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

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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
Description
Groundwater is the life blood of the earth. It is the most precious natural resource we have, and we cannot survive or thrive without it. Having access to secure water supplies is essential. There are millions of groundwater wells worldwide affected by intensive groundwater pumping. WaterWorks4All can help solve the

Groundwater is the life blood of the earth. It is the most precious natural resource we have, and we cannot survive or thrive without it. Having access to secure water supplies is essential. There are millions of groundwater wells worldwide affected by intensive groundwater pumping. WaterWorks4All can help solve the over pumping of renewable groundwater in communities effected by water uncertainty and scarcity.
Groundwater pumping in the US is significant, rated second in the world. Countries pumping the highest quantities of groundwater per capita are located in arid zones, where surface water is scarce and unreliable and where agricultural irrigation is well developed. Furthermore, groundwater is a common pool and there is little awareness of the cumulative implications of intensive groundwater pumping can do to a community’s water supply, leading to an unsustainable water supply.
New Mexico has been experiencing water supply diminishment leading to uncertainty in water supplies due to worldwide, regional and local atmospheric climate changes caused by rising greenhouse gases. There is strong scientific evidence that the current long-term drying trend, driven by warming and precipitation deficits, could worsen for years or decades into the future causing water scarcity and uncertainty (Udall, 2017). There is an urgent need for more groundwater management interventions. WaterWorks4All, is a groundwater well monitoring and usage reporting mobile application (App) to assist in increasing longevity of declining groundwater resources by stopping wastage, encouraging efficiency and providing self-governed conservation behaviors in the Middle Rio Grande. This solution takes an adaptation practical approach to water planning and management by providing a water management tool for users who rely on groundwater for agricultural crop production and domestic use well sharing. WaterWorks4All begins as a pilot project in collaboration with the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District (MRGCD) (MRGCD, 2020), focused on a select group of users dependent on groundwater wells. During the pilot the App will be analyzed, designed, developed, and tested in a real world setting before it can be made available to thousands of water users.
ContributorsCardenas, Theresa (Writer of accompanying material)
Created2020-05-15
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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