Large and Small: Conserving Single Large and Several Small

Huxley College of the Environment’s field course on rainforest conservation traces some of its roots to a seminal 1967 publication. MacArthur and Wilson’s The Theory of Island Biogeography presented two fundamental principles. Larger islands support more species than smaller ones and remote islands support fewer species than less remote ones. Moreover, they also established how habitat can be insulated by not only distance between islands, but anything that divides a landscape such as mountains and climate. But the conservation implications of biogeography became dichotomized during the seventies and eighties into a debate between preserving a Single Large section of habitat, or Several Small and captured in the acronym SLOSS? Costa Rica’s preserved natural areas presented Western Washington University students with an excellent case study of this history of conservation biogeography and its future where protected area management embraces Single Large AND Several Small (SLASS). Moreover, Costa Rica offered a stimulating laboratory to explore the promise and pitfalls of SLASS for students from around the world and its implications for ecosystem conservation challenges everywhere (Boza, Jukofsky, and Willie, 1995)

Five Seasons in Ecotopia: Rainforest Immersion and Conservation Action in Costa Rica

This book, Five Seasons in Ecotopia: Rainforest Immersion and Conservation Action in Costa Rica, is an effort to share our perspectives from five years of experience studying and teaching in Costa Rica through the intersections of geography, ecology, and political science. These reflect the dominant pedigrees of more than one-hundred students who annually spent five weeks in Huxley College of the Environment’s RICA program in Costa Rica. The RICA program was designed to foster global ecological citizenship through practices of democratic ecology that activate learner awareness and efficacy among undergraduate participants, Costa Rican students from local schools, and community members. In the 2011 field season, faculty and twenty-one students conducted observational studies of tree diversity, soil composition, avian bioacoustics, collaborative conservation management, and environmental education. Comparative observations were made at biological stations in Carara and Corcovado National Park in collaboration with Park staff. We hypothesized that significant contrasts will occur between the secondary forests of Carara and primary forests of Corcovado and their neighboring communities. Our results inform Costa Rican conservation and management strategies as well as contribute to the growing field of participatory ecological monitoring. Biodiversity conservation begins inside of Costa Rica’s protected areas but must be complemented by research, education and outreach in the communities outside of National Parks.https://cedar.wwu.edu/cedarbooks/1001/thumbnail.jp

Education: Participatory Ecological Monitoring and Environmental Education in 2011

In the summer of 2011, faculty from Western Washington University’s (WWU) Huxley College of the Environment implemented a five week field course in Costa Rica exploring Participatory Ecological Monitoring and the pedagogies of Environmental Education. Faculty and students completed observational studies of tree diversity, soil composition, avian bioacoustics, collaborative conservation management, and environmental education. Comparative observations were conducted at biological stations in Carara and Corcovado National Park in collaboration with Park staff. We hypothesized that significant contrasts will occur between Carara’s secondary and Corcovado’s primary forests and their neighboring communities. Our results inform Costa Rican conservation and management strategies as well as contribute to the growing field of participatory ecological monitoring. Biodiversity conservation begins inside of Costa Rica’s and other nation’s protected areas but will be complemented by research, education and outreach in the communities outside National Parks

Gentrified Sustainability: Inequitable Development and Seattle’s Skewed Riskscape

This paper examines the tensions of sustainable development in Seattle, Washington, a commonly recognised urban environmental leader. Drawing on the perspective of sustainability as a conflicted process, this research expected a negative relationship between gentrification and environmental justice when affluent residents outcompete less affluent ones for neighbourhoods with fewer environmental hazards. The methods combine geographic cluster analysis and longitudinal air toxic emission comparisons to analyse socioeconomic changes in Seattle Census block-groups between 1990, 2000, and 2009 coupled with measures of relative potential risk and pollution volume. The property and development conflicts embedded within sustainability lead to pollution exposure risk and socioeconomic vulnerability converging in the same areas and reveal one of the ‘Emerald City’s’ significant environmental challenges. Inequitable development and environmental injustice remain overlooked dimensions of sustainability that interdisciplinary research should address

Fostering Ecological Citizenship: The Case of Environmental Service-Learning in Costa Rica

The intent of this study was to explore how experiential education fosters ecological or environmental citizenship. In this context, we investigated the impact of international environmental service-learning in a college course. Specifically our research question was does environmental service-learning have an effect on ecological citizenship? Using a multimethod approach of both qualitative and quantitative instruments our study drew on 13 participant interviews, 19 student journals and 10 survey responses. Employing variables from the Value-Belief-Norm Theory our findings suggest that environmental service-learning experiences impact both awareness of environmental consequences and personal normative beliefs. We conclude that ecological citizenship was indirectly impacted through these social psychological predictors. Results of this study provide environmental educators with some important insights while implications of this study indicate the need for further research into experiential education and especially environmental service-learning as a means to encourage this type of citizenry

Fostering Ecological Citizenship: The Case of Environmental Service-Learning in Costa Rica

The intent of this study was to explore how experiential education fosters ecological or environmental citizenship. In this context, we investigated the impact of international environmental service-learning in a college course. Specifically our research question was does environmental service-learning have an effect on ecological citizenship? Using a multimethod approach of both qualitative and quantitative instruments our study drew on 13 participant interviews, 19 student journals and 10 survey responses. Employing variables from the Value-Belief-Norm Theory our findings suggest that environmental service-learning experiences impact both awareness of environmental consequences and personal normative beliefs. We conclude that ecological citizenship was indirectly impacted through these social psychological predicators. Results of this study provide environmental educators with some important insights while implications of this study indicate the need for further research into experiential education and especially environmental service-learning as a means to encourage this type of citizenry

Ecotopia\u27s Prism

Since 2003, I’ve taken more than 150 students of environmental studies to explore the landscapes, culture and economy of Costa Rica. Costa Rica’s tourism bureau proudly proclaims “no artificial ingredients” to draw visitors from around the world. Situated at the confluence of two oceans and bridging two continents in the tropical latitudes, this small nation hosts some of the greatest concentration of biodiversity anywhere. Costa Rica is about the size of West Virginia, or 0.03% of the world’s surface, yet it holds an estimated 5 percent of the world’s biodiversity. Species from North and South America mixed on this continental land bridge for over millennia leading to new combinations of flora and fauna

Risky Business: Sustainability and Industrial Land Use across Seattle’s Gentrifying Riskscape

This paper examines the spatial and temporal trajectories of Seattle’s industrial land use restructuring and the shifting riskscape in Seattle, WA, a commonly recognized urban model of sustainability. Drawing on the perspective of sustainability as a conflicted process, this research explored the intersections of urban industrial and nonindustrial land use planning, gentrification, and environmental injustice. In the first part of our research, we combine geographic cluster analysis and longitudinal air toxic emission comparisons to quantitatively investigate socioeconomic changes in Seattle Census block-groups between 1990, 2000, and 2009 coupled with measures of pollution volume and its relative potential risk. Second, we qualitatively examine Seattle’s historical land use policies and planning and the growing tension between industrial and nonindustrial land use. The gentrification, green cities, and growth management conflicts embedded within sustainability/livability lead to pollution exposure risk and socioeconomic vulnerability converging in the same areas and reveal one of Seattle’s significant environmental challenges. Our mixed-method approach can guide future urban sustainability studies to more effectively examine the connections between land use planning, industrial displacement, and environmental injustice. Our results also help sustainable development practitioners recognize that a more just sustainability in Seattle and beyond will require more planning and policy attention to mitigate obscured industrial land use conflicts

Coming Clean and Green: A Geospatial Mapping Tool for Visualizing Industrial Environmental Performance

The mapping of environmental data is rapidly expanding as advocates and scholars offer various platforms to display and analyze geographic environmental information.This working paper describes an online web map that displays national data from the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), Environmental Systems Research Institute’s (ESRI) ArcGIS Server platform, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI), and methodologies from Kraft, Stephan, and Abel (2011) to spatially display the environmental performance of more than 17,000 manufacturing facilities

Environmental Inequality Dataset

The Disaggreated RSEI model data (also known as RSEI-GM, or Geographic Microdata) version 2.3.4 was downloaded from the Amazon Web Service created by EPA. The RSEI-GM provides detailed air model results from EPA’s Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) model. The results include chemical concentration, toxicity-weighted concentration and score, calculated for each 810 meter square grid cell in a 49-km circle around the emitting facility, for every year from 1988 through 2014. The data can be used to examine trends in air pollution from industrial facilities over time and across geographies. In order to allow for evaluation of toxic-weighted concentration over time, we used only the core chemicals and industries that have been consistently required to report since 1988. Thus we filtered the RSEI-GM disaggregated dataset to exclude additional chemicals and industries added after 1988. Crosswalks to translate data from the RSEI grid cell system to U.S. census block geographies, provided by EPA, were used to combine RSEI results with census data and aggregate the results to the census tract level. We used the Longitudinal Tract Database created by Brown University, which adjusts data from previous years to 2010 census tract boundaries, to combine census demographic information for years 1989 through 2004. We used the 2006-2010 American Community Survey (ACS) for years 2005 through 2009 and the 2010-2014 ACS for years 2010 through 2014. This data were then used to calculate measures of environmental inequality. The ZIP file with the dataset is available below under additional files