the mind to change. But how can such programs increase their value proposition in support of the organization’s mission? In other words, how might we employ minds as well …

A Model For Cultivating Global Engagement Beyond Academic Tourism, Victor D. Carmona, Tizziana Carmona

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

The message to environmental scholars in Pope Francis’ Encyclical “Laudato Si” is clear: contributions from Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) must serve to inform both local and international conversations as well as connect learning communities in developed and developing nations. In the hope of fostering international opportunities that challenge U.S. students to link their academic degrees with social justice elements that calibrate them to the historical reality the overwhelming majority of the world experiences, we outline a teacher-scholar model that serves as a tool for the advancement of social and environmental justice issues in developing countries.

The Provision Of Urban Ecosystem Services Throughout The Private-Social-Public Domain: A Conceptual Framework, Alessandro Ossola, Laura Schifman, Dustin L. Herrmann, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Kirsten Schwarz, Matthew E. Hopton

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

As cities are largely private systems, recent investigations have assessed the provision of ecosystem services from the private realm. However, these assessments are largely based on the concept of ownership and fail to capture the complexity of service provision mediated by interactions between people and ecological structures. In fact, people interact with ecological structures in their role of land tenants and stewards, further modulating the provision of ecosystem services. We devise a theoretical framework based on the concepts of ownership, tenancy, and stewardship, in which people, as mediators of ecosystem services, regulate the provision of services throughout the private-social-public domain. …

Tree Canopy And Environmental Distribution Justice In Los Angeles: A Look Into Tree Planting Groups, Natalie Menicucci

Center for Urban Resilience Research Posters

The distribution and maintenance of urban tree coverage in Los Angeles is an issue of environmental justice. Researchers have found that there is a direct relationship between tree coverage and income and race in the city. Los Angeles has a tree planting initiative, called “City Plants,” with a goal that people in every neighborhood have equal access to trees and their benefits. Yet it is not clear how or whether tree planting organizations embody this in their practices. To address this problem, the purpose of this study is to examine how decisions on planting locations are made by planting groups, …

Necessary Companions: Faith And Reason, Timothy Law Snyder

Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal

Can faith and reason exist, free of mutual companionship? If we restrict ourselves to a traditional scientific method when pondering questions of the universe and close the door to theological data and human thought, we may be rendering inaccessible the majority of what exists. As a scientist, I take solace in what we can discover through science and math as we seek to understand the one percent of our physical universe that is accessible. But humans seek to know more, to learn more, to experience more. In this essay, I argue that the synthesis of faith and reason helps us …

Tree Canopy Change In Coastal Los Angeles, 2009 - 2014, Dexter H. Locke, Michele Romolini, Michael Galvin, Jarlath P.M. O'Neil-Dunne, Eric G. Strauss

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Los Angeles, California is prone to extreme climate events—e.g. drought, wildfires, and floods—that are only expected to increase with climate change. The establishment of green infrastructure, including a stable urban forest, is a strategy to improve resilience not only to these events, but also to contribute to other environmental, social, and economic goals. To this end, cities throughout Los Angeles County have tree planting programs and policies aimed to grow and maintain their urban forests. Despite the policy objectives and management goals of such programs, we know surprisingly little about the spatial distribution of the existing urban forest, how and …

Assessing The Distribution Of Environmental Stewardship Organizations And Their Relationship To The Demographics Of Los Angeles County, Krystle M. Golly

LMU Theses and Dissertations

An equal distribution of environmental stewardship organizations across the urban landscape provides an environment that facilitates community empowerment. The systemic issues found in Los Angeles County play an important role in the social development of the area. Through the utilization of modern technology and geographical mapping software, spatial distribution of environmental stewardship organizations provided an understanding of social conditions within Los Angeles County. Environmental stewardship organizations provide the capability for communities to be more engaged in helping to eliminate environmental injustice. The comparison of minority populations at the census tract-level emphasizes the importance of connecting environmental stewardship organizations with their …

Exploring Stakeholders’ Perceptions Of Urban Growth Scenarios For Metropolitan Boston (Usa): The Relationship Between Urban Trees And Perceived Density, Chingwen Cheng, Robert L. Ryan, Paige S. Warren, Craig Nicolson

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Achieving multiple goals rather than trading one goal off for another is the essence of sustainability. Visualizing alternative futures in a participatory planning process helps disentangle complex planning issues particularly when stakeholders may perceive key goals as imposing potential tradeoffs, such as increased housing for a growing population and availability of green space. This study explored the effects of using visualization and scenarios as planning tools in a workshop with stakeholders in the Boston Metro Area, Massachusetts (USA), in achieving multiple benefits of sustainable future growth of the region. We applied mixed methods sequential explanatory design and a survey instrument …

Beauty, Nature, And Laudato Si: Locating John Ruskin's Naturalism Within The Framework Of Theological Aesthetics, Dean Messinger

Say Something Theological: The Student Journal of Theological Studies

No abstract provided.

Praised Mother Earth: Divesting The Vatican, Melissa Cedillo

Say Something Theological: The Student Journal of Theological Studies

No abstract provided.

Deadly Heat Waves Projected In The Densely Populated Agricultural Regions Of South Asia, Eun-Soon Im, Jeremy S. Pal, Elfatih A. B. Eltahir

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Works

The risk associated with any climate change impact reflects intensity of natural hazard and level of human vulnerability. Previous work has shown that a wet-bulb temperature of 35°C can be considered an upper limit on human survivability. On the basis of an ensemble of high-resolution climate change simulations, we project that extremes of wet-bulb temperature in South Asia are likely to approach and, in a few locations, exceed this critical threshold by the late 21st century under the business-as-usual scenario of future greenhouse gas emissions. The most intense hazard from extreme future heat waves is concentrated around densely populated agricultural …

Home-Based Edible Gardening: Urban Residents’ Motivations And Barriers, Tenley M. Conway

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Home-based edible gardening is defined as individual households growing food on their own property. In the Global North, home-based edible gardens have recently been identified as an important part of urban sustainability initiatives, given the relatively large area of residential yard space available for food production in most cities. Yet basic questions around households’ decisions to participate in home-based edible gardening have not been fully examined, making the likelihood of meeting home-based gardens’ potential unclear. This study explores the motivations and barriers associated with home-based edible gardening through in-depth interviews with growers and non-growers. The study area is four neighborhoods …

Integrating Ecosystem Services Into Urban Park Planning & Design, Dorothy C. Ibes

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Urban parks, which include a variety of green, brown, and gray infrastructure (e.g. greenways, native desert parks, plazas), are key providers of ecosystem services within cities. Given the importance of urban ecosystem services to the social and ecological health of urban ecosystems, there is a growing consensus that ecosystem service considerations should be integrated into urban park planning, policy, and design. Yet this integration is limited by a lack of relevant, accessible tools and standards for implementation. To address these deficiencies the present study developed the Urban Park Ecosystem Services (UPES) tool. UPES an open-source, geographically contextualized planning tool and …

Communication Network Among Campus Sustainability Influencers, Alexandra C. Freling

Honors Thesis

Systems of all types require efficient communication between its parts and units in order to be successful and e ective. It is thus important to understand a systems units in order to better advance its operations. In this study, we look at Loyola Marymount University (LMU) as a systematic organization in regards to the universitys execution of its environmental sustainability endeavors. This approach allows for the identification of the path by which important environmental sustainability information is communicated, is learned, and is acted upon at LMU. Through various network centrality measurements, I will develop a visual representation of the communication …

The Sociological Eye 2016, Loyola Marymount University, Sociology Department

The Sociological Eye Student Journal

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Nadia Kim & Dr. Rebecca Sager

Co-Editors: Jordan Webb & Monica Zamora

Breaking Ground On The University Garden: Service-Learning And Action Research, Bryce Collin Davis

LMU Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation was to document, analyze, understand, and describe how the environmental virtue ethics of undergraduate students were impacted after participating in a service-learning project designed to establish a new university garden. This service-learning project occurred during the fall semester of 2011, on the campus of Lighthouse University, a mid-size Catholic college campus that is located in an urban area of Southern California. The service-learning component was embedded within one environmental ethics course. Over the course of one sixteen-week academic semester, thirty undergraduates, between the ages of 18-23, each volunteered ten hours in this new on-campus garden. …

Network Governance For Large‐Scale Natural Resource Conservation And The Challenge Of Capture, R. P. Bixler, D. M. Wald, L. A. Ogden, K. M. Leong, Michele Romolini

Center for Urban Resilience Scholarship

Large‐scale natural resource conservation initiatives are increasingly adopting a network governance framework to respond to the ecological, social, and political challenges of contemporary environmental governance. A network approach offers new modes of management that allow resource managers and others to transcend a single institution, organization, resource, or landscape and engage in conservation that is multi‐species and multi‐jurisdictional. However, there are challenges to network governance in large‐scale conservation efforts, which we address by focusing on how special interests can capture networks and shape the goals, objectives, and outcomes of initiatives. The term “network capture” is used here to describe an array …

Attic Salt, 2016, Loyola Marymount University, The Honors Program

Attic Salt

No abstract provided.

Community Gardens And Environmental Justice In The La Area: A Comparative Analysis, Ann Eme

Center for Urban Resilience Research Posters

In the realm of environmental studies, researchers in urban ecology have been able to find that urban vegetation and green space produce beneficial outcomes. Community gardens specifically have also been known to promote healthy relationships with local communities, promote mental wellness, and promote youth empowerment through civic action. By engaging members in their environment in both a holistic and remediating way, community gardening can be a form of environmental justice in urban communities, and particularly in communities of color, which have been known to receive unequal environmental benefits and protection.

Textbook-Bundled Metacognitive Tools: A Study Of Learnsmart’S Efficacy In General Chemistry, Vandana Thadani, Nicole C. Bouvier-Brown

Psychological Science Faculty Works

College textbook publishers increasingly bundle sophisticated technology-based study tools with their texts. These tools appear promising, but empirical work on their efficacy is needed. We examined whether LearnSmart, a study tool bundled with McGraw-Hill’s textbook Chemistry (Chang & Goldsby, 2013), improved learning in an undergraduate general chemistry course. Content-knowledge gains of those students who used LearnSmart, those who did not use it, and those who used it with scaffolding questions that supported use of the tool’s metacognitive features were compared. The metacognitive scaffolding questions appeared to help students use LearnSmart more effectively than did using LearnSmart by itself, which did …

Stewardship Mapping And Assessment Project: A Framework For Understanding Community-Based Environmental Stewardship, E. S. Svendsen, L. K. Campbell, D. R. Fisher, J. J. T. Connolly, M. L. Johnson, N. F. Sonti, D. H. Locke, L. M. Westphal, C. Leblanc Fisher, J. M. Grove, Michele Romolini, D. J. Blahna, K. L. Wolf

Center for Urban Resilience Scholarship

The Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP) is designed to answer who, where, why, and how environmental stewardship groups are caring for our urbanized landscapes. This report is intended to be a guide for those who wish to start STEW-MAP in their own city. It contains step-by-step directions for how to plan and implement a STEW-MAP project. STEW-MAP is both an empirical study of a city’s or region’s civic environmental stewardship resources and a publicly available online database to help support environmental stewardship broadly in these cities. The project adds a social layer of information to biophysical and urban geographic …

Cities And The Environment: Eight Years Of Urban Ecology Research And Practice, Eric G. Strauss, Laurel Hunt, Michele Romolini, Dexter H. Locke

Cities and the Environment (CATE)

Since its inception, Cities and the Environment has sought to showcase a broad range of urban environmental research and practice. Thus, as we celebrate the closing of our eighth anniversary, the purpose of this paper is to remind (or, for some, introduce) researchers and practitioners of the aims and scope of the journal by describing the first eight years of its history, and to outline our vision for the next eight years.

Wastelanding: Legacies Of Uranium Mining In Navajo Country, Traci Voyles

Faculty Pub Night

No abstract provided.