Place and Environment Commons^™

"Not Yet The End Of The World": Political Cultures Of Opposition And Creation In The Global Youth Climate Justice Movement, John Foran, Summer Gray, Corrie Grosse

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with two dozen young climate justice activists at the U.N. climate summit COP19 in Warsaw, Poland, in November 2013, this research uses the concepts of “political cultures of opposition and of creation” to analyze the political orientations, discourse, and actions of global climate justice activists attempting to impact the negotiation of a universal climate treaty. Capturing relationships among experience, emotions, ideology, idioms, and organization, the concepts of political cultures of opposition and of creation shed light on the ability of these actors to fashion social movements of their own making. Through an analysis …

Studying Human Behavior For Species Conservation, Hilary Byerly, Brendan Fisher

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Warming On Wind Speed And Potential Wind Power In Iceland, Alexei Smith

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Climate change is causing a shift in the temperature and pressure gradient between the Arctic and the Equator, with the Arctic warming at a faster rate than the Equator. This shift has the potential to alter the seasonal wind speeds in the Northern Hemisphere, which could in turn affect the wind power density potential. In this study, a wind model was created to predict future wind speeds and wind power density for 6 weather stations in Iceland. According to the model, winter wind speeds and wind power density potential will either stay the same or increase slightly (0 – 4%), …

Life In Hampton Roads: Sea Level Rise And Flooding, Public Affairs & News Bureau, Old Dominion University

News Items

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Young Environmental Activists In Iceland And Furthering Youth Engagement With Environmental Issues, Story Schwantes

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper looks at the role of youth environmental activism in Iceland and how these actors view their work in a country which has long held a reputation as one of the greenest in the world. Much of the credit for that distinction goes not to careful choices, sacrifice, or excellent stewardship but rather to its ideal geography providing massive geothermal energy which Iceland turns into electricity, a clean renewable source. So are there young environmental activists in Iceland, and if so what do they do? Short answer: yes, and they study and talk. The long answer is more complex. …

A Critical Examination Of The Climate Change Vulnerability And Adaptation Literature In Nunavut, Canada, Sarah Prentice

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper attempts to study the climate change vulnerability and adaptation literature in Nunavut, a province in the Canadian Arctic. The paper begins with a review of literature produced by Inuit organizations on colonization in the Canadian Arctic and Nunavut specifically, then systematically reviews the literature on climate change vulnerability and adaptation. Using a post-colonial analysis, this study found that while the climate change vulnerability and adaptation literature attempts to attend to colonial histories and legacies, it often falls short. Climate change vulnerability and adaptation literature had minimal representation of colonization, residential schooling, sanatoria, and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit. This may perpetuate …

Ecological Network Metrics: Opportunities For Synthesis, Matthew K. Lau, Stuart R. Borrett, Benjamin Baiser, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Aaron M. Ellison

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Network ecology provides a systems basis for approaching ecological questions, such as factors that influence biological diversity, the role of particular species or particular traits in structuring ecosystems, and long-term ecological dynamics (e.g., stability). Whereas the introduction of network theory has enabled ecologists to quantify not only the degree, but also the architecture of ecological complexity, these advances have come at the cost of introducing new challenges, including new theoretical concepts and metrics, and increased data complexity and computational intensity. Synthesizing recent developments in the network ecology literature, we point to several potential solutions to these issues: integrating network metrics …

Mountain Forests And Sustainable Development: The Potential For Achieving The United Nations' 2030 Agenda, Georg Gratzer, William S. Keeton

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

The world is facing numerous and severe environmental, social, and economic challenges. To address these, in September 2015 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the resolution Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The United Nations' 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) and their 169 targets are ambitious, broadly encompassing, and indivisible. They are intended to guide nations and communities toward attaining healthy and peaceful livelihoods free of poverty and hunger. Collectively the goals envision sound and safe environments, where global threats like climate change are successfully combated through both mitigation and adaptation. Agenda 2030 envisages sustainable …

Crowdsourced Delphis: Designing Solutions To Complex Environmental Problems With Broad Stakeholder Participation, Sarah Coleman, Stephanie Hurley, Christopher Koliba, Asim Zia

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

There is a well-established need for increased stakeholder participation in the generation of adaptive management approaches and specific solutions to complex environmental problems. However, integrating participant feedback into current science, research, and decision-making processes is challenging. This paper presents a novel approach that marries a rigorous Delphi method, borrowed from policy and organizational sciences, with contemporary “crowdsourcing” to address the complex problems of water pollution exacerbated by climate change in the Lake Champlain Basin. In an online Delphi forum that occurred over a six-week period during the Spring of 2014, fifty-three participants proposed and commented on adaptive solutions to address …

Evaluation Of A Proposal For Reliable Low-Cost Grid Power With 100% Wind, Water, And Solar, Christopher T.M. Clack, Staffan A. Qvist, Jay Apt, Morgan Bazilian, Adam R. Brandt, Ken Caldeira, Steven J. Davis, Victor Diakov, Mark A. Handschy, Paul D.H. Hines, Paulina Jaramillo, Daniel M. Kammen, Jane C.S. Long, M. Granger Morgan, Adam Reed, Varun Sivaram, James Sweeney, George R. Tynan, David G. Victor, John P. Weyant, Jay F. Whitacre

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

A number of analyses, meta-Analyses, and assessments, including those performed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the International Energy Agency, have concluded that deployment of a diverse portfolio of clean energy technologies makes a transition to a low-carbon-emission energy system both more feasible and less costly than other pathways. In contrast, Jacobson et al. [Jacobson MZ, Delucchi MA, Cameron MA, Frew BA (2015) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112(49):15060-15065] argue that it is feasible to provide "low-cost solutions to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of …

Characterizing Landscape-Scale Erosion Using 10be In Detrital Fluvial Sediment: Slope-Based Sampling Strategy Detects The Effect Of Widespread Dams, Lucas J. Reusser, Paul R. Bierman, Donna M. Rizzo, Eric W. Portenga, Dylan H. Rood

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Concentrations of in situ 10Be measured in detrital fluvial sediment are frequently used to estimate long-term erosion rates of drainage basins. In many regions, basin-averaged erosion rates are positively correlated with basin average slope. The slope dependence of erosion allows model-based erosion rate estimation for unsampled basins and basins where human disturbance may have biased cosmogenic nuclide concentrations in sediment. Using samples collected from southeastern North America, we demonstrate an approach that explicitly considers the relationship between average basin slope and erosion rate. Because dams and reservoirs are ubiquitous on larger channels in the field area, we selected 36 undammed …

Reducing Cascading Failure Risk By Increasing Infrastructure Network Interdependence, Mert Korkali, Jason G. Veneman, Brian F. Tivnan, James P. Bagrow, Paul D.H. Hines

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Increased interconnection between critical infrastructure networks, such as electric power and communications systems, has important implications for infrastructure reliability and security. Others have shown that increased coupling between networks that are vulnerable to internetwork cascading failures can increase vulnerability. However, the mechanisms of cascading in these models differ from those in real systems and such models disregard new functions enabled by coupling, such as intelligent control during a cascade. This paper compares the robustness of simple topological network models to models that more accurately reflect the dynamics of cascading in a particular case of coupled infrastructures. First, we compare a …

Transitions In Climate And Energy Discourse Between Hurricanes Katrina And Sandy, Emily M. Cody, Jennie C. Stephens, James P. Bagrow, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Christopher M. Danforth

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Although climate change and energy are intricately linked, their explicit connection is not always prominent in public discourse and the media. Disruptive extreme weather events, including hurricanes, focus public attention in new and different ways offering a unique window of opportunity to analyze how a focusing event influences public discourse. Media coverage of extreme weather events simultaneously shapes and reflects public discourse on climate issues. Here, we analyze climate and energy newspaper coverage of Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sandy (2012) using topic models, mathematical techniques used to discover abstract topics within a set of documents. Our results demonstrate that post-Katrina …

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions In Agriculture Without Compromising Food Security?, Stefan Frank, Petr Havlík, Jean François Soussana, Antoine Levesque, Hugo Valin, Eva Wollenberg, Ulrich Kleinwechter, Oliver Fricko, Mykola Gusti, Mario Herrero, Pete Smith, Tomoko Hasegawa, Florian Kraxner, Michael Obersteiner

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

To keep global warming possibly below 1.5◦C and mitigate adverse effects of climate change, agriculture, like all other sectors, will have to contribute to efforts in achieving net negative emissions by the end of the century. Cost-efficient distribution of mitigation across regions and economic sectors is typically calculated using a global uniform carbon price in climate stabilization scenarios. However, in reality such a carbon price would substantially affect food availability. Here, we assess the implications of climate change mitigation in the land use sector for agricultural production and food security using an integrated partial equilibrium modelling framework and explore ways …

The Database Of The Predicts (Projecting Responses Of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) Project, Lawrence N. Hudson, Tim Newbold, Sara Contu, Samantha L.L. Hill, Igor Lysenko, Adriana De Palma, Helen R.P. Phillips, Tamera I. Alhusseini, Felicity E. Bedford, Dominic J. Bennett, Hollie Booth, Victoria J. Burton, Charlotte W.T. Chng, Argyrios Choimes, David L.P. Correia, Julie Day, Susy Echeverría-Londoño, Susan R. Emerson, Di Gao, Morgan Garon, Michelle L.K. Harrison, Daniel J. Ingram, Martin Jung, Victoria Kemp, Lucinda Kirkpatrick, Callum D. Martin, Yuan Pan, Gwilym D. Pask-Hale, Edwin L. Pynegar, Alexandra N. Robinson, Katia Sanchez-Ortiz

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in …

Forest Carbon Projects In The Ukrainian Carpathians: An Assessment Of Potential Community Impacts And Benefits, Amanda R. Egan, William S. Keeton, Cecilia M. Danks, Ihor Soloviy, Asim Zia

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+) is a frequently promoted climate change mitigation strategy. As forest carbon projects proceed, we are learning how they affect local sovereignty and resource access, particularly in developing economies. Central and Eastern Europe’s temperate forests offer potential for projects, yet little is known about how the sociopolitical context of these transitional economies may influence project success. In this article, we enhance understanding of potential community impacts and explore opportunities for fair benefit distribution in Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountain region. Through a thematic qualitative and interpretive analysis of interviews and observational data, we: (1) describe what …

Life In Hampton Roads Survey Press Release #5: Sea Level Rise And Flooding, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

[Introductory paragraph]

This report examines regional measures of environmental risk perceptions from the 2017 Life In Hampton Roads survey (LIHR 2017) conducted by the Old Dominion University Social Science Research Center. Data from prior years is also provided when available to show comparisons in responses over time. Responses were weighted by city population, race, age, gender, and phone usage (cell versus land-line) to be representative of the Hampton Roads region.

Social-Ecological Enabling Conditions For Payments For Ecosystem Services, Heidi R. Huber-Stearns, Drew E. Bennett, Stephen Posner, Ryan C. Richards, Jenn Hoyle Fair, Stella J.M. Cousins, Chelsie L. Romulo

Peer-Reviewed Studies

The concept of “enabling conditions” centers on conditions that facilitate approaches to addressing social and ecological challenges. Although multiple fields have independently addressed the concept of enabling conditions, the literature lacks a shared understanding or integration of concepts. We propose a more synthesized understanding of enabling conditions beyond disciplinary boundaries by focusing on the enabling conditions that influence the implementation of a range of environmental policies termed payments for ecosystem services (PES). Through an analysis of key literature from different disciplinary perspectives, we examined how researchers and practitioners refer to and identify enabling conditions within the context of PES. Through …