Programs and Communities

There is no ’typical’ production process for Legally Autonomous Adults (LAD). However, some very general inputs and flows can be assumed: Physical, mental, emotional, and social or cultural inputs are provided by primary caregivers throughout the process. LADs in Arizona in the 21st century are produced in small batches. Inputs tend to be provided by consistent sources according to unique values, and the production process does not actually stop cold at the factory gate, but continues on into the next phase.

Sometimes, due to externalities like substance dependence or domestic violence, the original production process either deprives the product of essential inputs or adds toxic inputs, causing damage. The damage can carry forward into the next phases, or even be so severe that the production process is terminated. When there is a risk of such damage, then the product – the child – is removed from his original production system, taken into the custody of a state-run institution (Child Protective Services), and placed in foster care.

LADs who have experienced a foster care intervention as part of their production process are less likely to have that obligatory property of Legal Autonomy, and more likely to have obligatory properties that are detrimental to society at large. Omitting other variables, they have higher rates of incarceration, homelessness, and substance abuse than LADs who have not been in out-of-home foster care. The financial and societal costs of those dependencies are imposed on the same stakeholders whose efforts and contributions make the foster care system possible.

CPS removal triggers a system expansion that expends energy and resources in an attempt to compensate for the missing inputs and to mitigate the toxic inputs, if any, that the child’s family was adding. In a material production system, it seems illogical to construct a complex system expansion which predictably results in products lacking their most important obligatory property. That contradiction was the impetus for this paper.

The goal of this life cycle analysis is to visualize that system expansion. Then, the project seeks to quantify and compare the difference between this system expansion and the generalized original process, in units of dollars per LAD. Finally, the project assesses the statistical impacts of the system expansion on LADs, and describes further impacts of these LADs on society at large.

Urban landscaping palm tree waste in the form of palm frond trimmings and bark shavings that is currently handled as municipal solid waste by the City of Phoenix and other major municipalities can be handled in more cost effective ways and lead to reductions in emissions and greenhouse gases. While many cities have green organics collection and diversion programs, they always exclude palm tree waste due to its unique properties. As a result, an unknown tonnage of palm tree waste is annually landfilled as municipal solid waste. Additionally, as the tonnage is unknown, so are the associated emissions, greenhouse gases, and costs. An attributional lifecycle assessment was conducted in the City of Phoenix from the perspective responsibility of the City of Phoenix’s Public Works Department.

Many relationships exist between humans and their animal companions. Regardless of the relationship, the costs of pet ownership are more than just veterinary bills and the purchase of pet food. The purpose of this study is to examine the environmental impacts associated with ownership of canus lupus familiaris, more commonly known as the domesticated dog. Since dogs are carnivorous by nature, there has already been significant interest in the ecological ‘pawprint’ of pet food, or the pressure that dog food production exerts on the environment.

This study utilizes Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to determine the environmental impacts of industrial pet food production and furthermore, pet ownership through nutritional requirements. Additionally, this study aims to examine how pet food type—beef or lamb—can influence greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The approach taken by this study is that of a hybrid input-output LCA, combining Economic Input Output (EIO-LCA) data and process-level data to examine how supply chain decisions made by pet food manufactures can affect the ecological ‘pawprint’ of the domestic dog. The EIO-LCA provides an economy-wide lens, whereas, process-based LCAs provide data relevant to specific materials and processes. This approach was used to compare the environmental impacts associated with environmentally friendly supply chain decisions compared to the typical environmental impact of dog food.

An increase in population and need to protect the planet has created many initiatives and research goals in developing alternatives methods of fueling. Federal and state policies have provided a push for industries to find ways to of reducing their impact on the environment while maintaining competitiveness. In the sector of alternative fuels, large policies such as the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) in the United States are making goals to reduce vehicular fuel from coal and oil, and focus on alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. Along with the RFS and other federal policies, states are introducing independent initiatives to promote the use of alternative fuels.

Research has shown that other crops besides corn can feasibly be used to produce ethanol for fuel use. One of the major crops of interest currently is switchgrass (Panicum Virgatum L.) because of its ability to grow under a variety of weather conditions and soil types. Switchgrass does not require as much maintenance as corn and is a perennial grass that can have high yielding fields for up to 9 years.

This report focuses on the impacts from using switchgrass-derived ethanol to meet the state of Arizona’s policy to have government fleet vehicles operating on alternative fuels. The study uses a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to evaluate 22 million gallons of ethanol produced in Arizona and stored at fueling stations for use. Impacts in land use, global warming, and water quality are evaluated using software tools and databases in Ecoinvent and Simapro.

The results of the study indicate that the cultivation and harvest phase of the process will contribute the most to negative environmental impacts. According to the study, application of heavy nutrient fertilizer and the machinery needed for the additional agriculture have the potential to contribute over 36 million moles of hydrogen and 89 million CTU eq. to the air, soil, and water.

While the scientific study of religion is not new, the topic has yet to be approached by Lifecycle Assessment (LCA). This work demonstrates a method for assessing the personal “cost” of “manufacturing” a mature religious adherent, or, a believer committed to a particular faith. By measuring such inputs as personal importance of faith, prayer, religious service attendance, religious experiences, and scripture reading, an assessment can be made of the quantity of such inputs required to engender enduring religious devotion. Ultimately, this study has demonstrated that the data typically collected in longitudinal surveys are insufficient to adequately support any firm quantitative conclusions, but the method proposed is sound and can be exploited when data becomes available.

Public transportation systems are often part of strategies to reduce urban environmental impacts from passenger transportation, yet comprehensive energy and environmental life-cycle measures, including upfront infrastructure effects and indirect and supply chain processes, are rarely considered. Using the new bus rapid transit and light rail lines in Los Angeles, near-term and long-term life-cycle impact assessments are developed, including consideration of reduced automobile travel. Energy consumption and emissions of greenhouse gases and criteria pollutants are assessed, as well the potential for smog and respiratory impacts.

Results show that life-cycle infrastructure, vehicle, and energy production components significantly increase the footprint of each mode (by 48–100% for energy and greenhouse gases, and up to 6200% for environmental impacts), and emerging technologies and renewable electricity standards will significantly reduce impacts. Life-cycle results are identified as either local (in Los Angeles) or remote, and show how the decision to build and operate a transit system in a city produces environmental impacts far outside of geopolitical boundaries. Ensuring shifts of between 20–30% of transit riders from automobiles will result in passenger transportation greenhouse gas reductions for the city, and the larger the shift, the quicker the payback, which should be considered for time-specific environmental goals.

This administrative history of the Grand Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program (GCDAMP) includes government reports, oral history interviews and other relevant information about Colorado River law, environmental protection law, hydropower regulation, the Glen Canyon Environmental Studies that served as a precursor to GCDAMP, and the activities of the Adaptive Management Work Group, the Technical Work Group, and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center.

ABSTRACT: This book is a response to the USGS’s call for a research design that could be used as a framework for prioritizing cultural resources in the Colorado River ecosystem below Glen Canyon Dam. Changing River includes summaries of current environmental conditions and previous research and brings together diverse archaeological opinions about Grand Canyon’s human story. It then presents a theoretical basis for using a landscape approach to organize future research efforts in the canyon. The research presented here explores the geophysical, paleoclimatic, and biological parameters that have shaped the canyon landscape and influenced choices made by humans as they attempted to adapt to this ecosystem. It then focuses on the distribution of cultural materials and patterns using several archaeological approaches, and investigates natural and cultural realms as mutually reinforcing and interacting components of an integrated ecosystem to which humans have applied meaning and value over time.

While the ecology and evolution of partial migratory systems (defined broadly to include skip spawning) have been well studied, we are only beginning to under- stand how partial migratory populations are responding to ongoing environmen- tal change. Environmental change can lead to differences in the fitness of residents and migrants, which could eventually lead to changes in the frequency of the strategies in the overall population. Here, we address questions concerning the life history of the endangered Gila cypha (humpback chub) in the regulated Colorado River and the unregulated tributary and primary spawning area, the Little Colorado River. We develop eight multistate models for the population based on three movement hypotheses, in which states are defined in terms of fish size classes and river locations. We fit these models to mark–recapture data col- lected in 2009–2012. We compare survival and growth estimates between the Col- orado River and Little Colorado River and calculate abundances for all size classes. The best model supports the hypotheses that larger adults spawn more frequently than smaller adults, that there are residents in the spawning grounds, and that juveniles move out of the Little Colorado River in large numbers during the monsoon season (July–September). Monthly survival rates for G. cypha in the Colorado River are higher than in the Little Colorado River in all size classes; however, growth is slower. While the hypothetical life histories of life-long resi- dents in the Little Colorado River and partial migrants spending most of its time in the Colorado River are very different, they lead to roughly similar fitness expectations when we used expected number of spawns as a proxy. However, more research is needed because our study period covers a period of years when conditions in the Colorado River for G. cypha are likely to have been better than has been typical over the last few decades.