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Climate Change: Human Health, The Developing World And The Global Response, Cole James Kriett

Theses and Graduate Projects

Changes to the Earth’s biophysical system will extend and exacerbate the rates of vector-borne infectious disease, non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease and lung disease, and mental health disorders. Developing nations face the greatest burden of climate sensitive human health impacts while also having the lowest capacity to adapt to these changes. Addressing these global ethical challenges cannot be accomplished without supporting organizations like UNEP or the IPCC. However, these organizations cannot achieve global sustainability alone. Human beings collectively taking responsibility for climate change will be vital to this process.

Assessment Of The Carbonate Chemistry Seasonal Cycles In The Southern Ocean From Persistent Observational Platforms, N. L. Williams, L. W. Juranek, R. A. Feely, J. L. Russell, K. S. Johnson, B. Hales

Marine Science Faculty Publications

Observations from Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling (SOCCOM) biogeochemical profiling Argo floats are used to characterize the climatological seasonal cycles and drivers of dissolved inorganic carbon, total alkalinity, pH, the partial pressure of carbon dioxide (CO₂), and the saturation state of aragonite at the surface and at 200 m across five Southern Ocean frontal regimes, including under sea ice. The Southern Ocean ranges from a temperature-dominated system in the northernmost Subtropical Zone to a biologically dominated system in the most poleward Seasonal Sea Ice Zone. In all zones, the ingassing or outgassing of CO_{2 …}

Low Carbon Land Use: Paris, Pittsburgh, And The Ipcc, John R. Nolon

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This article describes strategies that local governments are employing to both mitigate and adapt to climate change, using their state-given powers to plan community development and to regulate private building. Local governments have significant legal authority to shape human settlements and, in so doing, lower CO2 emissions from buildings and vehicles, increase the sequestration of carbon by the natural environment, and promote distributed energy systems and renewable energy facilities that lower fossil fuel consumption. Local elected leaders are highly motivated to avoid the on-the-ground consequences of our changing climate. The effects of climate change manifest themselves at the local level, …

The Ecology And Economics Of Restoration: When, What, Where, And How To Restore Ecosystems, Jason R. Rohr, Emily S. Bernhardt, Marc W. Cadotte, William H. Clements

Integrative Biology Faculty and Staff Publications

Restoration ecology has provided a suite of tools for accelerating the recovery of ecosystems damaged by drivers of global change. We review both the ecological and economic concepts developed in restoration ecology, and offer guidance on when, what, where, and how to restore ecosystems. For when to restore, we highlight the value of pursuing restoration early to prevent ecosystems from crossing tipping points and evaluating whether unassisted natural recovery is more cost-effective than active restoration. For what to restore, we encourage developing a restoration plan with stakeholders that will restore structural, compositional, and functional endpoints, and whose goal is a …

Development Of On-Shore Behavior Among Polar Bears (Ursus Maritimus) In The Southern Beaufort Sea: Inherited Or Learned?, Kate M. Lillie, Eric M. Gese, Todd C. Atwood, Sarah A. Sonsthagen

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are experiencing rapid and substantial changes to their environment due to global climate change. Polar bears of the southern Beaufort Sea (SB) have historically spent most of the year on the sea ice. However, recent reports from Alaska indicate that the proportion of the SB subpopulation observed on-shore during late summer and early fall has increased. Our objective was to investigate whether this on-shore behavior has developed through genetic inheritance, asocial learning, or through social learning. From 2010 to 2013, genetic data were collected from SB polar bears in the fall via hair snags …

Climate Change, Cattle, And The Challenge Of Sustainability In A Telecoupled System In Africa, Tara S. Easter, Alexander K. Killion, Neil H. Carter

Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior

Information, energy, and materials are flowing over greater distances than in the past, changing the structure and feedbacks within and across coupled human and natural systems worldwide. The telecoupling framework was recently developed to understand the feedbacks and multidirectional flows characterizing social and environmental interactions between distant systems. We extend the application of the telecoupling framework to illustrate how flows in beef affect and are affected by social-ecological processes occurring between distant systems in Africa, and how those dynamics will likely change over the next few decades because of climate-induced shifts in a major bovine disease, trypanosomosis. The disease is …

Microgrids And Resilience To Climate-Driven Impacts On Public Health, Justin Gundlach

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

“Resilience” has burst into the lexicons of several policy areas in recent years, owing in no small part to climate change’s amplification of extreme events that severely disrupt the operation of natural, social, and engineered systems. Fostering resilience means anticipating severe disruptions and planning, investing, and designing so that such disruptions, which are certain to occur, are made shallower in depth and shorter in duration. Thus a resilient system or community can continue functioning despite disruptive events, return more swiftly to routine function following disruption, and incorporate new information so as to improve operations in extremis and speed future restorations. …

Evaluating Current And Future Range Limits Of An Endangered, Keystone Rodent (Dipodomys Ingens), Ivy V. Widick

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Climate is often considered the single most important factor limiting species’ ranges. Other factors, such as biotic interactions, are often assumed to be included via abiotic proxies. However, differential responses to climate change may decouple these relationships or lead to adaptation to novel environments. Accounting for competition and local adaptation should more accurately describe environmental factors influencing current distributions and increase the predictive accuracy of future distributions. Modeling the endangered giant kangaroo rat (Dipodomys ingens) is an excellent application of these model improvements, as the species range consists of geographically and genetically isolated populations experiencing disparate climatic change. …

Climate Change Challenges For Land Conservation: Rethinking Conservation Easements, Strategies, And Tools, W. William Weeks, Jessica Owley, Federico Cheever, Adena R. Rissman, M. Rebecca Shaw, Barton H. Thompson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Climate change has significant consequences for land conservation. Government agencies and nonprofit land trusts heavily rely on perpetual conservation easements. However, climate change and other dynamic landscape changes raise questions about the effectiveness and adaptability of permanent conservation instruments like conservation easements. Building upon a study of 269 conservation easements and interviews with seventy conservation-easement professionals in six different states, we examine the adaptability of conservation easements to climate change. We outline four potential approaches to enhance conservation outcomes under climate change: (1) shift land-acquisition priorities to account for potential climate-change impacts; (2) consider conservation tools other than perpetual conservation …

Dendroclimatic Analysis Of White Pine (Pinus Strobus L.) Using Long-Term Provenance Test Sites Across Eastern North America, Sophan Chhin, Ronald S. Zalesny Jr, William C. Parker, John Brissette

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Background: The main objective of this study was to examine the climatic sensitivity of the radial growth response of 13 eastern white pine (Pinus strobus L.) provenances planted at seven test sites throughout the northern part of the species’ native distribution in eastern North America.

Methods: The test sites (i.e., Wabeno, Wisconsin, USA; Manistique, Michigan, USA; Pine River, Michigan, USA; Newaygo, Michigan, USA; Turkey Point, Ontario, Canada; Ganaraska, Ontario, Canada; and Orono, Maine, USA) examined in this study were part of a range-wide white pine provenance trial established in the early 1960s in the eastern United States and Canada. Principal …

Institutionalizing Resilience In Us Universities: Prospects, Opportunities, And Models, Morris Foster, James O'Donnell, Mark Luckenbach, Elizabeth Andrews, Emily Steinhilber, John Wells, Mark Davis

ODU Articles

[From Introduction]

The United States is taking a largely region-specific approach to addressing challenges posed by climate change, in contrast with national and international approaches in most of the rest of the world. In locations such as Hampton Roads, New Orleans, and coastal Connecticut, the impacts of climate change tend to be addressed as they become locally evident rather than as part of a larger anticipatory national plan. Given that regional focus, universities can play a unique role in how the United States responds to the challenges of a changing climate. Universities can be knowledge brokers positioned outside or across …

Climate Change Challenges For Land Conservation: Rethinking Conservation Easements, Strategies, And Tools, Jessica Owley, Federico Cheever, Adena R. Rissman, M. Rebecca Shaw, Barton H. Thompson Jr., W. William Weeks

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Climate In The Dynamics Of Annual Plants In A Chihuahuan Desert Ecosystem, Danielle Ignace, Nancy Huntly, Peter Chesson

Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Question: What is the role of temporal climate fluctuations in the dynamics of desert winter annual plants in the Portal Bajada, and in the sustained irruption of the non-native annual plant species, Erodium cicutarium?

Field site: Portal Bajada, San Simon Valley, Arizona, USA. Methods: We counted plants at flowering over a 21-year period on twelve permanent plots and related these numbers to weather data collected at an on-site weather station, supplemented by observations from the National Climate Data Center. Specific summary climate variables considered most relevant to annual plant biology were developed as candidate predictors of plant response variables.

Statistical …

Range Expansion Of Tick Disease Vectors In North America: Implications For Spread Of Tick-Borne Disease, Daniel E. Sonenshine

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Ticks are the major vectors of most disease-causing agents to humans, companion animals and wildlife. Moreover, ticks transmit a greater variety of pathogenic agents than any other blood-feeding arthropod. Ticks have been expanding their geographic ranges in recent decades largely due to climate change. Furthermore, tick populations in many areas of their past and even newly established localities have increased in abundance. These dynamic changes present new and increasing severe public health threats to humans, livestock and companion animals in areas where they were previously unknown or were considered to be of minor importance. Here in this review, the geographic …

Four Years Of Unmanned Aerial System Imagery Reveals Vegetation Change In A Sub-Arctic Mire Due To Permafrost Thaw, Jessica Delgreco

Master's Theses and Capstones

Warming trends in sub-arctic regions have resulted in thawing of permafrost which in turn induces change in vegetation across peatlands both in areal extent and composition. Collapse of palsas (i.e. permafrost plateaus) has also been correlated with increases in methane (CH4) emission to the atmosphere. Vegetation change provides new microenvironments that promote CH4 production and emission, specifically through plant interactions and structure. By quantifying the changes in vegetation at the landscape scale, we will be able to scale the impact of thaw on CH4 emissions in these complex climate-sensitive northern ecosystems. We combine field-based measurements of vegetation composition and Unmanned …

Niche Modeling For The Genus Pogona (Squamata: Agamidae) In Australia: Predicting Past (Late Quaternary) And Future (2070) Areas Of Suitable Habitat, Julie E. Rej, T. Andrew Joyner

ETSU Faculty Works

Background: As the climate warms, many species of reptiles are at risk of habitat loss and ultimately extinction. Locations of suitable habitat in the past, present, and future were modeled for several lizard species using MaxEnt, incorporating climatic variables related to temperature and precipitation. In this study, we predict where there is currently suitable habitat for the genus Pogona and potential shifts in habitat suitability in the past and future. Methods: Georeferenced occurrence records were obtained from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, climate variables (describing temperature and precipitation) were obtained from WorldClim, and a vegetation index was obtained from AVHRR …

An Integrated Assessment Of The Potential Impacts Of Climate Change On Indiana Forests, Richard Phillips, Leslie Brandt, P. David Polly, Patrick A. Zollner, Michael Saunders, Keith Clay, Louis Iverson, Songlin Fei

Forest Publications

Forests provide myriad ecosystem services, many of which are vital to local and regional economies. Consequently, there is a need to better understand how predicted changes in climate will impact forests dynamics and the implications of such changes for society as a whole. Here we focus on the impacts of climate change on Indiana forests, which are representative of many secondary growth broadleaved forests in the greater Midwest region in terms of their land use history and current composition. We find that predicted changes in climate for the state – warmer and wetter winters/springs and hotter and potentially drier summers …

Implications Of Climate Change For Managing Urban Green Infrastructure In Indiana, Heather Reynolds, Leslie Brandt, Burnell C. Fischer Dr, And Clinical Professor, Brady Hardiman, Donovan Moxley, Eric Sandweiss, James Speer, Songlin Fei

Urban Green Spaces Publications

Urban areas around the world are increasingly investing in networks of urban forests, gardens, and other forms of green infrastructure for its many benefits, including enhanced livability, sustainability, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Proactive planning for climate change requires anticipating potential climate change impacts to green infrastructure and adjusting management strategies accordingly. We apply climate change projections for Indiana to assess the possible impacts of climate change on common forms of urban green infrastructure, and identify management implications. Projected changes in Indiana’s temperature and precipitation could pose numerous management challenges for managing urban green infrastructure, including water stress; pests, …

Environmental Effects Are Stronger Than Human Effects On Mammalian Predator-Prey Relationships In Arid Australian Ecosystems, Benjamin L. Allen, Alana Fawcett, Alison Anker, Richard M. Engeman, Allan Lisle, Luke K.-P. Leung

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Climate (drought, rainfall), geology (habitat availability), land use change (provision of artificial waterpoints, introduction of livestock), invasive species (competition, predation), and direct human intervention (lethal control of top-predators) have each been identified as processes driving the sustainability of threatened fauna populations. We used a systematic combination of empirical observational studies and experimental manipulations to comprehensively evaluate the effects of these process on a model endangered rodent, dusky hopping-mice (Notomys fuscus). We established a large manipulative experiment in arid Australia, and collected information from relative abundance indices, camera traps, GPS-collared dingoes (Canis familiaris) and dingo scats, along …

Global Climate Change In U.S. High School Curricula: Portrayals Of The Causes, Consequences, And Potential Responses, Casey R. Meehan, Brett L.M. Levy, Lauren Collet-Gildard

Educational Theory and Practice Faculty Scholarship

Broad misconceptions about global climate change (GCC) could hinder efforts to address this large-scale problem, and curricular materials can play a substantial role in what students learn about GCC. This study examines how U.S. high school textbooks and supplemental curricular materials published between 2007 and 2012 portray the causes, consequences, and potential responses to GCC. Our data included text segments related to these topics in five science textbooks, four social studies textbooks, and eight sets of GCC supplemental materials. To analyze these text segments, we conducted several rounds of coding, first categorizing curricula by their acceptance of the human causes …

Climate Change And Eutrophication: A Short Review, Mohammad Nazari-Sharabian, Sajjad Ahmad, Moses Karakouzian

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Water resources are vital not only for human beings but essentially all ecosystems. Human health is at risk if clean drinking water becomes contaminated. Water is also essential for agriculture, manufacturing, energy production and other diverse uses. Therefore, a changing climate and its potential effects put more pressure on water resources. Climate change may cause increased water demand as a result of rising temperatures and evaporation while decreasing water availability. On the other hand, extreme events as a result of climate change can increase surface runoff and flooding, deteriorating water quality as well. One effect is water eutrophication, which occurs …

Asia Pacific Perspectives Vol. 15 No. 2, Spring/Summer 2018, University Of San Francisco

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Contents:

Editor's Introduction by Melissa S. Dale

The editor reflects on this issue's new articles, which focus on climate change as it is being experienced across Asia, and the different local responses it has provoked. From China to India to Southeast Asia, the relationship of nature to each local worldview shapes how communities view climate change, its effects, and their responses to it.

Fengshui Forests as A Socio-natural Reservoir in the Face of Climate Change and Environmental Transformation by Christopher R. Coggins and Jesse Minor

Chinese lineage villages are social-ecological systems (SESs) designed according to principles of fengshui (“wind-water”). Fengshui …

L’Évolution Des Actions En Justice Climatique Aux États-Unis, De George W. Bush À Donald Trump, Michael B. Gerrard

Faculty Scholarship

Les États-Unis ont plus de procès sur le climat que tous les autres pays dumonde réunis. La nature du litige a tendance à varier selon le parti qui détient la Maison Blanche. Pendant les administrations démocrates (Barack Obama), les poursuites ont tendance à être intentées par des sociétés industrielles et des États à tendance républicaine, alléguant que le Gouvernement fédéral en fait trop pour lutter contre le changement climatique. Pendant les administrations républicaines (George W. Bush, Donald J. Trump), la plupart des poursuites sont intentées par des groupes environnementaux et des États démocrates, alléguant que le Gouvernement fédéral en fait …

Annual Climate Impacts On Tree Growth And Post-Fire Regeneration In Ponderosa Pine And Douglas-Fir In The Northern Rocky Mountains, Lacey Hankin

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Widespread changes in climate and disturbance regimes, including prolonged drought and increases in the size and frequency of wildfires, have raised concerns regarding forest resilience to environmental change. Dry mixed-conifer forests have persisted for centuries under mixed-severity fire regimes; however, climatically driven increases in the frequency of large wildfires in recent decades may lead to increased tree mortality and declines in post-fire tree regeneration. Climatic warming and increased drought may also impact tree growth, with implications for the carbon cycle. Lower-treeline forests near the edge of their climatic tolerance may be particularly vulnerable to these impacts of future climate warming …

Freshwater Reservoirs: Global Warming’S Best Kept Secret, Beau Baily

Seattle Journal of Environmental Law

Fresh water reservoir construction involves the decomposition of plants that were previously able to absorb greenhouse gas and prevent its release into the atmosphere. With these plants no longer able to absorb greenhouse gas, it is released into the atmosphere, making freshwater reservoirs a source of global warming. Due to an increasing demand for clean energy, countries are planning and constructing dams at unprecedented rates. With dams come reservoirs. While hydroelectric energy is clean energy, the methods used to harness that clean energy create environmental problems that contribute to global warming. Ironically, this hydroelectric boom could do more harm than …

Evaluating The Biology And Ecology Of Sea Turtles In The Context Of Anthropogenic Climate Change, Elizabeth Michelle Bevan

All ETDs from UAB

This dissertation addresses several key gaps in our knowledge of how long-term threats, like climate change, impact the survival and reproduction of thermally-sensitive endangered sea turtles. Many aspects of the sea turtle life history, such as sex determination in hatchlings, are directly affected by environmental temperatures, making sea turtles crucial sentinels for monitoring the impacts of ecosystem variability. Chapter 1 re-evaluates the historic size of the Kemp’s ridley sea turtle population in the context of current nesting trends at its primary nesting habitat in the western Gulf of Mexico to address recovery targets and the conservation status for this species. …

The Role Of Climate In The Dynamics Of Annual Plants In A Chihuahuan Desert Ecosystem, Danielle D. Ignace, Nancy Huntly, Peter Chesson

Biology Faculty Publications

Question: What is the role of temporal climate fluctuations in the dynamics of desert winter annual plants in the Portal Bajada, and in the sustained irruption of the non-native annual plant species, Erodium cicutarium?

Field site: Portal Bajada, San Simon Valley, Arizona, USA.

Methods: We counted plants at flowering over a 21-yeaer period on twelve permanent plots and related these numbers to weather data collected at an on-site weather station, supplemented by observations from the National Climate Data Center. Specific summary climate variables considered most relevant to annual plant biology were developed as candidate predictors of plant response variables. …

America’S Relation To World Order: Two Indictments, Two Thought Experiments, And A Misquotation, Philip C. Bobbitt

Faculty Scholarship

The State is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy owing to its inability to cope with novel problems of weapons proliferation, transnational threats including climate change, a fragile global financial infrastructure, cultural influences carried by electronic communications, and an undemocratic regime of human rights law. These fatal inadequacies are summoning forth a new constitutional order, the latest in a series of century-spanning archetypal regimes that have arisen since the Renaissance and the collapse of feudalism. A backlash against the harbingers of this new order, however, is crippling the development of those modes of action that are required to deal with the …

Indications Of Future Performance Of Native And Non-Native Adult Oysters Under Acidification And Warming, Anaëlle J. Lemasson, Jason M. Hall-Spencer, Stephen Fletcher, Samuel Provstgaard-Morys, Antony M. Knights

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Globally, non-native species (NNS) have been introduced and now often entirely replace native species in captive aquaculture; in part, a result of a perceived greater resilience of NSS to climate change and disease. Here, the effects of ocean acidification and warming on metabolic rate, feeding rate, and somatic growth was assessed using two co-occurring species of oysters – the introduced Pacific oyster Magallana gigas (formerly Crassostrea gigas), and native flat oyster Ostrea edulis. Biological responses to increased temperature and pCO₂ combinations were tested, the effects differing between species. Metabolic rates and energetic demands of both species were increased by …

The Effects Of Elevated Co2 On Shell Properties And Susceptibility To Predation In Mussels Mytilus Edulis, Daniel E. Sadler, Anaëlle J. Lemasson, Antony M. Knights

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

For many species, ocean acidification (OA) is having negative physiological consequences on their fitness and resilience to environmental change, but less is known about the ecosystem effects of these changes. Here, we assess how OA conditions predicted for 2100 affects the biological functioning of an important habitat-forming species Mytilus edulis and its susceptibility to predation by a key predator, the gastropod Nucella lapillus. Change in three physiological parameters in Mytilus were assessed: (1) shell thickness and cross-sectional surface area, (2) body volume and (3) feeding rate, as well as susceptibility to predation by N. lapillus. Shell thickness and cross-section area, …