Peter Isaacson, Geology & Geophysics '05
Summer Field Course in Geology at Indiana University

Judith Joffe-Block, History '04
Facilitating Transitions in Mexican Agriculture: Rediscovery of Traditional Knowledge and New Findings in Agroecology

Sparsh Khandeshi, Environmental Studies '04
Alpine Meadow Management in Sequoia / Kings Canyon National Parks with the White Mountain Research Station REU Program

Amy Kohout, History '04
Internship with Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness in Minneapolis

Katherine Lo, Anthropology '05
Internship with the International Society for Ecology and Culture in Ladakh, India

Christopher McPhee, Environmental Studies '04
Dendrochronology and Dendroclimatology in the Southwestern United States

Todd Montgomery, Environmental Studies '04
Issues in Land Management and Development: The Canyon Club Project in Jackson, Wyoming

Christine Pham,  Environmental Studies '04
The Nexus Between Environment and Development in Tanzania from a Food Security Perspective

Anya Raredon, Architecture '04
The Interaction of Environment and Vernacular Architecture in Mesoamerica

Michael Renda, Economics and Environmental Studies '04
Internship with the U.S. EPA in the Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation

Linda Shi, Environmental Studies and International Studies '04
Effect of Tourism in Sao Tome on Culture, Environment, and Economy of the Island

Katherine Sims, History of Art '04
Researching Clean Energy Alternatives with the Vermont Sierra Club

Marina Spitkovskaya, Environmental Studies and International Studies '04
Contamination, Health, and Injustice in Vieques, Puerto Rico

Elizabeth Turnell, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Track '04
Internship at the Marine Resources Center at Woods Hole

Rachel Wasser, Environmental Studies '04
Harnessing Capitalism: A Study of Women and the Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) Program in Botswana

Daniel Wei, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology '04
Genetic Examination of A. gambiae Species Complex: Understanding the Population Biology of the Main Vector of Malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa

Xizhou Zhou, Environmental Studies and International Studies '05
Internship with the World Wildlife Fund on the East Dongting Lake Wetland Conservation Project, China

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The scholarly investigation of the diversity and the unity of life on Earth has since its beginnings been entwined with the practical and applied inquiries of human medicine. From the combinatorial philosophy of this necessary alliance, the best scholars from both fields have molded their ideas. Darwin himself gained much of his knowledge of vertebrate anatomy from the two years which he spent in training for a medical degree. However, biology and medicine differ in a number of significant ways. Most importantly, the first is profoundly historical in its scope, the second profoundly proximate. Biology is the study of life, and to speak of “life,” one must understand that the appellation is in the same rhetorical class as “civilization”; few would consider the latter term to apply to only the interacting groups of humans in existence at this moment, and few should consider the former to refer to only that life which is directly accessible to us in the present. Both entities have a long past and (presumably) a distant future.

To extend the analogy further than perhaps it deserves, all civilizations have had the same basic components-some type of governmental structure, a sort of economy, a lingual system-and, at a yet more reductionist level, all have had people as their basic constituents. Yet, one would not indiscriminately take the Ancient Egyptian monarchy, the Roman expansionist philosophy, and the methods of trade among nearby tribes in Africa and mash them into a definitive “model civilization,” then try to apply this bizarre amalgam to the current state of the European Union, simply because people within each of these civilizations talked to each other, laboured in some way, and exchanged possessions.

During the 1950s, life scientists discovered powerful ways in which to study the generalized processes of life by focusing on common components of all cells, particularly nucleic acids and the proteins for which they code. Within and among eukaryotic cells especially, it seems, there is similar talk, work, and trade, and the biochemistry and cell biology labs of the world are currently engaged in a massive effort to elucidate the cellular functions of life, many with a view toward medical applications in humans. However, no matter how comparable they are in their endocytotic pathways, the spiral-valve intestine of a shark and the long, coiling intestine of Homo sapiens are as obviously different as an Egyptian khopesh and a Roman gladius. The challenge for the historians of life is to decouple molecular biology from strictly biomedical pursuits and to apply it to the study of the diversity of organisms and the ways in which that diversity has arisen. In doing so, they will observe the experiments of evolution, the world’s oldest bioengineering program, within the biosphere, the world’s oldest and most dynamic laboratory. Taq polymerase comes from an extreme thermophylic bacterium, Green Fluorescent Protein from a cnidarian, and tetradotoxin from the puffer fish Fugu; few of our biotechnological advances are entirely our own. There are larger-scale reasons for knowing the anatomical, physiological, and biochemical peculiarities of as many taxa as possible, as well: conservation biology depends upon a detailed knowledge of the ways in which human contributions to (and depletions from) ecosystems affect the organisms therein. Ultimately, to ensure the continued prosperity of our species, it is imperative that we gather as much knowledge as possible about the internal workings of each component of the biosphere.

One synthesis of broad-scale historical biology and experimental reductionist biology is the study of the evolution of development. Macroevolutionary morphological changes can be related to alterations in the activities of specific proteins within developmental pathways. The macroevolutionary phenomenon to which I applied myself this summer was that of the appearance and specialization of tetrapod limbs. Günter Wagner, under whom I worked, is particularly interested in the appearance of limbs in Devonian-period sarcopterygian fish because the limb zeugopod and autopod, or the lower limb and hand or foot, are structural innovations with no obvious morphological homologues in nontetrapods. Such innovations, as opposed to smaller modifications of extant structures, are prime foci in theoreticians’ attempts to better define the process large-scale evolution. Limbs are primarily mesodermal structures, forming from the lateral plate mesoderm which spreads broadly away from the central somitic axis of an amniote embryo. A variety of factors specify initial outgrowth and anteroposterior and dorsoventral patterning. We are interested in the development of the zeugopod and the autopod, in which homeotic homeobox genes of the Hox family are heavily involved. More specifically, the Hox11 paralogues Hoxa11 and Hoxd11 appear to control the growth of radial and ulnar elements, though not the initial formation of these structures. Hoxa13 and Hoxd13 play major parts in digit identity specification.

Various members of the lab are engaged in molecular evolutionary studies of the nucleotide and peptide sequences of limb development genes along phylogenetic pathways. A recurring pattern as one moves “up” the amniote tree toward crown diapsids and synapsids (to my knowledge, no detailed studies have yet been performed on anapsids) is the appearance of poly-alanine and poly-serine stretches in the non-homeodomain regions of the Hox polypeptides. Alanine and serine are small, hydrophobic amino acids (though serine is very slightly polar) and are common at protein-protein interaction surfaces. Noting a number of these stretches in eutherian (placental) Hoxa11, Günter postulated that novel cofactors play a part in an apparent gain-of-function in which Hoxa11 is expressed differentially in the uterine endometrium during the uterine cycle. If the cofactors with which Hoxa11 associates are different during development and during adulthood in placental mammals, the isolation and analysis of the various Hox-associated proteins would provide important insights into the evolution of function in patterning genes.

This summer, I worked with Jutta Roth, a visiting graduate student, to lay the groundwork for coimmunoprecipitation of Hoxa11 with its cofactors from both non-endometrial and endometrial cells. The work I performed was largely nucleic acid biochemistry, in which I desired to gain experience after a summer of purifying proteins the previous year. In order to easily pull Hoxa11 and its cofactors from a cellular lysate, we chose to use a poly-histidine tag, which could be attached to the C-terminus of the protein using the available vector, or a MYC tag, which could be attached to the N-terminus. Both N- and C-terminally tagged constructs were created to ensure that an alternative would be available should one tag or the other interfere with the function of the protein or be folded inaccessibly for isolation. His tags were preferable, as they could be isolated on a nickel-NTA column, whereas MYC tags required the use of an anti-MYC antibody.

During the last few weeks of the summer, when the various constructs had been created, cloned into mammalian expression vectors, and amplified, we tested the function of the constructs by determining whether they were localized to the nucleus as expected when expressed in Cos1 monkey liver cells. The immunohistochemistry using an anti-His primary antibody and a fluorescent secondary antibody demonstrated that the His construct did indeed localize to the nucleus and that, necessarily, the His tag was accessible in its position within the protein’s structure. Coimmunoprecipitation will proceed within a few weeks after the beginning of the semester; I will, however, be a spectator to it only, as I am currently studying lizard anatomy and evolution with Jacques Gauthier as part of the organismal portion of my bipartite plan for my biological education.

In addition to the biochemical work which I performed during my time in Günter’s lab, I compiled sequence information from online databases and extensively read the literature on two developmental genes, Gli3 and Hoxd13, at Günter’s behest, providing the gathered information to him when I had found all that I believed I could find. The aforementioned genes are possible future subjects of inquiry for the lab. During these projects, I became familiar with Genbank and various organismic genome databases, including Fugu and Homo sapiens, and learned to perform basic sequence comparisons with a number of software packages. Beyond the specific skills which I acquired during my computerized work, I now possess a general feel for inquiries into genomic evolution.

In sum, being in a lab whose primary mission was the recording of the history of life, I was able to continue to develop my experience in reductionist techniques while encountering, both in the literature and through my colleagues during lab meetings and casual conversations, a variety of integrative approaches to classical zoology. Most of all, I am grateful to have been able to watch Professor Brian Metscher of the University of Southern Indiana, a former postdoc who was visiting while classes were out, perform in-situ nucleic acid hybridizations on whole and sectioned animals, and to converse with him on general matters germane to the zoologically-inclined. Geffrey Stopper, a current graduate student, uses time-tested organismic techniques such as live-animal chemical exposure and histology to study limb development in amphibians; during June and July, he learned to perform in-situ from Brian. Perhaps I will at some point be able to learn microscopic techniques from him. Zoologists find themselves powerfully drawn to each other by the aesthetic joy which they take in asking questions about whole organisms across the planet and throughout geologic time. For this unforced sense of community and mutual stimulation alone, even without consideration of the valuable experience which I acquired, I am highly satisfied with the summer.

This summer I helped with the work of Prof. David Skelly and his lab technicians, Susan Bolden and Nicole Freidenfelds, studying amphibians in New England. Prof. Skelly has been working for the last several seasons on a survey project of amphibian populations in twenty-eight ponds in the Yale Meyers forest in CT and in about forty-eight ponds in the Lake Champlain Basin of VT. One of the project’s aims is to build a reliable data set for New England amphibian populations from which information about fluctuations in population size and in the prevalence of deformities across populations can be tracked. I was able to help the Skelly lab with their May and June surveys.

The internship I had in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park was a joint internship. For the first four weeks of the summer I was told that I would work with the Park s fish biologist in building a fish weir and learn how data is collected on fish populations. Additionally, I was told that during this portion of the internship I would learn about Wrangell St. Elias unique subsistence program, which allowed certain rural Alaskans to use the Park for hunting and fishing. For the second half of the summer, I was told that I would use the knowledge I had gained about the Park to help run educational programs in the Park s visitor s center. Also, I would run programs in the Native Ahtna villages, as the Park especially focused on programs at the local Ahtna summer camp. My expectations for the joint internship differed somewhat from the reality of the internship.

I first arrived at Wrangell-St. Elias on May 19th. I was picked up at the Anchorage airport and driven out to Wrangell, which is 3 hours east of Anchorage. The ride to the Park quickly exposed me to the Alaskan wilderness; there were glaciers off of the side of the highway, moose roaming to my left and right, and Dall sheep climbing the craggy peaks. I was dropped off at my cabin, which was about the size of a double in Berkeley. In the kitchen cabin next to my own cabin, there were gas-lights, running water, a stove, an oven, and a refrigerator, all of which could not be taken for granted, as many local Alaskans did not have those basic appliances. For most of the summer I lived with one other intern, who also had a cabin of his own. Luckily we got along well. I was expecting to be living with a few more people, but living with only one other person didn't bother me.

After settling into my cabin the first weekend, I went to various training sessions for Park employees. I was surprised by the first session, which was gun training for bear defense. If there was anything that made me realize I was in a very different place from home, it was that training session. I then watched informational movies about the Park s history, geology, and wildlife, all of which I found to be interesting.

The following week, I met the Park s fish biologist. He told me that I would be building a fish weir with him in a creek at the Northern end of the Park, and that I would be living in a house near the creek with him and 5 other workers for two weeks. So it turned out that the internship with the fish biologist was only for two weeks, and not for four.

Building the weir was tough work, and for the first week we spent 10 hours a day in the river. The weir was designed to force the salmon swimming upstream into a box so that they could be counted and sampled for the Park s data collection. While building the weir I found out many interesting facts about the relationship between local Alaskans and the Park service through the fish biologist. About ten years ago, the Federal government seized the rights to fisheries on the creek I was working in. The government laid claim to the creek because of the navigable waters clause in the Constitution, and thus the government controlled the fish populations of the river. However, after Alaskan statehood, the Alaska Native Settlement Claim Act (ANSCA) gave Natives the ability to use Alaskan land, which included rivers, for subsistence. A local Native challenged the government s control of the creek, and won the case so that the Natives have first right to the waterway. The main reason for collecting data on the salmon population of that creek was to make sure that the salmon were not being over-fished, as salmon are a crucial source of Alaskan revenue.

After the weir was built I was assigned a shift to count the salmon swimming upstream. Unfortunately the salmon didn t arrive, so I was sitting next to the river for 8 hours each day (for a week) with nothing much to do except to read Thoreau s Walden. This was a disappointment, as I thought that the fish biologist would have had more time for me, and teach me more about the biology of fishes, or at the very least give me the opportunity to travel around the Park with him. Another intern was also disillusioned; she however, had 5 weeks of sitting next to the river waiting for the salmon, rather than only 1 week for me. The interns for the fish biologist were really extra pairs of eyes to watch the river.

I was glad to return to my cabin and begin the second part of my internship. Before that began, I was able to do some exploration around the Park and in other parts of Alaska. I was able to go mountain biking, hiking, and camping in the Park, go white-water rafting, climb a mountain near the fishing town of Valdez, and spend a few days in Anchorage, going to various museums and getting a feel for the city. Although I was able to hike and camp inside of the Park, hiking and camping are extremely limited because of the dense brush and lack of trails. Thus when I had access to a car I would usually travel to other parts of Alaska to do hiking.

The second part of my internship was in the Visitor s Center of the Park. I began to feel that I was getting a good sense of the Alaskan land, people, and of the many issues regarding Park policy. The first week I teamed up with the Park s educational specialist and went to a few different places to teach about environmental issues. We went to the Christian community of Saypa, where everything is homegrown, from the food to the lumber. We presented a short talk about the history of the Park and played a geography game with the kids. We also went to a few Native Ahtna communities to share some information about the Park with them. The people of the Ahtna communities had been living on the land for hundreds of years, and had many stories to share about the area. They told me a story about how the mountains of Wrangell store the souls of those who die, and that each tribe has a mountain of its own that watches out for them. The Ahtna also had beautiful names for places around the park; for example, Mt. Wrangell, in Ahtna, is Kel taeni, which means the one that controls the weather. After learning from the Native Ahtna, we went on a few nature walks where we pointed out certain species of Alaskan trees and flowers, and they told us how they used them medicinally.

In the area around Wrangell, I discovered that there were many small religious communities that are completely self-sufficient, like Saypa. So when I visited another community, I asked one of the sisters why that was so. She replied, Alaska is a place where people come to get away. There are hardly any government regulations on the Church, and people can do things as they like. I agree with her: many people come to rural Alaska for unrestricted freedoms, and because of that many people of rural Alaska are in fact anti-government. Most locals greatly dislike the Park Service because they believe that big government has restricted their land claims. This summer a local family was actually bulldozing down Park land, and many locals supported the family. And, I found that when I was driving a government vehicle, a few middle fingers popped up at me from passing cars.

After spending some time with the educational specialist, I was placed in the visitor s center for the remainder of my stay. I helped to answer questions that visitors had, and I read many of the Park s publications. At this point the Park had little for me to do, and I was disappointed with their disorganization for their interns. I was offered the job of volunteering my time to file papers for a few employees, but I refused because I felt that was not why I came to Alaska.

I would not recommend an internship through the NPS in Wrangell-St. Elias to another Yale student because the internship was not well organized. However, my own experience was valuable in learning about how Alaskans live and depend on the land, and how the management of the land must take that into consideration. I have great respect for many of the Alaskans I met, as their knowledge of the natural world comes from direct interaction with it. I will certainly take that appreciation with me, and I have already taken up some interests related to it.

This summer I did research in the Yale Myers Forest with Catherine Burns, a PhD student under the guidance of Professor Oswald Schmitz. For the past five years, Cat has been researching the white-footed mouse population in various parts of the forest. She has focused on the aspects of habitat selection and, in doing so, has analyzed population viability and the general trends that govern the success or failure of a given group of animals. The two primary methods by which Cat collects her data are through nest box surveys and live trapping. Over the course of the summer I learned how to employ both of these research methods to study population dynamics.

We conducted nest box surveys every ten days at four sites. The sites represented the following habitat types: hardwood, pine, bog, field and hickory. The nest boxes were placed three to four feet above the ground, either in trees or on stakes. The main purpose of the boxes is to monitor reproduction, as females use them to give birth and raise their young for the first few weeks of their lives. When we came to a nest box that had mice in it, we weighed, sexed and tagged the animals, and also noted if the females were pregnant or lactating. Using this data, we were able to assess which habitats had the greatest level of reproductive success by monitoring the number of mice born and their survival rate.

In addition to the nest box surveys, we had one live trapping session per month at each nest box site, plus some additional sites. A session consisted of three consecutive nights of trapping, in which we would set the traps on the ground every 15m and bait them with seeds. Unlike the nest boxes, this type of monitoring was not exclusive to white-footed mice, and we caught many other species, such as voles, chipmunks, shrews, weasels and squirrels. We took the same measurements on the live-trapped mice as on the nest box mice, and released the other species. Thus while Cat does not have extensive records of the populations of the other species, she has data on how many of each type have been caught in each habitat type.

In my senior thesis, I plan to use the multiple species data to look at the distribution of small mammals in the Yale Myers Forest in a more general way. I will be able to use both the data I have collected and some of Cat’s backlogged data from the past three years that she is not planning on using herself. I plan to compare the habitats of these small mammal species. I would like to look at where different species are found, what types of habitats are preferred by the species, whether certain species exclude others, and the general population dynamic of the studied areas. I will focus on the parameters used to determine population viability and reproductive success in order to develop an understanding of the variation in quality of the different habitat types.

After I analyze the ecological data, my ultimate goal is to use that information as a case study for understanding the function of habitat conservation planning. I would like to analyze the effectiveness of current habitat conservation plans and look at the extent to which they are backed by thorough research. Through my knowledge of the research process that I gained this summer, I hope to be able to suggest means for improving habitat conservation planning as a strategy for maintaining biodiversity. Having a firm grasp of the ecological factors behind habitat selection before I attempt to tackle the legislative aspect will strengthen my argument. By combining the scientific and political aspects of the question, I hope to understand how the two might be used to mutually benefit each other.

My experience this summer allowed me to organize my ideas and gain a tighter focus on my research goals for the next year. Having the option to participate in this type of research the summer before my senior year means that I have a big head start on my thesis. I would definitely recommend this experience to anyone who thinks that they might be interested in field ecology. It was also really nice to work with a program that is affiliated with Yale because it makes it much easier to continue my research throughout the year. Both Cat and Prof. Schmitz are around campus and easy to contact with any questions, and I have access to all the data I would need. While it might not have been as exotic as other internships, working in the Yale Myers Forest was a very beneficial experience for me. I met many people from the Yale School of Forestry and learned a great deal from them. Again, the fact that they are based in New Haven and I have the option of contacting them throughout the year is a huge advantage.

The basic setup of my internship was similar to the structure of a National Science Foundation Internship, yet I had greater control over what I was studying as I shared my interests with both Professor Schmitz and Cat, who were then able to guide me towards aspects of their research in which they thought I would be interested. Any student that has an interest in ecological research and can find a project with someone who is doing work in the Forest should definitely take advantage of the opportunity.

For the past summer, I was awarded funding from the Environmental Studies department to purchase the equipment I would need to carry out research for my senior project in Crete. Armed with rock hammer, field boots, compass and hand lens, I traveled to Crete for two weeks, with another student and our professor from the Geology and Geophysics Department here at Yale. For the first week, we participated in a summer school program with other students from Yale, as well as from the University of Crete, who were involved in various ecological research projects in Crete. We were given lectures on the history, flora, fauna and geology of Crete, as well as its significance in the Mediterranean, in order to understand the background for all of our research. Lectures took place in the Natural History Museum of Crete, as well as at the University of Crete, given by various professors and researchers affiliated with the museum.

We also visited sites of interest, such as a marine biology institute, an aquaculture center and tourist sites around the capital city, Heraklion. Every night, the group of about twenty students and professors would gather for a traditional three-hour long Greek dinner, with local cuisine and even Greek dancing one night at a family restaurant. These dinners would last well into the night, but each morning we were up early to keep up with the busy itinerary. In that week, we also took an overnight field trip to the longest gorge in Europe, the Samaria gorge. The hike down this limestone gorge is a seven-hour trek that ends in a small village on the southern coast, which is only accessible by boat. After this, we traveled back to the capital, stopping at various geologic and tourist sites to observe structural geology, fault planes and even preserved fossils.

For the second week, the small group of geologists embarked on our own in-depth geology field trip around the island. Headed by the director of the Museum’s Geology group, we traveled to a new location everyday, where we observed structures and took pictures of minerals, while collecting samples of various limestone rock types and taking GPS readings. We looked for evidence of fluid flow through studying the veins running through strata and noting crystallization patterns and crystal sizes. The island is so dry that there is little vegetation covering the rugged landscape, and so, it was an excellent area for observing unique exposures and features, such as incredible folds, stromatolitic beds and fault scarps (see attached pictures). Most rocks that we observed were carbonate rocks that has been intensely deformed and affected by the metamorphism of the area.

I plan on using the samples collected to continue work this semester on my senior project. The rocks will be cut and used to make thin samples, which will then be analyzed for their crystal structures, compositional make-up, as well as porosity and permeability. We also collected samples of well-preserved fossils, which suggest that these rocks may be porous enough to retain fluid, such as carbon dioxide. I will also carry out tests using the samples to determine potential for fluid flow and retention.

This experience was indeed a wonderful opportunity to learn about the geology of an entirely new region, as well as carry out interesting research that will form the basis for my senior project. Besides the intellectual aspect, I was also extremely pleased to be exposed to the Greek culture and cuisine, together with the incredible historical sites, such as Knossos and the museums of the area. I would definitely recommend the program to another student, especially as the Natural History Museum hopes to continue the summer school idea. Next summer, students from Crete will be coming to Yale to complete their own research, working alongside Yale professors, researchers and students.

Pictures

For three months this summer I conducted research on Chagas Disease in Guatemala. Chagas disease is a parasitic disease that affects humans in areas of Central and South America. It is caused by a protozoan parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi, which is carried by blood-feeding insects of the Reduviidae family. Chagas disease can cause threatening damage to the heart and digestive tract of adults, and in infants and children it can cause a fatal swelling of the brain. Between 12 and 15 million cases of Chagas disease are estimated to occur each year, resulting in approximately 50,000 deaths. There is no vaccine for Chagas disease and treatment is effective only during acute stages of infection when most people are unaware that they are infected. Prevention by the control of the insect vector population using insecticides is the main approach being taken to control Chagas disease; however, due to the cost and negative environmental consequences of insecticides, new approaches are necessary.

One new approach uses paratransgenic techniques to transform Rhodococcus rhodnii, the symbiotic gut bacteria of the insect vector, with a shuttle plasmid, so that the bacteria produce an antitrypanosomal peptide, called cecropin A, that makes the insect unable to transmit Chagas disease. The research conducted this summer attempted to determine what the consequences are of releasing these transformed bacteria into the wild and the possibility of horizontal gene transfer through mobile genetic elements.

The first two weeks of the summer were spent on an insect collection field trip to the indigenous villages in the rural department of Alta Verapaz. During this time the team and I stayed in a UN field station in a town where we were based and traveled everyday to the villages to search the houses and buildings for the insects. We traveled with two members of the Guatemalan Ministry of Health who also served as translators since the villagers did not speak Spanish but instead one of the 23 Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. In addition to searching their houses for insects we gave the families pictures of the insects and explained to them the dangers of being bitten and what to do if someone was infected. With the public health team I was able to get a glimpse of a side of Guatemala that outsiders rarely see. These villages seemed untouched by technology such as cars, electricity, and running water, and the people followed traditional customs of work and dress. We were welcomed into their homes and I was able to see what their lives were actually like. In some of the villages they had not seen an American for twenty years so I was constantly watched by curious eyes. It was really an incredible experience to be able to be accepted into a culture so different from my own.

The remainder of the summer was spent in the Medical Entomology Research Training Unit/Guatemala laboratory in Guatemala City, where I conducted my laboratory research. The specific aims of the project were altered slightly due to the lack of sufficient live samples found in the field, but the overall goal of the research was the same. The general aim of this project was to characterize the mobile elements of the bacteria of the insect gut to eventually help determine the effect of genetically altered bacteria on the environment. The specifics aims of this project were 1) to test different plasmid isolation protocols to determine the optimal conditions for the isolation of plasmids from Rhodococcus rhodnii, 2) to perform the optimized plasmid isolation procedure on samples of the insect gut bacteria from the field to determine the plasmids present in these bacteria, and 3) to perform phage isolation procedures on soil samples collected in areas where insects were collected to detect the presence of Rhodococcus rhodnii bacteriophages.

In five of the field samples new plasmids slightly larger than 12,000bp in size were isolated that were not present in the control Rhodococcus strain. It was also found that there were bacteriophages present in the soil surrounding the homes where insects were found and that these bacteriophages were able to infect control Rhodococcus bacteria and bacteria from the fecal matter and from the intestines of field caught insects. These results indicate that there are indeed different mobile genetic elements already present in the wild bacteria and in the environment that may interact with the transformed bacteria and that more research needs to be done in this area before a field release is attempted. Since a shuttle plasmid containing the genes for cercropin A, the antitrypanosomal peptide, is being used to transform the gut bacteria, the presence of other plasmids in the field bacteria samples needs to be taken into account. Already existing plasmids could affect the likelihood of bacteria to uptake the shuttle plasmid and could also lead to unintended horizontal gene transfer to different bacteria. If the designed plasmids were taken up by bacteria other than the target bacteria unintended affects could arise. Similarly if the transformed bacteria were taken up by organisms other than the Chagas insect vectors cecropin A could cause damage in other organisms.

In addition to the importance of characterizing the plasmids naturally occurring in wild symbiotic bacteria, determining the presence of bacteriophages capable of infecting the symbiotic bacteria in the environment surrounding the insects is necessary. Phages capable of infecting the wild symbiotic bacteria and also other strains of bacteria occurring in other locations in the wild could potentially transmit genes from the designed plasmid into these non-targeted bacteria through transduction. Once incorporated into another bacteria the genes could continue to be spread into the environment. This research attempted to characterize the environment that the altered bacteria will be released into and the implications of that these elements will have on the spread of the altered bacteria in the environment.

This project was a very valuable academic experience. In the field I was able to see the real-world applications of the research and the people who will benefit from the research. Sometimes while doing specific research in the lab it is easy to forget the larger picture and I believe that this trip really helped to remind me of the overall importance of the work that I was doing. In the lab I learned many new lab techniques and received practice conducting numerous procedures. This was also an excellent opportunity to experience the challenges of conducting research in a developing country, where supplies and technology may not be available as they are in the United States. I think this type of research promotes ingenuity and resourcefulness on the part on the researcher and has made me more flexible and able to think on my feet in any situation.

This was an incredible experience and was intellectually challenging both scientifically and culturally. It really opened my eyes to the complex challenges of the actual implementation of research due to cultural differences and the lack of resources. I am continuing to conduct related research at a lab at the Yale School of Epidemiology and Public Health and I would like to return to Guatemala in the future and continue research there. This was an amazing opportunity that has increased my interest in this field and broadened my perspectives.

This summer I participated in the YBRA Field Course in Geologic Methods administered by the University of Pennsylvania. The five week course focused primarily on techniques involved with creating geologic maps, and the course projects consisted primarily of a 3 to 4 day field mapping project, followed by cross section drawing in the classroom. The course was taught in 3 segments, with 2 different professors for each segment. We looked at a wide range of locales in our mapping project, from primarily sedimentary structures, to classic fold-and-thrust mountain belts, to pre-Cambrian metamorphic sequences. The course was surely an intense five weeks, but I believe that all of the students came out of it thinking that it was one of the better experiences of their educational careers.

The course professors emphasized many topics which are very important to the construction of geologic maps, and to scientific field work in general. As students’ backgrounds varied widely, techniques were taught thoroughly, but quickly, so as to allow students to get out in the field and actually learn by doing. Much of the learning in the course was very hands-on; at times, it felt as if students were thrown out into the field to “sink or swim”, in a way. The faculty were always there to help and answer questions, and were quite supportive, but they did not get in the way of students learning by doing (this was highly encouraged). The first day of the course involved exercises designed to teach students to measure distances by pacing. We walked along a measured length of ground, and were able to calculate the distance of their pace. The professors also gave a quick demonstration of various types of measurements which could be done with the Brunton compass (a special type of compass used by geologists which is capable of taking many types of measurements), such as bearings, vertical angles, strike and dip of bedding, trend and plunge of linear features, and so on. Following the exercises, we paired up, and constructed a simplified map of the camp, using just bearings, vertical angles, and pacing. We were able to check the accuracy of our measurements by comparing the final results of our maps to the actual map. The map consisted of a series of 9 station points, and we had to navigate from the beginning to the end. Our error was apparent in the amount of difference we had between the actual location of the first point and the location we had arrived at in navigating between the stations using bearings, pacing, and vertical angles.

Following the first few days’ activity, we were thrown into the first mapping project. It of course seemed quite difficult at the time, but in retrospect was really quite easy, when compared with the rest of the projects to come! We were split into groups of 3, and given sections (approximately 2 square miles each) of a large, plunging anticline structure called Elk Basin. This anticline structure, caused by the uplift of the central part of the area, created a large pooling of petroleum, and a fairly large oil field is located in this area; it’s total reserves (combination of extracted and remaining) are estimated to be something like 1 billion barrels. The mapping was challenging only because it was really the first map any of us had ever constructed. The idea of determining where the contacts between the formations were, if there were any faults (my area turned out to have several!), taking data, and transferring everything to a map was very foreign to most of us. We spent three days in the field working on the maps, but if this area had been assigned later in the course, we would have breezed through it. In hindsight, it was an extremely easy area, as nearly everything was exposed. There was very little guess-work involved, as there was sure to be in our future projects. The difficulty of the areas seemed to change right along with our abilities, and this is a good example; it seemed challenging to us at the time, but would have been a bit too easy a few weeks into the course.

The next project (after a one day mapping project dealing with triangulation techniques, and then a day of glacial outwash terraces and moraines) dealt with the area surrounding the camp itself, the infamous Beartooth Front mapping project. We were lucky enough to have Don Wise as a professor, because Don did his doctoral thesis on this area back in the Archean (actually the 1950’s), and has been studying it ever since. To say he is an expert would be an understatement. Confusion and frustration were abundant, as rock outcroppings where we could actually see what we were supposed to be mapping were few and far between, structural relationships were confusing to say the least, the geographic areas assigned were far larger than those for the Elk Basin project, and the topography was much more difficult to navigate over and around. The professors were again helpful, but I think that most students sacrificed a good amount of their hair to this map! The cross sections for this area were also a challenge, as we had to think about the processes that would cause the structural relationships we were seeing, which we determined to be due to a large-scale fault propagation fold associated with the frontal thrust of the Beartooth range; as the land was compressed, the mountains were formed through uplift, and this was accommodated often through this thrust faulting. Essentially, the Beartooth block had been uplifted and thrusted outward, and the structures we observed were the remnants of the fold created at the front of the thrust fault as pressure from behind and friction from below caused the material to buckle up into these classic fault propagation folds. After finishing this project, we really felt that we had accomplished something.

The next few projects dealt with a metamorphic series of rocks near Dillon, in which we defined the units we would map, and then went out and were thoroughly confused by the variations we saw (Metamorphic rocks don’t make nice, clear boundaries very often, so we were essentially forced to define what the boundary between “units” was, and then try and stay consistent throughout the area. We often tried to bring small samples along with us to compare, both with ourselves and with other groups when the inevitable “border wars” between sections of the map erupted.). Miraculously, we ended up piecing together two large composite maps (the main group was split into two, and each subgroup was divided into three, with each of these groups getting a third of the entire area) which actually resembled each other somewhat. Everyone was shocked, to say the least! Our final project was probably the most difficult, in terms of geographic area, and the complexity of the structures involved. The area was near Block Mountain, about 45 minutes outside of Dillon, Montana. The main structure was an anticline which formed as the surface representation of a fault propagation fold caused by a thrust fault at depth. The entire area was strewn with a complex web of thrust faults, and this exercise left most of us feeling like we had learned nothing, that we were essentially unfit to call ourselves field geologists. By the end of the third day, however, we had somehow pieced together maps which actually looked like they might make sense. We were given a taste of reality, however, when told that we could not do cross sections from our maps; we had to do them off of the professor’s map, as ours weren’t good enough. No matter, we thought. Of COURSE we could have done a better map if we’d had more time.

I learned as much geology in this short course as I could have hoped, and probably more. Having never done any extensive field work in geology, this camp provided a fantastic opportunity to see what real field geologists do. There is obviously more to it than making maps, but I think that making maps introduces you to the methodology and thought process required to be a good, diligent field geologist. Getting into the habit of taking down rock descriptions, locations, measurements, and observations of scale, structure, etc. for every outcrop visited was stressed heavily in this course, and I think that this is why the course is based around constructing maps. It is an important skill in itself, but is also an important teaching tool; in constructing a good map, you are forced to employ many of the techniques demanded of a good field geologist.

This course was a fantastic experience in every respect. The exercises were well thought-out, and were well-chosen for the experience level of the group as it advanced. The professors also interspaced the mapping projects with field trips to different areas, where we would spend a day or so learning about the geology of different regions, such as the Stillwater Complex (a very interesting layered mafic intrusion), the Heart Mountain detachment (a block of material which sits over 10 miles away from similar material, on top of much younger sediment, the explanation for which is still being debated), classic examples of drape folding (a fold where a formation hangs over the edge of an uplifted block like a tablecloth) in the Clark’s Fork Canyon (the infamous YBRA “death march” through a significant part of the region’s stratigraphic column), and many other very interesting locales. I learned a great deal about geology that I could not hope to learn in the classroom, but I also learned in another respect. Being in the presence of 30 other geology students, a few of them already having entered the world of graduate school, and a few professors completely willing to talk about their experiences in the professional world and academia, helped me a great deal in thinking about the future and where I want to go after graduation. I am extremely glad that I was able to have this experience, and I would say that the schools that make a program like this a requirement for a degree in geology have the right idea

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Facilitating Transitions in Mexican Agriculture: Rediscovery of Traditional Knowledge and New Findings in Agroecology
Judith Joffe-Block, History '04

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Alpine Meadow Management in Sequoia / Kings Canyon National Parks with the White Mountain Research Station REU Program
Sparsh Khandeshi, Environmental Studies '04

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Internship with Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness in Minneapolis
Amy Kohout, History '04

This summer I interned with Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, a small environmental non-profit in Minneapolis, Minnesota, dedicated to the preservation of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and the Quetico-Superior ecosystem. I had the opportunity to work on several ongoing projects. I arrived at an exciting time for the Friends. During my first week, the Forest Service released the draft of its proposed management plan for the Superior and Chippewa National Forests, and I had the opportunity to attend two press conferences promoting the release of an 18 month independent inventory of roadless areas in Minnesota completed by volunteers and members of Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness.

The Forest Plan will shape the management direction for national forest lands in Minnesota for the next ten to fifteen years. Before the plan is adopted, the Forest Service releases a draft, and there is a three month public comment period. My main task this summer was to assist our policy director in writing the Friends' official comments on the Proposed Forest Plan and the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (documents each the size of a New Haven phonebook). This project gave me the opportunity to research and write about the timber industry, old-growth forest, the relationship between wilderness and economic growth, and to learn more about the use of fire as a management tool.

The other side to the Forest Plan comment period is the public part of it. I participated in a staff-wide effort to attempt to generate unique comments from our members, the members of other organizations, and to other interested parties by writing form letters, delivering comment cards, and researching events to attend. Originally, the public comment period was scheduled to end on August 11, 2003, which was the beginning of my last week with the Friends. However, after requests from both the timber industry and a coalition of Minnesota environmental groups to extend the deadline were refused, the congressional delegation made the same request, and this time, the Regional Forester granted a one month extension. The extra time will give organizations time to continue researching and writing their comments, and more importantly, it gives us more opportunities to generate comments from our members and other concerned citizens. Although I won’t be around to see this project to completion, I plan to remain in contact with my friends at Friends of the Boundary Waters. I’m extremely interested to hear the Forest Service’s response to the comments it receives.

Though the Forest Plan was my main project this summer, I also worked on smaller projects related to different arms of the organization. I worked with our Executive Director to develop a board manual that new board members will receive in January, and had the opportunity to present a sample copy to the Board Governance committee. We also began some preliminary planning for what will hopefully become an annual new board member orientation. I also worked on revising a curriculum the Friends is developing. The curriculum encourages middle and high school students to think about the connections between everyday and wild places, and culminates with an essay assignment. We hope to find funding to publish a collection of the essays written as a part of this curriculum. The project is still in the planning stages, but I have really enjoyed the discussions I have had with other staff members about this project and its goals, and I feel that my input will help shape the development of this curriculum when it is revisited by the Education Committee.

Earlier in the summer I had the opportunity to gather information and talk to members about the closure of a portage that serves as an entry point to the BWCA. An historic portage granting access to the Boundary Waters that crosses private land was closed by the landowner. This action violated a Minnesota state statute, and I had the opportunity to talk to Friends’ members about the situation. I learned a lot about the relationship between the Forest Service and the Minnesota DNR during this time, and had the chance to research management of Burntside State Forest and explore access issues. I also had the opportunity to update the Policy Committee on this issue during the July meeting.

This summer I had the opportunity to learn firsthand what it means to work for an organization dedicated to preservation. I learned that in order to sell preservation, you often have to present it in terms of recreational opportunity. I learned that donations and activism do not often go hand in hand. This summer I learned what it feels like to enjoy going to work everyday. My experience this summer forced me to reexamine both my thoughts on environmental issues and the reasons for my commitment to them.

I worked with a small group of passionate and committed individuals, and I was lucky enough to really get to know them as coworkers and friends. Sadly, I feel that my experience is more unusual in terms of summer internships than most Yalies would like to admit, and I am extremely grateful to the staff of the Friends of the Boundary Waters for welcoming me and giving me the opportunity to work on so many different projects. I would encourage any students interested in working on environmental issues to consider interning with Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness.

I arrived in Minneapolis hoping to gain a better understanding of the daily goings-on of a small environmental nonprofit, and I have returned to Yale feeling as though I have made a very real contribution to the work of the Friends of the Boundary Waters this year. My experience has helped me to realize that I could see myself working for a similar organization someday. Who knows, I might even go to Forestry school.

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Internship with the International Society for Ecology and Culture in Ladakh, India
Katherine Lo, Anthropology '05

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Dendrochronology and Dendroclimatology in the Southwestern United States
Christopher McPhee, Environmental Studies '04

For my summer project I had the chance to sample some of the most amazing organisms in the world. I connected with a small group of researchers at the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ and had the pleasure of joining them on a month long session of fieldwork. I worked alongside Dr. Matthew Salzer, and research assistants Rex Adams and Jim Parks collecting samples of Bristlecone Pine (Pinus Aristata and Pinus Longeva). The samples are going to be used for research funded by the National Science Foundation examining climate predating the instrumental record. I was able to help the team by adding another member to carry weight, take notes, photograph and mark the specimens and core and cut many of them as well.

In the field I learned the skills needed to identify an attractive subject, to core a tree and protect the sample, to cut a cross-section and how to keep detailed notes on the sampling process. All work was done in the field, with only a few days of introduction at the Tree Ring Lab. After a week of skill building, I was left to work independently – finding subjects and sampling them while recording their location, elevation and various other aspects. I learned how to use a Global Positioning System device to mark the trees for compilation in the larger database being kept by the Tree Ring Lab. During the field time we collected two to four samples from nearly 200 different specimens of bristlecone pine. The data that we collected as a team in Northern Arizona, Eastern Nevada and Southeastern California were comprised of core samples and cross-sections taken from living trees, standing snags (deceased) and deadfall. Our research permits allowed us to remove wood from pristine and protected wilderness where the trees are least effected by direct human impact (such as timber extraction), thus collecting data most reflective of the climatic trends of the past 10,000 years.

The trees that we worked with are a marvel of nature – living for thousands of years in some of the most rugged and inhospitable areas of the Southwestern United States. We collected samples at elevations ranging from 10,500 feet to 12,500 feet where available oxygen and carbon dioxide are at 45-55% of the quantity available at sea level. The weather is also quite harsh – the month that we spent in the various locations recorded an average relative humidity of 10-20%, which is extremely dry. Yearly precipitation is very low, so the growing season of the pine trees is limited to about two months. That is part of the secret to their extremely long lives – the pines only grow a small amount every year. The oldest living tree in the world has been sampled numerous times by the lab at the University of Arizona, and I was given the chance to meet “Methuselah,” who is approximately 4,850 years old. The slow growing trees are helpful to researchers because a single tree-ring sample can contain anywhere between 200 and 2000 rings (years) of data per sample. Each ring contains information about the contemporary climate corresponding to the growth year. A narrow ring signifies a cooler, drier year that allows less growth. A wider ring signifies a more prosperous growth year for the tree and, thus, less inclement weather. Dendroclimatology stems form the ability to match ring widths with specific qualities of climate to create an image of what basic climatic attributes were present during the period of time before the instrumental climate record. Repetitions of such large sample sizes create very robust data sets that are statistically trustworthier than other species used in tree ring studies.

After gathering the majority of our samples, Dr. Salzer taught me the basics on tree-ring data analysis. We prepped a few of our samples, counted rings and created skeleton plots. In these plots we recorded ring widths relative to neighboring rings using a standard methodology used among dendrochronologists. Using these plots, we could line each individual specimen’s plot up with the master chronology (compiled using older samples from all over the Southwestern region) and could find a best fit. Since all of the trees of the two bristlecone pine species grow at the same relative rate when exposed to the same weather, all trees from a localized area can be compared and matched up. Thus, comparing our samples to the master chronology, we were able to date our findings with a high level of accuracy. I also learned how these plots are constructed more precisely with microscopes and specialized computer software for matching that will prove almost statistically perfect. This analysis made me appreciate the effort expended by the dendrochronologist to create data sets like those I will be using in my senior project.

Along with the skill building I was able to do during my internship, I also had the chance to meet some of the most talented and experienced figures in the fields of dendrochronlogy and dendroclimatology. I was able to speak with them about my research interests and my senior project. They were very helpful in providing me resources and references for my project, including published and unpublished works and information derived from their fieldwork experiences. I will most certainly use these professors and post-doctoral students as references for my research

The program was a very enriching experience and also a good deal of fun. I had the chance to put my leadership and outdoor skills to use in helping Dr. Salzer and the team make decisions on route finding and sample selection. The areas we visited were stunningly beautiful and we had the luck of having perfect weather (if even a little too dry). The team was excellent – we all got along very well and enjoyed sharing the workload. For those interested in tree ring studies, the Tree Ring Lab is the only lab of it’s kind in the nation and one of two major labs in the world (the other is in Germany). All of the professionals at the lab are at the head of their fields (climate, hydrology, fire science, etc) in relation to tree ring data. After working with such amazing people, I have become inspired to investigate their graduate programs and will almost certainly apply to the university in the spring. They appreciated my help doing grunt work (though more fun than making copies or answering phone calls) and invited me back for their fieldwork next summer. I hope that the Environmental Studies program can keep this connection alive for any student interested in tree ring studies, as they could always use volunteers for collection and analysis. It was a wonderful opportunity that I’m grateful to have experienced, and I would recommend this type of research to any student who loves to experience the harsh realities of the outdoors firsthand while also enhancing their academic life.

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Issues in Land Management and Development: The Canyon Club Project in Jackson, Wyoming
Todd Montgomery, Environmental Studies '04

Jackson, Wyoming, is currently faced with a serious challenge. The economy of the area is based largely on tourism and real estate costs, both of which are intricately tied to the protected lands and species in and surrounding the town. However, the land development regulations drawn up by the county seem unable to curtail the booming, often irresponsible growth of the central city and surrounding private lands. Because the Jackson Hole area is entirely surrounded by protected lands, the demand for the fast disappearing developable private land in the area is extremely high, leading to extremely costly real estate. The amount of money within this market is so high that it becomes very difficult to ensure that the growth of the city continues to meet the ideals set forth in the County’s development plan, which is largely put in place to protect the wildlife and wilderness of the area. My goal this summer was to try to find out if development within Jackson can continue under the regulations set forth within the County Development Plan while still achieving the goals set forth within the same document.

While attempting to answer this specific question, the broader idea for me is that there are many areas in this and other countries in similar situations. It is not uncommon for a small strip of land that existed privately before surrounding lands were protected to become a precious commodity and subsequently have to deal with explosive growth that may occur faster than the changes in local land management that deal with this growth. As a result, regulation becomes a reactionary practice, which in many instances leads to unhappiness within the population. As Jackson “grows-up” and out of its classical, ranch-based economy and crosses over to focus more on high-end outdoor attractions like fishing, mountain biking and camping, much of the local governance concerning land management remains in the ranching days. Today there exists in Jackson the entire spectrum from old-time ranchers to second or third home-owning summer vacationers, and the county regulations do their best to appease all parties. Unfortunately, this is a remarkably difficult task, and one that has been approached with varying degrees of success.

The bulk of my research in Jackson was based on the case of the Canyon Golf Club located along a near-pristine stretch of the Snake River just south of town. This development was first proposed in 2000, and has been one of the major stories in the area from then until today. The goal of the development was to build a world-class, 18-hole golf course and 71 high-end properties on 360 acres of this former low-impact ranch-land. The developer claims that the goal of the project was to protect as much land as possible through land-exchanges and sensible planning and design while creating an income (the golf course fees and real estate costs) steady enough to support a limited, economically not self-sufficient ranching operation that will remain on the other half of the developer’s land. Jackson’s land regulations specify that one of their major goals is to protect the wildlife of the area, which, in the case of the Canyon Club, includes four eagle nests and critical areas for other species, the fishing industry and river rafting companies. However, another equally important goal of the same land regulations is a goal of protecting the private ranchers who still work the land and give the area much of its western character.

I spent the summer in Jackson trying to find out as much as I could about the process up to this point. Through a lot of work looking at county planning documents, county land regulations, state and federal documents, past newspaper articles (of which there were probably two every week), interviews with many of the key figures at all levels of the process, and a look at some of the other recent developments in the area, I think I was able to gain a pretty strong handle on the process as it had occurred. What is more, I think I was able to gain a real understanding of the difficulties of land management, and the process as a whole. In a very dynamic and diverse area like Jackson, the amount of regulatory agencies and interested parties is amazing, and to see the actions taken by these people to demand representation was inspirational. I feel that in a small way, this summer allowed me to become a part of this dynamic community and to gain a sense of their values with regards to the natural environment.

My senior paper is going to be based largely on my research on the Canyon Club. I would like to analyze the process more thoroughly and find other areas of the country that have faced similar challenges of land use. I think this summer was immensely challenging and easily one of the most productive and positive experiences of my life. This opportunity allowed me to look at a very pertinent problem, but more importantly it allowed me to look at myself and my own predispositions, and work through this to arrive at sensible, objective conclusions on how to improve the situation and move toward more sustainable goals that satisfy Jackson’s common interests.

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The Nexus Between Environment and Development in Tanzania from a Food Security Perspective
Christine Pham,  Environmental Studies '04

With support from the Environmental Studies Summer Fellowship, I was able to work in Arusha, Tanzania between mid-June and late July 2003 in the fields of sustainable agriculture, rural development, and farmer education. Along with three other volunteers under Global Service Corps (GSC), a non-governmental organization based in San Francisco, I spent one month leading training sessions in sustainable agriculture for local farmers, and two weeks conducting interviews and independent research. This fall, I intend on integrating this data into my senior thesis, which will examine the efficacy of the GSC project compared to other rural development strategies that target small-scale subsistence farmers in similar sub-Saharan African regions.

“Rural development” has become a loaded term within modern development discourse, and its definitions and boundaries continue to blur significantly. Current theorists speak of a growing “depeasantization” of the world, where the “world market” continues to disintegrate agrarian societies and their constituent small-scale economies. Thus, small-scale subsistence farmers experience either slow incorporation into “modern economies,” or they are left behind.

What I found in Arusha, Tanzania, was a situation that lay between those two poles. For several decades, at least 80% of the country’s population has consisted of small-scale subsistence farmers, due to a large development project initiated after colonial independence in which the government divided and distributed the country’s land into 1-2 acre parcels. Since the 1970’s, these farmers have experienced either stagnating or slowly declining yields of maize, beans, collard greens, and other staple crops grown on their land. The reasons behind this stagnation are complex and owe to market obstacles, soil degradation, lack of transport/communication/social infrastructure, among other reasons that I observed. To compound the problem, the government of the United Republic of Tanzania has not yet addressed the fate of the smallholder farmer, focusing instead on the large, export-oriented agricultural sector that sends species of exotic vegetables, cut flowers, and spices abroad. What, then, is the fate of the smallholder Tanzanian farmer whose subsistence needs are barely met, but who also hopes for larger economic development?

The Global Service Corps program attempts to address this question by beginning at a reasonable point: how do we help farmers to grow more food? Before addressing the larger social/political/economic issues, it was necessary to alleviate food insecurity and poverty by providing a method for sustainable, low-capital agriculture. The answer that we found was Biointensive Agriculture (BIA), a multi-part method of organic farming that claims to boost yields 2-6 fold while using little water, no agrochemicals, and no unaffordable machinery.

What became clear during my month of teaching BIA, however, was that the farmers whom we were teaching were mainly interested in increasing their food production, not for market purposes, but solely to feed their families. However, the leadership of the training program, which consisted mainly of professors at the Ministry of Agriculture Training Institute (a governmental program), had much larger hopes. In a series of interviews, I gathered that they were hoping to develop a market for this locally-grown chemical-free produce in Arusha in hopes of bringing more income to the farmers and their families.

Where is the demand for this produce? For the short-term, and possibly the long-term, the project leaders have secured some contracts with tourist hotels and restaurants, where tourists are aware of and demand for organic produce. Arusha happens to be the largest tourist hub in East Africa, outside of Nairobi, and thus has an enormous tourist sector. My question to them, however, was how secure and sustainable this sector is in serving as the demand side, to which they had no answer; it all remains to be seen.

And how about the supply side? Can BIA, which is still highly experimental in this region of Tanzania, supply the amounts of produce needed to support this market? What will it take for the farmers to achieve the level of organization and production required of them by the demand? Furthermore, are there agronomic limits inherent in the BIA method that would be ceilings to production? Would BIA still be ecologically sensitive and sustainable at that level of production?

All these questions serve as the motivation behind my senior essay, and my first-hand experience in Arusha gave me the direction and insights needed to approach them.

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The Interaction of Environment and Vernacular Architecture in Mesoamerica
Anya Raredon, Architecture '04

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Internship with the U.S. EPA in the Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation
Michael Renda, Economics and Environmental Studies '04

Introduction and Summary

This summer I was fortunate enough to be an intern at the National Center for Environmental Innovation (NCEI), a division of the Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation (OPEI) located in the Office of the Administrator (OA) of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Working in the heart of the District of Columbia at 1301 Constitution Avenue, I spent the majority of my summer experiencing my first taste of the government lifestyle while working on two major projects. The first project, under the supervision of the National Center for Environmental Innovation, involved researching innovative practices in state-level water clean-up programs. The other project was through the National Center for Environmental Economics, and while it was on the same floor as NCEI, it was much more quantitative in nature and involved compiling research on water and wastewater rates and using that data for analysis of some policy issues. The summer provided a solid glimpse into the public sector that contrasted quite a bit with my previous summer’s work at Environmental Defense (a national non-profit). Working in a professional environment was well suited to my interests, as it has helped to shape my thoughts about a career in the environmental or government sectors. I would recommend this internship to anyone that would prefer working in a professional atmosphere compared to a research-type internship, as it offered a serious glimpse at the epicenter of national environmental policy.

Project 1: Innovations in State TMDL Programs

The first major project that I worked on involved state TMDL programs. TMDL stands for total maximum daily load, which refers to the amount of a pollutant that can be allowed in a waterbody up to the point that it is still meeting its water quality criteria as defined by the state. Essentially, state environmental agencies are asked to submit biannual lists of water bodies that do not meet their “designated use,” as declared by the state and based on actual use. For example, a reservoir used for drinking water requires the highest level of cleanliness, while waterbodies that are marked for recreation can have lower quality standards. (Of course, the pollutant criteria designations are created by the states, but they have to be approved by the EPA, anyway.) Waterbodies that are not meeting their designated use are labeled “impaired” and the pollutant that exceeds its appropriate level is labeled as an “impairment.” Impairments can range from acid mine drainage (heavy metals) to temperature from a power plant, so long as they limit biological productivity. Next, states need to develop clean-up plans (also known as TMDLs) for each waterbody. This was originally required by the Clean Water Act. However, the EPA failed to enforce this upon states, and by the late-1990s, most states (around 43) had been sued, along with the EPA, for the lack of clean-up plans. Most of the court decisions required that all impaired waterbodies would need TMDLs in an expedited process for each state, and these states have until about 2012 to complete all of these studies.

As a result of the court orders, EPA granted most states (about 40) the right to conduct TMDL surveying processes (or contract them out to private firms) and subsequently, develop implementation plans for cleaning them up. Unfortunately, the rate at which the TMDLs are being written is quite high, almost too high for EPA Region Offices to review and approve them in a timely manner. Additionally, because of the number of the plans, the federal EPA office, where NCEI is located (a few Region Offices have similar divisions), is all but unable to keep track of which TMDLs are approved and likewise, what they entail or require of polluters. In addition, communication across regions and even states is limited, so what has happened is that states have little knowledge of what other methods are being used in TMDL production, program management, and implementation plans. What I was asked to do was to look for trends or innovative practices (as the role of NCEI is to support innovations in environmental policy and regulation) among the state TMDL programs and to create an informational document that could be distributed to state and regional offices to better inform them of what else is happening in the TMDL arena. Ideally, I would have been able to suggest innovative implementation schemes (such as pollutant trading, caps, stakeholder involvement, public committees to dole out allocations, etc.), but the sheer number of TMDLs prevented that from occurring. Towards the end of the summer, I began to receive some suggestions from state offices on innovative TMDL implementation programs, and my supervisor will be working this fall to put together a document on them.

As for my document, I detailed innovations relating to the manner in which states run and coordinate their TMDL programs. Some of the better examples include draft TMDLs for certain common impairments and unique scheduling that involves completing TMDLs for one impairment over a short time period. To further encourage discussion, I also included contact information for states whose innovations I highlighted and a brief description of the interesting practices that were occurring. Although I worry somewhat that my document will not be taken seriously, the lack of information of the federal level about TMDL programs as suggested by employees in other offices encouraged me heavily, and my document will hopefully be looked at carefully by these officials as well as those on the state and regional levels. The TMDL program is now such a huge part of each state agency’s budget that whatever innovations they can use will increase efficiency and the speed at which TMDLs are authored and eventually implemented. This, of course, promotes clean-up efforts of polluted waterbodies, a key resource for all.

Project 2: National Survey and Analysis of Water and Wastewater Rates

The second project required most of my summer and was completely different in nature, as it involved quantitative data work on water and wastewater rates. The origin of the project was a study recently commissioned by the EPA on water infrastructure that highlighted how outdated the nation’s infrastructure was and how, over the coming years, massive failures could cost billions of dollars. It suggested that far more investment was needed over the next twenty years. With this in mind, my supervisor, an economist in the National Center for Environmental Economics (which was, incidentally, on the same floor and just down the hall) had me create a massive data set on water and wastewater rates and to do a number of projects using this data. Essentially, I took data from consulting firms that had already investigated the issue at the request of some of the states and local water companies along with some EPA studies on Community Water Systems in 1995 and 2000. For each system (a city, town, etc.), each data point had information about the cost (monthly bill) of water (drinking water) and / or wastewater in terms of x number of gallons, population, and median household income. Ideally, we would be able to figure out what the “average” user would use in a month, and then extrapolate this cost and be able to compare costs across various factors such as EPA region, system size, and household income. One issue that would be particularly interesting is the issue of affordability, which is the ability of a household to pay for a service based on its income.

I compiled a massive data set using as much information as we could find, and then I performed a number of tasks. First, I used a data set from a 1995 survey of water rates by the American Waterworks Association, an association of drinking water suppliers around the country, to put together an estimate of average water use per person across the nation. Next, I took a very current survey that included data on only major cities that operated water and wastewater systems for the same populations. From this, I was able to calculate a water-wastewater use ratio, which would be very useful later. Ideally, wastewater use is exactly equal to water use (since water should just flow down the drain into the wastewater system), but obviously, some water uses, such as lawn watering or car washing, cause water to not enter the wastewater system, at least not directly.

The third project that I undertook was a time-sensitive project whose results ended up being used in an important discussion regarding wastewater treatment plants. The EPA had recently been sued over the issue of blending, which is a process of WWTPs that occasionally bypass the final treatment stage to prevent massive system failure due to heavy rainstorms. While there are relatively small environmental effects of doing this (as the rainflow is mostly clean freshwater), EPA had issued a series of different permits to WWTPs concerning when and under what situations they were allowed to blend. However, there was little logic in this permitting process, and the basis of the suit was that there needed to be a clear policy concerning the issue. The Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance decided, quite arbitrarily, that systems should be allowed to blend up until the point that not blending would raise the cost of wastewater services to above 2% of median HH income of their service population. For example, systems would have to raise costs to afford additions to handle the increased load from heavy storms or to install faster cleaning mechanisms. However, NCEE found this argument to be quite flawed, as 2% had no historical basis as the level of HH spending on wastewater bills. My project involved defining the cost gap between total revenue and certain percentages of HH income that existed based on the number of systems that would be blending at any one time. My final project involved looking at some trends in the data set based on system size, median household income deciles, and regions. As expected, the percentage of HH income spent on water and wastewater decreased in richer systems and decreased in larger systems.

While past studies had focused on the level of HH income spent on only water or wastewater bills, this project examined the sum of the bills for each system. Fortunately, the data set was designed to adjust automatically for varying levels of average water use and water-wastewater ratios, allowing future user input if better average use data is collected. This cost information will be very valuable to the EPA, as it has had to justify water and wastewater quality rules for various system sizes and flow levels, and it hopes to set policies that produce suitable levels of affordability for systems. Additionally, my supervisor and I came to the conclusion that data on the subject of water and wastewater rates was fairly inadequate for EPA to be setting affordability policies, and as such, it should begin collecting information on rates in the future.

Impressions of the EPA

This summer was my first adventure in government, and it provided a number of insights and the EPA itself. To begin, the EPA is heavily dependent upon the current administration for support, both financially and in terms of its policies. The agency is somewhat underfunded, and (at least my office) was lacking in employees and a decent level of technology, as the computers were quite old and slow. Second, the EPA seems to be continually at odds with the administration, and this effect trickles down and causes reduced employee morale. Events throughout the summer like the deletion of global warming from the State of the Environment Report and the sudden resignation of the Deputy Administrator were echoes of this problem. Finally, government life is slow, and to a slight degree, lacking of most drive. While a good deal were wholeheartedly excited about their work, some were quite happy drifting through work. However, it was a good place for me to be this summer, as the professional atmosphere was a solid introduction to the way that a business or government runs. For anyone not interested in a research or field position, this job is perfect, especially for someone majoring in social sciences. OPEI dedicates itself to looking at environmental problems through a policy perspective, and this worked very well for me, as I am a double major in Environmental Studies and Economics. While my first choice for an environmental career is not the EPA, I could see myself working there someday.

If you would like to intern in the summer for OPEI, I would gladly put any interested person in contact with the Summer Intern Head, Suganthi Simon.

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Effect of Tourism in Sao Tome on Culture, Environment, and Economy of the Island
Linda Shi, Environmental Studies and International Studies '04

This summer, I traveled to São Tomé e Príncipe (STP), a small, African island nation in the Gulf of Guinea, to conduct research for my senior thesis in Environmental Studies. As this was a last minute alternative to an internship in China, I knew little about the country’s real situation. Thus, while my initial proposed line of study was ecotourism – its current state, possibilities of expansion, and policy guidelines, I soon came to see that tourism was neither the most important issue nor was likely to become a solution in the near future for the immense problems facing the country. Instead, I decided to investigate the impact of international aid on conservation and rural development. While focusing on conservation, I sought to understand the state of environmental protection and current dangers thereof within the context of assistance in general. São Tomé receives the highest per capita rate of assistance of any country in Africa and 80 percent of its national income comes from aid; yet, it is questionable whether the past ten years of contributions have led to any significant improvement. Today, the country is months away from receiving its first payment (many times its current GDP) from oil developers as it begins to take advantage of the offshore oil reserves in its joint development zone with Nigeria. Many of these international funders are going to be decreasing funding as a result, and/or shifting their backing from actual assistance to guidance in governance and management of the new revenues and their use. What do these international institutions leave behind? Is the country really ready, or any more ready than ten years ago, to develop sustainably, equitably, and profitably? What is the role of international aid in conservation, and what is the role of domestic government?

In my first week, I was fortunate in having Henrique Pinto da Costa, former Yale World Fellow and native of São Tomé, take me all over the island so that I could get a real look at what lay hidden in the plantations away from the capital. An agronomist by training, Henrique was among the first Sãotomenses to receive a higher education; later, while his brother was president, he held various positions in government; and today, he works as a freelance consultant and is establishing an environmental NGO in STP. I could not have asked for a more knowledgeable guide, nor anyone better acquainted with the geography, history, politics and ecology on the island. Leaving the few paved roads in his Jeep, we drove to various plantations, down dirt paths now rapidly being overtaken by tropical plant life, and across railroad tracks now barely visible through the dirt. Henrique stopped often to pick fresh cacao, coffee beans, or élan (the essence of French perfume), or to ask a farmer for a taste of her cacao, kola nut (the cola in coca cola), coconut, or palm seed. Sometimes we were impeded from going further by the road conditions, e.g., a felled tree. Once, we stopped to attempt to rescue a marine turtle from a hunter, only to have it die in our hands, and once we ran into a family cutting and burning trees for charcoal.

Hidden behind the greenery, lie the remnants of the plantations, still inhabited by farmers, who use the old servants’ quarters. The people, possibly more impoverished now than during colonial times, are relying on this subsidy of the past that is every year the worse for wear. In colonial times, the 1,000 square kilometers of São Tomé e Príncipe was carved into various plantations bequeathed upon nobles of Portugal that grew sugar, coffee and cacao. Each of these plantations was a microcosm, with its own hospital – the grandest structure on the plantation, a big house for the manager, servants’ quarters, workshops, railroad, train, and port facility. Most of this infrastructure was located at the headquarters, with numerous outlaying dependencias, where more workers lived. In 1976, after gaining independence from Portugal, the new socialist government decided on a land distribution policy that gave former plantation workers 1-10 hectares of farmland, larger farmers 10-100 ha, and kept a few plantations whole. Given the political and cultural history, there was little recourse to such a giveaway; however, when unaccompanied by agricultural support and given larger economic forces, this proved to be a solution that has impoverished both the people and the environment.

The old plantation system had an assembly line style of working, so that each worker knew his job but not the entire process. The island also was uninhabited before the Portuguese discovery, and the inhabitants were brought over from all the other Lusophone colonies. No other nation was so entirely enslaved and deprived of indigenous cultural roots, connections, and subsistence agriculture lifestyles. Thus, when they were handed over the plot of land, many did not know how to farm it well. Nor were they given any information, seeds, or equipment. In addition, while São Tomé was once a chief producer of cacao, world prices have plunged in recent years, leaving it a highly unprofitable crop to plant. According to the director of the forestry department, a farmer with 1.5 ha of land, will be able to grow at most 60-75 kg of cacao per year, which at the current price of 3000 dobras/kg (US$0.30), will yield about 180,000-225,000Db, or US$20-25 a year. Older plants also yield less fruit and must be replanted, which takes a certain amount of capital, so that productivity has declined over the years. On the other hand, cacao must be grown in shade, and has in the past been grown with various hardwood trees; given the need for quality construction wood, these trees have become quite precious. A hectare of farmland will hold about four or five such trees, which can sell for US$300 each. This disparity has led to the trend of farmers cutting down the trees on their plot, selling it, cutting down the cacao and replanting with a more profitable crop, such as fruits and vegetables. Or, they replace the hardwoods with banana plants and breadfruit trees, which also give shade. The disturbance, however, has led to increasing cases of a fungal disease, Rubrucintus, that attacks cacao when it does not receive the perfect light conditions. It also indicates a radical change in the composition of the rural landscape, and of the ecology of the entire island. Outside of urban environmental problems, concentrated mostly in capital city, this deforestation and conversion of the entire island seemed to me to be the most crucial environmental problem on the island.

After touring island, I interviewed project leaders, people in the UNDP, and foreign embassies, government officials, and heads of various institutions to get an idea of the international aid in the country, and the state of the environment. It was exciting and not just a little daunting to be coming up with the interview questions and my own line of research on such a scale, for the first time. As I speak several languages, the interviewee at least was able to be comfortable speaking in his or her best language (interviews were conducted in Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese, with documents in all those languages as well as English and French). I was also able to have various interviewees take me to their project sites or meet them in informal settings, where people became much more candid in their views.

Overwhelmingly, the focus of the aid is on rural development, which is unsurprising given the poverty on the island, especially on the plantations. There are French projects for building houses and giving agricultural extension, Taiwanese projects for growing new fruits and vegetables and chickens, Portuguese projects in education and farming, Spanish pepper projects, and Italian fishing projects, to name a few. By and large, these governments come to the government with a certain amount of money and the government plans with them how to use this money. However, there is no cohesive land use plan within the government, nor any current integration and communication between the projects. The environmental sustainability of these different programs vary – some maintain that importing genetically modified substances and fertilizers is bad and illegal; others depend on fertilizer and enhanced feeds for their projects. Some programs try to construct houses out of mud to alleviate the stress on wood, while mostly the houses are made of hardwoods. There is no national law on the environmental requirements, or accountability, for these foreign projects.

Representing environmental aid is ECOFAC (ECOsystèmes Forestiers d’Afrique Centrale), an EU-funded sustainable development program. Despite its stated mission on sustainable development, conservation is the primary focus, with a goal in each of the seven Central African countries of creating a national park. Obo National Park, a largely naturally protected area due to its inaccessibility, covers a large portion of the upper reaches of the volcanic island of São Tomé. First envisioned ten years ago, when ECOFAC entered STP, the park is still not legally extant, as the assembly has not yet approved it. ECOFAC’s legacy is mainly one of data collection and scientific research on biodiversity and endemism, especially of orchids, ferns, and birds. It built a botanical garden near the entrance of the park, and gives a bit of funding to the Department of Forestry. As EU funding is being cut off at the close of this year, ECOFAC will be leaving. The foreign director believes that the government, with its new oil revenues, will now be able to pay for its own environmental protection. People at the Department of Forestry are highly skeptical, fearing that a complete loss of funding and shortage of technical assistance will mean that the garden will have to be closed and that activities will grind to a halt. The other international environmental program comes from the UNDP, which conducts research on carbon trading forests in São Tomé. France also funded, until recently, the Center for the Investigation of Agriculture and Technology, which conducts agro-experiments, including organic cacao for a niche market.

Based on the projects that were present in São Tomé, it is notable that, despite the rhetoric on sustainable development, there are still few examples to demonstrate the possible coexistence of these two trajectories in the real world. On the island, projects on development and conservation are still handled very separately. Furthermore, the international assistance focuses on protecting what it considers to be international patrimony – biodiversity, carbon sequestration, which does not necessarily in this case coincide with the most critical environmental concerns. If parks even on the mainland are questionable, then they become even more dubious on island nations, where ecosystems are much more fragile and must be protected holistically. A small park on a 20km by 40km island will go very little towards long-term preservation. This begs the question of what is environment, and environmental protection, and does international assistance towards what it considers to be environmentally worthy of protection actually lead to the long-term health of the overall environment in developing countries? What is the role of environmentally oriented international NGOs? The organizations said that they were there to set an example, to create a model, but have they created the conditions in which those examples can be multiplied and followed? Over and over, development workers noted how frustrating it was to work with people who expect you to give, give, and give, and how if you turn the other way, all work will stop. Does that indicate that their activities have actually failed to address issues truly important to the local people? How can aid work if it does not foster a sense of ownership? To be fair, São Tomé has been a democracy for little over a decade, and little has been done because they are in a state of preparation. Just as the international environmental community has been working on solutions, agreements and treaties in the past few decades, the next decades will be for actual implementation of the environmental laws and replication of models in São Tomé as well as the rest of the world. Perhaps the lack of implementation of sustainable development is emblematic of the uncertainty at the global level as to how this can really be achieved.

To make things even more exciting, there was a military coup near the end of my trip, which meant the government stopped working and I had to stay at home. Major Pereira, who led the coup, criticized not only the rampant corruption and lack of accountability in the government, but also went on to ask, “Sãotomenses owe US$295 per capita to the World Bank. What has this money done for the country, for the government? The United States, European Union, France, Portugal, Taiwan, they all take advantage of us.” Certainly, both donors and recipients have been milking the situation to their advantage, but how can Sãotomenses and the environment both come out on the winning side?

Lastly, I cannot thank the Environmental Studies Fellowship enough for having given me this opportunity to test my own intellectual abilities, to learn so much from people, to travel to such a beautiful land. I look forward to writing my thesis this coming year, and hope to make some contribution to São Tomé, who has enriched my life and understanding of conservation and development so much.

Pictures

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Researching Clean Energy Alternatives with the Vermont Sierra Club
Katherine Sims, History of Art '04

I am grateful for the Environmental Studies Internship Grant that gave me the opportunity to intern with the Vermont Chapter of the Sierra Club during the summer of 2003. The Sierra club is a grass-roots organization whose stated goal is to preserve, protect, and enjoy the natural world. Since 1892, the Sierra Club has been a leader in many areas of environmental advocacy. Although the Vermont Chapter works on a wide-range of issues from agricultural, to transportation, to environmental justice, I focused on clean energy issues.

Meeting the challenge of a clean energy future is a critical undertaking for advocates and for our planet. Our current energy path leads toward disaster on several fronts: polluted air, global warming, habitat destruction, and fouled water, to name a few. The technologies for a clean energy alternative are rapidly emerging and policy makers are beginning to set in place legislation to ensure aggressive clean energy standards. In particular, the Northeast Governors and the Eastern Canadian Premiers created a Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) in 2001. This plan set in place a number of target goals for the states and providences relating in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. As part of their Energy Futures Project, the Vermont Sierra Club, in partnership with other Sierra Club Chapters in the Northeast Regional Conservation Committee (NERCC), has been working to monitor the commitments made by the Governors and Premiers in the CCAP.

The first part of my internship was primarily focused on independent research related to the CCAP. The goal for my research was to gather enough data about current, as well as future, energy sources, uses, and regulation in the New England states to draft a final report card for each of the states. For my research, I reviewed printed documents by both governmental offices and advocacy groups, researched on the web, and interviewed government officials and members of advocacy groups. I also worked closely with members of the Sierra Club from all the New England States. After my research was completed, I produced a draft outline of the energy policies and plans for the New England states that was submitted to the other members of NERCC. Combined with the data for the Eastern Canadian Provinces, our group produced a report card for the New England States and the Eastern Canadian Provinces. This report card reviews each state or province’s accomplishments and suggests opportunities for change towards a clean energy future in line with the goals of the CCAP.

My experience this summer taught me a great deal. I was able to garner a clear understanding of many of the major issues related to clean energy policy. I also have a more thorough understanding of where New England is today and where it should head if we want to effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. My research brought in touch with people from many different sectors of the clean energy debate who provided me with a diverse range of information. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to attend a conference on clean energy put on by NERCC, as well as, attend the Vermont Solar Fest.

I will be able to directly apply what I learned through my internship to my studies here at Yale. Not only was I able to hone my research gathering and proposal drafting skills, but also my research done during the internship will relate to my senior essay. As an art history major, I plan to write my senior essay on sustainable architecture. An understanding of climate change, energy efficiency and clean energy alternatives is critical to architecture because any sustainable design should have a positive impact on the environment, rely energy efficient systems, and use renewable energy sources. I now have a clearer understanding of why clean energy is so critical and what opportunities are out there. In addition to informing my academic work at Yale, my experience has piqued my interest in other related projects. Although I am not particularly interested in working on regional policy issues again, I am very interested in more local and direct initiatives related to the implementation of clean energy policy and programs. Overall, my experience with the Sierra was truly edifying, engaging, and worthwhile.

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Contamination, Health, and Injustice in Vieques, Puerto Rico
Marina Spitkovskaya, Environmental Studies and International Studies '04

This past summer I spent eight weeks on the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. This island has been used for weapons storage and training exercises by the U.S. Navy for over sixty years. As a result, there has been serious environmental contamination of the air, water, soils, vegetation, and fisheries. This chemical contamination has jeopardized the health and well-being of Vieques residents, especially those whose livelihoods depend on the natural resources that have been compromised. Today, the Navy has relinquished control of all but several small areas of the island, and the pressing issue is the contamination and environmental degradation that remains and how it will impact the future of Vieques.

Vieques residents, as well as international activists and legislators in Congress, have called for the Navy to clean up the contamination and compensate Vieques residents for the health impacts it has caused. Studies of environmental contamination and health impacts are unclear, however, and the Agency for Toxins and Disease Registry – a part of the Centers for Disease Control - has found no significant risk to Vieques residents through any of the environmental media. The EPA is evaluating the possibility of classifying Vieques as a Superfund site; however, it is unclear whether this will ultimately achieve the necessary cleanup seeing that Superfund is severely underfunded and cannot meet its responsibilities even in the continental U.S.

The purpose of my stay on Vieques was to explore the fishing industry on the island and the behavior patterns of Vieques fishermen. I accomplished this by spending much of my time at the fishing dock, where Vieques fishermen come in and sell their catch. In this way I got to know the fishing community and succeeded in interviewing over fifty fishermen regarding their fishing and the fish consumption patterns of their families. I gathered a large amount of data regarding the demographic characteristics of fishermen and their families, the species of fish they catch and the quantities and seasonal differences, as well as the species of fish they consume, the frequencies, and methods of preparation. I explored how these patterns of consumption vary by season, gender, and age within the community.

Over the course of the eight weeks, I believe I spoke with the vast majority of fully active Vieques fishermen. Although there are over five hundred registered fishermen on Vieques, far fewer are actively fishing as their primary form of earning a livelihood. Because the summer months are the slow season for fishing, the fishermen I met at the dock were naturally those who fished most seriously and year-round.

In addition to performing interviews of fishermen, I spent time getting to know the other key players in Vieques natural resource management. I spoke with Mark Martin of the Vieques Historic and Conservation Trust and Oscar Diaz of the Fish and Wildlife Service. I also met with Robert Rabin of the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques and Colleen McNamara of the Technical Review Committee for the designation of Vieques as a Superfund site. In addition, I met with the leaders of the four fishermen’s associations on Vieques. Getting to know the various community members on Vieques was abundantly interesting and helpful in getting to know the issues at play.

Through this process, I became interested in the social and environmental implications of the process through which environmental health issues are addressed in the U.S. I became frustrated with the lack of accountability to the victims of environmental contamination and the way the greatest burden is placed most often on the victims and not the polluters. I hope to address these questions in writing my senior thesis this year. I hope to explore the issues pertaining to Vieques and consider broadly their implications for other cases of environmental contamination due to U.S. military activity, both in the U.S. and internationally. I would like to evaluate the existing protocols for evaluating risk to health and environment, in particular those used by the ATSDR, to determine why they so frequently place the greatest burden on the victims and not the polluters. I would like to consider Superfund and evaluate its effectiveness in protecting the health of affected communities in the U.S. Finally, I hope to compare the framework in place to protect victims of contamination in the U.S. to that pertaining to victims of U.S. military base contamination internationally, in locations such as Okinawa, Japan, the Philippines, Panama, and islands in Micronesia.

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Internship at the Marine Resources Center at Woods Hole
Elizabeth Turnell, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Track '04

This summer I worked as an intern at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA. The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is an international center for research, education, and training in biology, biomedicine, and ecology. I interned at the Marine Resources Center (MRC), which is a research facility as well as a holding facility for the field-collected marine organisms studied by MBL scientists.

Most of my time at the MRC (30 hrs/wk) was spent in the lab of Dr. Gabriele Gerlach, a biologist who studies behavioral ecology, population genetics, evolutionary biology, and conservation biology. I conducted a research project that explored the role played by visual cues in the mate choice behavior of zebrafish (Danio rerio). Extensive research has been conducted on the genetics and development of zebrafish, which are known as “the new white mice.” However, very little is known about the behavior of these animals. The goal of my project was to determine whether zebrafish use visual cues to select mates, and, if so, which visual characteristics are most important.

The experimental setup was as follows: The subject (an individual zebrafish) was placed in a tank (54 liters) situated between two computer monitors. Each monitor displayed a 3-D computer animated image of a swimming zebrafish. Computer animation was used instead of real fish because it allows for the manipulation of experimental visual characteristics and guarantees the uniformity of non-experimental visual characteristics. Each subject was kept in the tank for 4 sets of 5 minutes, between which the screens were covered for 1 minute and the images switched between the monitors. The percentage of time the subject spent on each half of the tank (i.e., in proximity to each of the two images) was recorded. Time spent in proximity was used as an indication of mating preference, so the image near which the subject spent more time was taken to be the image which the subject found more attractive. Several pairs of images were tested, and in each case the two simultaneously displayed images differed in one characteristic only. For example, one pair consisted of an image of a fish with a normal horizontal stripe pattern and an image of a fish with an abnormal vertical stripe pattern. Another pair consisted of a female-shaped image (with a large belly) and a male-shaped image (with a small belly). Other characteristics tested included normal vs. pale coloration and normal vs. small size.

My results indicated that zebrafish do in fact use visual cues during mate selection. Male zebrafish strongly preferred the female image over the male image, and female zebrafish strongly preferred the male image over the female image. This indicates that zebrafish use belly size to distinguish between the sexes of conspecifics during mate selection. Male zebrafish also strongly preferred the female image with horizontal stripes over the female image with vertical stripes, and female zebrafish strongly preferred the male image with horizontal stripes over the male image with vertical stripes. This indicates that zebrafish use stripe pattern to facilitate species recognition during mate selection. A preference for normal coloration over pale coloration was found in both sexes, although it was not significant. At the end of my internship I presented my findings at the MBL General Scientific Meetings. My study will be published in the MBL Biological Bulletin.

In addition to conducting my research project, I also spent 10 hrs/wk on animal care. This involved feeding the MRC animals, cleaning and maintaining holding tanks, culturing live food sources, performing water quality tests, and assisting with veterinary care and necropsies.

I would definitely recommend this internship to other students. I found the research aspect of my internship to be very educational and intellectually stimulating. Conducting my own research project was an extremely valuable experience. I learned a lot not only about fish behavior, but also about research methodologies and techniques in general. Presenting my findings to the scientific community, both through an oral presentation and a published report, was likewise an important experience. This internship has prepared me for the independent research I hope to conduct in the future as a graduate student, whether it is in fish behavior or in another field of biology.

The animal care aspect of my internship was also educational and very enjoyable. It was exciting to learn about the many different marine animals housed at the MRC and to take part in their daily maintenance. I gained extensive hands-on experience and a better understanding of the biology of many important organisms.

Finally, the atmosphere at the MRC was wonderful. Everyone who worked there, from the researchers to the animal care staff to the interns, were incredibly dedicated and exceptionally friendly, and it was a pleasure to work with them.

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Harnessing Capitalism: A Study of Women and the Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) Program in Botswana
Rachel Wasser, Environmental Studies '04

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Genetic Examination of A. gambiae Species Complex: Understanding the Population Biology of the Main Vector of Malaria in Sub-Saharan Africa
Daniel Wei, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology '04

In many developing countries, specifically in various African regions, malaria remains an economical and medical threat. The mosquito acts as the vector for transmission and appears to possess the strongest possibility for control of the disease. With increasing resistances to pesticides in mosquitoes and antibiotic resistances to a variety of malaria drugs, understanding mosquito populations has become key to controlling malaria.

This summer, I spent time sequencing and cloning a variety of mosquito samples from various regions in Sub-Saharan Africa from up to twenty years ago. The two main vectors, A. gambiae and A. arabiensis, are known to interbreed to create viable hybrid females. The regions sequenced were introns of novel genes pertaining to the fecundity of mosquitoes. With samples from the two main vectors from a variety of countries, an analysis was undertaken to determine whether introgression had occurred. Samples from the species A. melas and A. merus were utilized as outgroups. The research involved utilizing a variety of techniques and equipment to sequence and compare the various samples to create a phylogenetic tree. Ultimately, the goal of researching the mosquito is to create a mosquito incapable of carrying the malaria virus and to have it out compete other species. As a result, knowing how genes have been transmitted between species is vital to the success of the project.

From the research, I learned a great deal about the tedious process of scientific investigation and about the many setbacks that occur. I’ve also gained experience working through problems independently and researching previous papers to gain a better understanding of possible solutions. The experience with the various electronic devices, especially the sequencer, was extremely valuable as I was granted opportunities at working with machines typically not given to undergraduates. A great deal of research was accomplished and much of the data will be utilized in an upcoming grant. As a senior, the internship was also an excellent way to gain more time on my senior project, thereby allowing me to explore a topic in greater depth. Because of my summer internship, I’ve come into my senior year with a bit of experience on the various techniques and confidence in the protocols. I’m also aware of the modifications needed to get the various scientific equipment and techniques to work more effectively. Ultimately, it allowed me the opportunity to research a larger senior project without having to utilize the intensive research course.

I felt the internship was an excellent opportunity and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in experiencing independent laboratory work. The material was also intellectually stimulating; the constant reading and different techniques kept me interested throughout the summer. I was also allowed a great deal of freedom and independent thinking with the project. With a concrete goal for the end of my senior year, I was allowed to pace myself and to focus on certain areas I found more interesting than other areas.

The only shortcoming of the program was the lack of field experience. Although flying to Africa and back in time is impossible, experience with terrestrial arthropods nearby would have made the program more complete. Possible work with the West Nile virus and mosquito vectors could have allowed a better incorporation of the two but malaria clearly affects a wider population of individuals and funding is clearly easier to obtain with such a large project. The summer was also focused primarily on performing the laboratory work so that analysis of the data was next to impossible (because the time frame was too short). As a result, the internship would probably be best utilized prior to research performed during the school year so that all aspects of the project, from laboratory work to a written paper, can be completed.

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Internship with the World Wildlife Fund on the East Dongting Lake Wetland Conservation Project, China
Xizhou Zhou, Environmental Studies and International Studies '05

http://www.wwfchina.org/english/wetland/index.htm

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