Experience and experiments in integrating ecology and environmental policy in an undergraduate curriculum

In 1986 the School of Natural Resources (SNR) embarked on a project to define and implement an undergraduate core curriculum that integrates natural and social science in the context of natural resource education. Currently this curriculum includes seven courses (21 credits) taken over five semesters beginning in the student\u27s first semester and ending in their last year. At the outset, the students take two separate introductory courses, one introducing them to concepts in natural science and the other introducing them to natural resources from a social and cultural perspective. This paper describes the next phase of their curricular experience, a set of three courses taken concurrently. The overall goals of the courses are to introduce and integrate theories and approaches to analysis in ecology and social science as applied to environmental issues. This paper describes our use of the concept of integration in the context of natural resource education and three models for incorporating it into this portion of the SNR Core Curriculum. Our working definition of integration involves three levels: (1) process-logistics integration, and (3) framework integration. The first is related to the process of establishing and delivering the courses including management of instructor, student, and teaching assistant roles across the disciplines. The second is related to bringing together ecological and social science knowledge to provide different views of a single natural resource case or issue. The third is related to recognizing and using conceptual frameworks shared across ecological and social science

The role of data in the EIS process: Evidence from the BLM wilderness review

Various propositions have been offered about the role of the environmental impact statement (EIS) in agency decision making. These include statements that agencies are (1) using the information collected in the EIS to make rational decisions; (2) justifying decisions made a priori; (3) using the EIS to gain support or consensus for projects; or (4) simply fulfilling a legal mandate, with the EIS having no substantive impact on decisions. Previous studies regarding the role of EIS data have focused on the quality of the data in the EIS and whether or not the data are related to decisions. The role of site-specific information in the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wilderness EIS process is analyzed and the results are used to reflect on the impact of the EIS in agency decision making. These results are compared with an earlier analysis of the Forest Service's Second Roadless Area Review and Evaluation (RARE II).The results of the statistical analyses of three sets of BLM wilderness EISs indicate that although some of the site-specific information about resource potential is statistically related to agency wilderness recommendations, the vast majority of the information is not. In addition, in some cases, the information was related to wilderness recommendations in a counterintuitive direction. Overall, of the 190 measures of resource potential found in these documents, only 17 (9%) were statistically related to BLM recommendations in an intuitive direction. The fact that most of the information in these EISs is not statistically related to decisions lends support to the proposition that the agency was primarily fulfilling the legally mandated procedure of the National Environmental Policy Act in producing these EISs, rather than achieving the spirit of the law. Results from the analysis of the Forest Service's RARE II wilderness review are similar. Although these analyses may provide support for proposals to improve the EIS through shortening of the documents, more research is needed before it can be assumed that shorter EISs will ensure a link between the remaining information and agency decisions.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/30930/1/0000600.pd

Teaching to learn and learning to teach : a case study of multilevel, interdisciplinary education in natural resources

The University of Vermont’s School of Natural Resources (SNR) has linked undergraduate and graduate education through a recent update of a sophomore-level class in SNR’s core curriculum: “Environmental Problem Analysis” (NR105). As a result of a series of collaborative workshops, NR105 now includes explicit links to two other courses: “Ecology, Ecosystems and Environment” (NR103) and “Social Processes and the Environment” (NR104), and students must take these three courses concurrently. NR105, a multidisciplinary, integrative course, is taught collaboratively by two SNR Ph.D. students (an ecologist and a social scientist), and fulfills their graduate teaching requirement. Through direct course development and oversight, regular meetings with faculty members who teach the concurrent courses, and participation as members of the core faculty development group, this model places Ph.D. students into a “faculty apprentice” role. The three- course sequence thus combines integrative, cross-disciplinary education with a multilevel approach to education. At both undergraduate and graduate levels, it also includes an explicit focus on group work and interdisciplinary team collaborations

Book Review of \u3ci\u3eThe Nation’s Largest Landlord: The Bureau of Land Management in the American West\u3c/i\u3e by James R. Skillen.

James Skillen provides a comprehensive assessment of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), its origins, evolution, and ongoing efforts to manage the public lands for an increasing array of resources. His account documents the legal and political matrix in which the agency operates, recording the roles of key actors and processes that have influenced public lands administration, including members of Congress and presidential administrations, interest group politics, and efforts to bring expertise to the task of managing the public lands. Skillen organizes the results of his investigation into a chronology characterizing the BLM’s mandates and operations through two themes: “questions about the purposes and goals of public lands administration and questions about the decision-making processes that govern the public lands.” In tracking the conflicting responses to these questions throughout the history of public lands administration, Skillen concludes that ambiguity in this context is a given. Even so, he offers patterns and lessons

Interpreting wilderness policy in the Bureau of Land Management.

In 1976, Congress directed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to review 178 million acres of public lands to identify, by 1991, areas warranting wilderness designation. In response, BLM established a wilderness program and conducted a wilderness review of the public lands in eleven western states. This action generated controversy inside and outside the agency. Much of the controversy arises from the opposition between the development philosophy associated with management of the public lands and the preservation philosophy associated with wilderness. This study examined process and content aspects of the BLM wilderness program. Data were gathered from documents and through participant observation and in-depth interviews. They were analyzed by ethnomethodology, content analysis, and semiotic analysis to develop interpretations of how wilderness policy is implemented within the context of agency culture. As policy process, this is a case of agency members implementing ambiguous policy. Ambiguity exists when multiple or no clear single meanings are present; it is accompanied by interpretive action taken by policy participants. Thus, BLM personnel interpret wilderness policy repeatedly as the program moves through various phases. Relative to content, the study considered interpretations of wilderness in light of environmental ethics and political geography. It examined how agency personnel interpret connections between nature and humans and, further, how these interpretations are manifested in space through the creation and enforcement of boundaries. The agency structure as a set of resource programs that facilitate use provides one understanding through which wilderness is interpreted. This dominant understanding is in tension with another understanding of agency activities as regulating use to mediate among uses. The idea of regulating use to mediate among uses is shown to be sometimes challenged by interpretations of wilderness policy used to minimize impacts of human use on environmental subjects. The boundaries of wilderness areas provide a mechanism through which interpretive action occurs. They are used to enforce meanings of territories relative to (1) other resource programs; (2) the wilderness program; and (3) elements of nature. As debate occurs over what constitutes appropriate action in wilderness areas, new understandings of wilderness policy arise.Ph.D.Urban, Technological, and Environmental Planning: Environmental PlanningUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/104466/1/9527632.pdfDescription of 9527632.pdf : Restricted to UM users only

Gastric bypass in rats does not decrease appetitive behavior towards sweet or fatty fluids despite blunting preferential intake of sugar and fat

After Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) surgery, patients report consuming fewer fatty and dessert-like foods, and rats display blunted sugar and fat preferences. Here we used a progressive ratio (PR) task in our rat model to explicitly test whether RYGB decreases the willingness of rats to work for very small amounts of preferred sugar- and/or fat-containing fluids. In each of two studies, two groups of rats - one maintained on a high-fat diet (HFD) and standard chow (CHOW) and one given CHOW alone - were trained while water-deprived to work for water or either Ensure or 1.0M sucrose on increasingly difficult operant schedules. When tested before surgery while nondeprived, HFD rats had lower PR breakpoints (number of operant responses in the last reinforced ratio) for sucrose, but not for Ensure, than CHOW rats. After surgery, at no time did rats given RYGB show lower breakpoints than SHAM rats for Ensure, sucrose, or when 5% Intralipid served postoperatively as the reinforcer. Nevertheless, RYGB rats showed blunted preferences for these caloric fluids versus water in 2-bottle preference tests. Importantly, although the Intralipid and sucrose preferences of RYGB rats decreased further over time, subsequent breakpoints for them were not significantly impacted. Collectively, these data suggest that the observed lower preferences for normally palatable fluids after RYGB in rats may reflect a learned adjustment to altered postingestive feedback rather than a dampening of the reinforcing taste characteristics of such stimuli as measured by the PR task in which postingestive stimulation is negligible