Sustainability Commons^™

Establishing A Framework For The Recognition Of Local Arboricultural Practitioners, Paul Yuen King Chan

Faculty of Design & Environment (THEi)

No abstract provided.

Strengthening The Resiliency Of Dryland Forest-Based Livelihoods In Ethiopia And South Sudan: A Review Of Literature On The Interaction Between Dryland Forests, Livelihoods And Forest Governance, Steven Lawry, Rebecca J. Mclain, Habtemariam Kassa

Institute for Sustainable Solutions Publications and Presentations

Dry forests account for nearly half of the world’s tropical and subtropical forests and provide a multitude of ecological services. They contribute to hydrological cycles and livestock and wildlife provisioning; and host pollinators and wild plants. They are also important ecological zones for dryland agriculture and pastoral livelihood strategies that support hundreds of millions of people around the world. Dry forests cover large areas and their biomass stores carbon and helps mitigate climate change. Dry forests are particularly important to people in Africa. They provide wood for construction and energy, contribute to local diets with wild fruits, vegetables, nuts, edible …

Cures Garden Program - Martha Baldwin, Center For Urban Resilience

Module 10: Garden Ecology

No abstract provided.

Collective Impact: Results From A Multi-Campus Farm To College Pilot Program, Mary Ellen Mallia, Jamie Adams, Hannah Morgan, Lisa Mitten, Deborah Howard

Presentations

Presented at Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Conference and State of NY Sustainability Conference.

A New Design Method For Vanadium Redox Batteries In Renewable Energy Systems, Casey Gibson, Karla G. Morrissey Unversity Of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This study investigated the behavior of vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs), which are batteries capable of easily switching between charging and discharging modes, making them a suitable option for storing intermittent sources of alternative energies (solar, wind, etc). Since different sizes of the battery provide varying voltages, optimal parameters for a particular home are key for implementation. These parameters, specifically the cell and tank volumes of the battery that are capable of providing consistent on-load voltage, were determined using data from a 13 kW solar array and a medium-sized house. Charge/discharge current values were used to run a mathematical model …

Drougthscape, Winter 2015, Kelly Smith

DroughtScape: Quarterly Newsletter of the National Drought Mitigation Center (2007–2023)

Contents

Director’s report

Central U.S. 2012 report

October-December drought summary

2014 drought summary

Caribbean capacity building

Drought impacts in 2014

California timeline 2014

UC Davis ranching workshop

NASA SMAP data

Global drought info system

Community Capitals

Evaluation and assessment

Indicator-impact research

NDMC on YouTube

Sustainability And Economic Analysis Of Propylene Carbonate And Polypropylene Carbonate Production Processes Using Co2 And Propylene Oxide, Yaşar Demirel

Yaşar Demirel Publications

Currently, the industrially important polycarbonates are synthesized from bisphenol A and diphenyl carbonate, which are highly toxic and hence other feasible alternatives are preferable. Following the considerable advances on the catalyst for the synthesis of carbonates from CO₂ and propylene oxide (PO), industrial scale processes for the productions of propylene carbonate (PC) and polypropylene carbonate (PPC) have been designed and simulated with sustainability and economic analyses. The CO₂ is supplied by a nearby bioethanol plant, while the PO from a petrochemical process. The first part of the study is for the production of 200 million lb/year cyclic PC …

Five-Year Growth Report: From Inception To Global Influence 2010 - 2015, Robert B. Daugherty Water For Food Institute

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Administrative Materials

While we are proud of our accomplishments in building an institutional framework, we are even more proud of our institute’s initial work to build an impact-driven program. This work is indeed the central focus of this report. Through the leadership of our new directors for research and policy, we have begun to build a vigorous research and policy development program that includes engagement with both local and global stakeholders. We have also developed a strong set of collaborations with national and international partners, striving to achieve a balance between work in Nebraska and globally, including in India, Brazil, China and …

Romania's Participation To The European Assessment Project Titled Hyunder, Multi-Criterial Analyses Of Salt Cavern Locations, Ioan Iordache, Dorin Schitea, Adriana Marinoiu, Mihaela Buga, Mihai Balan, Ioan Stefanescu, Adrian Gheorghe, Mihaela Iordache, Viviana Cigolotti (Ed.), Chiara Barchiesi (Ed.), Michela Chianella (Ed.)

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

The scope of the work is to assess the potential, the actors and relevant business cases for large scale storage of renewable electricity by hydrogen underground storage in Romania. This presentation intends to provide a picture of the multi-criterial analyses of salt cavern locations in Romania.

The energy sector is facing with the necessity to store large energy quantities for short to long term in order to adapt to the increasingly intermittent renewable energy. The results of this presentation have originated from an ongoing European assessment project by the name of HyUnder (FCH JU, grant 303417) regarding utilization of salt …

The Triple Bottom Line And Social Responsibility Framework In Public Sector Management, Matthew Ajiake

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Leaders of public sector agencies must incorporate the voices of diversified stakeholders into planning and decision-making processes. With aging infrastructures around the world, public agencies are challenged to move public benefit projects forward when citizens are not engaged or empowered to participate in the process. The purpose of this triple bottom line (social, ecological, and financial) and social responsibility study was to explore whether public sector organizations are socially responsible by law. A case study was developed using data from publicly available documents and interviews that explored how the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) implemented a social responsibility framework …

Transformational Leadership And Safe Driving Performance In The U.S. Electric Utility Industry, Mackington Joseph

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Transformational leadership (TL) has been found popular in many industries in the United States and abroad for the perceived transformational leaders' effectiveness in improving occupational safety. There is a lack of empirical evidence to confirm these claims for safe occupational driving. This phenomenological study attempted to fill this knowledge gap in the electric utility industry where employees must drive in all weather conditions to restore power to customers. The conceptual framework for the study was based on leadership and motivation theories of Burns and Maslow. The research questions explored the influence of (a) TL on safe driving performance improvement in …

The Prairie Post Quarterly Newsletter Of The High Plains Regional Climate Center- January 2015, Martha Shulski, Natalie Umphlett, Bill Sorensen, Crystal J. Stiles

Prairie Post: Quarterly Newsletter of the High Plains Regional Climate Center

Inside this issue:

Message from the director........................................1

Stakeholder engagement activities......................................2

AWDN news...............................3

Marketing efforts.....................3

Climate services and information................................4

Product highlight....................5

Outreach events and research highlights.................5

Recent and upcoming travel and activities.............................6

The Gravity Environment Of Zhouqu Debris Flow Of August 2010 And Its Implication For Future Recurrence, Diandong Ren, Lance M. Leslie, Xinyi Shen, Yang Hong, Qingyun Duan, Rezaul Mahmood, Yun Li, Gang Huang, Weidong Guo, Mervyn J. Lynch

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

This study investigates the geological background of the August 7-8, 2010 Zhouqu debris flows in the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu, and possible future occurrence of such hazards in the peri-Tibetan Plateau (TP) regions. Debris flows are a more predictable type of landslide because of its strong correlation with extreme precipitation. However, two factors affecting the frequency and magnitude of debris flows: very fine scale precipitation and degree of fracture of bedrock, both defy direct observations. Annual mean Net Primary production (NPP) is used as a surrogate for regional precipitation with patchiness filtered out, and gravity satellite measured regional mass …

Development Of A Long-Term (1884-2006) Serially Complete Dataset Of U.S. Temperatures And Precipitation For Climate Services, Jinshing You, Kenneth G. Hubbard, Martha Shulski, Mark D. Svoboda, Michael J. Hayes

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Serially complete climate datasets with no missing data are necessary for a diverse group of users working in many economic sectors. In this article we describe the procedures used to create a Serially Complete Data set (SCD) for the U.S. We include the selection criterion applied to potential SCD stations, the various procedural steps and the details applied to each step. A few observations that were not previously digitized were obtained from observers official paper reports. The methods used to estimate missing data are the Spatial Regression Test and the Inverse Distance Weighting technique. Using the criterion for selecting stations …

A Historical Perspective On Nebraska’S Variable And Changing Climate, Martha Shulski, William Baule, Crystal J. Stiles, Natalie A. Umphlett

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Nebraska is situated at the intersection of the northern and southern Great Plains, exhibiting a dramatic longitudinal gradient for precipitation and humidity, and benefiting from groundwater resources. The continental climate is highly variable temporally both for temperature and precipitation. Our assessment of long-term meteorological observations shows that over the last century the annual average temperature in Nebraska has warmed approximately 0.6°C, which is similar to the increase in the global average temperature over the same time period. Furthermore, we found minimum temperatures have warmed more than maximum temperatures, and winter and spring show the strongest warming. We found no significant …

Differences In Waste Generation, Waste Composition, And Source Separation Across Three Waste Districts In A New York Suburb, Omkar Aphale, Krista L. Thyberg, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Six tonnes of discards and recyclables from three waste districts in a New York suburb were sorted in 2012. The districts were chosen because one had a higher recycling percentage, one had median performance, and one was a low performing district. ASTM standards were followed for the waste composition sorting. The results showed, as expected, that the waste district with the highest recycling rate appeared to have the highest separation efficiencies, leading to greater amounts of recyclable materials being source separated. The waste districts also had different overall waste generation, both in terms of the amounts of wastes generated, and …

A Management Framework For Municipal Solid Waste Systems And Its Application To Food Waste Prevention, Krista L. Thyberg, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Waste management is a complex task involving numerous waste fractions, a range of technological treatment options, and many outputs that are circulated back to society. A systematic, interdisciplinary systems management framework was developed to facilitate the planning, implementation, and maintenance of sustainable waste systems. It aims not to replace existing decision-making approaches, but rather to enable their integration to allow for inclusion of overall sustainability concerns and address the complexity of solid waste management. The framework defines key considerations for system design, steps for performance monitoring, and approaches for facilitating continual system improvements. It was developed by critically examining the …

Quantification Of Food Waste Disposal In The United States: A Meta-Analysis, Krista L. Thyberg, David J. Tonjes, Jessica Gurevitch

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Food waste has major consequences for social, nutritional, economic, and environmental issues, and yet the amount of food waste disposed in the U.S. has not been accurately quantified. We introduce the transparent and repeatable methods of meta-analysis and systematic reviewing to determine how much food is discarded in the U.S., and to determine if specific factors drive increased disposal. The aggregate proportion of food waste in U.S. municipal solid waste from 1995 to 2013 was found to be 0.147 (95% CI 0.137-0.157) of total waste, which is lower than that estimated by USEPA for the same period (0.176). The proportion …

Assessing The Carbon Impacts Of Colby College’S Biomass Plant, Alice Hotopp

Honors Theses

Biomass energy plants are considered to be carbon neutral systems under some definitions. However, this concept of carbon neutrality needs to be rethought in order to understand the true carbon impact of biomass plants upon global climate change. A biomass plant’s wood source, the extent to which the biomass plant emits carbon dioxide, and the timescale over which the biomass plant emits carbon should all be taken into account. In this study, I consider the Colby College biomass plant’s role in carbon cycling. Colby’s Physical Plant Department provided me with information on how much carbon (tons of woodchips) is used …

Nurturing Environmental Literacy At Colby College: Higher Education And The Environmental Crisis, Molly Nash

Honors Theses

The environmental crisis will affect all people, career paths, and academic disciplines. Acknowledging this, does higher education have an obligation to educate all students for environmental literacy (EL)? This study reviews literature on how to effectively assess and implement EL initiatives and highlights how other colleges successfully nurture EL in all students. This study also uses quantitative and qualitative survey measures to understand student levels of EL at Colby College and to highlight specific programming or curriculum that leads to high EL levels in students. Findings include significantly different EL scores between environmental studies student respondents and respondents in all …