Studies show that municipal and other tree planting efforts can turn out greater participation from homeowners, while neighborhoods with higher rates of renters have been found to have both lower existing canopy cover and lower planting activity, indicating an inequality in the distribution of an ecological resource. In particular, a 2004 study found that homeowners made up 89% of participation in an “Adopt-a-Tree” program in Milwaukee, WI, while tree canopy already correlated negatively with rentership in the city. My study replicates this comparison of existing canopy cover and rates of tree planting among renters and homeowners in Massachusetts’ Greening the Gateway City Program (GGCP). My research asks: 1. Does housing tenure at the block scale correlate with existing tree canopy cover? 2. Does housing tenure at the block scale correlate with the rate of residential tree plantings? And 3. Are owner-occupied properties more likely to have tree plantings than renter-occupied properties? Using spatial autoregression, the study compares existing tree canopy cover and the rate of trees planted with rentership and other demographic and housing variables at the block scale. The study also compares point data for tree plantings with property ownership, for a finer grained analysis of the distribution of tree planting activity at the property scale. By analyzing existing trends in the urban forest and evaluating the extent to which a tree giveaway program perpetuates or reverses these trends, the study may suggest ways to reenforce or adapt urban forestry practices in efforts to engage residents.

Preservation of historically significant buildings is essential to sustaining cultural heritage and history, but current preservation processes for such structures do not require stringent energy performance criteria. As a result, little research has been done on quantifiable methods for sustainable historic preservation, while striving to maintain the building’s original design integrity. This paper presents a case study on facade performance for Spomen Dom (translating to “Remembrance Home”), a Brutalist civic building located in Montenegro, once part of the former Yugoslavia. This research was conducted to determine and analyze the building’s original design features, to assess the building’s current physical state and to investigate thermal/moisture performance of the building skin. The purpose was to evaluate building’s current performance compared to original design intent, and to propose renovation strategies that would improve the building’s performance, while striving to maintain the integrity of original design of the exterior enclosure. Though a single case study, methodology presented here can be widely applied to analyze performance and encourage sustainable retrofitting of historically significant buildings.

Environmental conservation takes into account the built environment, as buildings have a significant impact on the overarching global goal of environmental preservation and carbon emissions mitigation and reduction. On a global scale, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calls to globally reduce 80% of the buildings’ emissions by the year of 2050. Similarly, on a state level, the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs in Massachusetts is undergoing a plan to achieve long-term total emission reduction by at least 85% by the year 2050. With this plan, the goal for the built environment is to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. A similar study is being developed at the University of Massachusetts campus through the Carbon Mitigation Taskforce organization with the objective of carbon neutrality by the year 2030.

Currently, the existing buildings consume 44% of the total energy in the U.S., and while new buildings must abide by stringent building codes, half of the U.S. buildings were constructed before 1980 which was prior to initial building energy standards which had outlined minimally required building energy performance. Meanwhile, the annual replacement rate of existing buildings by new buildings is only around 1.0–3.0%. Thus, in order to achieve a significant reduction in building energy use, there is a direction to adopt net-zero energy buildings. However, the economic challenge to achieve such revolutionary results presents significant challenge in retrofitting existing buildings. This has created a need to explore the most cost-effective way to design and optimize commercial retrofit buildings in different climates in the US.

To reduce the rate of climate change and negative environmental impacts of the built environment, it is essential for building energy simulation processes to be an integral part of the design process, which results in the more energy-efficient buildings. Building performance simulations should be used to investigate various design options and quantify the energy impacts of design decisions at the early design stages. However, there are not that many simulation software programs that are integrated with the architectural design tools, making the energy modeling process more time- consuming and error prone. This results in the analysis process being postponed to later stages of the design process, when most of the critical decisions (such as building orientation, massing, form, etc.) are already made. Another critical aspect during the design and energy analysis processes is to consider climate change and its impacts on the current and the future weather condition, rather than relying on the historical weather data. To do so, prediction of the future weather condition, which consequently affects the energy performance of the buildings, should be considered during the energy analysis process.

One critical aspect to consider in retrofitting of existing buildings, is how to sustainably retrofit historically significant buildings which also require preservation of their original design intent, such as unique architectural features and materials. However, the current historic preservation process does not have to meet minimum energy performance criteria in the United States. Likewise, little research has been done on sustainable methods for historic preservation, such as quantifying the present state thermal and moisture performance and utilizing that information to inform delicate retrofit strategies that can improve performance of these buildings while maintaining their original design intent. Reusing and retrofitting historically significant buildings, as opposed to demolishing them and building new buildings, is not only more environmentally sustainable, but ethically essential for preserving cultural heritage. Sustainably performing retrofits can ensure long-term energy performance, and improve occupant comfort, health, and a general sense of well-being. Additionally, new building construction requires a higher quantity of new materials, while retrofitted buildings conserve the embodied energy of the original structure, diverging from the potential demolition and construction waste from landfills when buildings are demolished.

At the ECo GSS panel discussion session, the focus will be on the two major topics of energy-efficiency in the new and existing buildings and the impacts of climate change on the built environment. The discussion will get narrower to the role of energy performance analysis during the architectural design process (concerning new buildings) and historical and net-zero retrofit measures (addressing the existing buildings stock).

Novel climatic conditions and increasingly severe disturbance events due to climate change urge us to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies to avoid irreversible losses of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Forests present a unique opportunity to study adaptive management approaches that could also mitigate atmospheric carbon dioxide levels through sequestration and storage. However, we need to examine if and how these approaches can balance multiple goals including forest resilience and carbon mitigation, as well as other vital ecosystem services. Although forest managers typically use the promotion of structural complexity as a target for adaptive management, functional diversity (distribution of functional traits across species and individuals) may provide an improved management objective for competing goals of long-term carbon storage and forest resilience. I will investigate how forest carbon relates to these forest diversity indices across a range of silvicultural approaches in the northeastern U.S. Specifically, I will identify functional traits related to productivity in northeastern temperate forests, quantify the values of these traits across individuals within recently harvested Continuous Forest Inventory (CFI) sites, and test for their association with site-specific structural complexity and carbon stocks by leveraging existing CFI data. I will then use a model of forest dynamics (changes in forest composition, density, and size over time) to predict future forest resilience and carbon stocks under global change scenarios and assess the efficacy of silvicultural strategies to meet multiple goals. This study will integrate theoretical and applied forest ecology to inform adaptive management aimed at maximizing forest carbon storage in the Northeast.

Invasive plant species decrease agricultural productivity, threaten native biodiversity and have numerous other widespread environmental and economic consequences. These many costs and damages associated with invasives are best minimized by proactively identifying species of high risk and intervening before invasions take hold. Therefore, accurately predicting which plant species will invade next has become a topic of great interest in ecology and global biogeography. Despite extensive existing research which has thoroughly examined the biological traits of plants for predictive patterns, a generalized method of predicting future invasives that is effective for numerous species and locations has yet to be created. However, biogeographic traits of the native ranges of plant species represent a suite of characteristics that have not yet been tested for their predictive power in reference to invasiveness. We compiled a dataset of biogeographic variables associated with the native ranges of plant species in the continental United States and then used regression and machine learning techniques to determine whether any of these characteristics could be used to substantially improve invasive predictions. Our preliminary results suggest that some biogeographic traits (mainly those which represent the extent of anthropogenic influence and propagule pressure) may be useful in predicting which plants will become invasive in the future.

“In my practicum work with the UMass Clean Energy Extension and Massachusetts’ Green Communities program I have been evaluating energy use by the cities and towns of Holyoke, Bridgewater, and Tewksbury. By applying to be a Green Community, they commit to reducing their municipal energy consumption by 20%, but this has been a challenge for many communities to reach. Through interviews and analyzing energy data, we investigate how energy is used and managed in the municipalities’ facilities. From there we are able to give community leaders a clear picture of their energy use and how to prioritize their efforts to meet their goal. But municipalities often encounter difficulties in reaching the 20% goal that can depend on a host of issues, including: city infrastructure; engaged and knowledgeable staffing; willing leadership; clear communication; and funding. Each of the municipalities I have analyzed are unique in their structure and funding, and with this in mind, I have been evaluating the diversity of challenges they face. To successfully meet their energy reduction goals, it’s imperative for municipalities to include: an individual with institutional knowledge; a local committee, project manager, or leadership that keeps the projects on task; as well as funding, including state or federal incentives, that makes a project more affordable. With the additional challenges of grant funding cycles, permit approvals, and construction schedules, it’s critical for municipalities to engage the necessary partners and dedicate the proper resources to follow through on their energy reduction goals.”

Linear regression analysis is one the most common methods for weather-normalizing energy data, where energy vs. degree-days are plotted, quantifying the impacts of outside temperature on buildings’ energy use. However, this approach solely considers dry-bulb temperature, while other climate variables are ignored. In addition, depending on buildings’ internal loads, weather impact can be less influential. In this study, several existing buildings from different categories, all located on the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus and exposed to the same weather conditions in a heating-dominated climate, were analyzed. For all cases, regression of steam use on heating degree-days and floor-area normalized steam data were used, investigating applicability of the former when the latter changes. It was found that internal loads can skew steam consumption, depending on the building functionality, making the effect of degree-days negligible. For laboratory-type buildings, besides heating and domestic hot water production, steam is also used for scientific experiments. Here, daily occupancy percentage, even during weekends, was higher than that of other buildings, indicating the intensity of experiments performed. This impacted steam consumption, resulting in higher floor-area-normalized steam usage. In these cases, steam use did not provide an outstanding correlation to heating degree-days. Whereas, for cases with other functionality-types and lower floor-area normalized steam, coefficients of determination in regressions were high. This study concludes that even for buildings located in the same climate, depending on building functionality and occupancy schedule, multivariate linear regression can provide more accurate analysis, rather than linear regression of steam on heating degree-days.

“Buildings consume 44% of the energy in the U.S. New construction buildings now have to abide by energy codes, however, half of the U.S. buildings were constructed before 1980, when building energy standards were not as stringent. The annual replacement rate of existing buildings by new buildings is only around 1.0–3.0%. Meanwhile, commercial buildings account for 19% of the total energy used by buildings in the U.S. This study focuses on net-zero cost optimization of existing commercial office buildings in the U.S. The paper presents a methodology that was developed for optimizing net-zero energy commercial retrofit buildings using simulation-based optimization. The methodology was tested considering existing commercial buildings in a heating-dominated climate (Boston), where the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) data was used to identify characteristics of typical buildings found in this climate. The multi-parameter optimization considered various energy-efficiency retrofit design measures, including building envelope retrofit, HVAC systems as well as various sources of renewable energy. The results identify the cost-optimal design solutions for five common building shapes in three different orientations. The study is expected to be a guide during the conceptual design phase for designers and builders, and to help policy managers and energy efficiency program administrators in identifying future energy-efficiency measures and renewable energy technologies to achieve net-zero energy targets.

Connectivity is a vital landscape component, linking dispersal to the emergent dynamics and persistence of spatially structured populations. Functional measures of connectivity seek to incorporate aspects of landscape structure and animal movement to describe ecologically meaningful connectedness at the landscape and the local scale. Despite this focus on function, traditional measures of landscape connectivity assume it is a static or solely structural property of the landscape, hence abstracting out the underlying spatiotemporal population dynamics. Connectivity is, arguably, a dynamic property of landscapes, and is inherently dynamically related to the spatial distribution of individuals and populations across the landscape. Using a large scale, long-term time-series of occupancy data from a metapopulation of water voles (Arvicola amphibius), we explored several facets of how to increase the functional scope of connectivity metrics. First, we tested competing hypotheses on how to consider the dynamic nature of connectivity and its implications for accurately recovering population dynamics. Through iterative relaxation of common connectivity metric assumptions, we provide empirical evidence that demographic weighting and allowing temporal variation in connectivity metrics are important to accurately describe metapopulation dynamics. Second, we applied these common assumptions deployed in connectivity modeling to calculate metapopulation capacity. We show that they produce variation in the metric, as well as increasing amounts of noise, an oft overlooked component of the ecologically important, connectivity-driven metric. Thus, we argue that the concept of connectivity and its potential applications would benefit from recognizing inherent spatiotemporal variation in connectivity that is explicitly linked to landscape and underlying ecological state variables.

Transitioning the U.S. energy system towards renewable sources of electricity generation is critical to reducing global CO2 emissions. Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is a promising source of renewable energy. Federal and state mandates, incentives, and subsidies increase solar PV adoption and hasten the energy transition. However, these policies are designed with adoption as the end goal and fail to account for other streams of value. Our research investigates the distributional impacts of the Massachusetts Solar Renewable Energy Certificate (SREC) program. We explore how the financial returns to SREC participants differ by system ownership status (leased or owned), income, and race. We find that financial returns for owned systems are 300% higher on average than for leased systems. We also find that low-income and nonwhite households receive a disproportionately low share of the financial returns, mostly because these households tend to lease their solar panels. Our results suggest that the form of participation in the solar market (leasing or owning) has significant implications for the distribution of financial returns. Leasing is promoted as a mechanism for increasing low-income households’ adoption, but we find that leasing is also associated with significantly lower returns. Policymakers interested in prioritizing equity in the energy transition should account for this disparity when designing solar adoption incentives, especially those targeted towards low-income and non-white communities.

The USDA Forest Service’s, State and Private Forestry program administers multiple landowner assistance programs to assist private forest owners, including the Forest Legacy Program (FLP) and the Forest Stewardship Program (FSP). Through collaborations with state forestry agencies and other partners, these programs aim to conserve working forests and increase sustainable management to help ensure the continued supply of ecosystem services ranging from timber supply to recreation to carbon sequestration. Private forests, which account for 60% of the forest land in the U.S., are integral to the supply of these ecosystem services and many of these lands are facing challenges from development pressures, wildfires, invasive species, and other vectors that are having deleterious impacts. The goal of this project is to quantify the economic and ecosystem service contributions emanating from forested lands participating in the FLP and FSP programs. IMPLAN and InVEST are the primary modeling systems used to generate the estimates. IMPLAN is an input/output modelling system that estimates how economic contributions emanating from timber harvesting, recreational spending, and other activities flow through regional economies. InVEST, or Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs, uses a combination of spatial and tabular data to estimate the value of carbon. Quantifying and estimating economic contributions and ecosystem services of properties participating in landowner assistance programs provides a framework for understanding how they could benefit and assist the private woodland owner and their surrounding communities.

Winter lake drawdowns are a common management tool for many former mill ponds where lake surface levels are lowered during the winter to expose shoreline and destroy nuisance aquatic vegetation and protect in-lake structures from ice damage. To manage lake water levels, dam releases are increased during the fall and decreased during the spring, flipping the natural hydrologic cycle. However, the rate and volume of drawdown for each lake is unique leading to a variety of flow conditions and unknown impacts on downstream ecology. This study aims to quantify downstream changes in hydrology, thermal regime, and benthic macroinvertebrates and periphyton in response to altered flows in Massachusetts’ streams. We predict altered flows, including decreased variation, frequency, and magnitude of floods, and altered stream temperatures will lead to changes in macro-invertebrate community composition and periphyton growth, while rapid increases of river stage (as lakes refill during large storms) will lead to exclusion of some macro-invertebrate taxa closer to the dam.

Green crabs (Carcinus maenas) are a globally dispersed invasive species that are known to alter their estuarine environment through disruption to vegetated marsh banks and intertidal predation. Several studies have documented the role of green crab behavior in these impacts. Yet, knowledge of estuarine habitat use and how this changes based on season and sex remains unknown, and dependent on identifying changes in green crab abundances and distribution. We therefore used acoustic telemetry tracking as a novel tool along with water quality monitoring data to identify individual crab movement patterns and correlations with environmental factors over a seasonal time frame. We tagged 11 females and 11 males over two deployments from July 2018–April 2019 in a Gulf of Maine estuary. Our results indicate that both females and males remained localized to very specific areas within the estuary and that temperature was strongly correlated with movements. These results identify individual movements that contribute to green crab habitat use within an estuary and are valuable to resource managers currently evaluating mitigation strategies.

Major environmental issues such as climate change are unique as their most destructive consequences will occur in the future. This temporal distance from the present increases temporal discounting, the tendency for individuals to be less concerned and less likely to take action to prevent the emergence of issues (such as climate change) that will not influence them in the present. Extant research has thoroughly investigated the factors that can combat temporal discounting (e.g., Wade-Benzoni & Tost, 2009). Such factors include fairness, concerns about one’s legacy, a predisposition towards feeling grateful, increased perceived continuity with one’s future self and increased consideration of future consequences. However, although this research is extensive in intergenerational reciprocity in general, it is fairly nascent in the intergenerational environmental decision making domain. In our talk we will discuss recent findings from our lab which apply these principles to investigate their influence on intergenerational environmental decision making. Our research suggests that gratitude, legacy motives and perceived responsibility towards future generations are associated with increased tendencies to engage in daily conservation behaviors, environmental concern, environmental movement activism and belief in and concern for climate change. We conclude by highlighting key future avenues for furthering research in this domain.

With the northeastern region of the United States projected to be a plant invasion hotspot due to range shifts related to climate change, it is important to analyze and identify sleeper species which are nonnative naturalized species that may become invasive in the near future strictly due to climate. My project specifically focuses on analyzing, identifying, and assessing these northeastern plant sleeper species in hopes to develop strong information to be available to create management actions for ecosystems vulnerable to the emergence of sleeper species.

“Within the last couple of centuries, people largely took care of their dead without third party intervention and often buried their loved ones on private property. After the advent of embalming during the Civil War, funeral services proliferated and began to routinely offer these services; however, embalming fluids have been observed as a risk to public health and the environment. Similarly, caskets, grave liners, and burial vaults are the accepted way cemeteries bury the dead, but they tax natural resources. Traditional burial is on the decline, though, due to high costs and shrinking cemeteries. Cremation has recently surpassed that of traditional burial in the U.S., but it is not without its limitations. Despite advanced filtering technology, emissions from cremation can include toxins like mercury vapors that pose public health risks. Cremation also releases significant amounts of CO2 annually. When factoring in countries that almost solely use cremation as disposition, emissions contribute a small percentage to climate change. Natural alternatives offer innovative approaches to these existing mortuary practices. “Green” burials have been established since the 1990s and are the leading sustainable death care option. They generally cost less, forgo embalming, utilize biodegradable materials, and consume less resources than traditional burial. They also double as a conservation method. As an alternative to cremation, alkaline hydrolysis is less energy-intensive and uses chemicals to break down bodies. Though a myriad of other alternatives exist, these disposition methods serve as direct alternatives to traditional methods and pose as pivotal examples of future mortuary practices. “

With shark populations showing signs of recovery in the United States, there is increased potential for shark-angler interactions and depredation in recreational fisheries. This can result in increased mortality for target fish species, changes in shark behavior, and changes in angler attitudes towards sharks. The impacts of depredation in recreational fisheries are dramatically understudied compared to commercial fisheries. Furthermore, sharks can be a polarizing topic among anglers, with some perceiving them as a threat to their catch and others valuing their ecosystem importance. To better understand angler perceptions and reactions to depredation, we distributed an online survey to North American anglers from July 2019 – January 2020, receiving over 500 responses from anglers and professional fishing guides. Overall, 77% of respondents experienced at least one depredation event in the last five years, with tunas (Thunnus spp.), king mackerel (Scombermorus cavalla), and snappers (Lutjanus spp.) lost most frequently. Survey results reveal that emotional and behavioral responses to depredation were dependent upon whether or not an angler was a fishing guide. Guides tended to feel more extreme negative emotions, including sadness and anger. Guides were significantly more likely to target and harvest sharks in response to depredation, while non-guides reported no change in behavior. Guides overwhelmingly reported that depredation had a negative effect on their livelihood with 86% having experienced depredation with clients. Overall, these results can be used to inform strategies to reduce conflict among stakeholder groups, particularly anglers, guides, and those advocating for shark conversation.

Salt marshes are gaining increased attention due to their ability to sequester and retain massive amounts of “blue carbon,” a colloquial term for the carbon stored as organic matter in intertidal sediments. Soil carbon plays a critical role in climate regulation and provides the energetic foundation upon which all living organisms rely. The quantification of soil organic carbon (SOC) can be used as a justification for ecosystem conservation and as an indicator of soil health (i.e., the capacity of a soil to maintain environmental quality and plant/animal health). But what does SOC really mean when used as a proxy for soil health in coastal wetlands? Which soil properties are associated with SOC? To provide insight into these questions, I have performed a meta-analysis of properties related to soil health in salt marsh ecosystems. The present study aims to determine the nature of healthy wetlands when SOC is used as an indicator of soil health. The results will be used to inform management strategies focused on conserving SOC, which will ultimately support the ecological, environmental, and social benefits associated with carbon-rich soils.

The goal of this proposed research is to use the urban heat island effect as a proxy for how birds will respond to increased temperatures due to climate change. Climate change increases temperatures in urban environments, especially areas with higher percentages of impervious surfaces (e.g buildings and roads). I will study metabolic and respiratory responses to heat to understand how increased temperature causes stress in these species by collecting blood samples from urban birds. The focal species is House Wrens in the Springfield, Massachusetts, urbanized ecosystem. How does the temperature increase occurring in the urban heat island affect adult or nestling physiological stress response variables with a focus on two species with similar physiology

The greatest challenge in classifying salt marsh vegetation based on hyperspectral imagery is to separate the different height classes of a single species, S. alterniflora, both from each other and from mud. Erik Sotka at the College of Charleston and Randall Hughes at Northeastern University have been surveying three sites in Charleston for flower phenology, and measured plant height and density to detect repeated, independent evolution of genetic differentiation between tall- and short-form Spartina. I was able to take their data and use remote sensing to compare the correlation with DEM, MLLW, and NDVI.