Digital Commons Network^™

Urban Sacred Grove: A Visioning For Collective Care, Preservation, Environmental Justice, And Resilience, Oluwadara A. Ojugbele

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My capstone explores how the concept of sacred groves—a community-based practice of conserving forest areas for cultural, spiritual, or religious purposes—can be reimagined as a framework for urban environmental stewardship and community care. Sacred groves have historically varied across time and place but consistently serve as protected spaces that honor divine forces, ancestors, and community values. In the Yoruba context, groves demarcate lush forests as abodes for oriṣas (divine forces) and spiritual beings, often containing shrines and artifacts that embody cultural beliefs. My capstone draws on the sacred grove concept and aims to illustrate how urban communities might adopt sacred …

Decentralizing Dementia Research To The Us–Mexico Border: The Rio Grande Valley Ad-Rcmar As A Model For Translational Equity, Gladys E. Maestre, John Blangero, Eron Manusov, Gabriel A. De Erausquin, Francisco Fernandez, Silvia Mejia-Arango, Vincent P. Diego, Juan C. Lopez-Alvarenga, Claudia Alaniz, Neyra García, Rosa V. Pirela, Andrew Tsin, Michael Mahaney

School of Medicine Publications

Translational equity means ensuring that diagnostics, treatments, care models, and prevention strategies are developed and implemented so they work for populations with the greatest burden and least access to care. In Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD), where most evidence derives from highly educated, non-Hispanic White participants at large academic centers, translational equity is critical to prevent misclassification, limited access, and widening disparities and to ensure that underrepresented communities shape how new knowledge moves into practice. Hispanic and other populations in the United States are disproportionately affected by ADRD yet remain underrepresented in research, with gaps especially pronounced in high-poverty …

Science-Related Rhetoric And Action By United States Presidents From 1977-2017, Amanda E. Shea

Interdisciplinary Studies

Presidential rhetoric and executive action have played an important role in shaping how scientific issues are presented to the American public. This project examined how United States presidents from Jimmy Carter through Barack Obama (1977–2017) employed science-related rhetoric and policy regarding climate science and reproductive health. Findings suggest that reproductive health remained a partisan issue throughout the study period, while climate science shifted from a largely bipartisan concern to a more partisan one over time. The results also indicate that presidential rhetoric and executive action were not always aligned, with several administrations using science-related rhetoric more extensively than corresponding policy.

Environmental Repair In The Energy Transition, Martin Lockman

Faculty Publications

For nearly a century, American laws have required mines, oil and gas companies, and other potentially hazardous industries to restore land affected by their activities to a safe condition when they are done with it. These laws represent a grand bargain—they allow operators to make profitable but damaging use of land today in exchange for the promise of expensive remediation tomorrow. However, this bargain has proven hard to enforce. Dozens of “zombie” mines scar mountains in Kentucky. Unrecorded “orphaned” wells poison groundwater in Texas. Over the past century, these laws have become the center of a legal arms race. Fossil …

Of Climate Justice And Magical Realism, Sonya Ziaja

Michigan Law Review

A review of Climate Justice: What Rich Nations Owe the World—and the Future. By Cass R. Sunstein.

Rooted In Hillsboro: An Urban Tree Protection Project, Leandre Mills, Aidan Mcclinton, Aria Shopbell, Karl Coppock, Wally Mcallister

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

The Canopi team and the City of Hillsboro Urban Forestry Program completed this project to evaluate and strengthen municipal tree protection policies. Current regulations rely heavily on tree replacement rather than retention, contributing to loss of mature canopy and reduced climate, infrastructure, and equity benefits. In many cases, mature trees removed during development or infrastructure projects are replaced with small-caliper plantings that do not provide equivalent environmental or community value for decades.

As Hillsboro grows, the city faces increasing climate pressures, including urban heat island effects, stormwater impacts, invasive pests, and uneven canopy distribution across historically underserved neighborhoods. These challenges …

Gateway: Heat Resilience Focus Area Final Report, Jill Coleman, Sletsy Dlamini, Luke Gordon, Danny Harden-Ramella, Joe Kortenhof, Devery Sheridan

Master of Urban and Regional Planning Workshop Projects

In the Summer of 2021, Multnomah County experienced a heat dome that resulted in the tragic deaths of 75 people and caused 258 individuals to seek medical care in emergency rooms and urgent care facilities. While heat related treatment had been experienced in previous heat waves, no heat related deaths had been recorded by the county prior to the Heat Dome. Since 2021, heat-related fatalities have remained elevated above the pre-2021 baseline. Medical visits for illness and injury also remain elevated from 2021 onwards. Many of the more easily implementable short-term solutions have already been implemented in Portland, and the …

From The Hood To The Pwi: A Self-Reflective Journey As Learner And Educator, Tatiana C. Height

Black Educology Mixtape "Journal"

This track explores the concept of organic sustainability within the context of Black educational experiences, drawing from my personal journey as student, scholar, mother, and educator. Using action research and autoethnography, I examine how anti-Black schooling shaped my academic trajectory across K–12 schools, predominantly white institutions, graduate studies, and faculty life. The narrative highlights tensions between education as a promise of liberation and its simultaneous perpetuation of systemic oppression. Strategies of resilience and resistance—such as ungrading, culturally relevant pedagogy, Apocalyptic Education, and unschooling—are positioned as tools to reimagine liberatory education. The work underscores the necessity of rejecting white supremacist norms …

Municipality Of Bayamón V. Exxon Mobil Corp. (2025): Bringing Racketeering Charges For Climate Justice, Ilinca C. Johnson

Pace Environmental Law Review

Environmental justice communities should have their climate change damages heard in the courtroom. One means to increase environmental justice claims is through claims under the federal Racketeer Influence and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Using Municipality of Bayamón v. Exxon Mobil Corp. (2025) as a model, this Article suggests a novel RICO case strategy to pursue climate damages for marginalized communities. Fundamentally, environmental justice RICO claims involve careful case design based on the climate-related damages a marginalized community has faced because of the long-term deception by fossil fuel actors upon those communities. Pursuing such claims forwards the intersectional issues faced by …

Non-Reformist Reforms In Environmentalism: Legal Theory And Praxis, Nicholas F. Stump

Pace Environmental Law Review

This Article explores how non-reformist reforms—as opposed to traditional environmental law—are required for ecologically transformative futures. Traditional environmental law is a critically flawed regime due to its embeddedness in our current ecological political economy, which functionally requires perpetual accumulation and growth. However, this accumulation- and growth-based paradigm is incompatible with the material realities of our planetary boundaries. This paradigm has thus engendered our current era of profound ecological crisis (i.e., as associated with notions of the Anthropocene).

Non-reformist reforms are an alternative framework that can help drive transformations of our ecological political economy vis-à-vis building and operationalizing people power from …

Testing Prior Appropriation As Drought And Climate Change Push States Toward Water Code Reform: Lessons From And For Oregon, Adell L. Amos

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Part I outlines approaches to addressing the challenges that have arisen in water management under state water codes that have been considered—some adopted, and some still under consideration—in Oregon. This section examines some historical material on Oregon water law and describes the current moment as a way for setting the stage for the work that is currently underway. The dynamics described for Oregon are replicated in many western states. So, while the details are Oregon-related, the storyline is a familiar one in the West.2 Part II describes the efforts of a working group of water law attorneys that the Oregon …

Greenspace Access In The Denver Metro Region: Historical Housing Policy Impact On Modern Greenspace Distribution, Brody Petig, Susan Dagget

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

Access to safe, high quality, urban green spaces is widely recognized as a determinant for physical health, mental well-being, and social cohesion. Existing literature has demonstrated that race, age, gender, and socioeconomic status frequently dictate the allocation of resources and shape disparities in access to greenspace. These disparities are also often reflective of historical housing policy and zoning decisions. This paper examines greenspace access in the Denver Metro Region (DMR) and the City and County of Denver (CCD) through a social justice lens, with particular attention to the relationship between historical housing policy and contemporary trends in greenspace distribution and …

Academic Freedom's Inflection Point, Jerry C. Edwards

Law Faculty Scholarship

Academic freedom faces an existential crisis. The Trump administration, building on a movement that began in the states, is seeking ideological conquest of higher education. Some universities have already surrendered. Others fight on, facing an endless barrage of assaults on their institutional autonomy. Faculty too have chosen to resist, relying on their free expression rights. One of the most potent weapons in higher education’s arsenal is the constitutional academic freedom doctrine, a First Amendment protection that safeguards faculty’s academic expression and universities’ academic judgments. But the Supreme Court’s embrace of history and tradition as a focal point of its individual …

The Role Of Anticipatory, Preparatory, And Transformative Governance In Wildfire And Watershed Resilience Strategies, Robin Kundis Craig, Melinda Morgan

Natural Resources Journal

Wildfire is a game-changer for both communities and ecosystems throughout the West, including in New Mexico. Building resilience to increasing numbers of wildfire events, especially when wildfires can shift communities, ecosystems, and combined social ecological systems (“SESs”) past tipping points and into new regimes requires new approaches to governance. Focusing on the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon fire and New Mexico residents’ ongoing response, this Article examines post-fire needs before surveying new modes of governance that can help to address those needs in a climate change era. It ends with a summary of our engagement with the participants in the “Life After …

Climate Change, Justice, And Equity In The Adjudication Of Hermit’S Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Claims, Brett Phelps

Natural Resources Journal

Large-scale, climate-driven wildfire has become a recurring and foreseeable feature of life in the American West, creating long-term consequences for forests, watersheds, and rural communities. The 2022 Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, the largest wildfire in New Mexico history, provides an opportunity to examine how a federally created compensation statute functions once a climate disaster moves from legislation and rulemaking into adjudication. Sparked by prescribed burns on public land, the fire led Congress to enact the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act, directing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (“FEMA”) to provide expeditious and just compensation for injuries resulting from the fire. …

Adapting The Hermit’S Peak/Calf Canyon Fire Assistance Act To Address The Needs Of The Community It Was Meant To Serve, Kieran Raney

Natural Resources Journal

In 2022, New Mexico experienced its worst documented wildfire season on record, and the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire was the largest among them. Over 340,000 acres of Northern New Mexico burned, devastating a multi-generational, subsistence community. In response, Congress passed the Hermit’s Peak Fire Assistance Act, the second-ever act of its kind to provide full and expeditious compensation for wildfire damage. Yet, more than four years later, many community members still have not received any funding and litigation continues over whether the Act is meant to provide noneconomic damages. This Comment outlines the steps of the rulemaking process to argue …

Trial By Fire: Disaster Justice And Lessons Learned, Clifford J. Villa

Natural Resources Journal

Disaster Justice reflects the intersection of environmental justice and disaster law. The study of disaster justice is becoming increasingly essential as disasters become more frequent and devastating in the face of accelerating climate change. Disaster law is marked by statutes such as the federal Stafford Act and by theory such as the “disaster cycle” of readiness, response, and recovery. Environmental justice recognizes that the distribution of harms such as bad air or water quality may be distributed inequitably among groups such as low-income populations or racial minorities. In similar fashion, the adverse impacts of disasters may also be distributed inequitably …

Enemies To Lovers: An Unsuspecting Friendship In The Journey To Save The Endangerment Finding, Sophie Ballah

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Integrating Social Determinants Of Health And Temporal Patterns With Wastewater-Based Drug Surveillance In El Paso, Texas, Arav Wijesinghe

Summer Research Program Abstracts

No abstract provided.

Integrating Social Determinants Of Health And Temporal Patterns With Wastewater-Based Drug Surveillance In El Paso, Texas, Arav Wijesinghe

Summer Research Program Abstracts

No abstract provided.

The Feather Of The Quill: How Folklore Shapes Human Relationships With Wildlife, Taylor Breeanne Nelson

Master's Theses

This thesis examines how folklore and cultural phenomena shape human relationships with wildlife, arguing that the stories a society tells about animals are not merely reflective of its values but are constitutive of them. Drawing on narrative research methods sourced from literature and academic journals and interviews with academics, conservationists, and community members, this project examines the role of animal folklore.

I discuss how narratives around wildlife evolved alongside the development of the United States, arguing that the beginnings of mainstream American conservation not only displaced existing communities but also erased the sophisticated human-animal relationships their traditions had long sustained. …

Perceptions Of Care: An Exploratory Case Study On Residents’ Perceptions Of Neighborhood And City Maintenance, Taylor Coats

Transforming Communities

Where one lives impacts both their physical and mental well-being. Though one’s builtenvironment is an important factor, the perception of one’s environment influences mental well-being. This qualitative study examines what influences residents’ perceptions of theirneighborhood and local governmental efforts to maintain and improve their community. Thisstudy utilized a case study methodology to interview residents, stakeholders, and politicians intwo neighborhoods in a mid-sized urban city in the Midwest (N = 16). This study identified threecore aspects that influence participants' perceptions of their neighborhoods and city efforts tomaintain and improve their community: 1) history with the city; 2) geographic location withinsegregated neighborhoods; …

An Ice-Sheet Modelling Framework To Determine Vulnerable Regions Of The Greenland Ice Sheet In The Past, Benjamin A. Keisling, Joerg M. Schaefer, Robert M. Deconto, Jason P. Briner, Nicolás E. Young, Caleb K. Walcott-George, Gisela Winckler, Allie Balter-Kennedy, Sridhar Anandakrishnan

Earth and Environmental Sciences Faculty Publications

The contribution of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) to sea-level rise is accelerating and there is an urgent need to characterize which sectors of the ice sheet are the most vulnerable. Estimating the volume of Greenland ice that was lost during past warm periods can support efforts to constrain the ice sheet's response to future warming. Sub-ice sediment and bedrock, retrieved from deep ice core campaigns or targeted drilling efforts, yield critical and direct information about past ice-free conditions. However, it is challenging to scale the few available sub-ice point measurements to the geometry of the entire ice sheet. Here, …

Providence Puzzle:Exhibition Design As Urban Spatial Practice, Ye Chen

Masters Theses

Providence is a city shaped by past industrial production, immigrant communities, artistic practice, waterfront renewal, and urban redevelopment. Its identity exists not only in historical remnants, but also in the cultural atmosphere created through the ongoing interaction between past and present. Former factories, river infrastructure, neighborhood streets, public parks and scenes of everyday life together form an urban narrative that continues to evolve. Yet existing methods of presenting Providence’s history and culture remain limited to informational signage, commemorative markers, or one-directional communication, offering little incentive for people to stop, read, explore, or actively engage. As a city rich in both …

Watershed Amendments: Assembling New Pervious Ground From Landscape Waste, Sophie Kaplan-Bucciarelli

Masters Theses

In Providence, Rhode Island, much of the downtown area is built over a vast historic tidal estuary. Though we no longer see the salt marshes, wooded bluffs, or meadows that once characterized this landscape, we recognize their absence in contemporary crises of urban heat, flooding, polluted soils and stormwater runoff, and habitat loss. These conditions are particularly acute along the city’s industrialized river corridors, where vacant lots and parking areas sit idle, their history paved over and potential constrained by limited imagination and resources.

These lots - already experiments in fill and land building after centuries of disturbance - can …

Learning From The Remains: Meditations On Sustainability, Julae Tan

Masters Theses

What remains when a person or material assemblage is stripped of its

component parts?

What is left is the remainder, an irreductible core.

Purely cerebral learning can be fleeting. A hybrid approach of cerebral and

visceral, “perverse” learning grounded in a familial understanding of the

remainder yields a more resilient pedagogy that endures long after leaving the

site of formal education.

This research was completed under the aegis of the 2025/26 Sustainability

Design Lab and features the subject of making with paper discards as the

primary mode of interrogation.

Via a collection of essays, a literature review, as well as …

From Agroecology To Democratic Resilience: Community-Based Food Security And Climate Adaptation In West Sumatra, Dina Yulianti, Virtuous Setyaka, Arry Bainus, Deasy Silvya Sari, Akim Akim

Jurnal Wacana Politik

The West Sumatra has a high index of food security and because of its dependence on modern farming systems that are chemical based, farmers are susceptible to environmental degradation and market forces worldwide. Through the Critical International Relations (CIR) approach of Robert W. Cox, this paper analyzes how community-based agroecological practices can be the solution to a transition between climate change adaptation and democratic resilience in West Sumatra. The current study is dedicated to the case of Cheap Staple Rice Fields (Sawah Pokok Murah - SPM) an agroecological farming system, a grassroots movement that helps to break free of the …

Given The Systematic Theological Analysis With A Practical Theological Target Of Creation Care, A Christian Worldview Provides Robust Reasons For Protecting And Promoting The Fecundity Of Non-Human Animals, Joshua Forystek

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

When a systematic theological analysis with a practical theological target of creation care is taken, a Christian worldview provides robust reasons for protecting and promoting the fecundity of non-human animals. This multifaceted approach brings cohesion and specificity into the area of Christian stewardship toward creation care.

Environmental Impact And Environmental Justice Of Oil Palm: A Discourse Analysis On Social Media In Indonesia, Rijal Ramdani, Obed Asamoah, Eloy Sinai Leriand

Forest and Society

Drawing upon the environmental impacts of oil palm and environmental justice frameworks, this study critically analyses what issues associated with the negative image of oil palm on social media, particularly Twitter (currently X) and Facebook addressed by Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) and research institutes in Indonesia. We applied the discourse analysis method, and we mined the data from seven Twitter and Facebook accounts, namely 1) WWF Indonesia, 2) Sawit Watch, 3) Yayasan Fortasbi, 4) Greenpeace Indonesia, 5) AMAN, 6) WALHI and 7) CIFOR representing the right-based NGOs, environmental justice NGOs, and research institute in Indonesia. The research shows that the environmental …

Special Issue Editors’ Introduction: 11th World Conference On Women’S Studies, Jyoti Rupa Deka, Jaypee S. Yongco, Noma Mguni

Journal of International Women's Studies

No abstract provided.