Matching Items (151)
Description
Regional and geographical differences may explain variability in menopausal symptom occurrence due to development of climate-specific thermoneutral zones leading to population-specific hot flash frequencies. Limited information available regarding menopausal symptoms in underserved women living in extreme heat.
Understanding the perception of menopausal symptoms in underserved women living in extreme heat regions to identify if heat impacts perception of menopausal symptoms was the objective of this study. Women in free, low-income, and homeless clinics in Phoenix were surveyed during summer and winter months using a self-administered, written questionnaire including demographic, climate and menopause related questions, including the Green Climacteric Scale (GCS).
A total of 139 predominantly Hispanic (56 %), uninsured (53 %), menopausal (56 %), mid-aged (mean 49.9, SD 10.3) women were surveyed— 36% were homeless or in shelters. Most women were not on menopausal hormone therapy (98 %). Twenty-two percent reported hot flashes and 26% night sweats. Twenty-five percent of women reported previously becoming ill from heat. More women thought season influenced menopausal symptoms during summer than winter (41 % vs. 14 %, p = 0.0009). However, majority of women did not think temperature outside influenced their menopausal symptoms and that did not differ by season (73 % in winter vs. 60% in summer, p=0.1094). No statistically significant differences seen for vasomotor symptoms between winter and summer months.
Regional and geographical differences may be key in understanding the variability in menopausal symptoms. Regardless of season, the menopausal, underserved and homeless women living in Arizona reported few vasomotor symptoms. In the summer, they were more likely to report that the season influenced their menopausal symptoms rather than temperature suggesting an influence of the season on symptom perception.
ContributorsMukarram, Mahnoor (Author) / Hondula, David M. (Thesis director) / Kling, Juliana (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The City of Phoenix Street Transportation Department partnered with the Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service at Arizona State University (ASU) and researchers from various ASU schools to evaluate the effectiveness, performance, and community perception of the new pavement coating. The data collection and analysis occurred across multiple neighborhoods and at varying times across days and/or months over the course of one year (July 15, 2020–July 14, 2021), allowing the team to study the impacts of the surface treatment under various weather conditions.
ContributorsMiddel, Ariane (Author) / Vanos, Jennifer K. (Author) / Hondula, David M. (Author) / Kaloush, Kamil (Author) / Sailor, David (Author) / Medina, Jose R. (Jose Roberto) (Author) / Schneider, Florian (Author) / Ortiz, Johny Cordova (Author) / Campbell, Bill (Author) / Epel, Erin (Contributor) / Rice, Brendan (Contributor) / Garcia, Ruth (Contributor) / Phoenix (Ariz.). Street Transportation Department (Contributor) / City of Phoenix (Funder) / Industrial Development Authority of the County of Maricopa (Funder) / Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability (Funder) / Arizona State University. Healthy Urban Environments Program (Contributor)
Created2021-09
Description
ABSTRACT Over the past several decades, the dilemma of free-roaming horses in the U.S. has proven to be one of the most divisive issues in management of public lands. According to federal land management agencies, without population regulation, horses can increase at the rate of 15-20% a year on arid rangelands with inadequate numbers of natural, large predators. Horses compete for valuable forage and water resources alongside cattle and native wildlife in delicate riparian areas highly susceptible to the negative ecological effects of soil compaction and overgrazing. Most U.S. management policies, therefore, call for increased removal of free-roaming horses as they are categorized as “un-authorized livestock” or "non-native" species. Wild horse advocates, however, continue to petition for improvement in animal welfare and expansion of the horses’ territory. With heightened social conflict spurred by animal rights and ecological concerns, not to mention the often-stark differences over what really “belongs” on the landscape, the success of appropriate management strategies hinges on managing agencies’ preparedness and ability to respond in a timely and inclusive manner. A critical element of the management context is the public’s views toward the wild horse and the science used to manage them. Synthesizing the vast literature in the history and philosophy of wildlife management in the American West, and utilizing an ethnographic and case study approach, my research examines the range of stakeholder concerns and analyzes the factors that have led to the disconnect between public values of wild horses and public policy for the management of the federally protected free-roaming horses in Arizona’s Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests.
ContributorsMurphree, Julie Joan (Author) / Minteer, Ben A. (Thesis advisor) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Bradshaw, Karen (Committee member) / Chew, Matthew (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Infrastructure systems are facing non-stationary challenges that stem from climate change and the increasingly complex interactions between the social, ecological, and technological systems (SETSs). It is crucial for transportation infrastructures—which enable residents to access opportunities and foster prosperity, quality of life, and social connections—to be resilient under these non-stationary challenges. Vulnerability assessment (VA) examines the potential consequences a system is likely to experience due to exposure to perturbation or stressors and lack of the capacity to adapt. Post-fire debris flow and heat represent particularly challenging problems for infrastructure and users in the arid U.S. West. Post-fire debris flow, which is manifested with heat and drought, produces powerful runoff threatening physical transportation infrastructures. And heat waves have devastating health effects on transportation infrastructure users, including increased mortality rates. VA anticipates the potential consequences of these perturbations and enables infrastructure stakeholders to improve the system's resilience. The current transportation climate VA—which only considers a single direct climate stressor on the infrastructure—falls short of addressing the wildfire and heat challenges. This work proposes advanced transportation climate VA methods to address the complex and multiple climate stressors and the vulnerability of infrastructure users. Two specific regions were chosen to carry out the progressive transportation climate VA: 1) the California transportation networks’ vulnerability to post-fire debris flows, and 2) the transportation infrastructure user’s vulnerability to heat exposure in Phoenix.
ContributorsLi, Rui (Author) / Chester, Mikhail V. (Thesis advisor) / Middel, Ariane (Committee member) / Hondula, David M. (Committee member) / Pendyala, Ram (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
Communications around sustainability have been found to be incongruent with eliciting the transformative change required to address global climate change and its' repercussions. Recent research has been exploring storytelling in sustainability, specifically with an emphasis on reflexive and emancipatory methods. These methods encourage embracing and contextualizing complexity and intend to target entire cognitive hierarchies. This study explores the possibility of using emancipatory and reflexive storytelling as a tool to change attitudes pertaining to the Valley Metro Light Rail, an example of a complex sustainability mitigation effort. I explore this in four steps: 1) Conducted a pre-survey to gauge preexisting attitudes and predispositions; 2) Provided a narrative that uses storytelling methodologies of reflexivity and emancipation through a story about the light rail; 3) Conducted a post-survey to gauge attitude shift resulting from the narrative intervention; 4) Facilitated a focus group discussion to examine impact qualitatively. These steps intended to provide an answer to the question: How does emancipatory and reflexive storytelling impact affective, cognitive and conative attitudes regarding local alternative transportation? By using tripartite attitude model, qualitative and quantitative analysis this paper determines that reflexive and emancipatory storytelling impacts attitudinal structures. The impact is marginal in the survey response, though the shift indicated a narrowing of participant responses towards one another, indicative of participants subscribing to emancipation and reflexivity of their held attitudes. From the group discussion, it was evident from qualitative responses that participants engaged in emancipating themselves from their held attitudes and reflected upon them. In doing so they engaged in collaboration to make suggestions and suggest actions to help those with experiences that differed from their own. Though this research doesn’t provide conclusive evidence, it opens the door for future research to assess these methodologies as a tool to elicit shared values, beliefs and norms, which are necessary for collective action leading to transformative change in response to global climate change.
ContributorsSwanson, Jake Ryan (Author) / Roseland, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Larson, Kelli (Committee member) / Calhoun, Craig (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Understanding the dynamic interactions between humans and wildlife is essential to establishing sustainable wildlife-based ecotourism (WBE). Animal behavior exists within a complex feedback loop that affects overall ecosystem function, tourist satisfaction, and socioeconomics of local communities. However, the specific value that animal behavior plays in provisioning ecosystem services has not been thoroughly evaluated. People enjoy activities that facilitate intimate contact with animals, and there are many perceived benefits associated with these experiences, such as encouraging pro-environmental attitudes that can lead to greater motivation for conservation. There is extensive research on the effects that unregulated tourism activity can have on wildlife behavior, which include implications for population health and survival. Prior to COVID-19, WBE was developing rapidly on a global scale, and the pause in activity caused by the pandemic gave natural systems the chance to recover from environmental damage from over-tourism and provided insights into how tourism could be less impactful in the future. Until now it has been undetermined how changes in animal behavior can alter the relationships and socioeconomics of this multidimensional system. This dissertation provides a thorough exploration of the behavioral, ecological, and economic parameters required to model biosocial interactions and feedbacks within the whale watching system in Las Perlas Archipelago, Panama. Through observational data collected in the field, this project assessed how unmanaged whale watching activity is affecting the behavior of Humpback whales in the area as well as the socioeconomic and conservation contributions of the industry. Additionally, it is necessary to consider what a sustainable form of wildlife tourism might be, and whether the incorporation of technology will help enhance visitor experience while reducing negative impacts on wildlife. To better ascertain whether this concept of this integration would be favorably viewed, a sample of individuals was surveyed about their experiences about using technology to enhance their interactions with nature. This research highlights the need for more deliberate identification and incorporation of the perceptions of all stakeholders (wildlife included) to develop a less-impactful WBE industry that provides people with opportunities to establish meaningful relationships with nature that motivate them to help meet the conservation challenges of today.
ContributorsSurrey, Katie (Author) / Gerber, Leah (Thesis advisor) / Guzman, Hector (Committee member) / Minteer, Ben (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
University-level sustainability education in Western academia attempts to focus on eliminating future harm to people and the planet. However, Western academia as an institution upholds systems of oppression and reproduces settler colonialism. This reproduction is antithetical to sustainability goals as it continues patterns of Indigenous erasure and extractive relationships to the Land that perpetuate violence towards people and the planet. Sustainability programs, however, offer several frameworks, including resilience, that facilitate critical interrogations of social-ecological systems. In this thesis, I apply the notion of resilience to the perpetuation of settler colonialism within university-level sustainability education. Specifically, I ask: How is settler colonialism resilient in university-level sustainability education? How are, or could, sustainability programs in Western academic settings address settler colonialism? Through a series of conversational interviews with faculty and leadership from Arizona State University School of Sustainability, I analyzed how university-level sustainability education is both challenging and shaped by settler colonialism. These interviews focused on faculty perspectives on the topic and related issues; the interviews were analyzed using thematic coding in NVivo software. The results of this project highlight that many faculty members are already concerned with and focused on challenging settler colonialism, but that settler colonialism remains resilient in this system due to feedback loops at the personal level and reinforcing mechanisms at the institutional level. This research analyzes these feedback loops and reinforcing mechanisms, among others, and supports the call for anti-colonial and decolonial reconstruction of curriculum, as well as a focus on relationship building, shifting of mindset, and school-wide education on topics of white supremacy, settler colonialism, and systems of oppression in general.
ContributorsBills, Haven (Author) / Klinsky, Sonja (Thesis advisor) / Goebel, Janna (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022
Description
In 1996, a floral and faunal inventory of the southeastern slopes of the Marojejy Massif, which falls in a protected area known as the Parc national de Marojejy, was conducted in an ascending series of altitudinal transect zones. The 1996 research team worked in five altitudinal zones (referred to as transect zones). Between 3 October and 15 November 2021, a floral and faunal inventory was completed, replicating the locations surveyed in 1996 and closely the dates. Detected bird species were analyzed for changes in elevational distribution between 1996 and 2021. Birds were divided into three feeding behavior groups and tolerance to forest habitat degradation was considered.
ContributorsLangrand, Tahiry (Author) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis director) / Goodman, Steve (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Complex Adaptive Systems (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
Political boundaries often divide ecosystems and create the challenge of conserving the ecosystem across borders. Through transboundary ecosystem management multiple groups can come together and manage the ecosystem that spans their borders collaboratively. In the United States there are several examples of ecosystems that span borders, such as the Sonoran Desert along the US-Mexico frontier and the Rocky Mountains running through the US and Canada. To gain insight into what leads to effective transboundary resource management I compared two case studies that manage resources over borders with multiple collaborators: Glacier National Park and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. These two cases offer contrasting ecosystems and backgrounds in transboundary resource management in the United States. To compare the cases I coded them using a collaborative governance codebook (Schoon et al. 2020). The codebook uses a Context-Mechanisms-Outcomes framework to identify aspects of collaborative governance and contextual factors present in each park (Pawson & Tilley 1997; Salter & Kothari, 2014). Once coded, the cases were compared to identify what aspects were similar and different in the parks to help potentially explain what features did or did not lead to effective transboundary resource management.
ContributorsTaetle, Noah (Author) / Schoon, Michael (Thesis director) / Carr Kelman, Candice (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor)
Created2022-05
Description
Heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants contribute to human health risks worldwide. Among the most common routes of exposure to pollutants for humans are through the consumption of contaminated water and food, with fish being among the greatest vectors for ingestion of heavy metals in humans, particularly mercury.This dissertation consists of three chapters with a central theme of investigating heavy metal and persistent organic pollutant concentrations in fish and corned beef, which are two commonly consumed food items in American Samoa. A literature review illustrated that historically the primary pollutants of concern in fish muscle tissue from American Samoa have been mercury, arsenic, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon mixtures. To better understand the changes in heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants in fish, this study reports an updated data set, comparing concentrations in pollutants as they have changed over time. To further investigate pollutants in fish tissue, 77 locally caught and commonly consumed fish were analyzed for heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants, and baseline human health risk assessments were calculated for contaminants that had available oral reference doses. While in American Samoa collecting fish for contaminant analyses, it was realized that canned corned beef appeared to be more commonly consumed than fresh fish. An IRB approved consumption survey revealed that 89% of American Samoan adults regularly consume fish, which is the same percentage of people that reported eating canned corned beef, indicating a dramatic increase in this food item to their diet since its introduction in the 20th century.
Results of this study indicate that fish muscle tissue generally has higher heavy metal concentrations than canned corned beef, and that mercury continues to be a main contaminant of concern when consuming fresh and canned fish in American Samoa. While none of the heavy metal concentrations in corned beef exceeded calculated action levels, these foods might contribute to negative health outcomes in other ways. One of the main findings of this study is that either the presence or the ability to detect persistent organic pollutant concentrations are increasing in fish tissue and should be periodically monitored to adequately reflect current conditions.
ContributorsLewis, Tiffany Beth (Author) / Polidoro, Beth (Thesis advisor) / Neuer, Susanne (Thesis advisor) / Halden, Rolf (Committee member) / Schoon, Michael (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023