Digital Commons Network^™

Lands Lost: Tracing Displacement And Ecological Degradation Amongst The Tataviam, Kawaiisu, Kitanemuk, And Vanyume People Of Antelope Valley, Calif., Daisy Alvarez

Scripps Senior Theses

Exploring the historic and ongoing impact of settler colonialism in the Antelope Valley, this thesis argues the Tataviam, Kawaiisu, Kitanemuk, and Vanyume, the aboriginal tribes of the valley, are effectively erased from the valley’s narrative and imagination. Through a series of genocidal and colonization efforts, first from Mission San Fernando and then from the California State Government and arrival of Anglo American settlers, the valley’s tribes can be subjugated to acculturation, displacement, massacres, and marginalization. Recognizing the valley's moral responsibility to platform their living descendants, the thesis proposes a path forward through decolonization, calling out local governments (Lancaster and Palmdale) …

A Song Of Soil And Seeds: The Delicious History Of Tunisian Grain Agriculture And Its Solution To Contemporary Food Scarcity., Ella Schonberger

Scripps Senior Theses

“A Song of Soil and Seeds: The Delicious History of Tunisian Cereal Agriculture and Its Solution to Contemporary Food Scarcity” by Ella Schonberger explores the history of Tunisian grain agriculture as a continuous narrative of adaptation, resilience, and colonial disruption. This thesis traces the historical journey of Tunisian grain agriculture, from its indigenous Amazigh roots through successive waves of Roman, Ottoman, and French agro-colonialism, to the environmental and agricultural pressures of the Green Revolution and today’s climate crisis.

Combining archaeological evidence, historical records, agronomic research, oral interviews, and firsthand culinary experimentation, this paper examines how Tunisia’s heirloom grains—sorghum, millet, and …

Find My Friends: Location-Sharing Ideologies And Peer Surveillance Practices, Nayla Dayal

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the use of Find My Friends in the context of the Claremont Colleges. Students choose to location-share under initial rhetorical justifications of social reciprocity, and community-orientedness, and peer-safety. Drawing from ethnographic interviews conducted with users at the colleges, I argue that the infrastructure of Find My Friends in conjunction with the social and physical proximities of the Claremont environment creates a distinctive condition where users are subject to what I term as a “virtual, neoliberal, and participatory panopticon.” Here, users are seemingly empowered through the application’s neutralizing collapse of reciprocity and hierarchy that are seen in conventional …

Governance And Innovation In Plastic Waste Management: The Case Of Japan, Minoo Tehrani, Yu Cui

Business Faculty Publications

This study investigates plastic waste management, focusing on Japan. The volume of plastic waste in Japan is more than eight million tons, and less than a quarter of the plastic waste is subjected to recycling. Considering that Japan is an archipelago consisting of a combination of four large islands and numerous smaller ones, plastic waste that enters the ocean poses significant threats to marine life, birds, other living beings, and beach pollution. This research explores the underlying factors that have made Japan one of the highest users of plastic. In addition, this study evaluates different strategies that are utilized in …

Green Cities Conference 2025--Program Booklet, Minoo Tehrani

Business Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The City Of Sunbury Cemetery Mapping & 1936 Flood Research, Sophia M. Martinez, Fehr A. Gillett, Ben J. Faxon, Sarah M. Sanfield

Final Reports in ENST 411: Environmental Community Projects

The City of Sunbury Cemetery Mapping & 1936 Flood Research Project was a community-driven effort to restore lost historical records of the Sunbury cemetery and to understand the context of how these records were originally lost. This project was completed as a partnership between the City of Sunbury government and four undergraduate environmental studies/sciences students in Bucknell University's ENST 411 Environmental Community Projects course. In this project, we used Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping technology, historical research, and volunteer engagement to create a comprehensive digital record of the cemetery. The goal of this project was to preserve Sunbury’s rich history …

Energy Equity In India’S Renewable Energy Transition: A Policy Design Agenda, Aritra Chakrabarty

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

India’s transition to renewable energy has prioritized large-scale, grid-based electrification, often overlooking energy equity, particularly in rural communities. Many households would benefit more from decentralized solutions than from grid extension, yet current policies neither guarantee equitable access nor address pre-existing social and economic inequalities in energy distribution. This dissertation examines the sensitivity of India’s renewable energy policies to energy equity, with a specific focus on gender equity in rural last-mile connectivity. The study is guided by the fundamental question: How can implementation of solar energy program alleviate the lives of rural communities? Using a mixed-method approach that combines policy …

Predicting Monthly Weather Anomalies In Ireland: A Comparative Study Of Machine Learning And Deep Learning Models., Fiona Behan

ICT

Abstract

This study investigates the application of statistical, machine learning, and deep learning methods to detect monthly weather anomalies in Ireland between 1960-2024. Climate variability is intensifying globally, increasing the urgency for accurate detection of unusual weather events. Using publicly available data from Met Eireann provided by the CSO PxStat Open Data Portal, the research applied comprehensive preprocessing including Bayesian Ridge iterative imputation, temporal and seasonal feature engineering, and ensemble statistical anomaly labelling based on z-score, interquartile range, and rolling residual analysis. Four models were developed and evaluated: Isolation Forest, XGBoost, Long Short Term Memory networks, and Gated Recurrent Units, …

Minnesota School Boards Association Communications Internship, Anna Houston

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

My internship at Minnesota School Boards Association allowed me to gain more experience within the communications field. This internship allowed me to see how current communications professionals are working within the non-profit sector that isn’t directly related to environmental matters. It was beneficial to learn from these experts while improving on my hard and soft skills within the communications field. This will help show future employers that I didn’t just study communications, but I actively practiced this work within the communications field. The Minnesota School Boards Association is a private, nonprofit organization founded in 1920 in St. Peter MN. The …

Landscape Intactness As A Necessary Component Of Multiple-Use And Sustained-Yield Management Of Bureau Of Land Management Public Lands, Matthew S. Dietz, Alison C. Flint, R. Travis Belote

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Interrogating Marine Plastics Pollution Regulations: The Intended Roles Of The Global Plastics Treaty, Ndubuisi Augustine Nwafor

Colorado Environmental Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Post-Purdue Landscape Of Consensual Third-Party Releases Through Contract Law, Kaori Nagase

American University Law Review

In Harrington v. Purdue Pharma L.P., the Supreme Court invalidated non-consensual third-party releases in Chapter 11 bankruptcy plans. In doing so, however, the Court left open the question of what constitutes valid consent to a release. This Comment argues that lower courts must now require a higher threshold of affirmative consent—particularly in mass-tort bankruptcies involving highly culpable non-debtors. In light of Purdue’s implication that third-party releases are anchored in contract law principles, this Comment suggests that courts should evaluate what constitutes adequate consideration for a release.

In The Kingdom Of The Thunder Dragon: Happiness, History, And Environment In A Changing Bhutan, Betsy Bolton

English Literature Faculty Works

Landlocked, mountainous, and surrounded by global giants India and China, Bhutan has provided remarkable leadership on both climate action and human happiness, despite its pre-2023 status as a least-developed nation. Bhutan was the first country to be internationally recognized as carbon neutral; it is also the birthplace of “Gross National Happiness” (GNH), a pointed alternative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a means of measuring the success of national policies in promoting citizens’ wellbeing. Yet Bhutan has also been a site of ethnic conflict, with roughly tens of thousands people displaced into refugee camps in the 1990s and eventually resettled …

Puerto Rico’S Grand Wyndham Hotel Río Mar, The Methods They Use To Protect Leatherback Sea Turtle Nests, And My Own Findings On These Nests, Christopher Thillet

Theses & ETDs

For a very long time, leatherback sea turtles have been harmed in many ways by ecological damage caused by humans, especially their nests. Despite this, it is also humans who have been trying their best to undo these wrongs by working to protect the environment around the areas they have constructed. This thesis serves as a reflection that will provide information on what leatherback sea turtles are and the many things that are harming them worldwide, as well as the information that the hotels of Puerto Rico have collected to help further the study surrounding the many effects that people …

Food Deserts: How To Make Them Green, Minoo Tehrani, Andreas Rathgeber, Lawrence Fulton, Bryan Schmutz

Business Faculty Publications

Despite tremendous progress in addressing food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition are still widespread across the globe. Different factors, such as low levels of income and education, lack of access to food markets and transportation, high unemployment and population rates, and abandoned homes in a neighborhood, are among the factors that have been attributed to the creation of food deserts in emerging and developed countries. Some of the leading causes of death in the U.S. are heart attack, obesity, and diabetes. These major causes of death have a higher rate among the Black, Latin, and Hispanic populations. Access to healthy and …

Mangroves: A Lesson On Modeling Changing Shorelines, Willa Skye

ENGS 15.11: Design and Education

This lesson is an overview of storm barriers, specifically mangroves and how they maintain shorelines. It is meant to offer a visual experience of coastline protection and provide a background for deeper understanding about intertidal zones and their conservation. Students will spend time creating a solution to a flooding problem by making a mock coast and storm barrier. To wrap-up the lesson, students will pair up, then reflect on their model and then individually write or draw their takeaways.

The Philosophies Of Swedish Mushroom Hunting, Kelly Zreloff

ENGS 15.11: Design and Education

This lesson invites students to explore Swedish mushroom hunting as both a cultural and environmental philosophy. Through a mix of mini lectures, storytelling, and outdoor experiential learning, students first learn about Allemansrätten (Sweden’s Right of Public Access) and how mushroom hunting evolved from post-war necessity to modern well-being practice. Students then reconstruct “a day in the forest” to reinforce the lecture’s key points about stewardship, secrecy, and serenity before participating in a quiet “hunt” activity in Pine Park.

By engaging curiosity first and empathy second, students come to understand that mushroom hunting is not only about harvesting food but about …

Crack Development Of Electroplated Niw Alloys And Their Wettability And Tribological Properties, Jidsucha Darayen, Suwat Ploypech, Martin Metzner, Claudia Beatriz Dos Santos, Petch Jearanaisilawong, Yuttanant Boonyongmaneerat

Journal of Metals, Materials and Minerals

This study investigates how sodium tungstate concentration (20–46 wt.%) and current density (40–60 A/dm²) affect the microstructure, wettability, mechanical properties, and tribological behavior of electrodeposited Ni-W coatings. Results show that increasing current density markedly raises crack density (from <100 to >400 cracks/cm²), while tungstate concentration has minimal effect. XRD confirms Ni-W solid solution formation, with higher tungsten content refining grains and increasing hardness—peaking at 900 HV at 50 A/dm² (an 80% rise from 500 HV at 40 A/dm²). However, excessive stress at 60 A/dm² leads to microcracking and hardness plateauing (~650–700 HV). Higher crack density improves wettability (contact angle ~17°), enhancing lubricant …

Dwelling With The Fault : Cultural Landscape And Spatial Formation In Kampung Batu Lonceng, Indonesia, Widjaja Martokusumo, Rr. Diah Asih Purwaningrum, Medria Shekar Rani, M. Zaini Dahlan, Budi Faisal, Izazaya Binta, Irwan Meilano, Hirohide Kobayashi

NAKHARA (Journal of Environmental Design and Planning)

Since UNESCO formalized the concept of cultural landscapes in 1992, heritage discourse has shifted from monument-centric approaches toward values-based perspectives that foreground the dynamic interplay among people, place, and ecology. Within this framework, cultural landscapes offer a critical lens for understanding rural settlements not only as spatial configurations but also as embodiments of intangible knowledge and ecological adaptation.  This study investigates Kampung Batu Lonceng, a vernacular settlement situated along the active Lembang Fault in West Java, Indonesia. With historical traces dating back to the Neolithic period, the kampung exemplifies how spatial formation is shaped simultaneously by geomorphological vulnerabilities and long-standing …

Downers Grove Environmental Sustainability Plan Implementation: Benchmark Analysis And Performance Management Plan, Allison Gazda, Jude St. Clair

CURE Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Perspectives 2025, Oberlin College Libraries

Perspectives Annual Reports

No abstract provided.

Re-Establishing People And Industry: A Study Of The Historical Context Of The Winters Decision (1908) Involving Indian Agent William R. Logan, The Plantiffs In Winters, And Sugar Beet Agriculture On The Fort Belknap Reservation, Montana, 1856-1910, Kellen R. Neighbors

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In 1905, Indian Agent William R. Logan filed an injunction to stop upriver irrigators from diverting Milk River water before it reached the Fort Belknap reservation. This culminated in Winters v. U.S. (1908) and became known as the Winters decision, the Winters Doctrine, or Indian Reserved Water Rights. This case is the foundation for Native American water rights cases today. This study explores the historical context of the case, specifically focusing on Fort Belknap Indian Agent William Logan’s role. William Logan was a devout Montana entrepreneur who carried his entrepreneurial spirit into his tenure as Fort Belknap Agent. This fact …

Essays On Human Decisions Related To Water Quality Problems In The United States, Sonia M. Refulio Coronado

Open Access Dissertations

Water pollution remains a pervasive and inequitable environmental threat in the United States, with mounting evidence that its burdens - whether in recreational or drinking water contexts - are unevenly distributed across communities. Urbanization, aging infrastructure, and industrial contamination have degraded both coastal waters and drinking water systems, posing serious public health and welfare concerns. At the same time, the extent to which water quality influences behavioral decisions, such as beach recreation or household adoption of water filters, remains poorly understood. Although drinking water pollution is widely ranked as a top environmental concern in national surveys, public knowledge of specific …

Metabarcoding-Biomass Relationships And Internal Standards For Quantitative Dna Metabarcoding, Frances Webber

Open Access Master's Theses

DNA metabarcoding has been widely adopted due to its power in investigating the composition of protistan communities, accurately identifying even small and cryptic taxa. However, the compositional nature of DNA metabarcoding results, and the distortion of natural abundances due to variation of the often-used 18S rRNA gene copy number over several orders of magnitude, renders these results semi-quantitative at best, limiting the application of DNA metabarcoding to ecological study. Here, we constructed mock communities from uni-algal cultures of taxonomically diverse phytoplankton and conducted metabarcoding using multiple primer sets and both DNA and cDNA as PCR templates. For each culture, chlorophyll …

Coastal Perspectives: An Analysis Of Resident And Visitor Attitudes And Motivations Of Coastal Resilience Measures In Rhode Island, Jamie-Lynn Ward

Open Access Master's Theses

Anthropogenic impacts of climate change negatively affect the geographic structure, economic stability, and environmental conservation of coastal communities at exhaustive rates. Coastal resiliency planning and frameworks have been widely credited and criticized for their ability to mitigate climate risks in vulnerable communities. Yet, the rapid impacts of climate on communities' socioeconomic and environmental sectors have led to outcries from researchers and users for integrated and holistic coastal resilience approaches. Approaches highlighting stakeholders’ views of risks, coastal resilience measures, and place values to form localized adaptation and politically supported management strategies directly involving and benefiting communities. This mixed-method study was designed …

Site Optimization For A Dual Crisis: Co-Prioritizing Carbon And Biodiversity To Improve Conservation Impact In Indonesia, Saskia Braden

Library Map Prize

As the dual crises of climate change and biodiversity loss accelerate and human expansion reshapes the planet, calls to preserve Earth’s remaining wilderness have grown more urgent. However, in the race to protect as much as possible, as fast as possible, society risks missing what matters most. Not all conservation sites are equally valuable, and without strategic prioritization, limited resources may be squandered while critical ecosystems disappear. Few places illustrate this challenge as vividly as Indonesia: a rainforest nation that is home to some of the richest biodiversity and densest forest carbon stores on Earth but where conservation efforts are …

2025 Commencement Program, Seattle University

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

2025-2026 Course Catalog, University Of Montana--Missoula. Office Of The Registrar

University of Montana Course Catalogs, 1895-2024

An annual catalog of courses and course descriptions offered at the University of Montana.

Implementation Of Smart Training On Construction Site Safety : A Case Study In Hong Kong, Yan Wai Chan, Kwan Keung Ng, Simon K.S. Cheung

Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange (JETDE)

The construction industry has made progress in improving safety controls, but vocational and professional education and training are still necessary to ensure site safety. In the 2022-2023 budget, the Hong Kong government has allocated HK$1.2 billion to The Construction Innovation and Technology Fund (CITF) implementation of advanced construction technologies (ACT) and a smart site safety system (SSSS) and the purpose of this system is to reduce accidents in the construction industry. In September and October of 2023, relevant training courses for the SSSS were introduced on a pilot basis. The industry will have access to a learning platform to participate …

Florida Resident Water Survey: Floridians' Relationships With Water And Water Management, Derek S. Reiners, Stefan Carpenter

Florida Geographer

This article reports the results of a 2023 survey of Florida residents regarding water and water management issues, including recreational and utilitarian water use, assessments and concerns regarding various water entities, knowledge of water management concepts, and involvement in water management activities. The survey included a total of 54 measures from a combination of compound (4) and single-answer (16) questions. Overall, the survey found that Florida’s water resources are held in high regard, and there is strong interest in protecting them across key demographic categories, including political ideology. This level of public attention and support may represent an opportunity for …