-
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…
-
Sophie Marchetti
Native plants have long been a key component in the study of ecosystems. More recently, they have moved beyond just ecology to to occupy the realms of design and conservation as well. The ways in which native plants are valued affects how they are then used in each of these respective fields. A clear and concise definition of “native species” is difficult to produce. There are many grey areas that complicate ideas of inherent nativeness. The best that can be done is to identify common t…
-
Isabella Blair
Globalization has caused widespread integration of goods, services, information, people and more. Globalization creates both benefits and challenges for individuals and governments. An individual may benefit from low priced goods and the cheap disposal of waste while also facing the challenge of losing their job to outsourcing or being exposed to hazardous chemicals. Globally, the rate of the production of waste is growing, necessitating a place for its disposal. There are many different types o…
-
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 …
-
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…
-
Cam Sylla
To form a connection with someone or something is a powerful act. The definition and idea of connecting varies from person to person. I’m curious how people relate to their surroundings, natural or other as viewed through an environmental studies lens. And I'm curious what this means in a psychological context, whether these connections can benefit or harm people psychologically. The word nature used in a Euro-American context refers to positive connotations humans have with all non-human c…
-
Satya Austin-Opper
As humans have moved towards industrialization, large scale agriculture, global trade and other practices that come with modernization, we have surely seen an increase in negative externalities. In this era, capitalism is the dominant global form of political economy (West, 2012). Capitalism is a system that forces a single motive on the action of all of its members, perpetual accumulation of capital (Magdoff, 2011). Because industries rely so heavily on extraction, it is hard to find cohesion …
-
Kat Altaffer
I want to examine the relationship between ethical ideologies and policy relating to climate change. There are three main theories of ethics; virtue, deontology, and utilitarianism. Beginning with the ancient Greeks, philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, have written tirelessly on the topic of ethics. They focus specifically on virtue ethics in an attempt to understand the basis of morality. John Stewart Mill, a 19th century British philosopher details his theories in support of u…
-
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…
-
A Multi-Faceted Approach to Clean Energy Transition: Reviewing What it Means to Transition Equatably
Noah Neubert
Although there is quite a bit of discussion within the scientific community surrounding transitions to renewable energy to combat climate change, this thought oftentimes seems to go unfinished; that is, discourse like this tends to forget that poor communities and communities of color - each with their own needs - shoulder a larger burden of climate change impacts while simultaneously being left out of the discussion of transitions. Often complementary to this dialogue is the idea that transitio…
-
Amanda Brady
Earth, as we know it, is changing. Extracting resources, developing land for human use, pollution, and climate change all interact and alter the environment in varying ways and contribute to the environmental stressors felt by individuals. An environmental stressor is defined as a change in our environment that impacts our ability to survive, takes a toll on our mental health, or disrupts our day to day activities. Some of these stressors include traffic congestion, natural disasters, and defore…
-
Keilani Vega
In modern discourse of environmental justice, the inclusion of ecofeminist ideology has been increasingly prominent. The inception of the environmental movement in the United States in the 1960s and the 1970s called not only environmental ethics into question, but also the inclusion of marginalized people. Activists on the frontlines saw that there was an immense exclusion of voices and sought to blend sociological, scientific, and political thought (Islam 2017). Thus, environmental justice was …