ASU Scholarship Showcase

An assessment framework was developed to evaluate and characterize material recovery facilities within the U.S. that process e-waste. The framework consists of five key categories including, facility overview, operating model and process flows, product flows, collection methods, and facility resource use. The results were used to conduct a material flow analysis to develop a representative set of end-of-life pathways (e.g., reuse, refurbish, recycle) to better understand the flow of e-waste in the end-of-life management industry. The majority of products collected was from business sector collection routes. The largest number of products (by units) collected at 90% of facilities was mobile phones. It was also seen that most products went directly to recycling for material recovery and were not in the condition to be re-used or refurbished.

Construction waste management has become extremely important due to stricter disposal and landfill regulations, and a lesser number of available landfills. There are extensive works done on waste treatment and management of the construction industry. Concepts like deconstruction, recyclability, and Design for Disassembly (DfD) are examples of better construction waste management methods. Although some authors and organizations have published rich guides addressing the DfD's principles, there are only a few buildings already developed in this area. This study aims to find the challenges in the current practice of deconstruction activities and the gaps between its theory and implementation. Furthermore, it aims to provide insights about how DfD can create opportunities to turn these concepts into strategies that can be largely adopted by the construction industry stakeholders in the near future.

This study assesses whether multifunctional edible landscaping business models provide a sufficient business case at enterprise and city scales to justify widespread implementation. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with four landscaping entrepreneurs, and the information obtained from the interviews was utilized to carry out a business model comparison with the Business Model Canvas framework. The comparison showed that the landscaping enterprises using multifunctional edible landscaping methods possessed a greater range of value propositions and revenue streams, enhancing their competitive advantage. Second, a GIS landscape analysis of seven Phoenix metro area cities was carried out to identify landscapes that were suited for becoming multifunctional edible landscapes. The GIS analysis identified single family residential, residential recreational open space, municipal parks, and municipal schools as being suitable landscapes, and that the area of these landscapes in the seven cities exceeded 180,000 acres. Third, scenarios were created using interview and GIS data to estimate potential value creation and return on investment of implementing multifunctional edible landscaping in the cities of interest. The scenarios found that the potential value creation of edible landscaping ranged between $3.9 and $66 billion, and that positive return on investment (ROI) could be achieved in 11 out of 12 scenarios within one to five years. Finally, the paper concludes by discussing potential long-term implications of implementing multifunctional edible urban landscaping, as well as possible future directions for multifunctional landscaping business model development and research.

Predicting how forest carbon cycling will change in response to climate change and management depends on the collective knowledge from measurements across environmental gradients, ecosystem manipulations of global change factors, and mathematical models. Formally integrating these sources of knowledge through data assimilation, or model–data fusion, allows the use of past observations to constrain model parameters and estimate prediction uncertainty. Data assimilation (DA) focused on the regional scale has the opportunity to integrate data from both environmental gradients and experimental studies to constrain model parameters.

Here, we introduce a hierarchical Bayesian DA approach (Data Assimilation to Predict Productivity for Ecosystems and Regions, DAPPER) that uses observations of carbon stocks, carbon fluxes, water fluxes, and vegetation dynamics from loblolly pine plantation ecosystems across the southeastern US to constrain parameters in a modified version of the Physiological Principles Predicting Growth (3-PG) forest growth model. The observations included major experiments that manipulated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentration, water, and nutrients, along with nonexperimental surveys that spanned environmental gradients across an 8.6  ×  10⁵ km² region. We optimized regionally representative posterior distributions for model parameters, which dependably predicted data from plots withheld from the data assimilation. While the mean bias in predictions of nutrient fertilization experiments, irrigation experiments, and CO₂ enrichment experiments was low, future work needs to focus modifications to model structures that decrease the bias in predictions of drought experiments.

Predictions of how growth responded to elevated CO₂ strongly depended on whether ecosystem experiments were assimilated and whether the assimilated field plots in the CO₂ study were allowed to have different mortality parameters than the other field plots in the region. We present predictions of stem biomass productivity under elevated CO₂, decreased precipitation, and increased nutrient availability that include estimates of uncertainty for the southeastern US. Overall, we (1) demonstrated how three decades of research in southeastern US planted pine forests can be used to develop DA techniques that use multiple locations, multiple data streams, and multiple ecosystem experiment types to optimize parameters and (2) developed a tool for the development of future predictions of forest productivity for natural resource managers that leverage a rich dataset of integrated ecosystem observations across a region.

The International Long-Term Ecological Research (ILTER) network comprises > 600 scientific groups conducting site-based research within 40 countries. Its mission includes improving the understanding of global ecosystems and informs solutions to current and future environmental problems at the global scales. The ILTER network covers a wide range of social-ecological conditions and is aligned with the Programme on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS) goals and approach. Our aim is to examine and develop the conceptual basis for proposed collaboration between ILTER and PECS. We describe how a coordinated effort of several contrasting LTER site-based research groups contributes to the understanding of how policies and technologies drive either toward or away from the sustainable delivery of ecosystem services. This effort is based on three tenets: transdisciplinary research; cross-scale interactions and subsequent dynamics; and an ecological stewardship orientation.

The overarching goal is to design management practices taking into account trade-offs between using and conserving ecosystems toward more sustainable solutions. To that end, we propose a conceptual approach linking ecosystem integrity, ecosystem services, and stakeholder well-being, and as a way to analyze trade-offs among ecosystem services inherent in diverse management options. We also outline our methodological approach that includes: (i) monitoring and synthesis activities following spatial and temporal trends and changes on each site and by documenting cross-scale interactions; (ii) developing analytical tools for integration; (iii) promoting trans-site comparison; and (iv) developing conceptual tools to design adequate policies and management interventions to deal with trade-offs. Finally, we highlight the heterogeneity in the social-ecological setting encountered in a subset of 15 ILTER sites. These study cases are diverse enough to provide a broad cross-section of contrasting ecosystems with different policy and management drivers of ecosystem conversion; distinct trends of biodiversity change; different stakeholders’ preferences for ecosystem services; and diverse components of well-being issues.

Differences in governance relationships and community efforts to remove an exotic, rapidly spreading invasive plant, the-mile-a-minute weed (Mikania micrantha), are explored in five case study community forests in the subtropical region of Chitwan, Nepal. An institutional analysis informs an examination of the de jure (formal) versus de facto (on the ground) institutions and actor relationships relevant to Mikania removal efforts. Contrary to the expectations set by the de jure situation, we find heterogeneous governance relationships and norms related to Mikania management across community forests. Content analysis of interview data illuminates reoccurring themes and their implications for social and ecological outcomes in the communities. Complex governance relationships and regular discussion of distrust of government and non-government officials help explain collective action efforts and management decisions. The content analysis suggests that Mikania is impacting people’s daily lives but the degree of severity and the response to the disruption varies substantially and is heavily affected by other problems experienced by community forest members. Our results indicate that understanding how the de facto, or on the ground situation, differs from the de jure institutions may be vital in structuring successful efforts to manage invasive species and understanding collective action problems related to other social-ecological threats. We present data-informed propositions about common pool resource management and invasive species. This study contributes to a better scientific understanding of how institutions mediate social-ecological challenges influencing common pool resources more broadly.

Social-ecological organization is a multidimensional phenomenon that combines material and symbolic processes. However, the coupling between social and ecological subsystem is often conceptualized as purely material, thus reducing the symbolic dimension to its behavioral and actionable expressions. In this paper I conceptualize social-ecological systems as doubly coupled. On the one hand, material expressions of socio-cultural processes affect and are affected by ecological dynamics. On the other hand, coupled social-ecological material dynamics are concurrently coupled with subjective dynamics via coding, decoding, personal experience, and human agency. This second coupling operates across two organizationally heterogeneous dimensions: material and symbolic. Although resilience thinking builds on the recognition of organizational asymmetry between living and nonliving systems, it has overlooked the equivalent asymmetry between ecological and socio-cultural subsystems.

Three guiding concepts are proposed to formalize double coupling. The first one, social-ecological asymmetry, expands on past seminal work on ecological self-organization to incorporate reflexivity and subjectivity in social-ecological modeling. Organizational asymmetry is based in the distinction between social rules, which are symbolically produced and changed through human agents’ reflexivity and purpose, and biophysical rules, which are determined by functional relations between ecological components. The second guiding concept, conscious power, brings to the fore human agents’ distinctive capacity to produce our own subjective identity and the consequences of this capacity for social-ecological organization. The third concept, congruence between subjective and objective dynamics, redefines sustainability as contingent on congruent relations between material and symbolic processes. Social-ecological theories and analyses based on these three guiding concepts would support the integration of current structuralist-functionalist methods, which sufficiently and appropriately characterize ecological organization, with ethnographic and narrative methods exploring human intentionality, reflexivity, and biographical development.

Groundwater is a common-pool resource that is subject to depletion in many places around the world as a result of increased use of irrigation and water-demanding cash crops. Where state capacity to control groundwater use is limited, collective action is important to increase recharge and restrict highly water-consumptive crops. We present results of field experiments in hard rock areas of Andhra Pradesh, India, to examine factors affecting groundwater use. Two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) ran the games in communities where they were working to improve watershed and water management. Results indicate that, when the links between crop choice and groundwater depletion is made explicit, farmers can act cooperatively to address this problem. Longer NGO involvement in the villages was associated with more cooperative outcomes in the games. Individuals with more education and higher perceived community social capital played more cooperatively, but neither gender nor method of payment had a significantly effect on individual behavior. When participants could repeat the game with communication, similar crop choice patterns were observed. The games provided an entry point for discussion on the understanding of communities of the interconnectedness of groundwater use and crop choice.

Experiments have made important contributions to our understanding of human behavior, including behavior relevant for understanding social-ecological systems. When there is a conflict between individual and group interests in social-ecological systems, social dilemmas occur. From the many types of social-dilemma formulations that are used to study collective action, common-pool resource and public-good dilemmas are most relevant for social-ecological systems. Experimental studies of both common-pool resource and public-good dilemmas have shown that many predictions based on the conventional theory of collective action, which assumes rational, self-interested behavior, do not hold. More cooperation occurs than predicted (Ledyard 1995), “cheap talk” increases cooperation (Ostrom 2006), and participants are willing to invest in sanctioning free riders (Yamagishi 1986, Ostrom et al. 1992, Fehr and Gächter 2000, Chaudhuri 2011). Experiments have also demonstrated a diversity of motivations, which affect individual decisions about cooperation and sanctioning (see Fehr and Fischbacher 2002 and Sobel 2005 for reviews, and Bowles 2008 for policy implications).

Recently, an approach for global sustainability, the planetary-boundary approach (PBA), has been proposed, which combines the concept of tipping points with global-scale sustainability indicators. The PBA could represent a significant step forward in monitoring and managing known and suspected global sustainability criteria. However, as the authors of the PBA describe, the approach faces numerous and fundamental challenges that must be addressed, including successful identification of key global sustainability metrics and their tipping points, as well as the coordination of systemic individual and institutional actions that are required to address the sustainability challenges highlighted. We apply a previously published framework for systematic and strategic development toward a robust basic definition of sustainability, i.e., the framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD), to improve and inform the PBA.

The FSSD includes basic principles for sustainability, and logical guidelines for how to approach their fulfillment. It is aimed at preventing unsustainable behavior at both the micro, e.g., individual firm, and macro, i.e., global, levels, even when specific global sustainability symptoms and metrics are not yet well understood or even known. Whereas the PBA seeks to estimate how far the biosphere can be driven away from a “normal” or “natural” state before tipping points are reached, because of ongoing violations of basic sustainability principles, the FSSD allows for individual planners to move systematically toward sustainability before all impacts from not doing so, or their respective tipping points, are known. Critical weaknesses in the PBA can, thus, be overcome by a combined approach, significantly increasing both the applicability and efficacy of the PBA, as well as informing strategies developed in line with the FSSD, e.g., by providing a “global warning system” to help prioritize strategic actions highlighted by the FSSD. Thus, although ongoing monitoring of known and suspected global sustainability metrics and their possible tipping points is a critical part of the evolving sustainability landscape, effective and timely utilization of planetary-boundary information on multiple scales requires coupling to a strategic approach that makes the underlying sustainability principles explicit and includes strategic guidelines to approach them.

Outside of such a rigorous and systems-based context, the PBA, even given its global scale, risks leading individual organizations or planners to (i) focus on “shares” of, e.g., pollution within the PBs and negotiations to get as high proportion of such as possible, and/or (ii) awaiting data on PBs when such do not yet exist before they act, and/or (iii) find it difficult to manage uncertainties of the data once such have arrived. If global sustainability problems are to be solved, it is important that each actor recognizes the benefits, not the least self-benefits, of designing and executing strategies toward a principled and scientifically robust definition of sustainability. This claim is not only based on theoretical reasoning. A growing number of sectors, businesses, and municipalities/cities around the world are already doing it, i.e., not estimating “allowed” shares of, say fossil CO[subscript 2] emissions, but gradually moving away from unsustainable use of fossil fuels and other unsustainable practices altogether.