High resolution aerial photographs have important rangeland applications, such as monitoring vegetation change, developing grazing strategies, determining rangeland health, and assessing remediation treatment effectiveness. Acquisition of high resolution images by Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has certain advantages over piloted aircraft missions, including lower cost, improved safety, flexibility in mission planning, and closer proximity to the target. Different levels of remote sensing data can be combined to provide more comprehensive information: 15–30 m resolution imaging from space-borne sensors for determining uniform landscape units; < 1 m satellite or aircraft data to assess the pattern of ecological states in an area of interest; 5 cm UAV images to measure gap and patch sizes as well as percent bare soil and vegetation ground cover; and < 1 cm ground-based boom photography for ground truth or reference data. Two parallel tracks of investigation are necessary: one that emphasizes the utilization of the most technically advanced sensors for research, and a second that emphasizes the minimization of costs and the maximization of simplicity for monitoring purposes. We envision that in the future, resource management agencies, rangeland consultants, and private land managers should be able to use small, lightweight UAVs to satisfy their needs for acquiring improved data at a reasonable cost, and for making appropriate management decisions.

Produced water from oil and gas development requires management to avoid negative public health effects, particularly those associated with dissolved solids and bromide in drinking water. Rapidly expanding drilling in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania has significantly increased the volume of produced water that must be managed. Produced water management may include treatment followed by surface water discharge, such as at publically owned wastewater treatment plants (POTWs) or centralized brine treatment plants (CWTs). The use of POTWs and CWTs that discharge partially treated produced water has the potential to increase salt loads to surface waters significantly. These loads may cause unacceptably high concentrations of dissolved solids or bromide in source waters, particularly when rivers are at low-flow conditions. The present study evaluates produced water management in Pennsylvania from 2006 through 2011 to determine whether surface water discharges were sufficient to cause salt or bromide loads that would negatively affect drinking water sources. The increase in produced water that occurred in 2008 in Pennsylvania was accompanied by an increase in use of CWTs and POTWs that were exempt from discharge limits on dissolved solids. Estimates of salt loads associated with produced water and with discharges from CWTs and POTWs in 2008 and 2009 indicate that more than 50% of the total dissolved solids in the produced water generated in those years were released to surface water systems. Especially during the low-flow conditions of 2008 and 2009, these loads would be expected to affect drinking water.

Environmental Practice 14:1–13 (2012)

The increasing world demand for energy has led to an increase in the exploration and extraction of natural gas, condensate, and oil from unconventional organic-rich shale plays. However, little is known about the quantity, transport, and disposal method of wastes produced during the extraction process. We examined the quantity of waste produced by gas extraction activities from the Marcellus Shale play in Pennsylvania for 2011. The main types of wastes included drilling cuttings and fluids from vertical and horizontal drilling and fluids generated from hydraulic fracturing [i.e., flowback and brine (formation) water]. Most reported drill cuttings (98.4%) were disposed of in landfills, and there was a high amount of interstate (49.2%) and interbasin (36.7%) transport. Drilling fluids were largely reused (70.7%), with little interstate (8.5%) and interbasin (5.8%) transport. Reported flowback water was mostly reused (89.8%) or disposed of in brine or industrial waste treatment plants (8.0%) and largely remained within Pennsylvania (interstate transport was 3.1%) with little interbasin transport (2.9%). Brine water was most often reused (55.7%), followed by disposal in injection wells (26.6%), and then disposed of in brine or industrial waste treatment plants (13.8%). Of the major types of fluid waste, brine water was most often transported to other states (28.2%) and to other basins (9.8%). In 2011, 71.5% of the reported brine water, drilling fluids, and flowback was recycled: 73.1% in the first half and 69.7% in the second half of 2011. Disposal of waste to municipal sewage treatment plants decreased nearly 100% from the first half to second half of 2011. When standardized against the total amount of gas produced, all reported wastes, except flowback sands, were less in the second half than the first half of 2011. Disposal of wastes into injection disposal wells increased 129.2% from the first half to the second half of 2011; other disposal methods decreased. Some issues with data were uncovered during the analytical process (e.g., correct geospatial location of disposal sites and the proper reporting of end use of waste) that obfuscated the analyses; correcting these issues will help future analyses.

Environmental Practice 14:1–10 (2012)

This article analyzes community building and political agency through an investigation of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN). By using farming as a strategy of resistance against the structural factors that have left much of Detroit in a condition of food insecurity, DBCFSN not only meets citizens' needs for fresh produce, but also builds community by transforming the social, economic, and physical environment. In so doing, it creates new community spaces on vacant land. DBCFSN uses the farm (a) as a community center, (b) as a means to articulate culturally relevant language about healthy food and healthy lifestyles, and (c) as a tangible model of collective work, self-reliance, and political agency. These farmers adopt a community-based model for increasing access to healthy food for the mostly African American citizens of Detroit. By focusing on improving the daily existence of citizens rather than mobilizing against the power structures, D-Town, a seven-acre model urban farm project of DBCFSN, activists participate in the revival of a city mired in racism and poverty, and all but abandoned by politicians, the automobile industry, and the merchants and supermarkets who once served Detroit's residents.

Environmental Practice 13:406–417 (2011)

Development of unconventional natural gas resources in the Marcellus Shale region of the northeastern United States has progressed rapidly over the last decade. The discourse surrounding such development recalls quarter-century-old debates about positive and negative implications for the well-being of such energy boomtowns. Potential support or opposition relates to trust in the industry and its regulators, perceived knowledge, and perceived impacts. Our research project takes advantage of the opportunity for a natural experiment in comparing these elements between two spatially adjacent sites with contrasting approaches to gas development: in Pennsylvania, drilling of unconventional natural gas reserves has been proceeding for nearly a decade, whereas, at the time of this writing, drilling has not begun in New York. A mail survey of a random sample of New York and Pennsylvania residents within the Marcellus region revealed important differences between sites. New York residents were more opposed to development, characterized the industry in a more negative light, and were more likely to have engaged in various forms of public participation. In contrast, respondents did not differ by state on their perceived level of knowledge, even though gas development is more advanced in Pennsylvania. Potential explanations for these findings are offered, as are implications for understanding newly emerging energy boomtowns.

Environmental Practice 14:287–298 (2012)

Over the past decade, green infrastructure has evolved from a novel buzzword into a recognized planning practice. Definitions of green infrastructure inevitably have been tailored to appeal to diverse constituents with message points that address a particular professional discipline or resource issue. Commonly accepted definitions emphasize the interconnected network concept and are mostly differentiated by the scale at which green infrastructure planning is implemented. This commentary lays out an operational framework for green infrastructure that can be advanced at all scales, from the largest landscape to the smallest site, and illustrates examples of operationalizing the framework at each scale. What is ultimately needed is a seamless quilt of planning and implementation across scales and jurisdictional boundaries that make sense in terms of their benefits but also in terms of their economics, and every one can play a part in making that a reality in their communities.

Environmental Practice 14:17–25 (2012)

Exploration and extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale have created considerable controversy. At the core of these debates are differing perceptions of the level and types of risks involved with the extraction activities, such as hydraulic fracturing, truck traffic, air emissions, and population growth. Risks described include the potential for human and environmental health implications, as well as community change and economic gain. This article explores the nature of perceived risks associated with Marcellus Shale development by using data from a household survey (N = 1,917) conducted in 2009–10 in Pennsylvania and New York counties located in the core areas of the Marcellus Shale region. The article describes a quantitative measure of risk perceptions. Statistical analyses of the data indicate that trust in institutions responsible for managing the risks associated with development and attitudes related to relationships between people and nature are associated strongly with perceptions of risk. Other associated variables include reported knowledge of environmental, social, and economic impacts, mineral rights ownership, demographic characteristics (gender, income), and state of residence. Implications of these findings are discussed, particularly as related to improving local discourse surrounding Marcellus Shale development.

Environmental Practice 15:108–122 (2013)

In most contaminated soils and mine tailings, mercury (Hg) is not readily available for plant uptake. A strategy for inducing Hg mobilization in soils to increase accumulation potential in plants was investigated to enhance Hg phytoremediation. Accumulation of Hg in the nickel hyperaccumulator Berkheya coddii, the salt-tolerant Atriplex canescens, and the nonaccumulators Brassica juncea and Lupinus sp. was studied by pot trials containing mine tailings treated with either soluble Hg or sulfur-containing ligands. Accumulation of Hg in shoots of B. coddii and A. canescens after addition of soluble Hg was lower than 10 mg/kg dry weight. The addition of ammonium thiosulfate (NH4S2O3) to tailings mobilized Hg in substrates, as indicated by the elevated Hg concentrations in leachates from the pots of both species. Ammonium thiosulfate caused a significant increase in the Hg concentration in shoots of B. juncea. Conversely, Hg translocation to Lupinus sp. shoots was significantly reduced in the presence of this ligand. Mass balance calculations revealed a significant fraction of Hg was lost from the system. This unaccounted-for Hg may indicate Hg volatilization. The results suggest that there is potential for induced plant Hg accumulation for phytoremediation of Hg-contaminated sites. Issues of Hg leaching and volatilization, however, need to be addressed before this technology can be implemented in the field.

China's tuigeng huanlin or “Returning Farmland to Forest” (RFFP) program has been widely praised as the world's largest and most successful payment for ecosystem services program, as well as a major contributor to China's dramatic increase in forest cover from perhaps as low as 8% in 1960 to about 21% today. By compensating rural households for the conversion of marginal farmland to forestland and financing the afforestation of barren mountainsides, the program, in addition to expanding forestland, aims to reduce soil erosion and alleviate poverty. This paper presents qualitative and quantitative studies conducted on the local implementation of RFFP in three diverse townships in Sichuan. We find the actual results to be more mixed than the official figures would indicate. Though there have been some positive results, we identify problems with site and species selection, compensation for land taken out of cultivation, shift of labor to off-farm activities, and monitoring of replanted sites, which challenge the ecological and economic impacts of these programs and reveal much of the effort of the program has been misdirected. We suggest that efforts are misplaced because of the top-down, panacea nature of the program, which in turn is a feature of Chinese bureaucratic management.

Environmental Practice 15:350–366 (2013)

This article takes a new approach to studying food access. It combines environmental justice analysis with systems thinking in an examination of the food environment of Detroit. The article reviews food access literature and identifies how each body of scholarship’s underlying assumptions help or distort our understanding of urban food environments. The article argues for more comprehensive approaches to studying food access and demonstrates how such approaches can be implemented. We collected data from multiple sources, including ReferenceUSA, Orbis, and the Michigan Department of Agriculture, between 2011 and 2013 to build a database of food outlets in the city. We used SPSS 22 and ArcGIS 10.1 to analyze and map the data. The article analyzes the location of 3,499 food outlets in Detroit, comprising 34 categories food retailers, growers, supply chain, and food assistance programs. The study identified 96 supermarkets or full-line grocery stores; 1,110 small groceries, convenience stores, mini marts, and liquor stores; 279 specialty food stores; 306 pharmacies, dollar, and variety stores; 1,245 full-service and fast food restaurants and other food service outlets; 157 supply chain operations; 206 farms, community and school gardens, farmers’ markets, and produce markets; and 100 food assistance programs. The article finds that though Detroit has areas that lack food outlets, the portrayal of the entire city as a “food desert” is misleading. Moreover, the traditional approach of food desert research of using only or primarily the presence or absence of supermarkets and full-line grocery stores to study food access ignores many important venues from which people obtain food. It also ignores the strategies people use to cope with food insecurity and their responses to limited food access.

Environmental Practice 17: 102–133 (2015)

The recent growth of urban brownfield redevelopment and greenfield protection initiatives is a positive indicator of the redirected priorities of the public and private sectors to restore and regenerate sustainable places and spaces in the American landscape. Concepts such as “sustainable development” and “environmental stewardship” are universal ideals, achievable goals, and intergenerational necessities that have practical applications. This article suggests that brownfield redevelopment and greenfield protection are land use strategies that emphasize long–term sustainability goals rather than unrestrained economic growth and resource expansion. Brownfield initiatives are deeply intertwined with community economic redevelopment and job creation, and they are also important aids in health and safety issues, neighborhood restoration, and the reuse of urban space to counter suburban sprawl into green, open spaces. Planning processes such as “smart growth” and “urban infill” help to better manage development and slow down sprawl. Central to smart growth are brownfields and infill development, because smart growth strives to use underdeveloped areas within the urban environment more efficiently. Urban infill, such as brownfields redevelopment, holds the promise of enabling cities and communities to grow and evolve over time through many incremental changes. By creating places of enduring value and by restoring and reusing buildings and other urban spaces, we can build common ground between sustainability and historic preservation efforts, and provide alternatives to developing greenfield sites.

Green infrastructure at the parcel scale provides critical ecosystem goods and services when these services (such as flood mitigation) must be provided locally. Here we report on an approach that encourages suburban landowners to mitigate impervious surfaces on their properties through a voluntary auction mechanism. We used an economic incentive to place rain gardens and rain barrels onto parcels in a 1.8-km2 watershed near Cincinnati, Ohio. A comprehensive hydrologic, water-quality, and ecological monitoring campaign documented environmental conditions before and after treatment. In 2007 and 2008, we engaged private landowners through a reverse auction to encourage placement of one rain garden and up to four rain barrels on their property. The program led to the installation of 83 rain gardens and 176 rain barrels onto more than 20% of the properties, and preliminary analyses indicate that the overall discharge regime was altered by the treatments. The length of the study (six years) may have precluded observation of treatment effects on water quality and aquatic biological communities, as we would expect these conditions to respond more slowly to management changes. These distributed storm-water installations contributed to ecosystem services such as flood protection, water supply, and water infiltration; provided benefits to the local residents; and reduced the need for larger, expensive, centralized retrofits (such as deep tunnel storage).

Environmental Practice 14:57–67 (2012)

This research is part of an ULTRA NSF-US Forest service research grant addressing urban ecosystem metabolism in Syracuse, New York. This project explores local stakeholders' perceptions of green infrastructure (GI) and ecosystems services from both positive and detracting perspectives. Focus groups were used to elicit responses for a thematic analysis. Respondents displayed confusion about what ecosystems services are, as well as what GI is. Implementation barriers include costs (who pays), what the benefits are, unanticipated impacts, and scale of implementation.

Environmental Practice 14:6–16 (2012)

Biking is increasingly being recognized as a highly sustainable form of transportation. Consequently, a growing number of American cities have seen tremendous growth in bicycle travel, in part because many cities are also investing resources into improving bicycling infrastructure. Aside from the environmental advantages, there is now growing evidence to suggest that cities with higher bicycling rates also have better road safety records. This study attempts to better understand this phenomenon of lower fatality rates in bike-oriented cities by examining 11 years of road safety data (1997–2007) from 24 California cities. The analysis included accounting for crashes across all severity levels, as well as for three classes of road users: vehicle occupants, pedestrians, and bicyclists. Additionally, we looked at issues of street and street network design to help determine the role that these features might play in affecting both bicycling rates and road safety outcomes. Overall, cities with a high bicycling rate among the population generally show a much lower risk of fatal crashes for all road users when compared to the other cities in our database. The fact that this pattern of low fatality risk is consistent for all classes of road users strongly suggests that the crashes in cities with a high bicycling rate are occurring at lower speeds. This agrees with the finding that street network density was one of the most notable differences found between the safer and less safe cities. Our data suggest that improving the streets and street networks to better accommodate bicycles may lead to a self-reinforcing cycle that can help enhance overall safety for all road users.

Environmental Practice 13:16–27 (2011)

Substantial progress has been made towards land management practices that fulfill the basic requirements of a burgeoning human population. One of them is extensive use of nitrogen-containing chemical fertilizers to boost crop production. Though their use is beneficial, overuse of these fertilizers is causing serious environmental problems associated with emission of NH3, N2, and N2O (the last being an important greenhouse gas implicated both in the greenhouse effect and ozone layer depletion in the stratosphere) to the atmosphere and contamination of ground and surface water resources via nitrate leaching or runoff. Because these losses have both economic and environmental implications, it is high time to utilize a technique that contains nitrogen losses and enhances nitrogen-use efficiency of agricultural crops. To manage nitrogen losses from agricultural fields, different nitrification inhibitors are currently available, and if used along with NH4-containing fertilizers, they can effectively increase nitrogen-use efficacy and attenuate the emission of greenhouse gases by decelerating the soil nitrification processes resulting from ammonia metabolism.

Environmental Practice 9:266–279 (2007)

Water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) is an integrated water management system that encompasses low-impact design (LID), water conservation and recycling, water quality management, and urban ecology. WSUD increasingly is becoming a key component in establishing appropriate sustainable supply planning in urban areas around the globe, as well as in contributing to flood prevention and water quality protection. Water resource management is one of the greatest challenges of the present century. As populations climb, per-capita use increases, and current water supplies grow shorter, water resources are becoming more critical globally. Most urban areas face difficult choices and expensive solutions to meet existing and future demand. WSUD provides one of the key approaches to resolving these dilemmas. This article describes newly emerging models of WSUD and its implementation. The discussion begins with an overview of key WSUD planning and design principles and regulatory drivers, which is followed by the WSUD toolkit and example selection process for its implementation, drawing on examples of urban areas grappling with a range of water resource management issues. This article also touches on how WSUD elements can serve the dual purpose of improving functional water infrastructure and beautification. These ideas are presented within the scope of urban current planning and design. This article then provides approaches to identifying targets and implementing WSUD in several model case studies.

Environmental Practice 11:179–189 (2009)

As evidence of the earth's limited capacity to sustain human life mounts, institutions of higher education are being looked to for leadership in the effort to educate students about environmental concerns and support the development of sustainable innovations. Colleges and universities are responding to this call for leadership by starting and/or expanding environmental research programs, integrating sustainability issues throughout the curriculum, adopting sustainable operations, and building green facilities. Reflecting upon the sustainability efforts of these institutions, this research study explores the following questions:

• What factors are essential for initiating and leading a successful change effort to foster sustainability in higher education?

• What processes guide higher education institutions in efforts to deeply and comprehensively implement sustainable changes?

A sequential mixed-methods research design was used to gather data from questionnaires administered to 86 colleges and universities in the United States implementing sustainability programs and from interviews with 20 individuals who are guiding the change processes at ten different institutions. After the data had been analyzed to identify common themes, factors, and change-process strategies, the results of the analyses were examined in relationship to existing models of change in higher education. Significant correlations were found between the change strategies used and the support systems provided by these institutions and the level of progress achieved on the sustainability initiatives.

Environmental Practice 12:48–58 (2010)

There is increasing demand for the implementation of effects-based monitoring and surveillance (EBMS) approaches in the Great Lakes Basin to complement traditional chemical monitoring. Herein, we describe an ongoing multiagency effort to develop and implement EBMS tools, particularly with regard to monitoring potentially toxic chemicals and assessing Areas of Concern (AOCs), as envisioned by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI). Our strategy includes use of both targeted and open-ended/discovery techniques, as appropriate to the amount of information available, to guide a priori end point and/or assay selection. Specifically, a combination of in vivo and in vitro tools is employed by using both wild and caged fish (in vivo), and a variety of receptor- and cell-based assays (in vitro). We employ a work flow that progressively emphasizes in vitro tools for long-term or high-intensity monitoring because of their greater practicality (e.g., lower cost, labor) and relying on in vivo assays for initial surveillance and verification. Our strategy takes advantage of the strengths of a diversity of tools, balancing the depth, breadth, and specificity of information they provide against their costs, transferability, and practicality. Finally, a series of illustrative scenarios is examined that align EBMS options with management goals to illustrate the adaptability and scaling of EBMS approaches and how they can be used in management decisions.

Environmental Practice 15:409–426 (2013)

This article argues that there is a long history of environmental racism in American society. The first part of the article briefly discusses some of the environmental practices that discriminated against and negatively impacted people of color. It also discusses the responses of people color to these inequities. The second part of the article examines the rise of the contemporary environmental justice movement. This portion of the essay also looks at the evolution of environmental justice scholarship. It argues that despite controversy over the assertion that race and class are related to the siting patterns of hazardous facilities, most studies support the claim.

Environmental Practice 13:280–301 (2011)