ENVS – Page 2 – Mackenzie Hoult

Climate Change Today

October 16, 2018October 17, 2018Leave a comment

In an environmental analysis class we are often focusing on taking information in and figuring out why a or how a certain event is occurring. This type of research and learning is important but when looking at climate change today it can be incredibly alarming. Words such as crisis, extinction, mass migration, and irreversible destruction ring in my head time after time while reading articles about climate change. Not only that but the seemingly more detrimental words of President Trump who not only does not believe in climate change, but is actively trying to pull the United States out of the Paris agreement. It’s all a lot to read and digest, but it is important to do especially as someone who is an environmental studies major.

My thoughts on climate change today are that it’s important to get your voice and scientific voices heard in a world so divided by politics that some won’t even admit environmental threats are right outside their door. I also think it’s important to make changes in your lifestyle, no matter how small, that can positively affect the environment. As environmentalist, and especially environmentalist in an analysis class I find it hard not to get caught up in the daunting question of how do we solve it? What can we do? And while these are very important questions, they can drown you in all the negative things that people around the world will and wont do. A way to focus on positivity is focus on the facts, and especially for this class, the analysis. Reading information, knowing the facts, and analyzing what is going on.

I find it interesting how articles often focus on “saving the world or earth”, but in reality the earth would be much better without us, in fact the earth was doing great before humanity. It’s in reality the human race which we have to save which is ironic cause it is us as humans that are causing these issues to arise. It’s hard not to see the overall human race as selfish and unwilling to recognize when theres a problem, but I’ve also met so many smart and angry individuals who will fight for our climate and the human race.

Screen Shot 2018-10-15 at 6.00.31 PM — Picture Link

In todays world, climate change is not only real, but right around the corner, and every individual should make small changes in their lives to work towards a better future. While the people in power, especially in economically powerful countries, don’t seem to see climate change as an issue, there still are so many of us who are willing to fight this and fight for our place on the earth. As environmentalists specifically in this class, being open, skeptical and being able to reflect on all the information out there is a very important skill to learn and use. The world may be changing, and it may feel devastating and out of our control, but we aren’t alone.

Featured Image link: http://www.theeventchronicle.com/study/strange-things-california-fires/

Land Use Cover Change Story Map

October 9, 2018October 17, 2018Leave a comment

Over the past 4 weeks we’ve been doing research and having discussions in order to situate land cover change in our local environment. We researched land use cover change in three different areas, Lewis and Clark College campus, Collins view neighborhood and Riverview national area. From our data collection and comparison we were able to make connections and find unique differences in all three areas. From this research we were able to develop some thoughts and hypotheses about broader land cover changes. In order to synthesize our thoughts and findings, you can find our story map here where we situate our data in terms of our findings, as well as the broader context of land use cover change.

Local Change and Our Recent Panel

October 2, 2018Leave a comment

While doing environmental studies, it’s hard not to look at change in a negative light. Words like development are often associated with change in an area. For example, the land use cover change labs we’ve been doing the best month have been analyzing the change in the greater Portland area since 1931. I found that when analyzing data that has had a change over a certain amount of years, whether it is positive or negative change, it is hard to not give change a negative connotation. As our population rises and the demand for housing, public transport, water system, paved roads etc. rises, we tend to focus on the negative impacts expanding will have. But, during our Lewis and Clark vicinity panel I realized that while mass development can have a negative impact on the environment, it’s not always set in stone when local change can be a large shifting factor. In River view natural area, one of the areas studied in our land use cover change lab, there had been requests to the city to develop it. The city denied this request as river view has been an especially natural and reserved area for the neighborhood and greater Portland area. John Miller, one of our panelists who lives in the neighborhood, even told us that Tryon creek was targeted for development but was stopped as the locals and neighbors would not allow it.

These stories from people who have lived in this neighborhood made me realize that small changes in an area may not inherently be negative, but big changes can be. Although, despite the grim look on our ever diminishing environment, not everyone is out to develop on top of our natural areas. Local solutions really shown through at this panel, as these 5 people and most of their neighbors love the environment and the natural areas set aside, and they are determined to keep them that way. I found this very inspiring considering our outlook is often grim for the future of the environment with climate change and people in power always pushing the environment aside. The panel really showed me that small fights can make a big difference even if it is in a small neighborhood just outside of Portland.

This panel was really interesting not only to get more information on our labs but it also illustrated how important getting local opinions on change, especially having to do with the environment, really is. Using our lab as an example, we had been looking at data points and photos of the area in order to make assumptions about the change in the area. But, after talking with these people who have actually seen the change and fought for different areas to be kept natural, my view on the land has changed completely. The local and personal perspective is a very important aspect in doing environmental studies, because it is very easy to see areas as data points rather than an actual environmental area with different types of people living near it.

Land Use Cover Change in Greater Portland area IV

October 1, 2018Leave a comment

While continuing our study of land use cover change in the Portland area, we have started to map our data from our other labs in order to analyze change which may have occurred since 1931. Our last labs, posted here, were used to collect data from our specific site, a residential home in Collins View, as well as gain data from 11 other sites that our peers took, including Collins View, Riverview and Lewis and Clark, 4 groups in each area respectively.

For this specific lab, we took all our data which we organized in our last lab, and began adding it to ARCGIS. This is a program that can give us an aerial map view of the sites separated by color, and the field points indicated, as you can see in the base map below in figure 1. The pink indicates the RVNA area that 4 groups went to, showing one outlier as one group went slightly farther than the designated area. The orange indicating the Collins view boundary, which had 4 more groups and the red indicates the Lewis and Clark boundary which also contains all 4 groups. Once we added the three separate locations of study, we entered all the collected data we comprised last week. This data consisted of humidity, temperature, canopy cover, ground cover, and more data from the past labs. We looked at many different versions of this map by applying different layers as well as adding 3 overlaying pictures. These 3 pictures showed the same area in 1939, 1961 and 1982 respectively. This allowed us to overlay different data points found by our teams of current data, over the older maps to analyze the land cover change, as you can see below.

Starting by mapping temperature compared to canopy cover (figure 2). It’s important to note that percent canopy cover and average temperature, as illustrated in figure 2, seem to be inversely correlated as the canopy cover goes down, the average temperature rises. We suspected this in our last lab but now that we can see the data on top of each other, it is clear that the amount of tree canopy removed over the years has affected the areas temperature. We chose to focus on two data points that seemed to have visually changed the most over the years. From the archives, we were able to overlay 4 different aerial photos from the area, a 1939 photo, 61’ photo, 82’ photo and the 2018 google maps photo. We used these different photos and the 12 data points to observe the change in land use since 1939. We used the 1939 map as a base year for what we would compare all the other maps to, as thats the oldest we were able to compare to. For out site in collins view, (45.46, -122.68), land use is visibly changed from the 39 photo (figure 4)and 61(figure 5). The most significant change is the agriculture around the area, and some canopy cover, but not too significantly. The time period between 39 and 61 we see the whole area shifting into a more suburban setting. The Lewis and Clark campus also shifts a lot during this time period, as after 1934 the red area was bought in order to create Albany college. By 1939, you see can see this shift in the Lewis and Clark area. By 1961 Collins view has shifted into a larger residential area, similar to today, and Lewis and Clark has formed into a college.

RVNA, on the other hand, stays pretty consistent if you compare the 1939 photograph to the current google maps photo, there is not much canopy cover change in the area. In comparison, the two other sites canopy cover was vastly altered in the 80 year period. We noted this in our last lab as well, as the large shift in canopy cover was a larger data point for those two groups. Looking at figure 2 again, it seems like the shift in canopy cover has affected the temperature range of the areas. As you can see that the less canopy cover percentage, the larger the temperature max.

The change in canopy and ground cover could also be a concern for biodiversity in the area. From these three areas we can see how we’ve used the land and affected biodiversity potentially. As Collins view and Lewis and Clark we saw from our data, share many of the same attributes, compared to Riverview which has stayed relatively consistent. Because of this, Riverview represents how the land used to act like. As far as biodiversity is concerned, I am curious as to how these canopy and ground cover changes may be advantageous or possibly disadvantageous. To better understand the full impact on the area over the years we would need more data from additional areas to compare the effect on the environment. As well as accounts from people living in the area for a long time might aid in our research.

Land Use Cover Change in the Greater Portland Area part III

September 24, 2018September 26, 2018Leave a comment

This Lab has to due with the previous land use cover data we recorded in the Lewis and Clark Community. As stated in our past lab, our group went to the Collins view neighborhood and recorded, temperature, humidity, canopy cover and ground cover. In order to compare our data to the larger Portland area, there were two other sites that had data collected from them, RVNA (River view natural area) and Lewis and Clark Campus. There were 4 groups for each area in order to get a wide data set for each location. After all groups collected their separate information over the past two weeks, we all entered it into the same document in order to analyze all the results. These procedures are similar to that of larger scale experiments done by Globe and others on a worldwide basis.

In the Collins View neighborhood, our site had a central tree in the backyard of a residential home. In terms of the temperature we recorded compared to the three other sites in Collins view, our temperature min and max stayed within 2 degrees of all other Collins view sites. Overall, for all 4 Collins view groups, we had an average temperature range of .8 degrees celsius, compared to the humidity range which was larger at a range of 3.9. In order to compare all the average temperatures for all three locations, you can refer to graph 1 below. All 4 averages stayed relatively close to our average, which makes sense because they are all in a close enough radius that they wouldn’t have wildly different weather and temperature patterns. Looking at humidity, in table 2 below, our site had a lower humidity then most sites by about 3 degrees celsius. RVNA was an exception though, with an additional 14 degrees celsius min humidity, while the max humidity stayed within 1-2 degrees celsius from our Collins view location. Overall the three locations lay in fairly close vicinity to one another (a one mile radius) so the average data points all were very similar.

Graph 1

Average Humidity

Table 2

River View	61.475
Collins View	59.025
Lewis and Clark	57.65

The largest changes we saw in the data were from RVNA compared to Collins and River view. In terms of canopy cover, as you can read from the table below, Collins and River view stayed in between 40-47% canopy cover, where as RVNA almost doubled their percentage at 82%. This would make sense as River and Collins view tend to be more residential areas who have had a lot of manmade change over the years, depleting the amount of overall tree coverage. Whereas RVNA is an open, relatively untouched area, that has big tree and forest areas. RVNA also had the lowest temperature max by 4 degrees celsius which could be due to the large amount of canopy cover in the area.

Average Percent Canopy cover

Table 3

Collins view	47.5
RVNA	82.6875
Lewis and Clark	40.2

RVNA, unlike Collins and River view, has not been altered as much since 1939. As you can see from the aerial photograph, the residential areas have had their canopy’s altered for buildings, homes, roads etc. We can see this change from the temperature, canopy cover and humidity data as comparing them shows how different a change in land use can affect a small area. Lewis and Clark compared to Collins view are very similar in that they have both been altered since 1939, and they show that in the data as they both have similar data sets. In order to really differentiate between the land use of Collins View and Lewis and Clark, additional data points should be taken. Additionally, more information on how the land has changed since 1939 between the three locations could help us better interpret our data.

Land-Atmosphere processes reflection post

September 19, 2018September 26, 2018Leave a comment

Land-use and land-cover changes have many layers that are all worth diving deeper into. One that really stuck out to me was the land-atmosphere processes as well as the connection to biodiversity. Agriculture is one of the biggest components of gases being leaked into the atmosphere. As we intensify areas of land we are release more N20 and CH4 then would normally be released if the area of land had been kept in its original form. Verburg et. al states that these this release from agriculture is produced by “N2O from fertilizer application (Zaehle et al., 2011), or CH4 from cattle and rice production (Verburg, 34). Not only that but when converting areas of land for Agriculture, large forests are often cut down which further affect our CO2 emissions as forests are carbon sinks. I think this issue is only recently coming to the surface because the idea of food shortages because of extreme weathers, such as droughts or torrential rain, have overshadowed it.

While food shortages as a negative effect of climate change is very real, it becomes an endless cycle as we convert more land for agriculture we put out more CO2 causing more extreme weather and therefore more food shortages. I think it is extremely imperative we efficiently use our agriculture land use as well as preserve our forests in order to mitigate this endless cycle. In the land atmosphere process Verburg states, Finding ways to synthesize available data and knowledge in these communities will allow further development of the mechanisms represented in models, advance our capacity to evaluate model performance, and yield information to support policy development and societies towards successful adaptation and mitigation strategies” (Verburg, 35). This idea of working together, or telecoupling*, is a key component to the endless cycle of the land-atmosphere process I mentioned above. If we are able to give information that support policy development, we can become more efficient in our agricultural processes and preserve other land not only to help biodiversity but to also eliminate more CO2 emissions.

*Telecoupling- “Tele” meaning, distance, “Coupling” meaning, bringing things together. Represents the interconnected nature of our world and our connected network with everywhere around the world.

Sources:

Verburg, Peter H., Neville Crossman, Erle C. Ellis, Andreas Heinimann, Patrick Hostert, Ole Mertz, Harini Nagendra, et al. “Land System Science and Sustainable Development of the Earth System: A Global Land Project Perspective.” Anthropocene 12 (December 1, 2015): 29–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2015.09.004.

Studying Land Use/Cover Change In Collins View Area Part I

September 18, 2018September 26, 2018Leave a comment

Studying Land Use/Cover Change In Collins View Area

Mackenzie Hoult, Matt Weston

Part 1: Temperature and Humidity

In order to look at the magnitude of the human effect on the earth over the decades we’ve been inhabiting it, we must first look at different areas of land. This is crucial because it can show us how places have changed over the years by human interaction which we can then apply toward sustainable development goals. This lab was created with the central question of land use in mind, concerning how overall cover has changed within the parameters of Lewis & Clark College and the surrounding neighborhood and natural areas in the last eighty years and what effect cover change has had on temperature and humidity. In order to compare past and present land usage we used Google Earth Engine Timelapse and aerial footage from 1939. Our place of study was in Collins view area, which, based on our old photos, used to be a large agricultural area with a large expansion of the now suburban neighborhood starting in the early 2000s.

We utilized the Garmin GPS device in order to mark our coordinates exactly and find true North at our desired location. We wanted to place the device at exactly North in order to minimize skewed temperature data from direct sunlight. In order to measure the temperature and humidity of the area we used a Kestrel drop, which takes readouts every 5 seconds. of multiple environmental factors around the area. Our testing period lasted from 5pm September 6th to 5 pm September 7th, and took temperature and humidity in 10 minute intervals. The Kestrel also calculated our average temperature and humidity during our testing period.

After our 24 hour period we returned to our sight to collect the Kestrel drop and collect its data.. At our coordinates of (45.45665, -122.67726), the Kestrel Drop reported an average temperature of 19.8 degrees Celsius, with a maximum temperature of 29.8 and a minimum of 12.3, as shown in the table below.

Time	Temperature (degrees Celsius)
N/A	19.8
3:30pm September 7th	29.8
6:50-7:00am September 7th	12.3

Based on the information from the table above, the max temperature coincides with the time just after the sun is highest in the sky, and the lowest temperature coinciding with sunrise. Since the property we chose was relatively open and susceptible to sunlight all day, the temperature follows a clear curve of sunlight.

The Kestrel also reported that, the average relative humidity of the property was 56.9%. The minimum was 22.2% and the maximum was 86.8%, as shown in the table below.

Time	Relative Humidity (%)
N/A	56.9
6:10am September 7th	86.8
3:40pm September 7th	22.2

Based on this table, there is an inverse correlation between the temperature and humidity. At the maximum temperature for the day, the humidity is at its lowest. Vice versa, the maximum humidity aligns with the minimum temperature. These findings make sense as the weather on September 7th was dry and sunny, with clouds rolling in that would change the humidity that night.

In order to look further at the land use cover change of the larger area, it would be helpful to compare findings with the Riverview Natural Area. Riverview is relatively less developed compared to Collins view, so comparing the two might give an insight on changing of temperature and humidity because of urbanization. Overall, the data taken within our area of Collins View provides a good insight on the climate of a large, and expanding, urban area in the pacific northwest.

Part II: Canopy and Ground Cover

September 18, 2018September 26, 2018

Part II: Canopy and Ground cover

Continuing to look at land use cover change in our community in Portland, we inspected the 90m by 90m site we had set up in the Collins View neighborhood. We returned to our site to measure the canopy and ground cover. We started by measuring the height of our centroid tree which was 13 m tall. From there we took 2 paces in each NE, SE NW and SW direction. Every 2 paces we would record the canopy above us as well as the ground cover below us. The property we were on was smaller than 8100 square meters so we weren’t able to fully record the space around our centroid location. The yard was very landscaped with planted trees, shrubs, bushes and grass which was brown from the hot summer. There was also a garage and and a greenhouse that affected our ability to fully enter the data. This area was an average suburban house that had been altered by the owners from the natural cover shown in the 1939 photograph.

Canopy cover	43%
Tree canopy	40%

Shrub canopy	3%
Evergreen canopy	34%
Deciduous canopy	9%
Ground cover	80% (green 9%, brown 71%)
No ground cover	2%
Shrub ground cover	9%

This table shows the of data we collected from our centroid location. We took 35 total observations in our site. We found our percent canopy cover by taking the number of vertical densiometer canopy observations divided by all observations taken. There was a total of 43% canopy cover, with 3% being shrub canopy which includes any shrub between 5 and 50 cm tall. The tree canopy was 40% of our total canopy cover which was any tree over 5 cm tall. The canopy cover is also separated by type of tree, evergreen, which is a tree that doesn’t shed its leaves in winter and deciduous trees which shed seasonally. As seen above, 34% were evergreen trees and 9% were deciduous trees. Ground cover is defined, by GLOBE, as tha touching your feet or lower legs when standing at sample site. For this we found 80% ground cover which is separated into green ground cover, 9%, and 71% brown. This ground cover was mostly brown because the residential area was mostly surrounded by grass and had died over the hot summer. No ground cover was the pavement that made up the driveway which was only 2% of total ground cover. And finally, 9% of the ground cover consisted of shrubs which are considered by GLOBE, woody plants between 50 cm and 5 m tall.

Looking at the canopy and ground percentages from our centroid location helps us further understand the effect we’ve had on the Collins view area and the greater Portland area. By looking at canopy cover and ground cover we can see the changes humans have had on the land compared to the 1930’s version. For example, the area in the 1930 was mostly agricultural and forest whereas now it is very landscaped and paved. These observations further our understanding of the land use change and as we do further research in our location, we’ll be able to use this information to, for example, look at co2 emission in the area since it has been altered.