Browsing by Subject "Mitigation"
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Item Case Studies on the Effects of Climate Change on Water, Livestock and Hurricanes(2014-07-25) Yu, Chin-HsienThis dissertation investigates the agricultural impacts of climate change in three ways addressing water implications of mitigation strategies, feedlot livestock productivity vulnerability induced by climate change and dust and welfare effects of altered tropical storm frequency and intensity. Even though mitigation alleviates GHG emissions and ultimate climate change, it also has externalities and can alter water quantity and quality. The first essay focuses on examining the water quality and quantity effects of mitigation strategies. This is done using quantile regression and sector modeling. The quantile regression result examined land use change and showed that an increase in grassland significantly decreases water yield with changes in forest land having mixed effects. In the sector modeling we find that water quality is degraded under most mitigation alternatives when carbon prices are low but is improved with higher carbon prices. Also water quantity slightly increases under lower carbon prices but significantly decreases under higher carbon prices. The second essay examines the effects of climate change and dust on feedlot cattle performance plus the benefits of dust control adaption. A linear panel data model is used to see the relationship between climate and dust with cattle sale weight. We find that hotter temperatures and increased dust levels generally worsen cattle live sale weight. Dynamic programming is then used to estimate the benefits of dust control. The results show that dust control activity is beneficial. Additionally, climate change is found to be damaging and a factor that reduces dust control benefits. The last essay applies a demand model to investigate the economic consequences of tropical storm strikes on the vegetable market in Taiwan. Findings are that tropical storm strikes raise vegetable prices and in turn cause consumer loss and producer gain. Also higher intensity storms generally have larger impacts than lower intensity storms. Finally possible climate change induced intensified tropical storms or increased storm frequencies were found to result in a more severe welfare loss.Item Communicating Carbon Capture and Storage Technologies: Opportunities and Constraints across Media(2011-10-21) Feldpausch-Parker, Andrea MarieIn 2003, the U.S. Department of Energy created regional joint governmentindustry partnerships as part of a larger incentive to develop carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technologies to address the issue of climate change. As part of their missions, DOE and their partners are responsible for creating and distributing public outreach and education materials discussing climate change and CCS technologies. In this dissertation, I sought to evaluate processes for communicating CCS to the public by examining different pathways including direct communication through DOE and regional partnership websites (Chapter I), news media from states with energy projects proposed or underway (Chapter II), and alternative strategies for communication such as an online educational game for youth (Chapter IV). My study also included focus groups in communities where CCS technologies have been piloted to determine public knowledge and acceptance of CCS (Chapter III). In Chapter I, a critique of DOE and partnership websites, I found authority to be a dominant theme throughout DOE and partnership website content, often incorporating technical jargon beyond laymen understanding and, in many cases, targeting industry audiences over the intended public. In Chapter II, I analyzed newspaper articles from the states of Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana and Texas using Luhmann?s social theory and the SPEED framework to determine how CCS has been framed by the media. Findings indicated that political, legal, economic and technical frames dominated, with emphasis on benefits, rather than risks of adoption. I also found that CCS reporting increased dramatically as pilot projects started to come on line. In my study of community acceptance of CCS in the American Southwest, Chapter III, I found that participants focused their conversations on industry and government knowledge, risks and unknowns of CCS and processes for decision-making. These topics also provided an impetus for caution. Skepticism and distrust of government entities and corporations influenced participant willingness to accept storage risks to mitigate for CO2 emissions. After open discussion of pros and cons associated with the technology, however, participants were more willing to consider CCS as an option, indicating a need to talk through the issue and to come to their own conclusions. Finally, in focus groups used to evaluate of an online game titled The Adventures of Carbon Bond, I found that it was difficult for participants to discuss environmental issues with students that are viewed as contentious (i.e. climate change and CCS), but that gaming was a valuable tool for addressing such sensitive subjects. Overall, these four chapters demonstrate that communication of CCS has only reached portions of the public and has not consistently connected with those potentially impacted by the technology. They also show that CCS must overcome numerous barriers to deployment, foremost of which is public acceptance.Item Development of an index to rate the completeness and quality of mitigation project definition(2010-05) Muramatsu, Tadahisa; Borcherding, John D.; Menches, Cindy L.In the summer of 2008, two hurricanes made landfall along the Texas coast causing billions of dollars in damage. Texas received presidential disaster declarations, which resulted in the state receiving over $350 million in hazard mitigation funds. Over 500 requests for mitigation projects were submitted to the government from communities impacted. Not all requested projects could be funded. As a result, those communities that submitted requests for well-defined mitigation projects were the primary beneficiaries of the federal mitigation funds. To better understand the factors that characterize a “welldefined” mitigation project, this study developed an index to rate the completeness and quality of mitigation project definitions. The study incorporated concepts from research on quality community planning and from project definition rating methods. The rating tool consists of detailed descriptions of the project scope elements along with a scoring method for the completeness and quality of the project’s definition. The rating tool and the detailed descriptions help to develop a “well-defined” mitigation project definition as well as to evaluate it.Item Local Response to Global Climate Change: The Role of Local Development Plans in Climate Change Management(2011-10-21) Grover, HimanshuClimate change is possibly the greatest threat facing human society in this century. The response to this challenge has been dominated by international negotiations for controlling greenhouse gas emissions. More recently there are efforts by the international community to engage other levels of governance in mitigation and adaptation response. While the framework for international action on climate change continues to evolve, there is mounting pressure from researchers to include cities as significant actors in the global climate change management strategy. Cities are centers of production and consumption in our society and as such will be crucial for global climate change management strategy. Despite these links, demands for consideration of climate change management issues in local policy making have remained a research rhetoric and have not yet translated into planning action. This gap between planning research and practice is probably due to lack of evidence based research on this issue. This study fills in this gap and provides empirical evidence supporting the key role of local development plans in climate change management. Specifically, in the first step, this research investigates the influence of local development plans on climate change mitigation by comparing change in carbon dioxide emissions in groups of cities with and without plans. Thereafter, climate change management capacity in local development plans is analyzed through policy analysis. Finally, this research study examines the effect of plan quality on the change in carbon dioxide emissions, while controlling for socio-economic, landscape and policy characteristics. Results of this study support the demands for using local development plans as tools for climate change management. This study identifies numerous planning policies in local development plans with potential to influence climate change management. The analysis also reveals wide variation in the quality of the climate change management policies. For example, policies related to site planning regulations and transportation are fairly detailed, whereas acquisition and incentive/disincentive tools are not. The detailed review of plan quality suggests that although development plans have the potential to significantly influence climate change, there is need for further improvement, especially of the overall plan implementation capacity. Finally, the research findings show that the quality of climate change management planning policies in local development plans have a significant impact on a communities? emissions. Communities with better plan quality had significantly lower increase in per-capita emissions over the period of analysis. The study also discovered significant effects of wealth, travel behavior, occupation base and state policy on the change in emissions. Based on the research findings this study recommends evolving integrated local development policies that focus on dual goals of climate change management and sustainable development. Further studies are recommended to examine the opportunities and challenges to use of local development plans for climate change management.Item Mitigation in Spanish discourse : social and cognitive motivations, linguistic analyses, and effects on interaction and interlocutors(2010-05) Czerwionka, Lori Ann; Koike, Dale April; Streeck, J�; Beaver, David; Kelm, Orlando; Hensey, FritzMitigation is the modification of language in response to social or cognitive challenges (stressors) in contexts of linguistic interaction (Martinovski, Mao, Gratch, & Marsella 2005). Previous mitigation research has been largely from social perspectives, addressing the word or utterance levels of language. This dissertation presents an empirical study of mitigating language resulting from both a cognitive stressor (degree of uncertainty) and social stressor (degree of imposition) in Spanish discourse, and the impacts of mitigation on interaction and interlocutors. The tripartite approach includes a: (1) quantitative analysis of discourse markers associated with mitigation (speaker-discourse, speaker-listener, and epistemic markers); (2) qualitative discourse analysis, relying on concepts from the Conversation Analysis framework; and (3) qualitative analysis of interlocutors’ perceptions of mitigation, using metalinguistic conversations. The results are discussed considering prior research on mitigation, politeness theories, and Clark’s (2006) model of ‘language use’ to address information types, interlocutor roles, and mutual knowledge. In addition, Caffi and Janney’s (1994) ‘anticipatory schemata’ and Pinker’s (2007) social psychological perspective of indirect language inform the theoretical framework. Results indicate that: (1) Mitigation devices vary depending on contextual factors prompting mitigation, significantly fewer speaker-listener markers are shown as evidence of mitigation, and epistemic markers, which are commonly analyzed mitigation devices, are infrequent overall in these data. These results provide evidence against the assumption that mitigation is associated with increased use of linguistic devices; (2) Two mitigating discourse structures were found, depending on the degree of uncertainty. Within contexts of high-imposition, the Co-reconstruction structure (CRS) is found in contexts with uncertainty and the Non-linear structure (NLS) is in contexts with certainty; and (3) The listeners’ metalinguistic comments indicate that the CRS, compared to the NLS, is preferred. Also, the results indicate how interlocutors address cognitive, social, and emotional stressors in interaction. Considering all analyses, a unifying definition of mitigation in discourse is provided. This phenomenon is characterized as the postponement of both confirmed knowledge and negotiation of the interlocutor relationship. This research contributes the first experimental investigation of mitigation as the result of cognitive and social stressors, and also the first systematic analysis of mitigation in Spanish discourse.Item Monitoring of an outdoor exposure site : evaluating different treatment methods for mitigation of alkali-silica reactivity in hardened concrete(2011-05) Resendez, Yadhira Aracely; Folliard, Kevin J.; Drimalas, ThanoThis research project, funded by the Federal Highway Administration, entails the construction of an outdoor exposure site in order to evaluate various methods for mitigating alkali-silica reaction (ASR) in hardened concrete. The exposure site, built at the Concrete Durability Center at the University of Texas at Austin J.J. Pickle Research campus, included a series of bridge deck, column and slab elements. The specimens were cast in 2008, allowed to expand to predetermined expansion levels and then treated with various mitigation measures, after which the specimens were monitored for expansion, humidity, and deterioration.Item Sustainable disaster resilience : incorporating hazard mitigation methodologies into LEED for neighborhood development(2010-05) Gordon, Phillip Michael; Paterson, Robert G.; Butler, KentIn this professional report LEED for neighborhood development (LEED-ND) is analyzed through the lens of disaster resilience and mitigation. The new LEED-ND certification system recently created by the U.S. Green Building Council looks to be a popular method to create sustainable developments. LEED-ND as a system does not take hazards into account when certifying projects. Using HAZUS and hazard assessment methodologies LEED-ND is shown to do almost nothing to mitigate hazard losses. This is seen using the example of two hazard types (fire and earthquake). Since LEED-ND does not address hazards within the context of its system it is shown that LEED-ND is neither truly sustainable nor disaster resilient. Given the current trend of increasing hazard losses initiatives such as LEED-ND will have to address the issue of hazards moving forward.