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Conservation practitioners’ and researchers’ needs for bridging the knowledge–action gap
No full textIn the field of biodiversity conservation, there is a growing need for research to translate to real-world impacts. Currently there exists a gap between research outcomes and on the ground action, commonly referred to as the knowledge-action gap. Previous research has focused on identifying the causes of the gap, but less research has focused on how to bridge it. We conducted an online survey with conservation researchers and practitioners to identify barriers in the science-to application pipeline and to understand how potential solutions would need to account for their information needs and workflows. Through a qualitative analysis of the open-ended survey responses, we found that information about tools and approaches to address conservation challenges is needed, but decision makers also need information to help them account for context specific barriers and opportunities. Solution-specific information alone, however, is often insufficient for practitioners, who also require the resource capacity and capable personnel to work with that information. Word of mouth and scholarly databases are the most common ways of learning about new tools and techniques, but lack of time, funding and personnel are barriers to implementing them. In addition, respondents identified a need for increased engagement with the conservation social sciences. We argue that a user-centered design approach should underpin any proposed solution to the gap and suggest that an online tool could be one effective solution
A Manager's Dilemma: Defending Salt Marshes Against Rising Seas
No full textGrades: 11-12/ Advanced High School (AP/IB). Subjects: AP/IB Earth Science, Environmental Science, Oceanography With a partner, students will investigate certain features of salt marshes and the effectiveness of salt marsh restorations with sea-level rise, using an online model that simulates a salt marsh’s development over time. Students will interpret results, defend their stance on the best management strategy for their salt marsh, and develop a conservation plan based on their results interpretation. *This lesson plan is only compatible with Google schools, in which students have Gmail and Google Drive accountsVirginia Institute of Marine Scienc
Editorial: Call For Proposals For Special 2024 Election Results Issue
No full textLetter from the Editor calling for submissions for an upcoming special issue on sorority and fraternity life in the midst of the 2024 election results
A Heuristic Phenomenological Inquiry Of Counseling Graduate Students With Conservative Christian Values
No full textThe purpose of this heuristic phenomenological inquiry was to better understand how counseling students with conservative Christian values interpret their own spiritual/religious identity and how this impacts the way that they experience secular counseling training programs. Utilizing a social constructivist framework, the researcher recruited 10 participants for the study. Data was collected using a demographic questionnaire, a modified version of the Multidimensional Religious Ideology Scale (MRIS), and semi-structured interviews. To analyze the data, the researcher employed the procedure created by Moustakas (1990) for heuristic inquiry, which resulted in the identification of 10 themes. Findings, implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research are also discussed.EducationDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.
Mother Knows Best? Maternal Interoception Aids Interpretation Of Children's Heart Rate
No full textInteroception, at the conscious level, involves the perception of shifts in the body’s internal signals in response to fluctuations in the internal and external environments. Being interoceptive, termed interoceptive ability, allows one to interpret their physiology and subsequently make changes to regulate bodily responses. Most research, however, examines how interoceptive ability aids the interpretation of one's own needs rather than the needs of others. The present study uniquely examines how the ability to interpret one’s own physiology relates to the ability to interpret physiology in another individual. In this case, we examine how a mother’s ability to perceive changes in her physiology relates to, predicts, and potentially aids perception of her preschool child’s heart rate. Current measures of interoception are flawed, and there is a need to develop improved interoception methodologies. The present study introduces a novel method, which involves use of a wearable device that provides real-time heart rate data from the child, thereby allowing insight into the accuracy of their mother’s perceptions. Here, we coin the term mother’s objective maternal interoceptive accuracy (MOMIA) to describe the mother’s objective ability to accurately interpret her child’s HR. While the device records the child’s HR, the mother holds a smartphone with an application developed for Bluetooth communication with the device. The child engages in several tasks while their mother reports her perceptions of her child's HR, as well as her confidence. Results found that a mother’s certainty in her child’s mental states significantly relates to her ability to accurately interpret her child’s HR; however, a mother’s confidence in her perceptions of her child’s HR is unrelated to the accuracy of her perceptions. Further, results indicated that a mother’s certainty in her child’s mental states is a significant predictor of her ability to accurately interpret her child’s HR, as well as her child’s emotion-behavioral development. Follow-up analyses additionally found that a mother’s tendency to notice her physiology and perceived closeness to her child does significantly predict her ability to accurately interpret her child’s HR in contexts of low physiological arousal. However, a mother’s ability to accurately interpret her child’s physiology in contexts of high arousal is uniquely predictive of her child’s emotion-behavioral development. Overall, this study incorporates two important features: maternal interoception and the use of a novel monitoring device. Our results provide novel direction for not only dyadic interoception, but also the importance of mentalizing others' mental states in order to understand their physiology and support their needs. Future research should consider developing interventions that aim to improve maternal interoception and educate parents on the significance of both healthy body awareness and mindfulness of children’s mental states to support emotion-behavioral development.PsychologyMaster of Science (M.Sc.
Development Of A Living Shoreline Model To Compute Ecosystem Restoration Benefits
No full textSalt marshes provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including sediment capture, nutrient transformation, and water quality improvement. Several processes facilitate nutrient removal by marshes, including: 1) storage in plants and algae, 2) storage in and transformation by resident animals, 3) storage in sediments, and 4) microbial denitrification. Sediment removal occurs primarily through sedimentation and bivalve filtration followed by burial. However, salt marshes are increasingly being lost to sea level rise and coastal development, diminishing these services at a time when coastal systems are subject to anthropogenically elevated loads of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment (NPS). To address NPS inputs, the Chesapeake Bay Program (CBP) has identified best management practices (BMPs) to reduce non-point source coastal pollution. One BMP is a nature-based coastal adaptation called a living shoreline, which has become a replacement habitat for natural marshes. These constructed habitats leverage ecological processes to provide functions similar to natural marshes. This shoreline restoration provides watershed-scale benefits across natural and human communities, improving ecosystem services provided by the shoreline. However, limited tools are available to compute NPS removals by living shorelines, and those that exist are based on data from natural marshes. This project filled that gap by building a site-specific model for computing annual NPS removals by living shorelines calibrated to data collected from these created habitats. This simulation model was developed by combining existing models of Spartina alterniflora, benthic microalgae, sediment biogeochemistry, and Crassostrea virginica. Models were replicated and parameterized for Spartina patens and Geukensia demissa using literature. The model is forced using local climatic, tidal, and water quality data and upland loading of NPS from the CBP. Field observations demonstrated that living shorelines are important mediators of nutrient cycling and NPS removal. The model closely reproduced seasonal patterns in the data and predicted annual removals of 70 g N m-2, 5.26 g P m-2, and 7,820 g TSS m-2 (total suspended solids). Spartina biomass was the largest sink for N and P, while burial was the largest sink for TSS. Highest areal removal rates for N and P were in the high marsh, while areal rates of TSS removal were highest on the sill due to high bivalve densities. Model results indicated that living shorelines removed approximately one third of daily tidal N and P inputs and >100% of tidal TSS inputs. Living shorelines are an effective tool for reaching Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDL) at local scales, with an average of 14-34 acres (median 4-8) needed to achieve mandated NPS removals in individual CBP Land-River Segments. Finally, predicted removals were greater than values used in CBP BMP documentation, suggesting living shorelines are undervalued as a NPS removal strategy. This research created a widely applicable and directly accessible model for local stakeholders to assess NPS removals by living shorelines. The increased understanding of living shoreline function and the model developed here can inform regulatory decisions and support living shoreline restoration based on the ability of this BMP to assist in reaching TMDL goals.Virginia Institute of Marine ScienceMaster of Science (M.Sc.
Trash Talk: How to Tackle Plastic Pollution
No full textGrades: 9-12. Subjects: Earth Science | Environmental Science | Oceanography Students will carry out a cleanup of their school campus, collecting and graphing data about the trash they find and learning about problems associated with plastic pollution along the way. Then, based on their observations from the cleanup, students will have the opportunity to complete an action project by planning and implementing a behavior change campaign to reduce plastic waste at their school.Virginia Institute of Marine Scienc
Investigations Into The Environmental Ecology And Springtime Epizootiology Of Perkinsus Marinus
No full textPerkinsus marinus is a prevalent oyster parasite along the Atlantic coast of the USA and has been recognized as a major source of disease and mortality in wild and cultured eastern oyster populations for over half a century. While vegetative proliferation of this parasite is well described within the oyster host, the importance of zoosporulation in P. marinus epizootiology is far less clear, particularly considering the life history changes associated with intensification of the parasite in the 1980s. Further, the free-living and overwintering dynamics of the parasite remain unresolved despite their potential significance for perpetuation of yearly epizootics. To better understand the environmental ecology of this parasite, weekly surface and benthic water samples were collected from January 2022 – December 2022 in York River, VA, and filtered and preserved on 0.22-micron membrane filters. Parasite abundance was quantified using qPCR, and cell forms were visualized using fluorescence in situ hybridization. Weekly sampling was repeated in February – April 2023 and 2024 at three sites to investigate potential factors responsible for a recurring spring peak of environmental detection. Detection of P. marinus in environmental samples closely followed established seasonal infection trends in oyster hosts, with a maximum in late summer/early fall and little detection in winter and spring, with the notable exception of minor March peaks recurring across all three sampling years. Contrary to results from routine Ray’s fluid thioglycolate method and histological diagnostics, qPCR samples of hemolymph found that most oysters in my sampling sites were infected with the parasite throughout the late winter and early spring period. Increasing weighted prevalence of oyster infections, ambient water temperature, and salinity all increased the probability of detecting P. marinus in the water column throughout the year. Increasing total chlorophyll a was correlated with increased P. marinus detection in the environment during the early spring sampling periods, suggestive of a natural zoosporulation event triggered by favorable nutrient conditions. Visualization of cell forms revealed zoospores and hypnospores to be the predominant environmental stages, with markedly larger hypnospores found in March - August. The consistent observation of putative zoospores and hypnospores confirms the continued relevance for zoosporulation in P. marinus transmission, and a potential significance in supporting the year-round transmission of P. marinus that has long been known to occur even during annual periods of low abundance in oyster populations.Virginia Institute of Marine ScienceMaster of Science (M.Sc.
The Social And Material Life Of Time In The Anglo-Atlantic World, 1660-1830
No full textThe Social and Material Life of Time explores how across the Anglo-Atlantic world in diverse makers’ spaces time was too malleable to be understood solely by watching the clock. It argues that in place of an external timekeeper, craftspeople used their senses to read the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, and tactile signs of material change and process. The scum, froth, and bubbles that emerged as beer fermented, the kaleidoscopic range of color changes that shimmered across the surface of an indigo vat, and the deepening of the green of cucumbers as they pickled – these were the organic ‘signs’ that marked the passage of time in makers’ lives across the Anglo-Atlantic world.HistoryDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.
Mapping The Contemporary American Public Sphere With Habermas, Deleuze, And Soderbergh
No full textHowever infirm “the public” may be as a political body in America today, its presence as idea in American life is still potent. This thesis seeks to take a first step in developing an idea of what a contemporary American public looks like and how it functions, using concepts developed by Jürgen Habermas, Chantal Mouffe, and Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari. The Habermasian “public sphere” is a major reference point for popular thinking about the public, and The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is indeed an exemplary historical and critical account of the wide range of forces that cohered in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to form the liberal bourgeois public sphere, whose remnants exist in the constitutional governments of today. Yet later thinkers have critiqued Habermas’ account of its transformation into a contemporary public sphere as containing a normativity that idealizes the bourgeois character of the original public sphere. This thesis uses the public presented by the 2022 American film Kimi, directed by Stephen Soderbergh, to highlight the ways the public sphere has difficulty accounting for the specific undemocratic forces—which deter the type of rational communication the public sphere needs to function—that are most prevalent today. The thesis then spotlights an especially prevalent explanation for the sphere’s normative idealism—that the public sphere’s bourgeois class function facilitates a unity of opinion at its center, which is then explained by the collective exercise of innate human rationality—and the alternative conception of a public that most explicitly factors this critique into its structure: the agonist public, or one in which disagreement among participants is built into political proceedings. Although agonism is perceptive in diagnosing the problems posed by the public sphere’s idealism, its argument that the sphere’s necessary unity is the cause of this idealism (which can therefore be excised it by facilitating disagreement through the concept of the “adversary”), is less convincing—much more potent are the claims that the structure of “the public” as an idea requires some sort of normativity to exist. A more fruitful comparison between the public sphere and the agonist sphere can be done by mediating their relationship through the lens of the fascicular. This notion, formulated by Deleuze & Guattari, describes the tendency to maintain a fundamental unity even as it splits and forms new connections in seemingly rhizomatic ways. The arboreal characteristics of liberalism are well described in Structural Transformation and are thus built into the object of the public sphere (and account for much of the previously described critiques); because the “root” of the agonist sphere is in these same characteristics, they cannot be overcome to achieve the sort of democratic goals agonism intends to foster even as it explicitly addresses them. The nature of fascicular tendencies can be more clearly seen in Kimi, where the fascicular weakness of screen-based communication allows Soderbergh to continue his career-long tendency to comment on the norms of Hollywood cinema and the medium of film itself. The conclusion of this thesis suggests a shared goal of the seemingly incongruous Habermas and Deleuze & Guattari, “to escape the abstract opposition between the multiple and the one,” and identifies areas where a further partnership between these two sets of thinkers about the public can proceed.American StudiesMaster of Arts (M.A.