Digital Commons Network^™

Assessing The Transportation Adaptation Options To Sea Level Rise For Safety Enhancement In Riti Communities Through A Structured Decision-Making Framework, Suwan Shen, Dayea Shim

CSET Project Reports

Through a structured decision-making framework, this study aims to better understand the key factors influencing transportation adaptation planning in practice. Qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with various stakeholders were conducted to identify the main concerns, challenges, objectives, tradeoffs, and evaluation variables in transportation adaptation planning. Stakeholders were identified through preliminary interviews with transportation planning experts from the metropolitan planning organization using typical case and snowball sampling methods. Key aspects related to the major concerns, objectives, priorities, adaptation plan evaluations, implementation challenges, and potential conflicts and tradeoffs are identified. Major barriers to adaptation plan development and implementation include lack of resources, competing …

Identifying Factors To Develop And Validate A Heat Vulnerability Tool For Pakistan – A Review, Salman Muhammad Soomar, Sarmad Muhammad Soomar

Department of Emergency Medicine

Objective: This review will provide better insight into developing and validating a heat vulnerability assessment tool for Pakistan.
Methods: A literature search was done to identify studies onon heat vulnerability assessment published from January 2012 to January 2021 (10 years). Online databases PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of science were used for the literature search.
Results: Heat vulnerability can be evaluated by some specific determinants that have heat-related health events, including social, economic, environmental, housing, and geographical factors.
Conclusion: This tool will identify heat vulnerability risks and mitigate morbidity and mortality.

Climate Resources For Camping: A Resource-Based Theory Perspective, Christopher Craig, Siyao Ma, Song Feng

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Camping is a salient economic contributor to nature-based tourism that is also beholden to the natural environment. Climate resources are the combination of naturally occurring meteorological variables of empirically observable importance to firm performance. Tourism climatologist are at the forefront of climate resource research, where investigations have been primarily empirically derived rather than guided by theory. Accordingly, we introduce climate resources to the management discipline’s resource-based theory, operationalizing climate resources as public goods in addition to other public goods like open access innovation. We investigate the value, rareness, and inimitability of climate resources at 36 managed United States National Park …

Eco-Necrotourism And Public Land Management: Last Chance Tourism, Ecological Grief, And The World's Disappearing Natural Wonders, Robin Kundis Craig, Katrina Fischer Kuh

Florida State University Law Review

Last Chance Tourism. 500 Places to See Before They Disappear. 100 Places to Go Before They Disappear. As these (real) book titles at-test, climate change, often in combination with loss of biodiversity, has created a new kind of ecotourism, which we term eco-necrotourism—the desire to see natural wonders and rare species before they are lost or transformed forever. As a scholarly topic, eco-necrotourism is a small facet of an emerging necessity for climate change law and policy: the need for planners, managers, lawmakers, and policy writers to consider human psychological responses to climate change and its impacts. However, those responses …

U.S. Geography And Its Impact On Public Perception Of Climate Change: An Analysis Of The Role Of Geography, Partisanship, And Media On American Public Sentiment., Leaha Viscounte

Senior Honors Projects

Perception of climate change is often considered an issue of partisanship in America despite the scientific literature stating its factual reality. While the public sentiment reflects both people in favor of climate change policies and others in climate change denial, the geographical landscape of America contributes to the public perception surrounding climate change. Within America’s various regions, Southern and Midwestern areas face the greatest immediate climate- hardships while Northern and Western areas may begin to reap benefits initially. But regardless of region, vulnerable communities are the most at risk of climate-hardships. In order for America to approach climate change in …

The Texas Coast: Ship Channel Network Of The Petroleum Age, Alan Lessoff

Faculty Publications – History

This article provides an overview of the Texas Gulf Coast as a port city region dedicated above all to oil and gas. By the late 1800s, the same trends in transportation and industry that encouraged ship channel construction around the world drew attention to schemes to transform the Gulf Coast’s shallow bays and estuaries into inland deep-water harbors. An added factor in Texas was the vulnerability of Galveston and other coastal locations to hurricanes. Between 1902, when construction began on the 52-mile Houston Ship Channel, and the 1950s–60s, when a deep-water channel opened at Matagorda Bay along the mid-Texas coast, …

The Prospect And Perils Of Climate Preemption For Public Health, Sarah Fox

College of Law Faculty Publications

Climate change is disrupting many communities in the United States and around the world. Climate events like heat waves, hurricanes, drought, fire, and flooding will become much more frequent, and with them will come the need for robust health care responses. Given the widespread and boundary-crossing nature of the problem, an ideal response would possibly originate at the federal or state level. As illustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic, however, there is little guarantee that such a response will be forthcoming. Recent foreclosures of federal options for handling climate change make such a response even less likely. Instead, it seems likely …

Implications For Defense Strategy Stemming From Geopolitical Transformation Fueled By Climate Change, Steven R. Burrows

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Climate change has quickly become one of the most globally significant geopolitical issues facing all of humanity. Left unfettered, climate change is poised to impact nearly every facet of our environment ranging from increasingly dangerous and damaging storms, rising sea levels, increasingly extensive droughts to glacial melting, loss of arctic sea ice and a myriad of other catastrophic events. While still evolving, the current identified environmental threats will initiate long standing impacts not only to the environment, but to the global geopolitical and security climate of nearly every nation on the Earth. This project will not provide a synthesis of …

Intersectoral Responses To Climate Change And Waterborne Diseases In The Caribbean Region: Current Actions And Pathways Forward Using The One Health Framework, Sydney A. Steel

Public Health Theses

The Caribbean exists on the frontlines of climate change, and many climate-related threats are already felt throughout the region and projected to worsen in the coming decades. A critical climate-related threat is that of waterborne diseases, as extreme weather events, sea level rise, and temperature increases are shown to contribute to potable water inaccessibility and a more favorable environment for pathogen proliferation and transmission. The complexity of this challenge calls for increased regional and inter-sectoral collaboration in both preparedness and response efforts. Countries and territories across the Caribbean are currently displaying variable yet marked interest in One Health, yet there …

Modeling Monthly Actual Evapotranspiration: An Application Of Geographically Weighted Regression Technique In The Passaic River Basin, Felix Oteng Mensah, Clement Aga Alo

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Actual evapotranspiration (ET) is perhaps the most difficult quantity to directly measure among the major water balance components. Because of the high cost and labor constraints associated with the direct measurement of ET, empirical data-driven modeling has frequently been used to estimate ET. Beyond the widely used traditional type regression that has the effect of producing ‘global’ parameter estimates, assumed to be uniform throughout an area, we utilized a more localized spatially non-stationary technique - the geographically weighted regression (GWR) - to estimate mean monthly ET in the Passaic River Basin (PRB). We identified the key environmental controls of ET …

Futures On Dry Ground: Anthropology And Coastal Planning, Theodore Hilton, Sheehan Moore

Publications and Research

Around the world, governments, industry, and other actors are creating plans to save coasts from environmental crisis. Louisiana is one prominent example: levees and other measures protect oil and gas infrastructure from inundation as the wetlands buffer rapidly erodes—in large part due to that same industry. The state’s primary answer to land loss is a $50 billion Coastal Master Plan. To illuminate such responses in Louisiana and globally, this article reviews emerging literature and frames an anthropology of coastal planning around three themes: (1) novel orientations toward time and space, (2) the reproduction of power and capital in the name …

Adoption Of Climate Smart Agricultural Technologies Among Smallholder Farmers In Semi-Arid Ghana, Mohammed Tiyumtaba Shaibu, Rose Afful, Daniel Nukpezah, Mohammed Shaibu, Darlington Sibanda

All Rsif Scholars' Publications

The evidence of climate change and variability in semi-arid Ghana is glaring and the adverse impact is being felt mostly by smallholder farmers because of their over dependence on agriculture for livelihood and subsistence. As a solution to building the resilience of the smallholder farmers, the Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) concept was introduced a decade ago by the Food and Agriculture Organization, guided by three key principles of adaptation to climate change, greenhouse gas emissions reduction and promotion of food security. The paper sought to assess the level of awareness of climate smart agriculture practices and the respective rate of …

Complexities Of Community Consultation In Chile's Lithium Industry, Isabella R. Whelan

Honors Theses

Echoed by November’s COP27 in Egypt, the climate crisis has become an increasingly pressing and global issue, with the need to move away from fossil fuels more urgent than ever. In attempts to decarbonize the global economy, many countries and companies have turned to electrification –particularly within the transportation sector, one of today’s largest contributors of greenhouse gasses. A crucial component of energy storage and batteries is lithium, now considered a “critical mineral.” Demand for lithium has skyrocketed in recent years and is only expected to continue growing. More than fifty percent of the world’s lithium supply is found within …

Abiotic Stress Mitigation: A Case Study From 21 Trials Using A Natural Organic Matter Based Biostimulant Across Multiple Geographies, Rachel L. Sleighter, Terry Hanson, David Holden, Kristen M. Richards

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Crop productivity and yields can be greatly diminished by abiotic stress events including drought, extreme temperatures, excess moisture, and saline irrigation water. Multiple stressors occurring simultaneously can further exacerbate the strain on plants. Various types of biostimulants have been shown to mitigate abiotic stress and here, the results of 21 trials on corn, wheat, soybean, and various high-value crops are discussed in the context of the abiotic stress that either occurred naturally or was experimentally induced. Treatments in these trials included stressed and non-stressed plants, as well as either an untreated control or grower standard fertilizer applications alone and in …

Implementing Nature's Rights In Colombia: The Arato And Amazon Experiences, Camila Bustos, Whitney Richardson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Nature's rights approaches are being developed as an alternative legal means to enable justice for nature and, oftentimes, humans, too. This study examines Colombia's two seminal court-ordered nature's rights approaches which recognize ecosystems-the Atrato River Basin (2016) and the Colombian Amazon (2018)-as a legal subject with rights to protection, maintenance, conservation, and restoration. Developed as remedies for human rights violations, both cases offer opportunities to explore variations in nature's rights approaches and the relationship between efforts to enable justice for humans and nature. We build on existing scholarly engagement with the cases by contributing a detailed archival study on their …

Miniscule And Might Predators: A Cautionary Tale Of The Power Of Mosquitoes In California And The Greater United States, Benjamin Willett

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates how the growth of mosquito populations within the United States, and California specifically, poses unique threats both to public health and socio- political conditions. Mosquito species that are native to the country, Anopheles punctipennis (An. Punctipennis) and Anopheles freeborni (An. freeborni) exist in a uniquely threatening position, bolstered by the introduction of invasive species (Ae. aegypti) and Aedes albopictus (Ae. albopictus). A focus on tracing introductions of invasive species and the resulting spread of zoonotic diseases such as yellow fever, dengue, and chikungunya are valuable indicators of how the insects are influenced by human actions. This relationship …

On Fires, Floods, And Federalism, Andrew Hammond

UF Law Faculty Publications

In the United States, law condemns poor people to their fates in states. Where Americans live continues to dictate whether they can access cash, food, and medical assistance. What’s more, immigrants, territorial residents, and tribal members encounter deteriorated corners of the American welfare state. Nonetheless, despite repeated retrenchment efforts, this patchwork of programs has proven remarkably resilient. Yet, the ability of the United States to meet its people’s most basic needs now faces an unprecedented challenge: climate change. As extreme weather events like wildfires and hurricanes become more frequent and more intense, these climate-fueled disasters will displace and impoverish more …

Analysis Of The Introduction Of Green Laboratory Certification Program At The University At Albany, State University Of New York To Increase Sustainability In Laboratories, Samantha Long

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Universities around the world are making changes to become more sustainable including lowering energy and water consumption, reducing waste production, and looking at procurement methods. At the University at Albany, State University of New York, there is an ongoing effort to increase sustainability and climate resiliency to align with state and international goals. One of the key areas needing improvement are scientific laboratories because they have a substantially larger energy consumption than other buildings. An analysis of current practices on campus was conducted and improvements suggested from research of similar programs. This included expanding and testing a campus specific “Green …

Net Zero Roadmap For Copper And Nickel, Columbia Center On Sustainable Investment, Carbon Trust, Rmi, Payne Institute For Public Policy

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

As we seek to meet the challenges of climate change impacts, many commodities will play an increasing role in decarbonizing economies. There are increasing challenges of addressing the emissions from extraction of these commodities needed to support the zero-carbon transition.

CCSI, in a consortium with Carbon Trust, RMI, and the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines, developed the Net Zero Roadmap to 2050 for Copper and Nickel Value Chains to support the copper and nickel mining sectors in taking collective, coordinated action by providing a clear, approachable, and accepted roadmap for decarbonization.

Our key messages …

Smoke, Air, Fire, Energy (Safe) In Rural California: Critical Reflections On An Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration, Deepti Chatti, Carisse Geronimo, Cassidy Barrientos, Jana Ganion, Malcolm Moncheur, Peter Alstone Phd, Shawn Bourque, Tanya Garcia, Tesfayohanes Yacob

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article provides a synthesis of the interconnected problems of tenuous energy access, wildfires, and exposures to high air pollution in Indigenous communities in rural California through the lens of ongoing collaborative research being carried out by researchers at Cal Poly Humboldt, Schatz Energy Research Center, Karuk Department of Natural Resources, and the Blue Lake Rancheria Tribe. The collaboration is funded by the Strategic Growth Council of the state of California, and we hope is the beginning of a longer term relationship between all partners. We are an interdisciplinary team of researchers drawing on energy engineering, air pollution science, and …

Recent Climate Change Influence On Flood Magnitude And Frequency, Channel Widening, And Bar Deposition In Big River, Missouri Ozarks, Patrick Saulys

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Climate and land use can control the flood regime of a river and regulate channel form and size over periods of decades to centuries. Recent climate change has increased rainfall intensity and flood magnitude/frequency in many watersheds in the midwestern United States. Thus, river channels affected by more frequent and larger floods are expected to respond by increasing width (or depth) by fluvial erosion to accommodate larger peak discharges. This hypothesis was evaluated along 186 km of the Big River in southeast Missouri by analysis of historical aerial photography, precipitation studies, and United States Geological Survey (USGS) flow gage records. …

Kindling A Desire To Read: A Review Of Three Young Adult Novels, Michelle Rasheed

South Carolina Association for Middle Level Education Journal

Drawing on experiences as an English teacher and as a teacher educator, this article offers a review of Nothing Burns as Bright as You by Ashley Woodfolk (2021), Paradise on Fire by Jewell Parker Rhodes (2022), and Year on Fire by Julie Buxbaum (2022). The review offers suggestions to promote adolescent reading. Authentic characterizations, realistic dialogue, credible events, and elements of suspense draw readers in and keep them reading. Recommended as viable works to spark students’ interest in reading, Nothing Burns as Bright as You, Paradise on Fire, and Year on Fire are contemporary young adult novels to …

The Effect Of Climate Change On Avian Offspring Production: A Global Meta-Analysis, Lucyna Halupka, Debora Arlt, Jere Tolvanen, Alexandre Millon, Pierre Bize, Peter Adamík, Pascal Albert, Wayne J. Arendt, Alexander V. Artemyev, Vittorio Baglione, Jerzy Bańbura, Mirosława Bańbura, Emilio Barba, Robert T. Barrett, Peter H. Becker, Eugen Belskii, Mark Bolton, E. Keith Bowers, Joël Bried, Lyanne Brouwer, Monika Bukacińska, Dariusz Bukaciński, Lesley Bulluck, Kate F. Carstens, Inês Catry, Motti Charter, Anna Chernomorets, Rita Covas, Monika Czuchra, Donald Dearborn, Florentino De Lope

All Faculty Scholarship

Climate change affects timing of reproduction in many bird species, but few studies have investigated its influence on annual reproductive output. Here, we assess changes in the annual production of young by female breeders in 201 populations of 104 bird species (N = 745,962 clutches) covering all continents between 1970 and 2019. Overall, average offspring production has declined in recent decades, but considerable differences were found among species and populations. A total of 56.7% of populations showed a declining trend in offspring production (significant in 17.4%), whereas 43.3% exhibited an increase (significant in 10.4%). The results show that climatic changes …

Quantifying The Carbon Stored And Sequestered By The Trees On Pomona College’S Campus, Paola A. Giron-Carson

Scripps Senior Theses

We are experiencing a climate crisis that must be confronted with strategic mitigation. Pomona College contributes to the climate crisis through its emissions for which there is a baseline record. However there is no baseline record of the climate mitigation currently performed by the trees on Pomona’s campus through carbon storage. This study seeks to determine a current baseline quantity of carbon stored and sequestrated by Pomona’s trees as well as possible courses of climate mitigation for Pomona College to take. Initial information gathering was conducted through interviews with several stakeholders. This study was conducted using data collected prior to …

The Pledging World Order, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

There is an emerging world order characterized by unilateral pledges within a legal or “legal-ish” architecture of commitments. The pledging world order has materialized in the international legal response to climate change and in other diverse sites. It crosses and blurs the public-private divide. It erodes distinctions between multilateralism and localism, law and not-law, and progress and stasis. It is both a symptom of and a contributor to the dismantling of the Westphalian and postwar orders. Its report card is mixed: While pledging can be highly ineffective as a legal technology, the pledging world order may respond to some legitimacy …

Exploring The Evolution Of Trypanosoma Cruzi And The Emergence Of Chagas Disease In The Context Of Environmental Change: Applying The Stockholm Paradigm To Archaeoparasitology, Part I, Aida Romera Barbera, Daniel R. Brooks, T. Michael Fink, Karl J. Reinhard

Karl Reinhard Publications

The Stockholm Paradigm is an evolutionary synthesis that explains the emergence of novel pathogens in the context of environmental disturbances. Considering the urgent climate change situation, anticipation stands as key to prevent and mitigate the effects that climate change can have in the emergence of pathogens. However, the success of preventive measures is hindered by a limited knowledge of the interplaying dynamics between biology, environment, and culture leading to emerging infectious diseases. For many decades, bioarchaeologists have been gathering data on past human-environment interactions, therefore contributing to the conversation. Archaeoparasitology, at the intersection between pathology, bioarchaeology, and biology, is uniquely …

The Dynamic Relationship Between Permafrost And Landcover In Northwestern Canada’S Discontinuous Permafrost Zone, Olivia Carpino

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Northwestern Canada’s subarctic is among the most impacted regions in the world as it is experiencing rapid climatic and environmental change. As a result, northwestern Canada has been experiencing region-wide permafrost thaw and disappearance, both of which are also occurring at unprecedented rates. Permafrost temperatures in the Taiga Plains have been warming steadily over the last several decades, which has been particularly detrimental across its lower latitudes of the discontinuous permafrost zone where the permafrost is already relatively thin and warm. These factors indicate that permafrost in the southern Taiga Plains may be in a state of disequilibrium with the …

Illuminating The Land-Energy Nexus, Danielle Stokes

Law Faculty Publications

The complexities of climate change have infiltrated every facet of life. From environmental preservation and food production to employment opportunities and policymaking, climate plays a role. These respective touchpoints have a direct connection to the Farm Bill. This law serves as the crux of agricultural programs and cements the relationship between farmers and the federal government. What began as a safety net following the Great Depression has expanded into a multi-title behemoth that now regulates nutrition assistance, rural economic development initiatives, and everything in between. In recent years, thought leaders such as the Farm Bill Law Enterprise have brought climate-centered …

Physiology And Energetics Of Resilient Coral-Dinoflagellate Communities, Elise F. Keister

All ETDs from UAB

Despite coral reefs declining globally, thermally resilient coral-dinoflagellate communities have been identified, providing insight into how corals can inhabit warmer environments. These corals are able to better resist and recover from thermal stress events compared to adjacent, offshore conspecifics that are found in habitats that have cooler temperatures. To better understand the physiological traits that make corals resilient, I measured the initial tissue biomass and energy reserves of eight coral species. These corals were collected from both warm-water nearshore habitats and offshore reefs with milder temperatures in Palau, Micronesia. Despite contrasting environments, coral tissue similarities between these populations were striking, …

Growth ≠ Density: Zoning Deregulation And The Enduring Problem Of Sprawl, Christopher Serkin, Kelsea Best

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

According to its many critics, zoning bears significant responsi- bility for the housing crisis in America andfor promoting unsustain- able development patterns. Reformers argue that zoning reduces the supply of new housing and therefore drives up prices in thriving communities. Zoning also increases carbon emissions by restricting density in the urban core and promoting carbon-intensive, land- consuming, automobile-dependent sprawl in single-family suburbs. A growing chorus calls for relaxing zoning limits in order to pro- mote growth in the urban core as a response to the twin crises of housing costs and climate change. Relaxing zoning limits will al- most certainly …