Sustainability Commons^™

Nephrotoxic Contaminants In Drinking Water And Urine, And Chronic Kidney Disease In Rural Sri Lanka, Tewodros Rango, Marc Jeuland, Herath Manthrithilake, Peter G. Mccornick

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Chronic kidney disease of unknown (“u”) cause (CKDu) is a growing public health concern in Sri Lanka. Prior research has hypothesized a link with drinking water quality, but rigorous studies are lacking. This study assesses the relationship between nephrotoxic elements (namely arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), and uranium (U)) in drinking water, and urine samples collected from individuals with and/or without CKDu in endemic areas, and from individuals without CKDu in nonendemic areas. All water samples—from a variety of source types (i.e., shallow and deep wells, springs, piped, and surface water)—contained extremely low concentrations of nephrotoxic elements, and all …

Demonstration Of A Daily High-Resolution (375-M) Alexi Evapotranspiration Product For The Nena Region, Christopher Hain, Martha C. Anderson, Mitch Schull, Christopher M.U. Neale

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

While the current constellation of geostationary sensors provides near-global coverage (60N to 60S) – it requires merging data from 7 satellites [resolving time differences; view angles; atmospheric correction]. Polar orbiting sensors such as MODIS and VIIRS provide daily global coverage of LST at higher resolutions than GEO sensors but at only two times per day.

Assessment Of Village Chicken Production Systems In Kambata Tambaro And Wolaita Zones, Snnpr, Ethiopia, Aman Getiso, Fitsum Tessema, Mesfin Mekonnen, Addisu Jimma, Bereket Zeleke

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

The study was conducted in four woredas (Damot Gale,Of a, Angacha and Hadero Tunto) the first two of them found in Wolaita zone and two of them in Kambata Tambaro Zone of SNNPR, Ethiopia respectively. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in the study areas to assess village chicken production systems, productive and reproductive performance of village chicken and identifying constraints to village chicken production. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select 240 farming households and administer a pre-tested and structured questionnaire. The results showed that the mean age of interviewed farmers was 37.8±9.3 years; average family size & chicken …

Yield Gap Analysis Of Field Crops: Methods And Case Studies, V. O. Sadras, Kenneth Cassman, Patricio Grassini, W. G.M. Bastiaanssen, A. G. Laborte, A. E. Milne, G. Sileshi, P. Steduto

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

The challenges of global agriculture have been analysed exhaustively and the need has been established for sustainable improvement in agricultural production aimed at food security in a context of increasing pressure on natural resources. Whereas the importance of R&D investment in agriculture is increasingly recognised, better allocation of limited funding is essential to improve food production. In this context, the common and often large gap between actual and attainable yield is a critical target. Realistic solutions are required to close yield gaps in both small and large scale cropping systems worldwide; to make progress in this direction, we need (1) …

What Is Valuable?, Kelly Harer

SR & SC Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Turning Toward Feeling, Elizabeth D. Mcgrew

SR & SC Masters Projects

Five years ago, upon completing a 200-hour, 30-day intensive yoga teacher-training course, we took this group photo. Painted on the wall behind us are the words, “Feel pain? Change positions.” At that time in my life, my understanding of this assertion was shallow: if it feels as though something is ripping, pulling, or tearing, move out of the yoga pose. But as for other physical and emotional pain, I had been taught to sit with it and accept it, and by doing so I would demonstrate strength and continue to grow stronger. Turning away from pain seemed cowardly. It wasn’t …

Mitigation And Beautification: Placing Rain Gardens In The Keystone Neighborhood Of Rock Island, Illinois, Rosalie K. Starenko

Independent Research Projects

With new stormwater management regulations, cities are looking for strategies to reduce urban runoff, and rain gardens are one of several strategies that capture runoff and encourage infiltration and evaporation. In doing so, pollution from runoff is mitigated and combined sewer systems experience fewer overflow events. I argue as well that the implementation of rain gardens would act as a movement for neighborhood beautification. This research develops a new methodology for placing rain gardens that: 1) maximizes the aesthetic value of the gardens by favoring high-visibility locations and 2) targets locations that would best benefit from reduced stormwater runoff. The …

The Integration Of Heat Resources In A Solar Thermal-Heat Pump Hydronic System, John Maxfield Degrove

Open Access Theses

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, roughly 41% of the energy consumed in the U.S. is used the power buildings. Within that number, almost half is used to heat or cool the building. Current technologies allow for consistent thermal management, but most utilize energy harvested from fossil fuels or convert electricity back into thermal energy. Background literature shows that the utilization of alternative heat resources such as heat pumps and solar thermal collectors can greatly reduce the energy used for heat delivery while producing adequate heating performance. A combined hydronic system using a bank of solar thermal collectors in …

Cultivating Sustainable Cities: A Comparative Study Of Urban Agriculture In Mumbai, India And New York City, Usa, Kristina Satterlee

Environmental Studies Honors Papers

Urban agriculture has the potential to be a source of great social and environmental good within a city. This study couples in-depth interviews with urban farmers with secondary research to provide a holistic understanding of the urban agriculture movement in Mumbai, Maharastra, India and New York City, New York, USA. Through this resource, it became apparent that the two movements vary drastically in terms of size, scope, resource availability, and movement goals. Despite these differences, the research points to one striking similarity. In both cities, farms and gardens in lower income areas have access to a far smaller body of …

Navigating A Pathway Toward Colorado's Water Future: A Review And Recommendations On Colorado's Draft Water Plan, Lawrence J. Macdonnell, Colorado Water Working Group

Books, Reports, and Studies

40 pages (includes color illustrations).

A Look At The Interim Guidelines At Their Mid-Point: How Are We Doing?, Colorado River Research Group

Books, Reports, and Studies

4 pages.

Putting Impact First: Community-University Partnerships To Advance Authentic Neighborhood Sustainability, Michelle L. Holliday, Tony Defalco, Jacob Sherman

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

This article profiles a partnership between the Living Cully ecodistrict and Portland State University’s Sustainable Neighborhoods Initiative. The case studies presented in this article explore how Living Cully leveraged PSU assets to advance their goals, highlighting successes and lessons learned. This article also addresses how the partnership was formed, what makes the partnership innovative, the role of interdisciplinary/intercommunity organizational strategies, and how the community partner commits to urban sustainability and social justice.

Ua12/13 2015 Sustainability Report [Western Kentucky University], Wku Office Of Sustainability, Christian Ryan-Downing

Sustainability Publications and Resources

2015 was a great year for WKU Sustainability, marked by significant new initiatives, special recognitions, and continued progress in advancing sustainability in the way Hilltoppers live, learn, and work. This report highlights the sustainability accomplishments of WKU students, faculty, staff, the Office of Sustainability, and the campus community in 2015.

Ua12/2/2 2015 Talisman: Resurgence, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

2015 Talisman yearbook.

• Osborne Sam. Into the Woods – Big To-Do Music & Arts Festival
• Spalding, Shelley. The Outliers – Greeks
• Badjie, Haddy. The Right to Live – Racism
• Gibson, Helen. Net Worth – Soccer
• Greer, John. Sustaining Seasons – Sustainability
• Wegert, Sally. Bloom – Eva Ross
• Cislo, Everett. Harvest – Hemp
• Kolb, William. Preserve – John All
• Voorhees, Jessica. Making Strides – Track & Field
• Greer, John. The Science Guy – Bill Nye
• Cole, Tanner. Lip Service – Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Belknap, Abby. Race to the Senate
• Gibson, Helen. Game of Loans – Student Financial Aid
• Belknap, Abby. …

Establishing A Framework For The Recognition Of Local Arboricultural Practitioners, Paul Yuen King Chan

Faculty of Design & Environment (THEi)

No abstract provided.

Strengthening The Resiliency Of Dryland Forest-Based Livelihoods In Ethiopia And South Sudan: A Review Of Literature On The Interaction Between Dryland Forests, Livelihoods And Forest Governance, Steven Lawry, Rebecca J. Mclain, Habtemariam Kassa

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

Dry forests account for nearly half of the world’s tropical and subtropical forests and provide a multitude of ecological services. They contribute to hydrological cycles and livestock and wildlife provisioning; and host pollinators and wild plants. They are also important ecological zones for dryland agriculture and pastoral livelihood strategies that support hundreds of millions of people around the world. Dry forests cover large areas and their biomass stores carbon and helps mitigate climate change. Dry forests are particularly important to people in Africa. They provide wood for construction and energy, contribute to local diets with wild fruits, vegetables, nuts, edible …

Cures Garden Program - Martha Baldwin, Center For Urban Resilience

Module 10: Garden Ecology

No abstract provided.

Collective Impact: Results From A Multi-Campus Farm To College Pilot Program, Mary Ellen Mallia, Jamie Adams, Hannah Morgan, Lisa Mitten, Deborah Howard

Presentations

Presented at Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Conference and State of NY Sustainability Conference.

A New Design Method For Vanadium Redox Batteries In Renewable Energy Systems, Casey Gibson, Karla G. Morrissey Unversity Of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This study investigated the behavior of vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs), which are batteries capable of easily switching between charging and discharging modes, making them a suitable option for storing intermittent sources of alternative energies (solar, wind, etc). Since different sizes of the battery provide varying voltages, optimal parameters for a particular home are key for implementation. These parameters, specifically the cell and tank volumes of the battery that are capable of providing consistent on-load voltage, were determined using data from a 13 kW solar array and a medium-sized house. Charge/discharge current values were used to run a mathematical model …

Drougthscape, Winter 2015, Kelly Smith

DroughtScape: Quarterly Newsletter of the National Drought Mitigation Center (2007–2023)

Contents

Director’s report

Central U.S. 2012 report

October-December drought summary

2014 drought summary

Caribbean capacity building

Drought impacts in 2014

California timeline 2014

UC Davis ranching workshop

NASA SMAP data

Global drought info system

Community Capitals

Evaluation and assessment

Indicator-impact research

NDMC on YouTube

Sustainability And Economic Analysis Of Propylene Carbonate And Polypropylene Carbonate Production Processes Using Co2 And Propylene Oxide, Yaşar Demirel

Yaşar Demirel Publications

Currently, the industrially important polycarbonates are synthesized from bisphenol A and diphenyl carbonate, which are highly toxic and hence other feasible alternatives are preferable. Following the considerable advances on the catalyst for the synthesis of carbonates from CO₂ and propylene oxide (PO), industrial scale processes for the productions of propylene carbonate (PC) and polypropylene carbonate (PPC) have been designed and simulated with sustainability and economic analyses. The CO₂ is supplied by a nearby bioethanol plant, while the PO from a petrochemical process. The first part of the study is for the production of 200 million lb/year cyclic PC …

Five-Year Growth Report: From Inception To Global Influence 2010 - 2015, Robert B. Daugherty Water For Food Institute

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Administrative Materials

While we are proud of our accomplishments in building an institutional framework, we are even more proud of our institute’s initial work to build an impact-driven program. This work is indeed the central focus of this report. Through the leadership of our new directors for research and policy, we have begun to build a vigorous research and policy development program that includes engagement with both local and global stakeholders. We have also developed a strong set of collaborations with national and international partners, striving to achieve a balance between work in Nebraska and globally, including in India, Brazil, China and …

Romania's Participation To The European Assessment Project Titled Hyunder, Multi-Criterial Analyses Of Salt Cavern Locations, Ioan Iordache, Dorin Schitea, Adriana Marinoiu, Mihaela Buga, Mihai Balan, Ioan Stefanescu, Adrian Gheorghe, Mihaela Iordache, Viviana Cigolotti (Ed.), Chiara Barchiesi (Ed.), Michela Chianella (Ed.)

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The scope of the work is to assess the potential, the actors and relevant business cases for large scale storage of renewable electricity by hydrogen underground storage in Romania. This presentation intends to provide a picture of the multi-criterial analyses of salt cavern locations in Romania.

The energy sector is facing with the necessity to store large energy quantities for short to long term in order to adapt to the increasingly intermittent renewable energy. The results of this presentation have originated from an ongoing European assessment project by the name of HyUnder (FCH JU, grant 303417) regarding utilization of salt …

The Triple Bottom Line And Social Responsibility Framework In Public Sector Management, Matthew Ajiake

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Leaders of public sector agencies must incorporate the voices of diversified stakeholders into planning and decision-making processes. With aging infrastructures around the world, public agencies are challenged to move public benefit projects forward when citizens are not engaged or empowered to participate in the process. The purpose of this triple bottom line (social, ecological, and financial) and social responsibility study was to explore whether public sector organizations are socially responsible by law. A case study was developed using data from publicly available documents and interviews that explored how the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) implemented a social responsibility framework …

Transformational Leadership And Safe Driving Performance In The U.S. Electric Utility Industry, Mackington Joseph

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Transformational leadership (TL) has been found popular in many industries in the United States and abroad for the perceived transformational leaders' effectiveness in improving occupational safety. There is a lack of empirical evidence to confirm these claims for safe occupational driving. This phenomenological study attempted to fill this knowledge gap in the electric utility industry where employees must drive in all weather conditions to restore power to customers. The conceptual framework for the study was based on leadership and motivation theories of Burns and Maslow. The research questions explored the influence of (a) TL on safe driving performance improvement in …

The Prairie Post Quarterly Newsletter Of The High Plains Regional Climate Center- January 2015, Martha Shulski, Natalie Umphlett, Bill Sorensen, Crystal J. Stiles

Prairie Post: Quarterly Newsletter of the High Plains Regional Climate Center

Inside this issue:

Message from the director........................................1

Stakeholder engagement activities......................................2

AWDN news...............................3

Marketing efforts.....................3

Climate services and information................................4

Product highlight....................5

Outreach events and research highlights.................5

Recent and upcoming travel and activities.............................6

The Gravity Environment Of Zhouqu Debris Flow Of August 2010 And Its Implication For Future Recurrence, Diandong Ren, Lance M. Leslie, Xinyi Shen, Yang Hong, Qingyun Duan, Rezaul Mahmood, Yun Li, Gang Huang, Weidong Guo, Mervyn J. Lynch

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

This study investigates the geological background of the August 7-8, 2010 Zhouqu debris flows in the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu, and possible future occurrence of such hazards in the peri-Tibetan Plateau (TP) regions. Debris flows are a more predictable type of landslide because of its strong correlation with extreme precipitation. However, two factors affecting the frequency and magnitude of debris flows: very fine scale precipitation and degree of fracture of bedrock, both defy direct observations. Annual mean Net Primary production (NPP) is used as a surrogate for regional precipitation with patchiness filtered out, and gravity satellite measured regional mass …

Development Of A Long-Term (1884-2006) Serially Complete Dataset Of U.S. Temperatures And Precipitation For Climate Services, Jinshing You, Kenneth G. Hubbard, Martha Shulski, Mark D. Svoboda, Michael J. Hayes

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Serially complete climate datasets with no missing data are necessary for a diverse group of users working in many economic sectors. In this article we describe the procedures used to create a Serially Complete Data set (SCD) for the U.S. We include the selection criterion applied to potential SCD stations, the various procedural steps and the details applied to each step. A few observations that were not previously digitized were obtained from observers official paper reports. The methods used to estimate missing data are the Spatial Regression Test and the Inverse Distance Weighting technique. Using the criterion for selecting stations …

A Historical Perspective On Nebraska’S Variable And Changing Climate, Martha Shulski, William Baule, Crystal J. Stiles, Natalie A. Umphlett

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Nebraska is situated at the intersection of the northern and southern Great Plains, exhibiting a dramatic longitudinal gradient for precipitation and humidity, and benefiting from groundwater resources. The continental climate is highly variable temporally both for temperature and precipitation. Our assessment of long-term meteorological observations shows that over the last century the annual average temperature in Nebraska has warmed approximately 0.6°C, which is similar to the increase in the global average temperature over the same time period. Furthermore, we found minimum temperatures have warmed more than maximum temperatures, and winter and spring show the strongest warming. We found no significant …

Differences In Waste Generation, Waste Composition, And Source Separation Across Three Waste Districts In A New York Suburb, Omkar Aphale, Krista L. Thyberg, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Six tonnes of discards and recyclables from three waste districts in a New York suburb were sorted in 2012. The districts were chosen because one had a higher recycling percentage, one had median performance, and one was a low performing district. ASTM standards were followed for the waste composition sorting. The results showed, as expected, that the waste district with the highest recycling rate appeared to have the highest separation efficiencies, leading to greater amounts of recyclable materials being source separated. The waste districts also had different overall waste generation, both in terms of the amounts of wastes generated, and …