With the tremendous number of golf courses that have been built in the last half-century and those that are slated to be built in the near future, the use of pesticides in course management has become an important environmental issue. By examining the management strategies of two golf courses, the Yale Golf Course in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Weymouth Course in Medina, Ohio, as well as researching ways in which pesticide use can be decreased, some surprising conclusions have been drawn. While any pesticide use presents some obvious hazards, controlled use by trained applicators presents low risks to both humans and the surrounding environment. Following the guidelines of pesticide reduction strategies like Integrated Pest Management, as well as utilizing new techniques of biological control and organic substitutes, can help minimize synthetic chemical use. Before pesticide use can be drastically reduced or eliminated altogether, however, golfers must change their expectations. Hence, education and communication for both golf course superintendents and members about pesticides, their uses, and their effects, are essential. Until the golfer economically supports a movement to more "organic" golf courses, pesticides will remain at the heart of golf course maintenance.

For my senior thesis in Studies in the Environment I am investigating the effect of housing design on energy use for a large housing development (10,000 people). The results of my project recommend a specific configuration of buildings to use energy most efficiently. The three configurations I am studying are: many (~100) small buildings each housing a small number of people, several (~10) medium sized buildings each holding more people, and one large building housing all 10,000 people. As well as studying the energy requirements for each of these three configurations, I am investigating the potential energy savings for each if they are designed for maximum energy efficiency.

The building simulation program Energy-10 along with case studies of existing housing developments has generated the data for my project. Energy-10 calculates energy needs for buildings based on location, use patterns, and design parameters (construction materials, HVAC system, etc.) and will also simulate the same building with energy saving products and design practices (low-e windows, passive solar design, daylighting, etc.). By evaluating a sample building for each configuration, the most energy efficient one may be chosen. Once the most efficient configuration is found, other energy saving products can be implemented to further reduce the energy needs for the development. The results of my project show that over one half for a population of 10,000 people can reduce energy use.

Through my Mechanical Engineering senior project I have constructed a model of a solar energy system that could be used to power this development instead of using fossil fuels. By using photovoltaic panels and fuel cells, electricity can be used much more efficiently than conventional power plants with none of the harmful byproducts.

The Massachusetts Military Reservation is a 22,000 acre federal facility that covers the highest elevation on the Cape Cod peninsula. Past training activities at the site have resulted in pervasive contamination of Cape Cod's sole-source aquifer and its drinking water supply. Efforts to remediate this site under the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (Superfund) have been wracked with scientific, legal, and political uncertainty and conflict. The result has been high degrees of cost and inefficiency. Questions regarding adverse health impacts due to the contamination add an additional dimension. This analysis examines the science and technical expertise on which remediation efforts depend; the legal precedent on which the US Environmental Prevention Agency has based its regulation; and the political interaction between regulators, military officials, and local citizens. The results raise questions regarding ethics and the distribution of risk. They also seek to understand the cost to public health, to the environment, and ultimately to the taxpayers.

I suggest that current policy does not adequately address the uncertainty, which is fundamental to the remediation process. It also leaves little room for negotiation or adaptation. As a result, remediation decisions are not always well reasoned or effective.

In March of 1998, after an absence of over twenty years, wolves returned to the Southwest. Intense persecution by humans made wolves extremely rare in Arizona and New Mexico by 1960. Not until the mid-1970’s, however, did hunters finally succeed in killing the "last" of the Southwest wolves, or so they thought. In 1998, a reintroduction plan mandated by the Endangered Species Act brought wolves back to their former forest haunts. Their return to the wilds of Arizona and New Mexico illustrates a contested shift in control over public land use and management. Examining the debates, controversies, and tensions provoked by reintroduction, provide us insight into ranchers' intense struggles to retain control over the land. As wolf-human relationships changed from the mid-nineteenth century, ranchers alone retain a primarily hostile perception of these predatory animals. In contrast, professional conservationists, sportsmen, and an increasingly environmentally aware public all helped to discredit the notion that predators such as wolves should be exterminated. Not only did the ecological importance of wolves gain scientific recognition, but wolves also became culturally important as mystical and romantic symbols of wilderness. Most ranchers, however, remain uninfluenced by the general public's growing veneration for wolves. For livestock owners, antipathy still best describes their feelings for the canine. In the era of reintroduction, that animosity is not inspired by any innate characteristics of wolves but by the greater political contest over the land that the wolves' return symbolizes.

Currently, 90% of water consumed in the United States goes for the irrigation of nearly 50 million acres in 17 western states. Yet the marginal net economic benefits from agricultural uses are lower, sometimes substantially lower, than the marginal net benefits of water use by municipalities and industry. A transfer of water from irrigated agriculture to these other uses would raise net benefits, but regulatory restrictions have inhibited these transfers.

The objective of this work is to examine the allocational inefficiency costs associated with the way water is currently divided between urban and agricultural users in the western United States. These inefficiency costs are examined in terms of a recent policy development, the purchase of water rights by the city of San Diego from the Imperial Irrigation District (IID) in Southern California. Under the agreement, the IID will transfer 200,000 acre-feet of conserved Colorado River water to Metropolitan Water District (MWD) users in the city of San Diego over the next 35 years.

Using data on agricultural production and returns between 1987-1997 and multiple regression analyses, the agricultural production function for farmers in III) is estimated. This function is then used to derive curves for the marginal value of inputs to agriculture, particularly water. The marginal value curve of water for municipal users in the MWD is derived from previous studies of water demand.

The water demand curves for both III) and MWD are then used to perform an economic efficiency analysis of the water transfer agreement. The analysis examines the change in net benefits for both III) and MWD water users as a result of the trade. Furthermore, the study estimates the economically efficient allocation of water for agricultural and municipal users if restrictions on water-transfers were lifted. Economic efficiency is achieved when marginal net benefits for water users have been equalized, which is not the case at present.

Alternative concerns of the agreement such as environmental impacts on riparian woodlands and reduced recharges to the groundwater aquifer are also discussed. It is concluded that increased facilitation of water-transfers will improve economic efficiency in consumptive water use.

Planned communities are mixed-use real estate developments built according to one pre-determined plan that incorporates infrastructure needs. This type of development has been touted as a potential solution to perceived suburban sprawl. Additional benefits of planned community development may include greater profits for their builders and a better relationship to the land. This paper seeks to determine whether planned communities are indeed financially and environmentally viable by closely examining four such developments in the D.C. metropolitan area: Reston, Virginia; Columbia, Maryland; Kentlands, Maryland; and Clopperis Mill, Maryland. Financial viability is analyzed by detailing the financial histories of each community, paying specific attention to cash flow and increase in land value. Environmental viability is analyzed using Geographic Information Systems technology and four desirable characteristics identified by landscape ecologists: a few large patches of natural space; a high level of connectivity between natural patches; protected riparian corridors; and a mix of natural patches throughout the suburban matrix.

Analysis of the four case studies showed that planned communities can be profitable ventures, but this potential is severely limited by real estate cycles, financing arrangements, product design, and business relationships. Profit for planned communities often takes the form of increased land value instead of immediate cumulative income, so a development scheme that takes advantage of this increase inland value may prove more viable.

Despite extensive rhetoric, planned communities do not actually offer a markedly better relationship with the land. In comparison with the landscape patterns formed by standard suburban development, the planned communities in this study were slightly better in terms of riparian corridor protection and heterogeneity, but were equal or worse to standard suburban development in the provision of large patches and connectivity between patches. No comparisons between the planned communities and standard suburban tract held true for every community. Instead, the communities showed as much variation between one another as they did when compared to standard suburbia. Overall, Columbia and Clopperis Mill were more environmentally viable landscapes than Reston or Kentlands.

The primary benefit of this project comes in the findings concerning the financial and environmental viability of planned communities. These are issues that must be explored if planned communities are to be seriously considered as a better form of urban growth. It is also possible to make some links between the financial and environmental sides of real estate development. The planned communities included in this study demonstrate three possible attitudes to open space: open space as land lost for more valuable development; open space as land unsuited for development; and open space as a means of increasing land value.

I grew up in Boulder County, Colorado, along the beautiful front range of the Rocky Mountains in what is now one of the fastest-growing regions of the country in terms of residential and commercial development. Thanks to the shifting agenda of Vice President Albert Gore, the American political community has begun to recognize the environmental as well as social consequences of residential growth and urban sprawl. Witnessing the rapid transformation of my local landscape inspired me to propose for my senior project a documentary film addressing these consequences. Specifically, I wanted to investigate how different land-use decisions were being made across the county, how much that decision-making was influenced by the environmental ethics of the residents, leaders, and activists in its varying communities, and finally, what are the social, environmental and economic consequences, not only of the scale and types of developments being built, but also of the rate at which they are being built. I learned, unsurprisingly, that the issues are inextricably complex; the local communities have differing ideas about the problems and possibilities of growth rooted in their independent histories and played out in their various approaches to development. I also found a member of my family at every turn of history and politics and walked away with a personal genealogy of land development in Boulder County.

This study presents an international comparison of the implications of ownership patterns in oil-dependent states. The investigation is based upon the counter-intuitive observation that seemingly wealthy petrostates in fact exhibit uncharacteristic levels of economic, political, and environmental turmoil. Negative implications are not the inevitable consequence of oil wealth per se, but rather the result of decision-making patterns common to petrostates. As a proposed explanation of this phenomenon, this theory begins with the assumption that ownership of resource rents in petrostates is 1) concentrated in a relatively small sector of the population and 2) precariously sustained by that sector. The resultant correlation is that the divergent preferences of owners and non-owners are irreconcilable, as concentration of resource ownership concentrates allocative power as well. Ownership concentration means that owners tend to collect benefits from oil-dependency, whereas non-owners tend to bear the inevitable costs of production. This observation evidenced by both empirical and anecdotal evidence, renders traditional methods of cost-benefit analysis, risk assessment, and resource allocation non-viable in the petrostate context. On a collective societal level, utility is not maximized; to the contrary, inefficiency plagues three identifiable arenas - the economic arena, the political arena, and the natural environment. In each of these three areas, concentration of resource ownership precludes efficient balancing of acquired benefits with assumed risks and opportunity costs.