Ensuring sustainable development is a growing societal concern, providing rationale to examine the current role and efforts towards implementing sustainable building initiatives within the United States. Sustainable building initiatives refer to the design, operation, and maintenance of a building while considering its conservation efforts and pollution reduction performance. These initiatives...
The natural environment provides important services and benefits to peoples’ health and lives. Conversely, environmental disservices can have negative impacts on humans such as through pollution, chemical toxins, and climate change. The combination of environmental services and disservices encompass how human health and wellbeing, and the environment are connected. As...
Generally presented as a preferred social norm based on both ethical considerations and legislative demands, gender equality has been highly encouraged in recent years. For instance, The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 call out achieving gender equality and empowerment of women. However, although there are multiple efforts to...
Rural farmers in Tanzania depend on subsistence agriculture for their livelihood. Poor soil conditions, and the danger of drought, increases the risk of cyclical poverty conditions. Aid organizations, including the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and the Millennium Development Projects (MDP), as well as industrial tobacco industry, have provided development programs...
Existing strategies and policies have emphasized the need for cross-sector collaboration as a means for the forest sector to be more competitive. Cross-sector collaboration initiatives of forest sector companies with neighboring industries such as energy, chemicals, plastics, textiles, and packaging are gaining increasing attention as a necessary element for a...
Although the human health and social benefits from outdoor recreation are numerous, there is mounting evidence that outdoor recreation can negatively impact wildlife. Shorebirds are known to be especially sensitive to recreation-related disturbance because they nest and forage directly on beaches that are often used for recreation. Many studies have...
The biggest obstacle to a 100% renewable energy utility portfolio is the ability to produce enough electricity to meet peak demand windows, which typically occur in the late afternoon to evening period from 3 pm to 9 pm. A popular policy option to reduce peak demand is time-of-use (TOU) electricity...
Informal higher education science learning programs are increasingly being used as a tool to build scientific research capacity. However, there is low understanding of the impact that these programs on their target audiences, which is important to future capacity building efforts and program design. The purpose of this research project...
One of the greatest challenges in the West is the sustainable management of limited water resources. In recognition of localized responses to natural resource challenges, there has been considerable work in the area of adaptive capacity and collaborative governance to help understand a community’s capacity to manage change. This study...
Natural resource challenges in the American West feature a suite of actors and processes operating at different spatial and political scales, and crossing several administrative jurisdictions. I applied concepts of new environmental governance to Oregon’s greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) conservation strategy, focusing, in particular, on features of voluntary conservation arrangements...
All animals that interact with fishing gear are not necessarily captured, and all animals that are captured are not necessarily retained. Fishing practices and gear configuration, management regulations, and markets dictate which animals ultimately are retained or discarded. The impact of a fishery and the efficacy of management regulations can...
Strategic planning for forests subjected to multiple uses is important for management that sustains and balances these many uses. In the wildland urban interface where forests are in the backyards of members of the public who avidly recreate in them, it is also important to include the community in the...
The ocean off Oregon's coast is a busy place with many activities occurring that can sometimes be in competition or cooperation. Deciding how new uses fit with existing ocean uses is complex, but there are some tools available to help decision-makers. Generating energy from waves is an emerging ocean use...
Social vulnerability is often thought of as a culmination of social factors influencing the susceptibility of various groups to harm and govern their ability to respond. In an effort to identify communities that may be susceptible to social impacts from changes to fishery policies or fishing conditions, NOAA Fisheries is...
From the 1960s to 1990s, the water quality of Dian Lake (滇池), China's sixth largest freshwater lake located outside the capital of Yunnan Province, Kunming City, rapidly declined causing livelihood disruption, decreased water availability, and biodiversity loss. Despite significant investments in remediation efforts, only small water quality improvements have been...
The overall purpose of this research is to assess the Oregon public's capacity to address water resources disturbances through civil society. According to scientists and resource managers, Oregon's water resources are over taxed and at risk, with future projections placing additional stress from climate change and population growth. Oregon's 2009...
This paper explores the contributions of social capital, social connections, and stakeholder engagement to the goals of ecosystem-based management in a local scale marine planning process. The body of work presented here, through a journal article and report, uses the lens of social capital to evaluate stakeholder engagement in making...
This study uses interviews with 18 businesses in Oregon's Willamette Valley to explore business investment in the environment, and how this relates to ecosystem services, payment for ecosystem services programs, and the water-energy nexus. Our research led us to outline 5 factors that influence business investment in the environment, those...
Wildland firefighting is environmentally and socially a risky and complex occupation. Although much attention has been given to understanding the physical components in fighting wildland fire, much less time has been devoted to understanding and developing the capacity of wildland firefighters to handle the dynamic pressures of the physical and...
The wood products industry is influenced heavily by family ownership along the entire value chain. Although family ownership affects each link of the wood products value chain, there has been little research into the importance of products originating from family forestland. Specific attributes of products, such as origin or environmental...
Over the last three decades Oregonians have been engaged in a protracted discussion about Marine Spatial Planning. In the last twenty years the discussion has centered on the protection of Oregon’s natural marine resources and has taken on various labels such as marine gardens, conservation areas, marine sanctuary, and marine...
Over the past two decades, the western United States has experienced many of the costliest and most severe wildfires in history. To mitigate the effects of the growing threats posed by wildfires, residents in at-risk communities are encouraged to protect their homes and property by adopting Firewise recommendations. This article...
Madagascar, home to a high degree of endemic species and has been subject to numerous programs and organizations intent on preserving its biodiversity, which is currently pressured largely by anthropogenic causes. Protected areas, including national parks, make up a central part of these conservation efforts, combining ecotourism and restricting access...
With over 175 million Americans visiting each year and the ability to create unique learning experiences, informal science institutions may play a greater role in climate change education in the coming years. As facilities in Oregon begin to incorporate climate science and solutions into their educational programming, effective communication across...
Policy makers in the United States (US), following recommendations made by the international scientific community, have drafted national emissions reduction legislation in hopes of minimizing the harmful effects of global climate change. Included in this legislation is a national cap-and-trade system with provisions for carbon offsets. Specific provisions for forest...
Graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are important in the teaching of undergraduate students (Golde & Dore, 2001). However, they are often poorly prepared for teaching (Luft, Kurdziel, Roehrig, & Turner, 2004). This dissertation addresses teaching effectiveness in three related manuscripts:
1. A position paper...
The social and economic impacts of climate change on the Oregon Coast may be reduced if coastal managers begin planning now to put in place adaptation measures. Oregon Sea Grant conducted a web-based survey of Oregon coastal professionals to target climate change adaptation outreach and engagement efforts toward this audience....
Given the current state of our oceans, the Pew Oceans Commission (1993) has strongly recommended that increased efforts be made towards ocean literacy. Informal education and outreach programs like the Whale Watching Spoken Here program are important contributors to life-long learning. However, there is little research looking at how these...