▼ The Oberlin Project is an unprecedented opportunity for the city of Oberlin, Oberlin College, and other participating institutions to work together to achieve sustainable development and carbon neutrality. How might these institutions engage Oberlin citizens in some of the planning decisions that will shape Oberlin's future? Collaborating with citizens is important because in theory, encouraging participatory, collaborative planning contributes to just, equitable, and diverse cities. Study of sustainability initiatives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, for instance, reveal that it is possible for cities to make great leaps at sustainable urbanism while simultaneously building up a strong base of social capital aimed at meeting sustainability goals. This social capital includes both public and private sector organizations, as well as a large percentage of active citizenry. Based on a survey response involving interviews with twenty Oberlin citizens in the government, business, and community development sectors, the two greatest strains on citizen engagement in the Oberlin Project as of spring 2011 may be 1) existing social tensions between the town and College, and 2) a lack of widespread knowledge about the objectives of the Oberlin Project. Drawing from the theory and demonstration of collaborative planning, two means to overcome these difficulties are 1) establishing a culture and environment of listening and dialogue, and 2) creating outlets that allow citizens ownership in different projects. These are two policy goals that may prove useful to the Oberlin Project as it continues to evolve. Advisors/Committee Members: Shammin, Rumi.

▼ Between 1830 and 1930, the northern Plains underwent sweeping changes. Cataclysmic conflict between Indians and whites, imposition of the American settlement system, and integration into the national economy all altered the region and how people lived there. Revisions in agriculture were part of these changes but also played their own role. As the dominant form of land use, and the direct or indirect occupation of most residents, agriculture has an important part in shaping landscapes and lifeways in the, northern plains. Of course, changes in agriculture between 1830 and 1930 dramatically affected the people and the land; to suggest the nature and degree of the changes; the kind of agriculture practiced in 1830 and that practiced in 1930 can be strikingly contrasted. Advisors/Committee Members: Orr, David.

▼ I performed quantitative analyses and qualitative interpretation of energy policy data, energy production and consumption data, and political data. I collected data on state Renewable Portfolio Standards from the Database for State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE), energy production and consumption data for the 50 states and Washington D.C. from the Energy Information Agency (EIA), and 1992 presidential election data from the internet. I identify relationships that exist between these different types of variables, and where Ohio fits in the national context of existing energy patterns and policies. There are several conclusions found in the literature that are independently tested with the data I have collected. I hypothesize that enactment of Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) policies and geographic location in the United States are not robust indicators of the proportion of energy generation in states that comes from renewable sources, and that the strength of RPS policies is not based upon location (Carley 2009). Furthermore, I predict that states that are politically left leaning have larger proportions of their energy generation coming from renewable sources and have stronger RPS policies (Carley 2009). Finally, I postulate that Ohio's energy policy will be weaker relative to some policies based upon descriptive statistics of the RPS policies. Tests utilized include correlations, T-tests, and multiple linear regressions for geographic variables. I also performed a spatial analysis of renewable energy potential and unemployment rates in the state of Ohio. I found National Renewable Energy Laboratory maps of average wind speed, solar radiation, biomass yield, and a Bureau of Labor Statistics map of unemployment rates at the county level. I calculated correlation coefficients between unemployment rate and renewable resource abundance according to a 24-section grid I overlaid on the state. No positive statistically significant results occurred, with the highest unemployment in the Southeast and greatest wind potential in the Northwest. There was insufficient variation of solar radiation across the state to perform a meaningful correlation. Advisors/Committee Members: Suter, Jordan.

▼ Children's knowledge of their eco-social environment is rarely privileged in environmental literature. Their voices help to broaden conceptions of environmental justice, to the benefit of both the environmental justice movement and the emerging discipline of environmental studies. In this community-based research project conducted in partnership with Save Our Children, an afterschool/summer enrichment center, in South Elyria, Ohio, third and fourth grade children utilized Theater of the Oppressed techniques to create an environmental justice narrative in the form of an original play. The goal of Theater of the Oppressed is for participants to dramatically analyze real-life oppressions/obstacles/challenges they face and act out potential solutions to overcome them. I collaborated with the children and staff members at Save Our Children to hold weekly Theater of the Oppressed workshops for an eight-week period. In these workshops, the children explored environmental injustices as it pertained to their own lived experiences and proposed imaginative solutions for dismantling them through an original play. Our community-based research serves as a step towards bringing justice to the city of Elyria by presenting the voices of its residents as an alternative environmental justice narrative that has yet to be heard in the larger environmental justice discussion. Advisors/Committee Members: Fiskio, Janet.

▼ The City of Oberlin joined the International Council for Leadership in Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) in 2007, committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through ICLEI's five-milestone process. As the first official step in this process, I conducted greenhouse gas inventories for the years 2001 and 2007 for community-wide and municipal operations emissions. I found that the community emitted 174,400 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2007, more than half of which was associated with the consumption of coal-intensive electricity. This amounts to 20.9 tons CO2e per resident annually. Of the community's overall emissions, the commercial sector, including all Oberlin College properties, was responsible for approximately 65%, with the College contributing about 20%. The residential and transportation sectors were each responsible for about 15%. Quantifying emissions in this manner is crucial to evaluating the effect of various emissions reductions measures and subsequent climate action strategy. Oberlin's next step is to institutionalize climate action within the municipal and community structure in order to sustain a formal effort to reduce emissions. Based on interviews I conducted with officials from eight ICLEI cities, there appear to be a variety of options for Oberlin to consider. Other cities have assigned the responsibility of completing the ICLEI milestones to one or more of four main entities: a City Sustainability Coordinator or small group of City employees, an existing City committee (e.g. a Recycling Committee), a newly established "Energy Task Force" of local businesspeople, City employees, experts, and other community members, and/or a nonprofit organization closely partnered with the municipal government. Oberlin should consider these and other strategies for establishing a framework for continued progress through the ICLEI process. If successful at reducing emissions over the next several years, the community of Oberlin could emerge as a bona fide leader in addressing the generation-defining challenge of climate change. Advisors/Committee Members: Petersen, John.

▼ Much research has been done surrounding conservation behaviors in the household and electricity consumption. Most research has tended to focus on attitudes about the environment and how those attitudes influence pro-environmental behavior, but the research has not usually found a strong link between the two. The Connectedness to Nature Scale was used in this study to measure emotional responses to nature, and to determine whether people who felt more connected to nature used less electricity in the household. The residents of the Union Street Housing complex at Oberlin College were chosen as the group monitored for this project, as the houses had the same baseline consumption data and the residents had no fiscal incentives to conserve electricity. I compared the emotional response to nature with attitudes about the environment and electricity consumption per house. I concluded that emotional response to nature had a correlational relationship with electricity consumption, and that attitudes about electricity consumption were very predictive of behavior, probably because the data measured attitudes about very specific behaviors. This was the first time the CNS was correlated with actual behavior. Recommendations were made for further studies that might establish a causal link between connectedness to nature and electricity consumption. Advisors/Committee Members: Petersen, John.

▼ Many young people today do not learn to cook, or eat nutritious, regular meals together with their families, or go shopping for produce. Because of this, they do not have the opportunity to develop any real appreciation for food. To make matters worse, many public schools fail to teach students anything at all about the complex environmental and cultural history of food – how it is produced, preserved, prepared, and distributed. At the same time, schools serve lunches that often lack nutritional value. In this thesis, I argue the importance of giving students the opportunity to connect to food through school gardens and food education programs in schools. First, I trace the history and philosophical origins of school gardens, focusing particularly on the growth of school gardens and relevant literature at the turn of the 20th century and during the two world wars. I then examine the decline and subsequent rise of school gardens during the latter half of the 20th century and analyze two examples of current school gardening and food education programs in the United States: the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, California, and the Burlington School Food Project in Burlington, Vermont. Finally, I consider the feasibility of incorporating school gardens and food education into classrooms in Oberlin’s schools, and suggest that educating students to be “food literate” is one critical step towards addressing complex problems that we face today, including climate change and obesity. Advisors/Committee Members: Newlin, Thomas.

▼ Headwaters are the most ubiquitous stream type worldwide, provide invaluable ecosystem services, and regulate downstream chemistry. These systems have high sensitivity to disturbance, however, and thus are susceptible to change at low thresholds of environmental, climatic or human impact. In this study, we use fine scale sampling to describe spatial and temporal stream chemistry variations in a first order 0.41 km2 headwater catchment at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, NH, USA to pinpoint the landscape position and extent of dominant processes and controls on surface water. We discovered a range of stream water chemistry that is as variable as stream chemistry ranges seen at the scale of the entire Hubbard Brook Valley (35 km2). We examined surface and subsurface structure in an attempt to characterize controls on stream chemistry (e.g. upslope accumulated area, soil horizon development, type of parent material). Four potential sources and mechanisms controlling surface water characteristics were identified: discrete soil horizons, drainage from distinct soil type, riparian zone and near stream exchanges, and isolated seeps as distinct groundwater inputs. As water table depth and configuration strongly control soil development and chemistry of groundwater sources to the stream, changes in spatial patterns in stream chemistry may serve as an indicator of the impacts of a changing climate on key hydropedologic processes. Advisors/Committee Members: Bailey, Scott.