Digital Commons Network^™

Film And Everyday Eco-Disasters, Robin L. Murray, Joseph K. Heumann

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

Eco-disasters such as coal-mining accidents, oil spills, and food-borne diseases appear regularly in the news, making them seem nearly commonplace. These ecological crises highlight the continual tensions between human needs and the environmental impact these needs produce. Contemporary documentaries and feature films explore environmental-human conflicts by depicting the consequences of our overconsumption and dependence on nonrenewable energy.

Film and Everyday Eco-disasters examines changing perspectives toward everyday eco-disasters as reflected in the work of filmmakers from the silent era forward, with an emphasis on recent films such as Dead Ahead, an HBO dramatization of the Exxon Valdez disaster; Total Recall …

Urban Ecology: Advancing Science And Society, Colby J. Tanner, Frederick R. Adler, Nancy B. Grimm, Peter M. Groffman, Simon A. Levin, Jason Munshi-South, Diane E. Pataki, Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman, William G. Wilson

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Urban ecology has quickly become established as a central part of ecological thinking. As cities continue to grow in size and number, two questions serve to unify this broad and multidisciplinary research landscape: (1) how can urban ecology contribute to the science of ecology, and (2) how can urban ecology be applied to make cities more livable and sustainable? In spite of the advances made thus far, there are many unexplored ways of integrating the science and application of urban ecology. Although scientists assess and make predictions regarding the connections between environmental and socioeconomic processes, practitioners involved in real-world application …

American Society Of Parasitologists Newsletter, V. 35, No. 3, Winter 2013, Scott Lyell Gardner

American Society of Parasitologists: Newsletter

An issue of the American Society of Parasitologists' quarterly newsletter, also called the Journal of Parasitology Newsletter.

Toward A Global Organizational Public Sphere: Non-Governmental Organizing And Democratic Legitimacy In A Postmodern World, Rachel Stohr

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation refigures Jürgen Habermas’s public sphere theory for the contemporary world in which organizations are key actors. I develop a concept of the “global organizational public sphere” to explore the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in narrowing the democratic legitimacy gap currently prevailing in the international arena. A case study of the NGO, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), gauges the extent to which WEDO (and, by extension, NGOs) serves as a global intermediary that performs the double task of translating needs from the grassroots to global institutions and adapting international policies to local communities. Three problematics structure …

Business Motivations For Implementing Sustainability-Focused Projects: P3 Program, Lessons Learned, Ayna Kekilova

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Partners in Pollution Prevention (P3) Program is an outreach assistance program, in which student interns provide clients with a business assessment reports and suggestions for waste minimization and resource conservation.

The goal of this study is to examine the motivations of business managers toward the implementation of P2 suggestions. This can influence education of the students and providers of the pollution prevention technical assistance. Methods used in this study included analysis of the reassessments and survey results. A group of 60 clients representing various sectors and reassessed in 2005-2011 was contacted, 43% returned the survey.

It was found that: …

Internet-Based Public Participation Gis In Environmental Management, Tiantian Liu

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses

Environmental problems are among the most urgent and significant issues in contemporary society and have attracted increasing attention all around the world. How to deal with the interaction between human and natural environment and achieve sustainable development is the task of environmental management. With the development of the democratic process, participatory management and planning show incomparable advantages in the decision making process. How to facilitate public participation in environmental management is the research endeavor of this thesis. With the development of the Internet and technology, Internet-based PPGIS becomes an affordable and accessible GIS tool for public engagement. This thesis uses …

Transforming The Teaching Of Geoscience And Sustainability, David Gosselin, Cathy Manduca, Timothy J. Bralower, David Mogk

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The geosciences have an important role to play in addressing whether humans can live sustainably on Earth. From water to energy, from climate change to natural hazards, geoscience is central to solving a wide range of problems.

Two projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) support faculty in incorporating aspects of sustainability in their teaching: the Interdisciplinary Teaching of Geoscience for a Sustainable Future ( InTeGrate) Center in the Geosciences and the On the Cutting Edge Faculty Development Program in the Geosciences. The former is funded by NSF’s Science Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Faculty Development Program, and the …

Water And The Architect: Architecture As Decentralized Water Management, Daniel A. Williamson

Architecture Masters of Science Program: Theses

Water is the essence of life, a material, a resource, a commodity. It is volatile, fragile, devastating, nourishing and is ultimately spatial. The design of how water spatially inhabits, flows, and interacts with our built life has seen many forms, functions, systems, failures and successes. Over the course of history those who have had the opportunity to define our relationship with water has spread across numerous disciplines, and touched many professions. The architectural relationship with water has seen an unfortunate bifurcation over the past two centuries. It is this separation of architecture from adequately and actively engaging water management, primarily …

Medicine Creek Shoreline Stabilization Project: Final Environmental Assessment And Finding Of No Significant Impact

United States Bureau of Land Management: Staff Publications

The Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) has independently reviewed the Environmental Assessment of the Medicine Creek Shoreline Stabilization Project, Frontier County, Nebraska (August 2013), prepared by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission (NGPC), and has determined that the document meets agency quality and accuracy standards for an Environmental Assessment under 40 CFR 1508.9. Pursuant to Interior’s NEPA Regulations under 43 CFR 46.320, Reclamation has adopted the Environmental Assessment of the Medicine Creek Shoreline Stabilization Project, Frontier County, Nebraska (August 2013), for purposes of a finding of no significant impact for the agency decision to approve NGPC’s proposal to implement shoreline stabilization …

Upscaling Natural And Social Capitals For Decentralized Urban Stormwater Management, Olivia Odom Green, William D. Shuster, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Hale Thurston

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

RÉSUMÉ

La gestion publique décentralisée des eaux pluviales, avec utilisation de techniques alternatives dispersées sur le bassin versant, est de plus en plus pratiquée par les collectivités. Mais elle doit répondre à des contraintes uniques liées à l’accès aux terrains et à l’engagement des citoyens. L'accès permanent aux terrains publics et privés est une contrainte qui pourrait être résolue de façon créative dans de nombreuses zones urbaines, grâce à la réaffectation de terrains vacants et de parcs publics. Ces espaces ont un potentiel important de services écosystémiques et notamment la rétention des eaux pluviales par la réalisation de jardins pluviaux …

Review Of Pioneer Performances: Staging The Frontier By Matthew Rebhorn, Theresa Strouth Gaul

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Important works on U.S. drama have emphasized the radically unstable nature of performance, finding it a shifting and contested ideological space. Despite this recent critical turn, Matthew Rebhorn argues that considerations of the frontier in drama and performance have remained singularly resistant to recognizing the various meanings that emerged in performances of the frontier. Arguing against the assumption that nineteenth-century frontier dramas were always a straightforward means of forwarding expansionist ideologies, Rebhorn explores how performances promulgated a “much more variegated and diffuse notion of the frontier” than has been heretofore acknowledged, one that sometimes “aimed to undercut the central tenets …

Review Of Gunfight At The Eco-Corral: Western Cinema And The Environment By Robin L. Murray And Joseph K. Heumann., Stephen Rust

Great Plains Quarterly (through 2013)

Is there any image from Hollywood cinema more iconic than a lone cowboy riding across a Western landscape? While much has been written about such themes as individualism, empire, and landscape in Hollywood Westerns, until recently scholars have ignored the central trope underlying all others in these films—the ecological relationship between humans and their environment. The Western, as Robin Murray and Joseph Heumann explain, both masks and unmasks this trope by dramatizing and oversimplifying ecological issues while mythologizing the cowboy’s relationship with the land. In this comprehensive study, the authors build on their previous work on popular cinema and animated …

An Honors Interdisciplinary Community-Based Research Course, David Dunbar, Melissa Terlecki, Nancy Watterson, Lisa Ratmansky

Honors in Practice Online Archive

BACKGROUND

Community-Based Research (CBR) is an important extension and development of existing community service learning (Stoecker). CBR has as its emphasis research questions asked or needed by the community and, therefore, positions students working alongside community members with the purpose of solving a community issue or creating social change. In doing so, it also allows student development of research skills and methods. A hallmark of CBR is collaboration between a community and academicians through all steps in the course design process, including the crafting of the initial research planning stages, implementation of the research, and dissemination of results and knowledge …

An Honors Interdisciplinary Community-Based Research Course, David Dunbar, Melissa Terlecki, Nancy Watterson, Lisa Ratmansky

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Community-Based Research (CBR) is an important extension and development of existing community service learning (Stoecker). CBR has as its emphasis research questions asked or needed by the community and, therefore, positions students working alongside community members with the purpose of solving a community issue or creating social change. In doing so, it also allows student development of research skills and methods. A hallmark of CBR is collaboration between a community and academicians through all steps in the course design process, including the crafting of the initial research planning stages, implementation of the research, and dissemination of results and knowledge (Israel …

The Meaning And Management Of Water For Food: An Exploratory Case Study On The Relationship Between Water And Urban Agriculture In Kansas City, Joana Chan

Nebraska Anthropologist

Significant attention has been paid to issues of water and rural agriculture worldwide and the nexus of water and urban agriculture in developing countries; however, very little research has been conducted on how water is understood and managed to grow food in cities of the Global North like the United States. To address this literature gap, the author explores the relationship between urban agriculture and water in the United States using a collective case study approach to examine urban farms and community gardens based in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews, participant …

Deliberation Models Featuring Youth Participation, Denise Bulling, Lyn Carson, Mark Dekraai, Alexis Garcia, Harri Raisio

University of Nebraska Public Policy Center: Publications

There is a growing trend among developed countries to increase the participation of youth in societal and institutional decision-making. The challenge is to move away from an illusion of participation (tokenism) to genuine youth influence. This article transfers knowledge of a relatively new theory to the fields of youth engagement and community development. We pose deliberative democracy as a model to build bridges between youth and decision-makers. This concrete approach offers a platform for youth and adults to engage in a learning process as equal citizens and proactive leaders. Deliberative democracy can be understood as an umbrella term for different …

Can Law Foster Social-Ecological Resilience?, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Craig R. Allen, Melinda H. Benson

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Law plays an essential role in shaping natural resource and environmental policy, but unfortunately, many environmental laws were developed around the prevailing scientific understanding that there was a “balance of nature” that could be managed and sustained. This view assumes that natural resource managers have the capacity to predict the behavior of ecological systems, know what its important functional components are, and successfully predict the outcome of management interventions. This paper takes on this problem by summarizing and synthesizing the contributions to this Special Feature (Law and Social-Ecological Resilience, Part I: Contributions from Resilience 2011), focusing on the interaction of …

Social-Ecological Predictors Of Global Invasions And Extinctions, Aaron Lotz, Craig R. Allen

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Most assessments of resilience have been focused on local conditions. Studies focused on the relationship between humanity and environmental degradation are rare, and are rarely comprehensive. We investigated multiple social-ecological factors for 100 countries around the globe in relation to the percentage of invasions and extinctions within each country. These 100 countries contain approximately 87% of the world’s population, produce 43% of the world’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP), and take up 74% of the earth’s total land area. We used an information theoretic approach to determine which models were most supported by our data, utilizing an a priori …

Zoning Barriers To The Implementation Of New Urbanist Land Use Principles In Lincoln, Nebraska, Rachel K. Jones

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses

Euclidean land use regulations that segregate different kinds of uses from one another can present significant barriers to achieving the land use-related principles of New Urbanism on a foundational level. This research evaluated the zoning ordinance of the city of Lincoln, Nebraska, with a special focus on the Community Unit Plan and Planned Unit Development processes, in order to determine its openness to mixed housing and mixed uses, using a combination of policy analysis and Geographic Information System (GIS). It was found that a number of Lincoln’s zoning districts as well as a significant amount of land are restricted in …

Positive Pollutions And Cultural Toxins, John Blair Gamber

University of Nebraska Press: Sample Books and Chapters

In this innovative study, Positive Pollutions and Cultural Toxins, John Blair Gamber examines urbanity and the results of urban living—traffic, garbage, sewage, waste, and pollution—arguing for a new recognition of all forms of human detritus as part of the natural world and thus for a broadening of our understanding of environmental literature. While much of the discourse surrounding the United States’ idealistic and nostalgic views of itself privileges “clean” living (primarily in rural, small-town, and suburban settings), representations of rurality and urbanity by Chicanas/Chicanos, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans, on the other hand, complicate such generalization. Gamber …

Health Equity Resource Toolkit For State Practitioners Addressing Obesity Disparities

United States Public Health Resources

Title Page

Acknowledgments

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Conceptual Framework

3. Incorporating Health Equity into the Obesity Prevention Planning Processes

4. Conclusion

5. References

6. Appendices

Organizational Strategies For Fostering Faculty Racial Inclusion, Dannielle Joy Davis, Edward J. Brantmeier, Robert Torosyan, Hyacinth E. Findlay

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

No abstract provided.

Engaging Social Capital For Decentralized Urban Stormwater Management, Olivia Odom Green, William D. Shuster, Ahjond S. Garmestani, Hale W. Thurston, Lee K. Rhea

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

Decentralized approaches to urban stormwater management, whereby installations of green infrastructure (e.g., rain gardens, bioswales, constructed wetlands) are dispersed throughout a management area, are cost-effective solutions with co-benefits beyond just water abatement. Instead of investing in traditional approaches for managing stormwater, such as deep tunnels and high capacity treatment facilities (i.e., gray infrastructure), municipalities that invest in green approaches (i.e., natural capital) may reap multiple benefits from increased green space, ecosystem services, increased property values, and community engagement. To maximize the provision of these benefits, water managers should account for social and other human capitals in their management plans. In …

Water Borne Diseases: A Cry Of A Trapped Community, Passmore Mudundulu

Community and Regional Planning Program: Theses

The purpose of this study was to understand the problem of attaining safe and clean water that has contributed to high incidence of water borne diseases and to investigate its effects on the residents of Chawama Township, Lusaka, Zambia. A survey was used to collect data from 400 male and female participants to determine their source, treatment and storage of water; sanitary facilities; attitude, experience and knowledge of waterborne diseases. Findings indicated that, the most common source of water was communal city taps and residents did not boil or add chlorine to make it safe for use, making it susceptible …

Mapping Injustice: The World Is Witness, Place-Framing, And The Politics Of Viewing On Google Earth, Joshua P. Ewalt

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Working from assumptions that inequality is often spatially informed, a set of interactive cartographies has recently proliferated on Google Earth. In this essay, I analyze one of those interactive cartographies: The World is Witness produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). I read the map as an organizational rhetoric that frames place as "embedded injustice." I also argue that thorough analysis of the framing of local place on Google Earth must inherently question whether the map can create a disruption in the viewing subject. While the map presents vital information on excruciatingly despicable acts of injustice, and the …

Living Well: The Value Of Teaching Place, Catherine M. English

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation is a teaching memoir that examines the implementation of a place conscious pedagogy as a means to teach sustainable living practices into a secondary English classroom in a rural Nebraska school. It is framed upon the premise of instilling five senses of place consciousness into students as defined by Haas and Nachtigal (1998) including living well in community or a sense of belonging; living well spiritually or a sense of connection; living well economically or a sense of worth; living well politically or a sense of civic involvement; and living well ecologically or a sense of place. I …

The Human-Environment Dialog In Award-Winning Children’S Picture Books, J. Allen Williams, Christopher Podeschi, Nathan Palmer, Philip Schwadel, Deanna Meyler

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Picture books often play an important role in childhood socialization. Given the seriousness of environmental problems, we ask how natural, modified, and built environments have been portrayed in children’s books. To answer this question, we analyze the 296 books receiving Caldecott awards from 1938 to 2008. Two possibilities are explored with respect to content change. Growing concern about critical environmental problems, such as decline in biodiversity and deforestation, may have led to an increase in illustrations and stories about wild animals and the natural environment. Alternatively, the increasing isolation of people from the natural world may have resulted in a …

Background Environmental Justice: An Extension Of Rawls's Political Liberalism, Edward Abplanalp

Department of Philosophy: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation extends John Rawls’s mature theory of justice out to address the environmental challenges that citizens of liberal democracies now face. Specifically, using Rawls’s framework of political liberalism, I piece together a theory of procedural justice to be applied to a constitutional democracy. I show how citizens of pluralistic democracies should apply this theory to environmental matters in a four stage contracting procedure. I argue that, if implemented, this extension to Rawls’s theory would secure background environmental justice. I explain why the theory can be viewed as a partially specified political conception of environmental pragmatism, and how it relates …

School Of Natural Resources Collection Development Policy, Joan Latta Konecky

University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries: Collection Development Policies

The collection supports the teaching, research and service activities of the School of Natural Resources and the related research endeavors of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln community.

School of Natural Resources cooperative research is conducted with various academic units including Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Department of Geosciences, Department of Civil Engineering, Department of Biological Systems Engineering, Department of Agricultural Economics, Arsenic Info System, College of Law, Public Policy Center, and Cooperative Extension.

Toward Regional Climate Services The Role Of Noaa’S Regional Climate Centers, Arthur T. Degaetano, Timothy J. Brown, Steven D. Hilberg, Kelly Redmond, Kevin Robbins, Peter Robinson, Martha Shulski, Marjorie Mcguirk

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

A comprehensive national climate services strategy requires the infrastructure, operational services, and applied research activities that have characterized the Regional Climate Center Program since its inception.