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Identifying the extent of spatial alignment between social and environmental systems that drive fire management decisions and outcomes.

Description

Fire is a naturally-occurring disruptive ecological force that is an essential part of certain ecosystems, and has historically been a tool used by indigenous fire stewards to maintain the health of the land. In the past century, fire has been severely suppressed throughout many areas of the Western United States…

Fire is a naturally-occurring disruptive ecological force that is an essential part of certain ecosystems, and has historically been a tool used by indigenous fire stewards to maintain the health of the land. In the past century, fire has been severely suppressed throughout many areas of the Western United States as Western colonization and the suppression of native traditional ecological knowledge took place, causing a severe decline in ecosystem health and the accumulation of flammable vegetation, which has more recently contributed towards a frequency of catastrophic, high-intensity wildfires. Current fire management challenges include balancing social and ecological perspectives. In Colorado and other areas of the country, community wildfire protection plans (CWPP) are evolving as a means to involve a variety of community stakeholders in fire management decisions. Using Colorado CWPP boundaries as a social management unit and endangered species ranges as an ecological management unit, I analyzed the spatial overlap of these different factors. Since each CWPP has its own fire management policies, I drew implications from the results for which important factors different CWPPs should consider.

ContributorsAzuma, Erin (Author) / Kroetz, Kailin (Thesis director) / Iacona, Gwen (Committee member) / Hamilton, Matthew (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Watts College of Public Service & Community Solut (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / Thunderbird School of Global Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)

Created2021-05

Mission Statement Alignment for Partnering and Non-Partnering Land-Managing Organizations

Description

Public and private lands depend on organizations to manage and protect them for the recreational enjoyment of humans and the conservation of biodiversity. Organizations that partner, or co-manage, to manage these lands can combine their resources to reach efficient conservation outcomes for biodiversity protection. How organizations express their priorities publicly…

Public and private lands depend on organizations to manage and protect them for the recreational enjoyment of humans and the conservation of biodiversity. Organizations that partner, or co-manage, to manage these lands can combine their resources to reach efficient conservation outcomes for biodiversity protection. How organizations express their priorities publicly through their mission statements are important because of their ability to reach stakeholders. In my thesis research, I collect the mission statements for 1144 organizations that are categorized into two groups of those that partner at least once and those that never partner. I analyze the extent to which they align and the drivers through performing text analysis by creating word clouds, word frequency lists, and identifying themes to categorize the words into for each group of partnering and non-partnering. Comparing partnering and non-partnering organization mission statements, I find that partnering organizations use more conservation-themed language and non-partnering organizations use community/people-themed language more frequently. I also find that the type of organization impacted the words being used, as well as the ratio of these different types of organizations that made up the total group of partnering and non-partnering (federal, local, and non-government organizations (NGO)). Future research could center around the dynamics of the partnerships and the extent to which mission statements play a role in attracting other organizations to partner and their role in clearly reflecting priorities to the public.

ContributorsHarding, Emily (Author) / Kroetz, Kailin (Thesis director) / Iacona, Gwen (Committee member) / Breetz, Hanna (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor)

Created2021-12

Cost Estimation Choices Influence Recovery Resource Allocation Priorities for Endangered Species

Description

Limited funding hinders endangered species recovery. Thus, decision makers need to strategically allocate resources to save the most species. Decision science provides guidance on efficient prioritization of conservation actions. However, endangered species recovery cost estimates are incomplete, so decision makers need to understand the implications of different cost estimation approaches.…

Limited funding hinders endangered species recovery. Thus, decision makers need to strategically allocate resources to save the most species. Decision science provides guidance on efficient prioritization of conservation actions. However, endangered species recovery cost estimates are incomplete, so decision makers need to understand the implications of different cost estimation approaches. To test how different ways of estimating the expected costs of recovery action influence suggested recovery priorities, I used three different cost estimation scenarios for prioritizing recovery effort for 29 endangered species in Arizona. My scenarios explored “remaining” costs, calculated by subtracting historical spending from recovery plan cost estimates, “average” costs which substituted the average cost for actions in recovery plans, and “micro” and “macro” overlaps accounting for efficiency of costs due to implementing shared recovery actions for species with overlapping ranges. These different methods of estimating costs resulted in different numbers of recovery plans funded. At a representative budget, the macro overlap scenario recommended funding for 97% of plans as compared to 93% of plans under the baseline cost scenario. In contrast, the micro overlap (59%), the average (28%), and remaining (24%) cost estimation approaches all resulted in less plans recommended for funding than the baseline. There were also differences in how individual plans were ranked across the scenarios and variation in species chosen for funding. The order of recovery plans was similar between the baseline and the remaining scenario (WS = 0.833), and the baseline and the average scenario (WS=0.811). The similarity metric is based on the identity of species ranked equally. In contrast, there was less similarity in plan ranking between the baseline, the macro (WS=0.777), and micro (WS=0.442) overlap scenarios. A group of 4 plans remained within the top priority ranks, 5 plans were ranked as high priority for all scenarios except the remaining cost scenario, and 5 plans were consistently ranked as low priority. My results show how cost estimation approaches influence species priority rankings and can be used to help decision makers determine implications when they are exploring options for prioritization.

ContributorsSansonetti, Alice Maria (Author) / Gerber, Leah (Thesis advisor) / Iacona, Gwen (Thesis advisor) / Maas, Amy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)

Created2023

College Hesitancy in Minority High School Girls Interested in STEM

Description

Minority women continue to be underrepresented in STEM fields and in STEM related degrees, leading to a lack of diversity in the research conducted and voices advocated for in STEM. To understand why there continues to be a lack of representation of minority women in STEM, I conducted a survey…

Minority women continue to be underrepresented in STEM fields and in STEM related degrees, leading to a lack of diversity in the research conducted and voices advocated for in STEM. To understand why there continues to be a lack of representation of minority women in STEM, I conducted a survey of approximately 20 high school girls who identified as minorities and had an interest in science and conservation to ask questions about their hesitancy to attend college and the different barriers they face. The results of this survey show that these minority girls have low hesitancy when considering applying to and attending college. The biggest barrier these girls face is cost, with 74% of respondents citing college expense as a source of hesitancy when considering applying to college. I then discuss possible interventions that would lead to an increase in the representation of minority women in STEM in higher education. I suggest that colleges and universities should highlight scholarships, financial aid, and programs available and that minority women are eligible for, or they should reduce the cost of tuition.

ContributorsClark, Amelie (Author) / Iacona, Gwen (Thesis director) / Gerber, Leah (Committee member) / Bisgrove, Daniel (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Civil, Environmental and Sustainable Eng Program (Contributor)

Created2023-12

Botany on a Budget: Accessible Wildlife Gardening

Description

In the Spring of 2021, I had an internship with Butterfly Wonderland, where I worked in their conservatory and learned about the ecological relationship between butterflies and plants. As part of my internship, I encouraged guests to learn more about gardening for pollinators. That experience inspired me to complete a…

In the Spring of 2021, I had an internship with Butterfly Wonderland, where I worked in their conservatory and learned about the ecological relationship between butterflies and plants. As part of my internship, I encouraged guests to learn more about gardening for pollinators. That experience inspired me to complete a creative project in which I would design a butterfly garden of my own that would highlight wildlife benefits and be accessible to people like myself, who do not have their own gardens and don’t have hundreds of dollars to spend on gardening supplies. In collaboration with Dr. Gwen Iacona and Liz Makings (director and second committee member respectively), I planted accessible gardens. By “accessible”, I mean that the gardens were affordable (less than $100 total), included free/upcycled materials wherever possible, and are easily replicable. For my project, I made ‘prototypes’ of the gardens by using freely available seeds and soil sources, germinating those seeds in the ASU Greenhouses, and documenting my process so that it could be shared. Freely available seeds and other materials came from a variety of places including the ASU seed library, local Free Little Libraries, donations, as well as purchases from on campus fundraisers. The germination and growth of seeds in the ASU greenhouse took place over the course of several months in the fall and winter. That documentation has taken on several forms, including an informational pamphlet about wildlife gardening and flyers specific to locally available plant seeds. I find this to be very important because my end goal was to create something that other students or people in our community can use in a practical way. I wanted to create something that will bring gardening into the homes of people who didn’t think they were able to participate in it.

ContributorsBernat, Isabella (Author) / Iacona, Gwen (Thesis director) / Makings, Elizabeth (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)

Created2022-05

Testing the Benefit of Agroforestry as a Solution for Red Listed Bird Conservation in the Peruvian Amazon

Description

Globally, land use change is the primary driver of biodiversity loss (IPBES, 2019). Land use change due to agricultural expansion is driving bird species to the brink of extinction in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. Agriculture is one of the primary threats to bird species in the region, and agroforestry is…

Globally, land use change is the primary driver of biodiversity loss (IPBES, 2019). Land use change due to agricultural expansion is driving bird species to the brink of extinction in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. Agriculture is one of the primary threats to bird species in the region, and agroforestry is being pursued in some communities as a potential solution to reduce agriculture's impacts on species, as agroforestry provides improved habitat for wildlife while also enabling livelihoods for people. Understanding how anthropogenic land use choices affect imperiled species is an important prerequisite for conservation policy and practice in the region. In this thesis, I develop a spatial model for quantifying expected threat abatement from shifting agricultural land use choices towards agroforestry. I used this model explored how agricultural land use impacts imperiled bird species in the Peruvian Amazon. My approach builds on the species threat abatement and restoration (STAR) metric to make the expected consequences of reducing agricultural threats spatially explicit. I then analyzed results of applying the metric to alternative scenarios with and without agroforestry conversion. I found that agroforestry could result in up to 18.68% reduction in mean bird projected population decline. I found that converting all terrestrial agriculture in the Peruvian Amazon to agroforestry could produce a benefit of up to 83% to imperiled birds in the region in terms of improvement in Red List status. This use of the STAR metric to model alternative scenarios presents a novel usage for the STAR metric and a promising approach to understand how to address terrestrial biodiversity challenges efficiently and effectively.

ContributorsPoe, Katherine (Author) / Iacona, Gwen (Thesis advisor) / Gerber, Leah (Thesis advisor) / Mair, Louise (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)

Created2023