Digital Commons Network^™

"Gen Z Climate Being": Podcast Series On Youth, Climate Emotions, And Affective Climate Justice, Rachel Wynne Moszkowicz

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

My project is a co-created 6 part podcast series with youth and the program lead from the Climate Mental Health Network’s Gen Z Advisory Board informed by affective climate justice, youth, mental health and education. This work foregrounds the embodied climate knowing and being of youth climate activists, offers ideas for a different relationship to climate change and climate education futures. In this podcast, Gen Zers speak to the youth mental health crisis as it relates to climate. My thesis project engages with and invites conversations that reflect the climate itself, which is non-linear, complex, porous, creative, expansive, and woven …

Refereed Research: A Sufficientarian Approach To Consumption Ethics In The Face Of Climate Change, Srinivas Venugopal, Ronika Chakrabarti

Subsistence Marketplaces

In this paper, we adopt a sufficientarian ethics approach to study the concern of consumption inadequacy engendered by climate change in subsistence communities. The sufficientarian approach to consumption ethics dictates that in the face of climate change, priority should be afforded to establishing and maintaining consumption adequacy in low-income settings. We elaborate on the basic principles underlying sufficientarian ethics and compare it to alternative approaches such as utilitarian ethics and prioritarian ethics. Subsequently, we turn our attention toward specifying how poverty and the deleterious impact of climate change combine to render subsistence communities more vulnerable to consumption inadequacies as compared …

Two Decades Of Climate Measurements Reveal El Niño's Role In Andean Elevation-Dependent Warming, Luke Davies

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Driven by climate change, elevation-dependent warming (EDW) has become a critical issue in the Cordillera Blanca of Peru. This study focuses on gathering evidence of EDW and determining the relationship between El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events and micrometeorological forcing in two proglacial valleys. A climate monitoring network was maintained through a 20-year collaboration between Bridgewater State University (BSU), Universidad Nacional Santiago Antúnez de Mayolo (UNASAM), and the Autoridad Nacional de Agua (ANA). Fieldwork in June 2023 and June 2024 included repairing weather stations, installing new Lascar sensors, and downloading data loggers to sustain and improve the climate record. Data …

Transhistorical Connectivities Around The Indian Ocean: Western Colonialism And Climate Change In Amtav Ghosh's The Nutmeg's Curse, Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru

Kritika Kultura

This article argues that Amitav Ghosh’s non-fiction book The Nutmeg’s Curse illustrates the ways in which the proto-global entanglement of chaotic colonial forces, which proliferates across space and time, has played an important part in the current climate change. Ghosh imagines the Indian Ocean as a melting pot of rhizomatic energies of imperial aggression and local resistance, but also of new emerging life, with the agency of nature playing a very important part in the latter. I aim to show this in a combined Deleuzian, postcolonial, and ecocritical reading, with elements of chaos theory meant to provide possible interpretations to …

Toxic Environments In The Handmaid's Tale, Its Sequels, And Other Feminist Dystopias, Péter Hajdu

Kritika Kultura

Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, was much more concerned with sexist oppression than environmental issues. The late 2010s experienced a boom in feminist dystopian novels, including a sequel by Atwood herself, and the television series adaptation of the novel is also part of this trend. This development evolves in a much more environmentally conscious context, which necessarily influences the interpretation both of the 1985 novel and the sequels. This article offers readings of recent feminist dystopias from the viewpoint of current environmental crises, especially the pollution crisis and climate change. The basic problem the religious fundamentalist regime of …

Climate Change And The Construction Of Compromised Agency In Selected Contemporary Fiction, Jessica Murray

Kritika Kultura

As the realities of climate change occupy an increasingly prominent position in all spheres of contemporary societies, the producers of cultural products grapple with these dynamics in their work. Even in texts where the climate and environmental concerns are tangential to the primary narratives, authors of contemporary fiction tend to make at least some passing reference to these dynamics. Fiction offers a space of almost limitless possibilities where writers can offer radically innovative modes of being in a world that is changing at an unprecedented rate due to anthropogenic activities. The construction of agency and the capacity of agents to …

Decadal Climate And Landform Variables Analysis In Iraq Using Remote Sensing Datasets, Sungwon Kim, Maryam Bayatvarkeshi, Atif Muhammad Ali, Kamal Ahmed

AUIQ Technical Engineering Science

Iraq has experienced record-breaking temperatures, making it one of the hottest places on Earth. It is also ranked among the world's top five most climate-vulnerable nations. Climate change is a hazard to Iraq's people and may cause societal disintegration, instability, and displacement. Therefore, it is important to assess Iraq's decadal climate and landform variables analysis. In the present study, the Climate Hazards Center InfraRed Precipitation with Station (CHIRPS) data in the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform from 2000 to 2022, as well as rainfall, anomaly, temperature, vegetation, and water, are used to analyse climate change in Iraq. As the land …

Environmental Change As A Driver Of The Evolution Of Migratory Behavior In Suboscine Birds, Emily Johns

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Avian migration, particularly long-distance seasonal migratory movement, has long captured the attention of researchers and the public alike. However, the evolutionary origins of migratory behavior are poorly understood, in part due to limited understanding of the full range of migratory strategies including short-distance and intra-tropical movements. We examine the climatic drivers of migration across suboscine birds, a group of roughly 1,300 primarily Neotropical species with a complex array of migratory strategies. Our reconstructions of the evolutionary history of suboscine migration reveal that migratory behavior is labile and is lost approximately twice as often as it is gained. We find that …

Using Simulations Of Future Extreme Weather Events To Escape The Resilience Trap: Experimental Evidence From Hong Kong, Terry Van Gevelt, J. Yang, K. N. Chan, L. Li, Fiona Williamson, B. G. Mcadoo, A. D. Switzer

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Hong Kong is a hyper-dense coastal city that has long learned to live with a potentially disastrous extreme weather event: tropical cyclones. This was largely a reactionary process, with investments in soft and hard infrastructure made in the aftermath of devastating tropical cyclones. While the experiences of devastating tropical cyclones remain strong in the collective memory of the city, Hong Kong's present-day resilience has led to complacency, especially among the general public. We suggest that Hong Kong may be caught in a resilience trap, where previous success in building resilience may be hindering the city's ability to adapt to the …

Advances In Research On Anthropogenic Drivers Of Climate Change, Andrew Jorgenson, Hassan El Tinay, Jared Fitzgerald, Jennifer Givens, Taekyeong Goh, Xiaorui Huang, Orla Kelly, Annika Marie Rieger, Ryan P. Thombs

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This chapter provides an overview of advances in social science research on the anthropogenic drivers of climate change. Anthropogenic drivers refer to the social systems and human actions causing GHG emissions, and societal factors shaping and conditioning those actions. The authors summarize the contemporary drivers research literature on (1) economic growth, (2) income and wealth inequality, (3) environmental load displacement and ecologically unequal exchange, (4) militarization, and (5) corporations. In addition to summarizing recent work, the authors identify future directions for each of these areas of research, as well as ways in which they can be better integrated.

Repurposed Energy, Alexandra B. Klass, Hannah Wiseman

Articles

Wildfires, weather extremes, and other conditions induced partially by climate change add urgency to the project of accelerating the clean energy transition from fossil fuels to zero-carbon energy infrastructure. Yet the hurdles to accomplishing such a massive industrial-scale transition are daunting. Indeed, large renewable energy generation projects regularly face denials or project-killing delays across the United States. This Article proposes a national policy to channel the bulk of new clean energy projects to targeted categories of both rural lands and urban, post-industrial lands that we define collectively as “repurposed energy” sites. Such lands will consist of marginal farmland, abandoned coal …

Catholic Responses To Peacebuilding, Climate Change, And Extractive Industries, William N. Holden, Kathleen Nadeau

Budhi: A Journal of Ideas and Culture

The paper overviews the Catholic response to addressing climate change-related problems and its peacekeeping efforts in the conflict zones impacted by natural and manmade disasters. It argues for the importance of transforming the dominant economic paradigm based on extracting natural resources for sale around the world, into a more environmentally sound approach that promotes the sustainable use of renewable energy sources and the greenifying of the natural environment. It calls for a world in which humans are seen as stewards of creation and their cities are constructed with the view of tendering and caring for other living sentient species and …

The Climate Impact Of Tropical Peatland Degradation, René Dommain, Steve Frolking, Aurich Jeltsch-Thömmes, Fortunat Joos, John Couwenberg, Paul Glaser, Alexander Cobb, Charles Harvey

Faculty Publications

Southeast Asia is a global hotspot of peatland degradation and related greenhouse gas emissions. Anthropogenic impacts, mainly associated with agricultural conversion, shift Southeast Asian peatlands from carbon sinks to significant carbon sources. Here we first describe the impacts of anthropogenic drainage on landscape-scale carbon dynamics of individual peatlands and then use an impulse‐response model of radiative forcing to quantify the climate impacts of peat-carbon losses. Whereas water-table elevation (i.e. drainage depth) determines the magnitude of CO2 emissions at the site-scale, the geometric arrangement of artificial drainage networks determines carbon losses on the landscape-scale. Among all peatland greenhouse gas fluxes, the …

The Climate Impact Of Tropical Peatland Degradation, René Dommain, Steve Frolking, Aurich Jeltsch-Thömmes, Fortunat Joos, John Couwenberg, Paul Glaser, Alexander Cobb, Charles Harvey

Faculty Publications

Southeast Asia is a global hotspot of peatland degradation and related greenhouse gas emissions. Anthropogenic impacts, mainly associated with agricultural conversion, shift Southeast Asian peatlands from carbon sinks to significant carbon sources. Here we first describe the impacts of anthropogenic drainage on landscape-scale carbon dynamics of individual peatlands and then use an impulse‐response model of radiative forcing to quantify the climate impacts of peat-carbon losses. Whereas water-table elevation (i.e. drainage depth) determines the magnitude of CO2 emissions at the site-scale, the geometric arrangement of artificial drainage networks determines carbon losses on the landscape-scale. Among all peatland greenhouse gas fluxes, the …

Lengthening Atlantic Hurricane Seasons With Earlier Storm Formation Dates Including Implications From 2020, Barry D. Keim, L. C. Hamilton, V. M. Brown, P. J. Klotzbach, A. B. Lewis, D. T. Thompson

School of Public Health Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes the formation dates of the nth storm in a sequence for all named North Atlantic tropical cyclones (TCs) and assesses whether the intraseasonal length of the Atlantic hurricane season has changed temporally. The record-breaking 2020 season, with 30 named storms, set records for the earliest third TC formation (Cristobal) and from the sixth TC (Fay) onward. Analysis of season length from 1851 to 2022 identifies only one statistically significant breakpoint detected in the early 1970s, roughly coinciding with the introduction of satellite observations. Since 1970, we also find a trend toward longer North Atlantic hurricane seasons. The …

Future-Oriented Science Learning And Its Effects On Students’ Emotions, Futures Literacy And Agency In The Anthropocene, Jessica Chan, Sibel Erduran

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

Science education bears the broader objective of nurturing students today to be scientifically-literate citizens of tomorrow who are able to foresee challenges, invent solutions and make responsible decisions for global issues. As a prelude to the new focus of agency in the Anthropocene, this paper presents an intervention on climate change with upper secondary students in a museum of natural history in England. Instructional strategies such as infusing scenarios and arts into scientific discussions were adopted to induce imagination, future-oriented thinking and emotional responses. Statistical results showed that the intervention significantly enhanced participants’ futures literacy, environmental agency and positive emotions. …

Threshold Changes In Winter Temperature And Precipitation Drive Threshold Responses Across Nine Global Climate Zones And Associated Biomes, Alexandra R. Contosta, Kyle A. Arndt, Helen M. Baulch, Nora J. Casson, Adrian Harpold, Toni Lyn Morelli, Alexej P.K. Sirén

Faculty Publications

Globally, winter temperatures are rising, and snowpack is shrinking or disappearing entirely. Despite previous research and published literature reviews, it remains unknown whether biomes across the globe will cross important thresholds in winter temperature and precipitation that will lead to significant ecological changes. Here, we combine the widely used Köppen–Geiger climate classification system with worst-case-scenario projected changes in global monthly temperature and precipitation to illustrate how multiple climatic zones across Earth may experience shifting winter conditions by the end of this century. We then examine how these shifts may affect ecosystems within corresponding biomes. Our analysis demonstrates potential widespread losses …

Media Use, Interpersonal Communication, And Personal Relevance As External And Internal Representations Of Climate Change, Sonny Rosenthal, Pengya Ai

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

Personal relevance is a key driver of individual climate action. It is also related to media use and interpersonal communication, which the current study examines from two perspectives. First, individuals may find climate change personally relevant because they experience it vicariously through the media and other information sources. Second, they may engage with climate change information because the issue is personally relevant. This study tested these models using structural equation modeling of online survey data from representative samples in Singapore (n = 1,997) and the United States (n = 2,009). Findings supported both models, albeit the first one more strongly. …

Coastal Wetlands In The Anthropocene, John Day, Edward Anthony, Robert Costanza, Douglas Edmonds, Joel Gunn, Charles Hopkinson, Michael E. Mann, James Morris, Michael Osland, Tracy Quirk, Andre Rovai, John Rybczyk, Thomas Spencer, Jessica Stephens, Jaia Syvitski, Robert Twilley, Jenneke Visser, John R. White

Faculty Publications

We review the functioning and sustainability of coastal marshes and mangroves. Urbanized humans have a 7,000-year-old enduring relationship to coastal wetlands. Wetlands include marshes, salt flats, and saline and freshwater forests. Coastal wetlands occur in all climate zones but are most abundant in deltas. Mangroves are tropical, whereas marshes occur from tropical to boreal areas. Quantification of coastal wetland areas has advanced in recent years but is still insufficiently accurate. Climate change and sea-level rise are predicted to lead to significant wetland losses and other impacts on coastal wetlands and the humans associated with them. Landward migration and coastal retreat …

Ex Vivo And In Vitro Methods As A Platform For Studying Anthropogenic Effects On Marine Mammals: Four Challenges And How To Meet Them, Juan M. Vazquez, Jane I. Khudyakov, Carla B. Madelaire, Céline A. Godard-Codding, Heli Routti, Emily K. Lam, Elizabeth R. Piotrowski, Greg B. Merrill, Jillian H. Wisse, Kaitlin N. Allen, Justin Conner, Pierre Blévin, Demetri D. Spyropoulos, Anders Goksøyr, José P. Vázquez-Medina

Pacific Faculty Work

Marine mammals are integral to global biodiversity and marine health through their roles in coastal, benthic, and pelagic ecosystems. Marine mammals face escalating threats from climate change, pollution, and human activities, which perturb their oceanic environment. The diverse biology and extreme adaptations evolved by marine mammals make them important study subjects for understanding anthropogenic pressures on marine ecosystems. However, ethical and logistical constraints restrict the tractability of experimental research with live marine mammals. Additionally, studies on the effects of changing ocean environments are further complicated by intricate gene-environment interactions across populations and species. These obstacles can be overcome with a …

The Role Of Climate Security Content On Instagram In Changing The Lifestyle Of Lebanese Society, Mariam Mohamad Hussein

BAU Journal - Society, Culture and Human Behavior

This study aimed to reveal the extent of Lebanese society’s interest in environmental affairs and the Instagram platform’s audience’s uses of environmental pages, in order to shed light on the extent to which environmental content on Instagram contributes to changing individuals’ lifestyle and identify the most prominent changes related to a lifestyle that contributes to confronting climate change. This study is a descriptive research utilizing a sample survey. The questionnaire tool was employed to gather data from a random sample of 400 individuals from the Lebanese community. The sample was selected based on a quota sample considering the place of …

A Call To Strengthen International Collaboration To Assess Climate Change Effects In Polar Regions, Clare B. Gaffey, Narissa Bax, Naomi Krauzig, Kévin Tougeron

Student Publications [Scholarly]

Climate change is exerting complex and transformative effects in the Arctic and Antarctic; regions that are essential to global climate, biodiversity, and sustainable futures. Given the polar regions’ roles in Earth’s system, a robust, coordinated, and innovative strategy to monitor and manage climate change effects is needed. Insufficient baseline data, inconsistent international collaboration, and short-term financing are obstacles to effectively monitor these changes. This hinders our understanding of biodiversity shifts, their implications for food security, and climate change mitigation. Confronting the impacts of climate change will require interdisciplinary collaboration and genuine participation of nations, including Indigenous communities. This sentiment includes …

Climate Change Adaptation Through Economic Democracy, Shriraksha Mohan

Student Papers in Local and Global Regional Economies

As global climate change poses a serious threat to humanity's survival, equitable and just climate change adaptation has become the focus of several climate movements, social justice groups, governments, and international organizations. Climate sciences and studies have concluded that climate change not only impacts the planet's natural ecosystems, but also has cascading negative consequences on society and the economy. The existing paradigm of economic development has created vast wealth and resource inequality. The inequality further exacerbates the ill effects of climate change and makes vulnerable communities bear a disproportionate amount of the burden of climate catastrophes. This necessitates replacing the …

Living In The Shadows: Exploring The Link Between Colonialism, Climate Change, And Women’S Vulnerability, Akash Bag, Anwesha Ghosh

Journal of International Women's Studies

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its sixth climate change report in early 2022. For the first time in thirty years, this report acknowledged colonial domination and global exploitation as drivers of the climate issue and contributors to the vulnerability of communities and groups. Colonialism, climate change, and women’s vulnerability are rarely discussed in the available literature. A scoping review was done to determine how colonialism makes women more vulnerable to climate change and related disasters. The study examined when and how colonialism increases women’s vulnerability in the Global North and South. Through the study, it was …

Projected Near-Future Flooding And Warming Increase Graminoid Biomass In A High-Latitude Coastal Wetland, Matteo Petit Bon, A. Joshua Leffler, Katharine C. Kelsey, Tyler J. Williams, Karen H. Beard

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

1. With rapid climate warming, some coastal high-latitude ecosystems are experiencing more frequent tidal floods. Yet little is known about tundra plant-community responses to flooding, and whether Arctic warming may modulate such responses.

2. In a 2-year, full-factorial field experiment in coastal tundra wetlands of the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta (western Alaska), we simulated periodic tidal flood events at two severities under both ambient and warmed summer conditions and measured above-ground plant-community responses. Low-severity flooding represented overbank flooding 1 day per month, which is consistent with projections in the next 5 years. High-severity flooding represented a more impactful flooding regime (three consecutive days …

What Can We Do? An Exploratory Study On Undergraduate Student Climate Change Perceptions, Walker J. Skeeter, Jacob R. Reed, Jordan R. Cissell, Riffat Islam, David J. Keellings

The Geographical Bulletin

A survey was conducted to evaluate the perceptions of undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory atmospheric processes course towards various climate change related topics, such as the validity of, and the scientific consensus surrounding climate change. Further questions sought information regarding student knowledge of climate change, such as when they were first exposed to the science, and their methods of seeking out information regarding climate change. This study additionally seeks to identify sectors of the human and natural world that students feel climate change negatively affects. Results indicate that students desire information about mitigation strategies, regardless of whether they believe …

Climate Change And Perceived Vulnerability: Gender, Heritage, And Religion Predict Risk Perception And Knowledge Of Climate Change In Hawaii, Kevin Showalter, David López-Carr, Daniel Ervin

The Geographical Bulletin

This study explores climate change related risk perception among residents of the ‘Big Island’ of Hawaii, an environmentally vulnerable region. Adapting established instruments, we investigated potential links among socio-demographic variables, risk perception, and perceived preparedness and knowledge, as they relate to climate change. Results reveal relationships between risk perceptions for climate change and gender, with females significantly more aware of the risks posed by climate change, but less prepared than men. Additionally, indigenous and native respondents felt that climate change events posed more risk and felt less prepared compared to non-indigenous. Results suggest that an understanding of how risk perceptions …

Assessing Climate Changein Alabama Using Climatenormals, Jonathan Herbert, Jeffrey A. D. Caudill

The Geographical Bulletin

This paper uses climate normals to assess historic changes in temperature and precipitation in Alabama. Changes in temperature and precipitation are calculated between climate normals periods at 18 weather stations across the state and for the state as a whole. The earliest climate normals period for which data are available is 1931-60 and the most recent is 1981-2010. Results show that Alabama has gotten cooler and wetter over the whole period of record, particularly in the fall and winter. However, changes between climate normals periods show these trends are reversing

Geographical Variation In The Photosynthesis Characteristics Of Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum) Lab- And Field-Grown Seedlings, David Goldblum, Christa Kennett, Alicia Lisowski

The Geographical Bulletin

A number of recent studies suggest that in light of anthropogenic climate change, sugar maple (Acer saccharum) may not be adapted to persist over much of its current range. We consider variation in the species’ photosynthetic properties across its range. Seeds from Tennessee, Illinois, and Michigan were grown under laboratory conditions and in two experimental plots in Illinois and Michigan forests. In the Michigan forest, seedlings derived from Michigan seeds had significantly higher rates of carbon assimilation than those from Illinois. In the Illinois forest, seedlings from Tennessee had significantly greater carbon assimilation rates and light saturation points than seedlings …

Future Land, Futures Lost: Planning The Crisis On The Louisiana Coast, Sheehan Moore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

South Louisiana is rapidly losing coastal land to the combined forces of subsidence, sea-level rise, and worsening storms, accelerated by the effects of flood control engineering and extractive industrial development. With erosion threatening homes and industry alike, the state has marshaled a response on a massive economic and geographic scale: its Coastal Master Plan recommends $50 billion in river sediment diversions, barrier island restoration, and other projects over fifty years. This dissertation is about the emergence of Louisiana’s coast as a place from this knot of human and environmental relations, as an object for governance and a container for political …