Nature and Society Relations Commons^™

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

Reintroducing Hemp (Rongony) In The Material Palette Of Madagascar: A Study On The Potential Of Hemp Clay Components And Its Impact On Social And Ecological Communities., Henintsoa Thierry Andrianambinina

Masters Theses

When mentioning the word hemp, especially in the local language of Madagascar, the literal translation does not set it apart from marijuana, as they are both called “rongony” - creating the stigma around hemp as the negative stereotype of marijuana. However, the material has been used by the ancestors of Madagascar, as well as across cultures, in its fibrous form to produce fabrication like textile goods and packaging. During colonization, the prohibition of hemp intensified, and since then, any activity related to either of these plants is prohibited and will end in severe punitive measures. This thesis explores the strengths …

The End Of Everything: The Physical And Figurative Impacts Of Landscape On American Ideology, Wyatt Alger

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Feasibility Of Earthships As Sustainable Homes In Brookings County, South Dakota, Whitney Sunkwah Yeboah

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Addressing the issue of housing deficit while providing affordable and sustainable homes is a significant problem in the United States today. This has prompted architects to design homes with less adverse environmental impacts despite their affordability, hence the birth of sustainable housing. Earthships are sustainable homes built from recycled materials, utilize solar or wind energy, and function as self-sufficient units. The study's main aim is to assess residents' perceptions of earthships and their willingness to adopt earthships in Brookings County, South Dakota. The research employs online surveys to garner data from residents, and data are analyzed using mixed methods. Results …

Quantifying The Carbon Stored And Sequestered By The Trees On Pomona College’S Campus, Paola A. Giron-Carson

Scripps Senior Theses

We are experiencing a climate crisis that must be confronted with strategic mitigation. Pomona College contributes to the climate crisis through its emissions for which there is a baseline record. However there is no baseline record of the climate mitigation currently performed by the trees on Pomona’s campus through carbon storage. This study seeks to determine a current baseline quantity of carbon stored and sequestrated by Pomona’s trees as well as possible courses of climate mitigation for Pomona College to take. Initial information gathering was conducted through interviews with several stakeholders. This study was conducted using data collected prior to …

Mapping The Impact Of A Trailway System On The Amount Of Trash Present Within Two Watersheds Of Lynchburg City, Virginia, Lillian Smith

Student Scholar Showcase

Transportation of trash debris within water systems is a prominent occurrence which has been linked to natural and artificial processes such as wind, rain, and littering. Recreational areas, such as activities along greenway trails, have been determined to be a source of debris found in waterways. This study examines whether the presence of an established recreational trail system limits trash accumulation in the entirety of a watershed. Trash data collected at Blackwater Creek, which contains an established trail system, was compared to trash data collected at Fishing Creek, containing a non-established trail system, to answer this hypothesis. A distance of …

Structural Problems Of Latin American Cities 450 Years After Caracas’ Foundation, Fabio Capra-Ribeiro

Faculty Publications

Latin American cities face many problems that compromise them from different angles such as lack of infrastructure, government fragmentation, and environmental degradation. At the same time, each city tries to come up with its own solutions, but there are so many difficulties that in many cases it is difficult to keep attention and efforts focused on all these directions. For these reasons, this research aims to define some of the most common problems faced by cities in Latin America. Disseminating these similarities could help to face those problems, since, if local governments recognize that they face the same situations as …

“A Certain Brauch:” German-Georgian Palatine And Rhenish Immigrant Houses In Columbia County, New York And Their Vernacular Architectural Roots, Andrew J. Roberge

Senior Projects Spring 2022

In this archaeological and architectural survey of 18th Century Palatine and Rhenish immigrant houses in New York's Hudson Valley, specifically in Columbia County, I track the development of three houses from their earliest vernacular forms to those touched by the Georgian influence. The Georgian worldview, stemming from European Enlightenment ideals, began permeating colonial American society in the 18th Century. It's influence first began to touch the wealthy and elite most connected with mother Europe, and then trickled into more common society. I chronicle and analyze Germantown, NY's Reformed Sanctity Church Parsonage, Germantown, NY's Simeon Rockefeller House, and Clermont, NY's "Stone …

Firesafe: Designing For Fire-Resilient Communities In The American West, Brenden Baitch

Masters Theses

The perception that wildfires are completely preventable has caused many structures and communities to be built in locations that will inevitably experience an uncontrollable fire event, risking human lives and infrastructure. Modification of built environments into fire-adapted communities has been explored in this thesis, through multiple strategies. Central to this analysis is the idea that sustainable human developments could adopt a form of biomimicry and indigenous design informed by the adaptions of plants, animals, and native groups that endure and even thrive with regular cycles of fire. This possibility has been assessed through the scope of fire adaptation strategies available …

Revisiting Prehistoric Archeological Sites: Envisioning First Built Environments To Repossess Geographically Specific Approaches In Architecture, Alisa Mohammad Kheir Abdulghany, Marwan Halabi, Maged Youssef, Bahaa El Dine Abou El Khoudoud

BAU Journal - Creative Sustainable Development

Since Prehistoric times, architecture had been a human response to an occurring natural setting. Starting from places of dwelling to buildings that no longer only serve physical requirements for survival. Architectural languages were approached initially as an expression of culture, evolution, and growth of a community within a natural setting. This response resulted in the creation of built environments, humanity’s decision to become sedentary. This decision took place in the Late Stone age, a key phase in our timeline. First built environments were born in a time known as the Neolithic revolution, which shown itself as humans transitioned from hunter-gatherer …

Some (Im)Material Girls, Living In (Im)Material Worlds, With Seeds, Stars, And Shit, Matthew Weiderspon

Theses and Dissertations

This writing situates material and gestural vocabularies cultivated in my artwork in relation to my lived experience; primarily my rural upbringing in Colorado. Scattered floor dispersals, calling sounds, and bodily movements desire reconsiderations of hope in precarity through a disorientation of place, association, scale, and language.

Evaluating Urban Parks Accessibility And Equity: A Case Study Of Hartford, Ct And New Haven, Ct, Natalie Roach, Mara Tu

Honors Scholar Theses

Public parks provide cities with environmental benefits, positive health effects, recreational opportunities, community building, educational spaces, and public amenities. However, certain populations have been systematically denied their fair share of these benefits because of unjust practices in the creation and maintenance of urban parks. With a lens of environmental justice, the goal of this research was to assess park quality and accessibility of two Connecticut cities, Hartford and New Haven, by gathering publicly available information as well as using GIS tools.

The Trust for Public Land (TPL) has an existing ParkScore rating system that evaluates the quality of a city’s …

Putting Policy In Its Place: Policy Enactment And Engagement Through A Multiscalar Policy-Shed Framework, Barbara L. Maclennan

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The objective of this research is to examine the spatial components integral to policy formation, implementation, and evaluation. The research uses solid waste as a case study to explore a multiscalar GIS policy-shed framework. To this end, the goal of this dissertation is to examine the spatial nature of public policy. The research applies spatial concepts and multiscalar methodological applications embedded within GIS and geovisualization to explore the complex spaces surrounding public policy implementation and evaluation.

Uncertain Regional Urbanism In Venezuela. Government, Infrastructure And Environment, Fabio Capra-Ribeiro

Faculty Publications

Uncertain Regional Urbanism in Venezuela explores the changes cities face when they become metropolises, forming expanding regions which create both potential and problems within settlements. To do so, it focuses on three metropolitan areas located in Venezuela’s Center-North region: Caracas, Maracay and Valencia, designated as "Camava."

Considering three core topics, government and territorial administration, infrastructure and environment, as well as looking at the reciprocal impact, this book describes and analyzes the determinant variables that characterize the phenomenon of regional urbanization in this area and in the wider Global South. It includes documentary research, semi-structured interviews and Delphi methodology, involving a …

The Use Of Green Pond Conglomerate As Building Stone In Morris County, New Jersey, Gregory A. Pope

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Green Pond Conglomerate (GPC) is a maroon colored quartzite with white quartz pebbles, a classic “puddingstone”. GPC derives from a NW-SW-trending sliver of Paleozoic sediments, the “Green Pond Outlier”, surrounded by older metamorphic and igneous rocks of Morris and Passaic Counties. Buildings, retaining walls, field fences, and monuments incorporate the durable and attractive stone, in a distinct geographic area of Morris County. Several instances of structures completely constructed or faced with GPC occur in and around Morristown, limited to affluent houses and one prominent church. In these cases, GPC stones were dressed and faced, a labor-intensive effort. Elsewhere in the …

Understanding And Measuring Net Positive Business Strategies, Luke Ruffner Robinson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Despite their attempts to mitigate ecological impacts through sustainability initiatives, businesses are a major cause of the world's ecological problems. Some progressive businesses are attempting to move beyond “net zero” in terms of achieving neutral environmental impacts and instead are now pursuing a goal of net positive. Net positive refers to the idea that business activities could contribute value-added benefits to earth’s ecological systems, for example, by using technologies that sequester and store carbon. However, except for a handful of high-profile corporate case studies, little is known about how companies are developing their strategies to become net positive and …

The Effects Of Urban Development And The Incidence Of Flooding And Discharge Changes From 1956-2016: A Case Study From Juan Diaz Township, Republic Of Panama, Virgilio De Jesus Quintero Rodriguez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The increase in flood occurrences in the Township of Juan Diaz has affected thousands of families and hundreds of businesses and has negatively impacted the lives of thousands of residents, who expect the worse every time there is a prolonged period of rain. Some of the residents lose their appliances, cars, furniture and houses every year. This study examines the relationship between urban development and flooding. Also, it addresses the influences of topography, green cover, population changes, runoff changes, and social dynamics on this relationship. This study implemented the use of thematic cartography, geographic information systems (GIS), personal interviews and …

Panel 3 Paper 3.2: Nature, Agriculture And Rural Resilience: Interdependencies Between Natural Protected Areas And Rural Landscapes In Satoyama/Satoumi In Japan, Maya N. Ishizawa

ISCCL Scientific Symposia and Annual General Meetings // Symposiums scientifiques et assemblées générales annuelles de l'ISCCL // Simposios científicos yy las Asambleas Generales Anuales

The Capacity Building Workshops on Nature-Culture Linkages in Heritage Conservation (CBWNCL), held at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, gather Asia-Pacific heritage professionals with the aim of creating a platform of mutual-learning and exchange between the culture and nature sectors. In the first workshop on Agricultural Landscapes, from 14 case studies, 5 showed natural protected areas in tense relations with their rural landscape surroundings. However, these agricultural landscapes are essential for protecting natural values, as they form part of their larger ecosystems. In the second workshop on Sacred Landscapes, from 16 case studies, 5 case studies were also …

Forest-Walks – An Intangible Heritage In Movement A Walk-And-Talk-Study Of A Social Practice Tradition, Margaretha Häggström

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This article seeks to understand and extend current understandings of intangible heritage and particularly forest-walks as such. The study is related to Swedish conditions and has been conducted in Sweden. The research is grounded in social practice theory – and the perspective of practice architectures in particular – and it draws on the work of Stephen Kemmis. Further, we view practice theory entangled with the phenomenological life-world concepts of intersubjectivity and historicity. The data are based on 12 walk-and-talk interviews conducted in the forest with individuals who willingly walk in the forest on their leisure time. The analysis takes its …

Design For Living Complexities, Peter J. Taylor

Working Papers in Critical, Creative and Reflective Practice

Lectures from a 12-session course that addresses the intersection of design with critical thinking. Design in this course means intentionality in construction, which involves a range of materials, a sequence of steps, and principles that inform the choice of materials and the steps. Design also always involves putting people, as well as materials, into place. This happens by working with the known properties of people, as well as the known properties of material, and trying out new arrangements to work around their constraints (at least temporarily). Critical thinking, as I define it, involves understanding ideas and practices better when we …

Rural Sense: Value, Heritage, And Sensory Landscapes: Developing A Design-Oriented Approach To Mapping For Healthier Landscapes, Judith Van Der Elst, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Lily Díaz-Kommonen

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Landscape design needs a novel value system centred on human experience of the landscape rather than simply on economic value. Design-oriented research allows us to shift the focus from mechanistic paradigms towards new sensemaking approaches that value both the sensual and the cognitive in human experience. To move in this direction, we investigate cultural and natural aspects of sensory experience in rural landscapes, arguing that: (1) rural (non-urban) regions offer diverse sensory experiences for optimising human health; and (2) spatial interconnectedness between rural and urban areas means that healthy rural regions are critical for urban development. Our key argument is …

Sylvan Dell Nature Park & Farm: An Innovative Approach To Recreation, Conservation, And Education, Brian Auman

Sponsored Events -- List

The Sylvan Dell Nature Park and Farm implements a comprehensive strategy for conservation, recreation, and education, while connecting residents with Williamsport's, and the region's, bountiful natural resources. The Sylvan Dell project encourages smart growth and asset-based development in its land-use ordinances and by connecting existing natural areas with a network of public access trails and parks. The park makes the most cost effective use of limited resources by achieving many ‘stacked benefits’, including high-quality recreation, innovative stormwater management, and accessible environmental education.

Fences: Physical And Socio-Cultural Boundaries, Vanessa Baehr

Senior Projects Fall 2018

Fences, walls, and lines exist around the world, across many cultures, and are generally universally understood symbols of defense, inclusion, and exclusion. Barriers are created intentionally and their purposes vary. Fences can act as a tension or relief between public and private spaces. Physical barriers can been seen as metaphors for social dynamics and relations; boundaries can be reflections of both our internal and external landscapes. Incorporates fences / walls from a number of perspectives; historical, anthropological, archaeological, and cultural. Inspired by a reflexive moment in moving to a new town, buying a house, having a garden, and wanting a …

The Billion Object Platform (Bop): A System To Lower Barriers To Support Big, Streaming, Spatio-Temporal Data Sources, Devika Kakkar, Ben Lewis, David Smiley, Ariel Nunez

Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) Conference Proceedings

With funding from the Sloan Foundation and Harvard Dataverse, the Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis (CGA) has developed a big spatio-temporal data visualization platform called the Billion Object Platform or "BOP". The goal of the project is to lower barriers for scholars who wish to access large, streaming, spatio-temporal datasets. Since once archived, streaming data gets big fast, and since most GIS systems don't support interactive visualization of millions of objects, a new platform was needed. The BOP is loaded with the latest billion geo-tweets and is fed a real-time stream of about 1 million tweets per day. The CGA …

Desert Pool {If Every Desert Was Once A Sea}, Karen Miranda Abel

The Goose

Desert Pool {If every desert was once a sea} is a site-specific art project by Canadian artist Karen Miranda Abel completed in 2016 while artist-in-residence at Joya: arte + ecología, an arts-led research centre situated in an alpine desert within a national park in southern Spain. The elemental installation represents an envisioning of the ancient sea that occupied the Sierra de María-Los Vélez Natural Park millions of years before the current desert ecology, a time when its highest mountain peaks may have been islands.

Visual Poetry Responses To A Changing City-Scape, Andrew Taylor

The Goose

Poetry by Andrew Taylor

3d Tool Evaluation And Workflow For An Ecological Approach To Visualizing Ancient Socio-Environmental Landscapes: A Case Study From Copan, Honduras, Heather Richards-Rissetto, Shona Sanford-Long, Jack Kerby-Miller

Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications

Architectural reconstructions are the centerpieces of ancient landscape visualization. When present, vegetation is relegated to the background, resulting in underutilized plant data—an integral data source for archaeological interpretation—thus limiting the capacity to take advantage of 3D visualization for studying ancient socio-environmental dynamics. Our long-term objective is to develop methods of 3D landscape visualization that have value for examining changes in land use and settlement patterns. To begin to work toward this objective, we have (1) identified 3D tools and techniques for vegetation modeling and landscape visualization, (2) evaluated the pros and cons of these tools, (3) investigated biological and ecological …

Impermeable Assemblages: Flooding, Urban Infrastructure, And Stormwater Politics In São Paulo, Brazil, Nate Millington

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This project analyzes efforts to remake the relationship between water and city in São Paulo, Brazil. Currently experiencing overlapping problems of flooding, scarcity, and pollution, São Paulo illustrates the challenges of managing water in a contemporary mega-city. This dissertation subsequently considers the city’s water management through an approach that borrows from urban political ecology, social studies of science, and post-colonial urban theory. With an epistemological grounding in these literatures, this project analyzes ongoing conversations about water management in São Paulo, and focuses on how water is encountered and engaged with in the landscape by engineers, artists, and activists. This project …

Bringing Football Back To Los Angeles, Gabriel Leiner

Gabriel Leiner

Identifying a suitable parcel for a large scale professional football stadium in the greater Los Angeles, CA area, which does not conflict with current uses, environmental protection codes, or airspace rights, and also has adequate transportation access and nearby populated neighborhoods.

Nest Building In Captive Gorilla Gorilla Gorilla, Kristen E. Lukas, Tara S. Stoinski, Kyle Burks, Rebecca Snyder, Sarah Bexell, Terry L. Maple

Sarah M. Bexell, PhD

Although various aspects of gorilla nest building have been described in wild populations, nest-building behavior of captive gorillas has not been subject to much scientific review. We observed nest building in 17 gorillas during three periods: summer baseline, winter baseline, and winter treatment, in which the amount of available nesting material was doubled. We conducted observations exclusively in the indoor holding area in the hour following evening departure of animal care staff. During baseline, gorillas engaged in nest-building on 3.1% of scans and were on a constructed nest on 27.9% of scans. Overall, gorillas spent significantly more time on elevated …