Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Quantifying The Health Benefits Of Nature Contact In Cities Across The Us, Aaron J. Schwartz

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Urbanization, the rise of sedentary lifestyles, and increasing screen time have led to a significant decline in nature contact, or how much time people spend in greenspace. At the same time, urban populations are experiencing declining physical and mental well-being. While nature contact has been shown to have a variety of health benefits, these benefits have not been well-quantified or verified across different geographic contexts. In addition, there is a lack of clarity around how the benefits of nature contact vary temporally (e.g. seasonally) and between different types of greenspaces. In this dissertation, I investigate the health benefits of urban …

Comparing Website Presentations Of "Nature" Across Vermont Ski Areas And Adjacent Rural Communities, Margaux Anna-Elizabeth Reckard

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Ski areas attract and cater to tourists and are often powerful symbols of cultural identity and place-based meaning. Within contexts of mountain tourism development, ski areas also communicate messages to orient visitors and residents to special features and qualities of the natural environment. This research specifically focuses on how Vermont ski areas and their neighboring rural communities use language, symbolism and imagery, within the context of website communications, to shape cultural meanings of nature and place.

A sample of small, medium, and large ski areas, representing a range of development sizes, locations, and recreational offerings, were paired with their adjacent …

Human-Nature Relationship And Faery Faith In The American Pagan Subculture, Sarah Goodrich

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Within American religious culture, there is a small but significant and growing movement that overlaps and interacts with the environmental movement. It's known by many names, including Contemporary Paganism, Neo-Paganism, Earth Religion, and Nature Religion. A few years of observation at Starwood Festival, the largest annual Pagan gathering in North America, revealed that many individuals who identify as Pagan (or Wiccan, Druid, animist, or another of the identities that fall under the Pagan umbrella) include in their spiritual practice engagement with faeries or other nature spirits. My research employed qualitative methods including participant observation and interviews to examine the extent …