William Atkinson
The role of Soil Minerals in Terrestrial Carbon Storage: A Unification of Field and Laboratory Studies
Carbon storage in soils plays an important role in climate change feedbacks, but the chemical controls on these processes are poorly understood. By comparing original lab studies with soil samples across North America, I find that different soil minerals store different forms of carbon based on their surface charge. This knowledge can improve climate models that do not account for these mineral preferences.
Miles Carey
Trash Mermaids: A New Play
This interdisciplinary playwriting thesis bridging English, theater, gender and sexuality studies, and environmental studies reimagines and recycles the familiar tale of “The Little Mermaid” as a piece of queer eco-theater. In the play, a contemporary, real-world story of three young LGBTQ people navigating family, community, and identity is mirrored by a dreamlike otherworld in which genderqueer merpeople construct their tails from the glittering and toxic trash that floats down from the human world above. The play seeks to bring ecology and queer experience into conversation with one another in a visceral, embodied way that speaks to the urgency of toxic masculinity, transphobia, and environmental crisis.
Walker Darling
Ground-Truthing Coral as a Proxy: An Examonation of the δ15N of four Coral Species Across the Bermuda Pededtal
This thesis was an examination of the heavy to light nitrogen isotopes within coral species, nitrogen pools, and comparator species in order to ground-truth coral as a nitrogen proxy. This project found no evidence for a hypothesis by another author that would complicate the usage of coral as a proxy. This suggests that coral can be used as a proxy for past nitrogen conditions.
Mark Goldstein
Climate Change in American National Parks: Impacts, Management, Communication and Public Perception
As climate change threatens human and natural systems worldwide, the United States government–once a leader of international collaboration on the topic under Presidents of both parties–has withdrawn from its obligation to respond, and the issue has become politically divisive despite near scientific consensus on its existence and attribution to human activity. Meanwhile, American National Parks, often called America’s “best idea,” are widely cherished spaces protected from extensive human development, and the National Park Service (NPS) is well-equipped and highly trained to protect and study them. I hypothesized that these qualities make the parks ideal laboratories in which to study physical impacts of climate change in the US and classrooms through which to effectively educate the public on this critical issue. With funding from the Woodrow Wilson School and the Princeton Environmental Institute, I visited 13 National Parks during the summer of 2017, seeking to examine the issue across four categories: impacts, management, communication, and public perception. At four parks–Joshua Tree (CA), Zion (UT), Glacier (MT), and Acadia (ME) I conducted formal, in-depth interviews with 12 NPS employees about their experiences with climate change research, management, and communication. At Zion, Glacier, and Acadia, I interviewed 61 visitors, surveying their beliefs toward climate change, perception of its impacts on the parks, and knowledge of NPS policy on the topic. From these interviews and a comprehensive analysis of literature on the issue and NPS policy, I formulated policy recommendations for the NPS to optimize its response to climate change.
Michelle Greenfield
Effect of Anthropogenic Injuries on the Social Associations of Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) in Sarasota Bay, Florida
Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) rely upon interactions with others for information transfer, protection from predators, and successful feeding. When injuries occur and potentially remove an animal from its association network, its fitness can decrease. Using long-term data sets available for the dolphin community in Sarasota Bay, Florida, I investigated how injuries from boat strikes and entanglements affect the social associations of dolphins by examining the differences before and after injury in group size as well as the number of strong associates (COA≥0.14). I found that while the size of the group a dolphin associates with does not change due to injury, injured dolphins have fewer strong associates within their individualized networks and form less tightly knit groups. This decrease in connectivity was not related to the age, sex, type of injury, presence of human intervention, or duration of human intervention. These findings provide some of the first information on how anthropogenic injuries can disrupt the social relationships of bottlenose dolphins and may be useful in conservation efforts.
Sonia Howlett
Potential for Competition Between Introduced Cattle and Endemic Giant Tortoises on Santa Cruz, Galápagos
Sonia investigated whether cattle, an introduced agricultural species of grazer, and giant tortoises, a critically endangered endemic species of browser, are likely to compete for food on Santa Cruz, an island in the Galápagos where these two species are frequently seen grazing the same agricultural land during the summer months. She found that the potential for competition between these two herbivores is low, as cattle tend to consume mostly introduced grasses, particularly elephant grass, while tortoises prefer to eat a wide range of other plants.
Ariana Mirzada
The Afghan Refugee Women of Diavata Camp: Environmental Considerations
This ethnography of Afghan refugee women involves in-depth interviews and participant-observation with over 15 women of Diavata Camp in Greece. I introduce the reader to NAOMI, a non-governmental organization that employs Afghan women in sewing work, and I point to disconnects between the NGO’s mission statement and its practiced reality. In addition to a presentation of the circumstances in which these Afghan women live as well as an assessment of the politics of humanitarian aid in contemporary Europe, this ethnography is a personal account of the challenges confronting those who wish to both improve the provision of humanitarian assistance in such circumstances but who are critical of contemporary practices of humanitarianism. Given my interactions and observations through my fieldwork, I argue that humanitarian organizations need to re-historicize the refugee and develop cultural understandings before engaging in these ongoing emergent situations.
Stuart Pomeroy
Winds of Change: Opportunities for Offshore Wind-Energy Integration and Development in the Northeast United States
This thesis explored the challenges and opportunities facing the offshore wind energy industry and environment in the Northeast United States. Despite the attractive oceanic and atmospheric characteristics and resources of the region, paired with a diversifying national energy portfolio and industry, there has been limited offshore wind energy development in the Northeast. Through comparative analyses with Europe and two domestic offshore wind projects, this thesis produced insightful comparative conclusions and policy recommendations for the future development of the domestic US offshore wind industry.
Maegan Richards
Personality and Environmental Attitudes: How Certain Personality Traits Affect Environmental Attitudes
My thesis looked at the relationship between environmental attitudes and certain personality traits. I tried to determine if increasing the salience of Agreeableness in someone’s mind would increase their level of environmental concern, since higher Agreeableness has been linked to higher environmental concern. Unfortunately, the method I used did not effectively increase Agreeableness, so it could not be determined if it would increase environmental concern.
Patrick Rooney
Fishing the Short Run
Fishing the Short Run is a documentary that investigates the recent decline of the king salmon run in western Alaska, what McDonalds has to do with it, and how this decline has been threatening the livelihoods of Native Alaskans. Ultimately, the film asks how we assign blame, responsibility, and punishment in the case of human caused natural disasters.
Lindy Zeng
Impact of Remote Sensing Domain Knowledge on Satellite Imagery Classification of the Amazon Rainforest
Satellite imagery with finer spatial resolution provides an opportunity to detect small-scale changes in forest cover. With recent improvements of techniques in the field of computer vision, convolutional neural networks can be trained with satellite imagery through a combination of deep learning and remote sensing principles. The aim of this thesis is to identify land cover types, land use types, and atmospheric conditions present in satellite imagery of the Amazon rainforest using deep learning models. Implementing, training, and testing models provide methods for detecting and identifying mechanisms of deforestation and shape understanding needed to protect the world’s forests. Our trained models demonstrate the ability to identify features in satellite imagery of the Amazon rainforest to a high degree of accuracy. Additionally, we establish their capability to detect small-scale forest cover changes over time.