126855-Thumbnail Image.png

Student capstone and applied projects from ASU's School of Sustainability.

Displaying 1 - 3 of 3
Filtering by

Clear all filters

Collective Action at the Shoreline: A Comparison of Lake Management Organizations in Vilas County, Wisconsin, U.S.A.

Description
Community-based volunteer organizations are critical to natural resource management in the United States. However, due to volunteer involvement, these organizations struggle with collective action problems: coping with free riding, solving commitment problems, arranging for the supply of new institutions, and monitoring individual compliance with sets of rules. In this study,…

Community-based volunteer organizations are critical to natural resource management in the United States. However, due to volunteer involvement, these organizations struggle with collective action problems: coping with free riding, solving commitment problems, arranging for the supply of new institutions, and monitoring individual compliance with sets of rules. In this study, we explore how volunteer organizations can overcome these challenges. To explore how they overcome these challenges, we use the Institutional Analysis and Development framework and the Institutional Design Principles. These frameworks help us understand the impact of natural resource conditions, community attributes, and the rules in use impact volunteer organizations. For this research, we focused on lake organizations in Wisconsin. We collected our data through semi-structured interviews with thirty-one lake organizations and public data. The data were analyzed using constant comparison and linear regression, followed by qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). We reinforce the importance of considering the system holistically when managing a resource the natural resource conditions, the community attributes, and the rules in use. Our study shows the importance of graduated sanctions and low-cost conflict resolution on social-ecological system outcomes. Volunteer-based resource management are an effective way to tailor management strategies to the natural resource condition and the community attributes.
ContributorsWhittaker, Dane (Author) / Janssen, Marco (Contributor) / Janssen,Marco (Contributor) / Leonard, Bryan (Contributor) / Solomon, Chris (Contributor)
Created2020-04-24
126634-Thumbnail Image.png

Campus Farm Green: A Paradigm for Regeneratively Sustainable Communities

Description

By 2050 more than a third of Tucson Arizona's days will have a heat index of 104 degrees or greater if current excessive energy use behavior continues (Climate Central 2016). During the 20th century, the water table of Tucson's aquifer dropped 200' because of excessive water use. (Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum,…

By 2050 more than a third of Tucson Arizona's days will have a heat index of 104 degrees or greater if current excessive energy use behavior continues (Climate Central 2016). During the 20th century, the water table of Tucson's aquifer dropped 200' because of excessive water use. (Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, 2013)
Our communities and buildings so far have not incorporated regenerative sustainability, the sustainable design and construction practices that could help avoid these problems.
Campus Farm Green, a new-home community in Tucson, is working to change that. "The Green" explores a new paradigm for developing regeneratively sustainable homes and neighborhoods that goes beyond reducing harm to the environment to helping to heal the environment. The Green has been designed to generate and return to the grid more electricity than it uses, and capture and return to the ground more water than it buys from the water utility. It does this while providing homes that can be sold for a profit at market prices.
This paper describes the challenges and solutions of the sustainably regenerative design and construction that is at the heart of The Green.
ContributorsArchangeli, Dante (Contributor)
Created2019-12-03
126601-Thumbnail Image.png

Exploring Sustainability Literacy through Nature Journaling in School Gardens

Description
Day-to-day decision makers on agricultural operations play a key role in maintaining both a sustainable and food secure agricultural society. This population, also defined as Principal Producers by the 2017 USDA Agricultural Census Report, has witnessed a significant decline in recent years, raising many questions surrounding why farmers are retiring…

Day-to-day decision makers on agricultural operations play a key role in maintaining both a sustainable and food secure agricultural society. This population, also defined as Principal Producers by the 2017 USDA Agricultural Census Report, has witnessed a significant decline in recent years, raising many questions surrounding why farmers are retiring faster than they can be replaced. To look closely at this phenomenon, this study focuses on the State of Ohio to hear first-hand from producers what they need to be successful through a series of semi-structured interviews. This study also maps recent changes in variables that define this issue from 2007-2017 using QGIS and USDA Agricultural Census data. The findings from this study show the recent decline of mid-sized agricultural operations and provide evidence linking declining rates of principal producer populations with specific features consistent with industrial agriculture. These findings are specific to the State of Ohio, but also raise much larger questions about which populations are experiencing more rapid rates of farm exit, and what implications these trends have for food security on a broader scale.
ContributorsMoore, Phillip (Author) / Chhetri, Nalini (Contributor) / Leonard, Bryan (Contributor) / Shrestha, Milan (Contributor)
Created2020