Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Climate Adaptive Forest Management In The Northeastern Us: Social And Ecological Motivations, Barriers, And Responses Of Rural And Urban Foresters, Teresa Mcgann

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This project examines how foresters in a diversity of professional contexts perceive and respond to global change in the northeastern United States, with the goal of supporting foresters in broadening and deepening their use of climate adaptive strategies. Based on qualitative analysis of 32 in-depth semi-structured interviews with urban and rural foresters (n = 15 and n = 17, respectively) across New England and New York, a summary is presented of the i) important environmental drivers of adaptation; ii) commonly employed adaptive practices; iii) significant barriers to adaptation; and iv) approaches to working through named barriers. According to the motivations, …

Enhancing Ecosystem Services And Climate Resilience In Agriculture: A Transdisciplinary Approach, Alissa White

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

A complex of social, economic and environmental factors influences agricultural management in the northeastern US. Farmers often balance goals of farm viability, environmental stewardship, and resilience to climate change, while also under public pressure to enhance the provisioning of ecosystem services from their landscapes. Changes in farm management have been identified as cost-effective ways to address both local water quality issues, and global anthropogenic influences on greenhouse gas concentrations. Individual decision-making on the part of farmers that determines the fate of ecosystem service provisioning from agroecosystems, placing increasing importance on understanding how policy, outreach and research can support farmers’ capacity …

Aridity In The Literature Of The American West: Water In Stegner's Angle Of Repose And Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang, Annie Frodeman

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines how Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose and Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang have been molded by water scarcity and in turn have shaped the discourse about water. Angle of Repose offers a reliable history of water in the West, showing how the myth of the garden permeated the lives of people who made the journey West at the end of the nineteenth century. Stegner’s narrative of the building of the West shows what comes of humanity’s desire to change the environment by making the desert bloom. The Monkey Wrench Gang complements Stegner’s Angle of Repose as …

Who Performs Pro-Environmental Behaviors (Pebs) And Why? Examining The Impacts Of Motivation, Environmental Attitudes, Identity, And Climate Change Concerns On Intended And Actual Pebs, Roberta Sofia Molokandov

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that the world only has until 2030 to prevent global temperatures from rising an additional .5 degrees Celsius from greenhouse gas emissions to thwart the catastrophic damage that could follow such warming. To reduce the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and alleviate human pressure on the natural environment, collective action must occur across the globe by consumers and producers. However, not everyone feels concerned about climate change, identifies as an environmentalist, or believes they can make an impact and that it is their responsibility to do so. Environmental …

Electric Grid Decarbonization Pathways: Landscape Impacts, Policy Interactions, And The Need For Cooperation, Austin Wesley Thomas

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Climate change has motivated governments around the world to ratify aggressive greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. Meeting these targets will require improved energy efficiency, behavior changes, and energy system decarbonization. Many climate change and energy policy targets imply the deployment of large amounts of low carbon, renewable energy resources like wind turbines and solar photovoltaic (PV) panels but do not specify how these resources will be sited on the landscape. The relationships between weather conditions, terrain, land cover, existing electric grid infrastructure, and electricity consumers will govern how these wind and solar PV infrastructure configurations develop and how quickly they …

Remote Sensing Methods And Applications For Detecting Change In Forest Ecosystems, David James Gudex-Cross

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Forest ecosystems are being altered by climate change, invasive species, and additional stressors. Our ability to detect these changes and quantify their impacts relies on detailed data across spatial and temporal scales. This dissertation expands the ecological utility of long-term satellite imagery by developing high quality forest mapping products and examining spatiotemporal changes in tree species abundance and phenology across the northeastern United States (US; the ‘Northeast’).

Species/genus-level forest composition maps were developed by integrating field data and Landsat images to model abundance at a sub-pixel scale. These abundance maps were then used to 1) produce a more detailed, accurate …

Role Of Community Social Capital For Acute Food Security Following An Extreme Weather Event, Alana N. Chriest

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Worsening climate changes effects are predicted to increase the severity and frequency of extreme weather events (EWE), which can disrupt food systems, from the local to global level, and compromise community food security. In the rural U.S., food insecurity, poverty, low economic growth, and population loss are prevalent, and rural communities often lack the physical capital to bolster community resiliency to climate change adaptation. In 2011, Tropical Storm Irene (TS Irene) in Vermont was the most damaging EWE the state’s history. Severely damaged roads, infrastructure, homes, and land, rendered many rural towns isolated for up to several days. The levels …