2020 Projects
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10217/222379
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Item Open Access Graduate Student Showcase, 2020: celebrating research and creativity: abstracts(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) CSU Graduate School, publisherAbstracts of the 2020 Graduate Student Showcase, held virtually on November 16-18, 2020 from Colorado State University.Item Open Access Cattle as partners in conservation: collaborative management of public lands(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Monlezun, Anna Clare, author; Lynn, Stacy, authorCould conceptualizing cattle as partners in conservation be a win-win for the livestock and rangeland conservation sectors, resolving the [often] paradoxical objectives of food production and natural resource management? To learn more about the collaborative grazing management that occurs across much of Colorado's rangelands, we are conducting an investigation of partnerships between private ranchers and government-owned land managers along the Front Range. Our research process addresses the sustainability of these rangelands as complex social-ecological systems where livestock production and natural resource conservation are woven together in a tapestry of management, culture, and science. Recent literature indicates that scientific research engaging the ecological, economic and social elements of grazing management is lacking. Therefore, our study reflects a holistic model evaluating these three components of sustainability (ecological, economic, and social) to answer our overarching question: Can strategic grazing partnerships on multi-use government-owned landscapes achieve the dual goals of assisting land management agencies with natural resource conservation, and ranchers with maintaining sustainable beef production? We are exploring multiple themes in alignment with the three components of sustainability: soil health, plant biodiversity, forage nutritive quality, ecosystem services, and socio-cultural values. System dynamics modeling will be used to examine relationships and interactions among these themes within and across our study sites. System dynamics modeling will allow us to apply qualitative and quantitative context-specific variables to generate and visualize management alternatives that will ultimately aid in adaptive and integrated decision-making. Our intention is to produce results that are meaningful to stakeholders, solution-focused, and application-oriented.Item Open Access Effect of building wind-retrofit strategies on socio-economic community-level resilience metrics(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2020) Wang, Wanting (Lisa), author; van de Lindt, John, authorTornadoes occur at a high frequency in the United States compared with other natural hazards but have a substantially small footprint. A single high-intensity tornado can result in high casualty rates and catastrophic economic and social consequences, particularly for small to medium communities. Comprehensive community resilience assessment and improvement requires the analyst to develop a model of interacting physical, social, and economic systems, and to measure outcomes that result from specific decisions made. These outcomes often are in the form of metrics such as the number of people injured or the number of households or businesses without water, but it has been recognized that most community resilience metrics have socio-economic characteristics. In this study, for the first time, a fully quantitative interacting model is used to examine the effect of a tornado damaging physical infrastructure (buildings and electrical power network) and the effects on the population and the local economy for a real community. Then, three residential building retrofit strategies are considered as alternatives to improve community resilience and metrics from the physical, economic, and social sectors computed. An illustrative example is presented for the 2011 Joplin tornado in a new open-source Interdependent Networked Community Resilience Modeling Environment (IN-CORE), with a computable general equilibrium (CGE) economics model that computes household income, employment, and domestic supply before and after the tornado. Detailed demographic data was allocated to each structure to calculate resilience metrics related to population dislocation impacts from the tornado.