Environmental Studies Commons^™

Identifying And Assessing Conflicts Between Future Development And Current Migratory Bird Habitat Around Farmington Bay, Utah, Aubin A. Douglas

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Every year, the Great Salt Lake (GSL) and its associated wetlands provide critical habitat for over 250 migratory bird species from both the Pacific and Central Flyways. The GSL borders the Wasatch Front, which is the fastest growing and most populous region in Utah. To support the ever-increasing working population, the government of Utah aspires to increase the robust economic growth of the region through economic incentives and development of infrastructure. As this area continues to develop, greater pressure will be placed on the surrounding natural resources, including the GSL, its wetlands, and the open space and agricultural land that …

Saving The Smokies: Land Rights In The Middle And Mountain South, Robin J. Happel

Student Theses 2015-Present

From the Trail of Tears to the forced evictions that turned Cades Cove into a ghost town, Appalachia’s residents have long been betrayed by their governments. Currently, mountaintop removal – the destruction of hundreds of mountain peaks for coal – mirrors past abuses, and has sparked a new cycle of catastrophic health effects and land loss. This legacy of human rights abuses is far from Appalachia’s only option, however. In examining both the past and current socioeconomic structures that enable environmentally destructive practices like mountaintop removal, it is possible to chart a path forward. And, by adopting a system similar …

Shelter Cove, Ca Fishing Community Sustainability Plan, Lisa Wise Consulting, Inc., Humboldt State University

Local Reports and Publications

The Shelter Cove Fishing Community Sustainability Plan (FCSP) is the product of a strong collaborative partnership among the fishing community, Humboldt State University, civic leaders, elected officials, and local business owners and operators. The project was funded by a generous grant from Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant Program, awarded in September of 2016.

The FCSP is a powerful example of the Shelter Cove fishing community’s capacity to establish key partnerships, identify opportunities and constraints, procure funding and engage in strategic planning. The FCSP culminates with a list of Recommendations which reflect the highest priorities needs aimed at the success and resilience of the …

Art Brut & Bricolage: Manifesting Alternate Imaginaries Of The Waste Cataclysm, Dominic Alan Chequer

Communication Studies

Living within a consumer society that boasts increased sustainable consumption as the panacea to large-scale environmental degradation, the social avoidance of waste becomes an interesting psychological battleground in developing an environmentally sustainable future. In light of this situation, I used my participation in the design of a music festival to create a social critique by design. Using artistic techniques of bricolage and aesthetic upcycling, under the visage of art brut. The paper blends theory and practice, ideas with tangible outputs.

Asymmetric Relationship Of Urbanization And Co2 Emissions In Less Developed Countries, Julius Mcgee, Richard York

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Understanding the relationship between carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and the urbanization of national populations has been a key concern for environmental scholars for several decades. Although sophisticated modeling techniques have been developed to explore the connection between increases in urban populations and CO₂ emissions, none has attempted to assess whether declines in urbanization have an effect on emissions that is not symmetrical with that of growth in urbanization. The present study uses panel data on CO₂ emissions and the percentage of individuals living in urban areas, as well as a variety of other structural factors, for …

Trash Talk: The Effects Of Plastic Pollution On Seabirds In Narragansett Bay, Erin A. O'Neill

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Plastic pollution in the ocean is a global concern with more than 8 million tons of plastic dumped into our oceans every year. This policy paper assesses plastic pollution in Narragansett Bay and the negative implications it holds on local seabird populations. Also, essential background information on plastic production and throwaway culture is provided. Moreover, the biological significance of seabirds is described, highlighting the vital role such populations play in local ecosystems such as Narragansett Bay. This paper contributes research to the global issue of plastic pollution by observing declining native wildlife life populations, such as seabirds, on a local …

Burning Libraries: A Community Response, Thomas H. Mcgovern

Publications and Research

Archaeology is increasingly seen as a global change science as well as a provider of community heritage resources. Rapid climate change is destroying archaeological sites at an unprecedented rate, and community- based response is urgently needed.

Keeping Pace With Relative Sea Level Rise: Marsh Platform Monitoring Shows Minimal Sediment Deficit Along The Louisiana Coast, Kelly Marie Sanks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent reports estimate that the marshes of the Mississippi Delta receive just 30% of the sediment necessary to sustain current land area1. An extensive monitoring campaign by the USGS and LCPRA provides direct measurements of sediment accumulation, subsidence rates, and deposit characteristics along the coast over the past 10 years2, allowing us to directly evaluate this sediment balance. By interpolating bulk density, organic fraction, and vertical accretion rates from 273 sites, a direct measurement of organic and inorganic sediment accumulation can be made. Results show that a total of 82 MT/year of sediment is delivered to the coast. Using a …

Low Income Households Investment In Energy Efficient Appliances, Jieun Chang

Faculty Articles & Research

Introduction

•Does adopting energy efficient appliances reduce electricity consumption among low income households?

•Low income households: households below 150% of the federal poverty level

•Energy efficient appliances:

energy star refrigerators and energy star room air conditioners

Defining Landscape-Scale Collaboration As Used To Restore Forests And Reduce Catastrophic Wildfires, Marcelle Elise Dupraw 2512721

The Qualitative Report

In this article, I explore the distinctive characteristics of landscape-scale collaboration in the context of forest resource management in the United States. The United States (US) is experiencing a significant increase in acres burned by wildfire in the wildland-urban interface zone, exacting a heavy toll on human life, health, property, and livelihoods. The US Forest Service’s Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) Program demonstrates an effective approach to reducing risk of catastrophic wildfire through collaborative forest restoration work at the landscape scale. This is the first in a series of articles building toward a grounded theory to guide development of the …

Using Redundant Primer Sets To Detect Multiple Native Alaskan Fish Species From Environmental Dna, Damian Menning, Trey Simmons, Sandra Talbot

United States National Park Service: Publications

Accurate and timely data regarding freshwater fish communities is important for informed decision-making by local, state, tribal, and federal land and resource managers; however, conducting traditional gear-based fish surveys can be an expensive and time-consuming process, particularly in remote areas, like those that characterize much of Alaska. To help address this challenge, we developed and tested five multi-species environmental DNA (eDNA) primer sets for the simultaneous detection of up to 37 target fish species in a single sample. Using these primer sets can reduce the cost and time needed to perform future studies of fish communities. Our results comparing multiple …

The Anti-Fracking Movement And The Politics Of Rural Marginalization In Lithuania: Intersectionality In Environmental Justice, Diana Mincyte, Aiste Bartkiene

Publications and Research

While the environmental justice perspective focuses on the unequal distribution of environmental risks and benefits across different groups based on race, class, or gender, intersectionality approaches avoid the use of a priori categories to examine marginalization. We argue that intersectionality can broaden the scope of environmental justice studies by examining interactive, historically grounded processes through which categories of difference are produced. To support this argument, we present an illustrative case of the movement in Lithuania that challenged Chevron’s plans to prospect shale resources for potential fracking. We conduct a narrative analysis of public discourses surrounding the formation of the movement …

Evaluation Of Spatial Generalization Characteristics Of A Robust Classifier As Applied To Coral Reef Habitats In Remote Islands Of The Pacific Ocean, Justin J. Gapper, Hesham El-Askary, Erik J. Linstead, Thomas Piechota

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

This study was an evaluation of the spectral signature generalization properties of coral across four remote Pacific Ocean reefs. The sites under consideration have not been the subject of previous studies for coral classification using remote sensing data. Previous research regarding using remote sensing to identify reefs has been limited to in-situ assessment, with some researchers also performing temporal analysis of a selected area of interest. This study expanded the previous in-situ analyses by evaluating the ability of a basic predictor, Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), trained on Depth Invariant Indices calculated from the spectral signature of coral in one location …

"Sounding The Nile" In Nubian Musical Expression, Regan L. Homeyer

Shared Knowledge Conference

Nubians are indigenous peoples of the Nile River Valley whose ancient civilization parallels that of ancient Egypt. In 1964, 50,000 Egyptian Nubians were removed from their homeland along the Nile because of President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s initiative, the Aswan High Dam Project. With fertile lands and sacred temples doomed to inundation by the waters of what is now Lake Nassar, Nubians were resettled in government built villages that promised both preservation of culture and modern conveniences. What these riverine people received, in fact, were poorly constructed, unfinished dwellings located in the desert, more than five miles from the Nile. A …

The Effectiveness Of Albuquerque's "There Is No Poop Fairy" Campaign, Sergio Lozoya

Shared Knowledge Conference

This research seeks to understand the effectiveness of the There is no Poop Fairy campaign through a public survey of dog owners. The There Is No Poop Fairy campaign was initiated in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2014, with the goal of getting dog owners to pick up and properly dispose of their dogs’ waste. The Rio Grande is contaminated with E. coli bacteria that originates in part from dog waste, which is carried to the river through storm water. Levels of E. coli in the Rio Grande have decreased dramatically within the past few years, coincident with the campaign. The …

Sustainability And Carbon Neutrality, Jennifer Thomson

Bucknell: Occupied

Jennifer Thomson, assistant professor of History at Bucknell University, interviews Amanda Wooden, professor of Environmental Studies at Bucknell University and a second anonymous guest. Wooden and Thomson discuss the history and future of sustainability and carbon neutrality on campus. The audio quality is very poor. The anonymous guest discussed the October 31, 2018 Sustainability Forum.

Modeling How Land Use Legacy Affects The Provision Of Ecosystem Services In Mediterranean Southern Spain, Juan Miguel Requena-Mullor, Cristina Quintas-Soriano, Jodi Brandt, Javier Cabello, Antonio J. Castro

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Land use decisions induce legacies that affect the welfare of future generations. Here, we present a spatial modeling approach for quantifying how past land use decisions influence provision of multiple ecosystem services(ESs) based on different land use trajectories. We modeled the effect of past land use changes on water regulation, soil protection and habitat quality in southern Spain, one of the most transformed areas of the Mediterranean region. We demonstrate a measurable influence of antecedent land use changes on the capacity of a given land use to provide ESs, and that the effect size can vary among different services and …

Niobrara National Scenic River, Socioeconomic Monitoring Pilot Implementation, Summer 2016, Resource Systems Group

United States National Park Service: Publications

Executive Summary

This report describes the results of a visitor study at Niobrara National Scenic River (NSR) conducted from July 15 through July 24, 2016. During the sampling period, 253 visitor groups were contacted to participate in the survey. Of those groups, 217 agreed to participate in the study by accepting a mail-back survey packet. Questionnaires were completed and returned by 110 visitor groups, resulting in a completion rate of 51% among those visitor groups that agreed to participate in the study and an overall response rate of 43% for the study.

 This report profiles a systematic random sample …

Identification And Characterisation Of Novel Phages Of Pectobacterium And Erwinia, Colin Buttimer

PhDs

Losses in crop yields due to disease need to be reduced to meet increasing global food demands associated with growth in the human population. There is a well-recognised need to develop new environmentally-friendly control strategies to combat bacterial crop diseases. There are several crop diseases for which no effective bactericidal agents are currently available, such as potato blackleg and soft rot disease caused by Pectobacterium atrosepticum and other members of soft rot Enterobacteriaceae (Czajkowski et al., 2011). Furthermore, current control measures involving the use of traditional chemicals or antibiotics are losing their efficacy due to the natural development of bacterial …

Quality Assurance Plan For Monitoring White-Tailed Deer In The Heartland Inventory And Monitoring Network, United States National Park Service, Heartland Inventory And Monitoring Network

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

In accordance with guidelines set forth by the National Park Service Inventory and Monitoring Division, a quality-assurance plan has been created for use by the Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network in the implementation of the White-tailed Deer Monitoring Protocol (HTLN 2018). This quality-assurance plan documents the standards, policies, and procedures used by the Heartland Network for activities related to the collection, processing, storage, analysis, and publication of monitoring data. The policies and procedures documented in this quality-assurance plan complement the quality-assurance plans for other monitoring activities conducted by the Heartland Network and supplement the National Inventory and Monitoring Division …

Examining Patterns In Nest Predation Using Artificial Nests, Victoria L. Simonsen

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The use of artificial nests to study the predation of avian nests has faced disregard by ecologists due to inconsistencies found between the survival rates of real and artificial nests across studies and reviews. The negative perception of artificial nests providing an inconsistent assessment of survival has thus fostered the perception that artificial nests are a secondary option to be used to overcome logistical hurdles associated with achieving sufficient sample sizes in systems where study species are rare or elusive, or as merely a preliminary method to study predation across gradients. We argue that the greatest mistake ecologists have made …

Understanding Electricity Bills: Guidance For Nebraska Businesses And Municipalities, Elizabeth M. Regier, Bruce I. Dvorak

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

This publication is intended to help business owners and municipal managers understand the different types of charges in their electricity bills. By understanding these charges, they may be able to identify ways to reduce their electricity costs.

Dynamics Of The Community Resilience To Drought Hazard In The South-Central United States, Volodymyr Mihunov

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Drought effects cross-cut meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, and socioeconomic systems and affect both natural and human communities. The drought hazard varies in time and space in its intensity and impact on human communities. An identification of the main variables that affect resilience is crucial to coping with the hazard and promoting resilience. The study applied the Resilience Inference Measurement (RIM) framework to measure the resilience levels of the 503 counties of Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. In the first assessment, through k-means cluster analysis, stepwise discriminant analysis (74.7 percent accuracy, 72.8 percent leave-one-out cross-validation accuracy), and regression analysis (adjusted …

The Praxis Of Deceleration: Recovery As "Inner Work, Public Act", Marisol Cortez Ph.D.

Academic Labor: Research and Artistry (2017-2022 archives)

Originally published in Deceleration and presented at the 2017 meeting of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, this short essay details the vision and praxis behind an online journal of environmental justice co-edited by the author alongside environmental journalist Gregory Harman. In this essay, I situate the evolution of this project in relation to our precarious institutional positions as writers with disabilities who consequently work in the spaces between academia, journalism, activism, and creative writing. This positionality has in turn placed Deceleration in conversation with degrowth and allied movements around the world, which challenge the disabling …

Ohio Leed Schools And Academic Performance: A Panel Study, 2006–2016, Allen Prindle, Ryan P. Thombs

Business, Accounting and Economics Faculty Scholarship

This study investigates the effect that Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) had on academic performance using a difference-in-differences (DID) estimator using data from the years 2006–2016. By obtaining data from the Ohio Department of Education and the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission, this investigation examines the effect that LEED design had on the Student Performance Index for schools that opened in the year 2012. Each LEED school was matched with a non-LEED school based on several criteria. The study determined that LEED did not have an impact on the Student Performance Index. Though we find no relationship, green schools …

The Last Oil: Students Respond, Unm Department Of Art

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

In February 2018, the University of New Mexico (UNM) convened the last oil: a multispecies justice symposium on Arctic Alaska and beyond.Twenty-nine artists, activists, attorneys, scientists, conservationists, curators, scholars, and writers from across the United States and Canada, gave talks and/or did creative performances—and ten colleagues from UNM and beyond chaired various sessions. the last oil was the first national convening to apprehend the reckless U.S. federal Arctic policy, and also brought impacts of climate change and Indigenous rights concerns in Alaska into conversation with similar impacts and struggles in New Mexico and the west.

Published on Indigenous …

Achieving Sdg Targets: The European Approach: Compliance - The Case Of Energy & Irish Universities, Dr. Mary Whitney, Andy Maguire

Conference papers

Ireland, as a nation, has signed up to the SDGs. The main drivers in reaching these targets will be through a set of interventions that are encompassing
- legislation
- compliance to higher regulations
- incentives
- dissemination of effective best practice
When all put together it is a large and complex tapestry of actions.

The presentation takes Energy as an example. It outlines how the targets have been set nationally to achieve Ireland's internationally agreed targets. The resulting approach is highlighted, filtering down to what specific steps are taking place in the public sector. The resulting actions that are …

The Plastic Problem: Plastic Pollution In Bali, Kate Giesler

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

With the fourth highest population and an ever-growing rate of plastic consumption, Indonesia is the second largest plastic polluter in the world (McCarthy, 2018). The country, which has only had plastic since the latter half of the 20th century, has staggeringly high rates of plastic waste which becomes pollution due to various factors. This paper examines the factors that go into why the rates of plastic pollution are so high, what people know about it and what is being done to help combat the problem. The four main topics explored are: laws, disposal methods, education and tourism. The study uses …

Academic Job Tips By Costanza Rampini - Phone Interview, Costanza Rampini

Faculty Publications, Environmental Studies

If you are on the academic job market, particularly in the fields of environmental studies/geography, I would be happy to share tips and questions from phone and on-campus interviews. I realize that Ph.D. advisors should provide this type of coaching, but they don't always do it...and some haven't been on the job market for a long time. It helps to speak to someone who just went through it...and has fresh notes from it! I was so much more prepared and had much more articulated answers by the time I had my 8th phone interview as compared to my first. Some …

Pedestrian Pedagogy Of Place: Nurturing An Ecological Consciousness Through Slow Explorations Of The Public Realm, Kevin M. Pozzi

Leadership for Sustainability Education Comprehensive Papers

As increasing institutional paralysis and polarization demonstrate, citizens are not engaged or motivated by ecological challenges because they struggle to identify with our catastrophic relationship to nature in this urban, anthropocentric, and climactically-fraught modern era. Rather than focus solely on natural areas as a pathway to ecological consciousness and action, educators can inspire citizens through a “Pedestrian Pedagogy of Place” that brings wonder and enchantment into our urban public realm. Using the principles of sustainability education and place-based education as a framework, this pedagogy recognizes the sidewalk and pedestrian experience as a shared classroom through sensory, awareness-based learning modalities.