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- All Subjects: Phoenix
- Creators: School of Sustainability
- Creators: Department of English
- Resource Type: Text
Golf courses require large amounts of water and other resources. The Southwestern United States has experienced rapid population growth, coupled with a dramatic increase in the built environment and golf courses. This paper aims to assess the environmental sustainability of golf courses in the Phoenix Metropolitan area at multiple scales in terms of water, ecosystem services and management practices. We report on the number and spatial distribution of golf courses, the amount of water used by them, the ecosystem services they provide, potential social injustice issues within the area, and the sustainability of management practices. There are 197 golf courses within the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, which are composed of 465 patches covering an area around 57 square miles. The golf courses within the Phoenix Active Management Area use around 500 acre-feet of water per year. Golf courses are categorized as an industrial water user and account for roughly half of all industrial water use in the Phoenix Active Management Area. The primary water source for golf courses is groundwater, with effluent as their second most-used source. Most golf courses are located in areas with a median household income between $61,333-$90,185 and only one was located in an area with a median household income below $27,393. Golf courses in the region provide a number of ecosystem services and help the local economy in multiple ways. However, given the scarcity of water and the projected drier and hotter climate in the American Southwest, we suggest curbing the expansion of golf courses and implement more sustainable management practices.
After doing projects at Maryvale High School with the director of the gifted program and her students, I was inspired to investigate if Maricopa County’s public school funding data would show a correlation between higher proportions of Hispanic/Latino students and less funding. The per-pupil expenditures were compared with the proportion of the student population that was Hispanic/Latino. I proposed that these two factors would show an inverse correlation in the public school districts of Maricopa County and in the high schools of the Phoenix Union High School District (PUHSD). This hypothesis was refuted, and no correlation was shown at the district level nor at the high school level. While there was little correlation between race/ethnicity and per-pupil expenditures, there were still huge disparities between the districts of Maricopa and among the high schools of PUHSD. These results might indicate the current state of public-school funding, but they are insufficient in describing the entirety of education in Maricopa. The lived experiences of the students I worked with indicated that they felt less privileged than their peers in both public and charter schools. Further research must be done to investigate how the inclusion of private schools, charter schools, and additional schools in Maricopa County influences these variables of race/ethnicity and per-pupil expenditures. Further research should also be done to compare different variables to race/ethnicity, such as rates of high school graduation and college acceptance.
This thesis explores conservation of threatened and endangered species in the Phoenix metro area using social media. With increased urbanization, rising temperatures, and other issues occurring in the desert landscape, creatures big and small face devastating losses in their populations. Informing the public about the species currently on the brink of extinction allows people to identify the animals in the wild, and may encourage conservation practices that would allow wildlife to thrive far into the future. Utilizing social media as a tool for spreading awareness permits information about Arizona wildlife to be free and easily accessible. This project consists of interviews with conservationists and social media influencers, a survey to understand online behaviors and identify level of interest in the different species, and the creation of consumable social media infographics about the threatened and endangered species of Phoenix. Instagram was selected by survey respondents as the platform they would follow conservation accounts on, leading to the creation of @phxconservation to post the social media infographics. Best practices found by posting on social media in this project can be useful information for conservationists looking to build engagement and effectively inform people.
Using Sant’Ambrogio and Open Air as case studies for the research, this paper provides insight on the degree of impact that local farmers’ markets can have on creating food sovereignty within communities; and how pre-existing factors and negative forces diminish the benefits of farmers’ markets and local food movements. Among many, some of these negative forces include the effects of social and cultural pressures that promote fast food and convenience; a broken agricultural system controlled by monopoly companies; industrial food items priced cheaper than small farmers can compete with; and an underscore of unethical behavior across all sectors (including organic and local) that inhibit honest farmers from making enough profit to survive.
The comparison between Sant’Ambrogio and Open Air Market indicates that big agriculture undermines the success of local farming movements in both countries, but Phoenix can still learn from the movement in Florence, which is rooted in a deep history of outdoor markets and rich food culture. Italy is fortunate in terms of their agriculture capacity because their climate allows for a diverse variety of crops; while Arizona does not have the same agricultural capacity as the Mediterranean climate of Italy, it is still valuable to mimic the network of local food systems that Italy has. In order to do so, Phoenician consumers should take advantage of the food that grows locally and then supplement it with more diverse crops from other areas of Arizona or the southwest.
The Open Air Market in Phoenix currently does not play an important role in the food system except for helping people to relate community and socialization to food. Transparency, communication and education are required to actually increase the success of small local farmers and to help the Open Air Market play a real role in the local food movement and the establishment of food sovereignty.