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Katherine Sugura
Water is an essential part of any living thing and has been a focal point of human life as it's in manufacturing, agricultural practices, and a beverage. The term water resource refers to any amount of naturally occurring freshwater (in any state) that can be used by humans. This includes the most widely thought of resources such as the river systems, reservoirs, and groundwater (Brooks Kenneth. 2011). In and around the high altitudes in mountain regions are communities mobile throughout the mou…
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Abby Guild
Climate change is an ever-changing, forever-evolving process. As its negative effects increase in severity, they also become more apparent. This emphasizes the uneven distribution of these effects and the vast differences between communities in terms of preparedness and ability adapt to a changing world. The majority of Earth’s citizens haven’t seen any changes or ecological damage that warrants a drastic response. However, certain populations, such as indigenous Arctic communities, are alre…
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Nina Rosenbaum
The theory of the Urban Growth Machine, by the Marxist geographer David Harvey (2002), refers to the strategic coalition between local government and industry. This is based on private developers’ incentives to create the greatest profit from their investments in spatial monopolies, by charging rent for space, and a local government’s incentive to attract capital to the city, through firms and high-income individuals (Harvey). This coalition together uses a variety of tactics to work towards…
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Kailey Hunt
Environmental education is essential as it can form environmental leaders. What kids are taught in school isn’t the same in every school, there are variations. Some learn less about environmental studies in school, some learn more, some can learn nothing. Every school doesn’t teach in the same exact way the same information, therefore there are bound to be differences in what is taught. How accurate and current is the information taught about the environment? What type of schools teach i…
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Quentin
It’s fitting, that my area of interest begins with a reference to Lewis and Clark— the individuals, not this college— and their fateful westward journey. Following Thomas Jefferson’s purchase of Louisiana, America began a great migration into the west, starting with Lewis and Clark. Jefferson “believed that a republic depended on an independent, virtuous citizenry for its survival, and that independence and virtue went hand in hand with land ownership… In order to provide enough land…
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Gigi Newcomer-Neeson
While natural disasters have long been considered social “equalizers” or “status levelers”, they have not proven to be such as there are oftentimes many groups that are particularly susceptible to the stages before, during, and after natural disasters. Communities are affected differently in the wake of natural disasters of all kinds, in all different places, and oftentimes, some groups are impacted more harshly and directly than other groups. My Area of Interest aims to explore why ce…
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Gil Odgers
"Agriculture and Public Health" as an area of interest is meant to encompass the relationship between agricultural operations of different scales and the health of connected communities and ecosystems. This area would include questions such as "Are there long term effects of different types of agricultural techniques on soil composition?", "Is there a connection between overall health and proximity to agricultural areas?", or "How does income influence diet?". Branching off from these initial …
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Copeland Burchenal
One of the world’s last great pockets of untapped resources, the Arctic region of North America has been fought over by world powers for decades. The Boreal Forest inhabits the global sub-Arctic climate, accounting for 11.5% of the world’s land coverage and 25% of the world’s remaining intact forests. Massive amounts of timber, precious metals, and oil reside within the Boreal Forest and further north. In the Arctic Ocean, which connects with Europe, Asia, and North America, is subject to …
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Olivia Smith
Plants and the climate they live in have a particular dynamic and we are trying to understand all the elements that go into the relationship that keeps the equilibrium to allow the biomes to thrive. Currently, with the rise in global temperatures, there are increased concerns about how vegetation and agriculture will adapt to the shifts in climate of varying regions. According to Thomas Lewis (2016), there is a lot of uncertainty in all the predictions that are currently being made on plants and…
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Ishara Sorensen
Climate change is not this new and radical concept that many people have pegged it to be. In fact, the idea that carbon dioxide causes a change in the temperature has been around since at least the late 1890’s (Arrhenius, 1896) and has been confirmed since then (Barnett, 2005). Carbon that is found in the atmosphere usually comes from either a natural process, such as respiration and decomposition, or human activities, such as energy production or transportation. The main idea of the carb…
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Madeleine Newton
Issues of water are some of the most important within the field of development and conversations surrounding the global south. Development discourse is a significant portion of the conversation surrounding access to clean water because most approaches to improved access are focused on industrialization which in the global south is largely initiated by development actors. Access to water is connected to domestic, agricultural and industrial aspects of life across the globe. (Crow 2001, Gadgil 199…
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Destiny Frey-Gonzalez
The commitment of creating a space for education while simultaneously acting as a research tool for scientists may seem like a demanding role to fill, yet natural history museums (NHMs) across the world have accomplished it for decades. It is a site that can act as a crossroads between research and implementation, an important aspect of conservation science, which is practiced in NHMs in many ways (Maas et al. 2019). These scientific institutions provide specimens for researchers to expand the…