Annual Reports
1997-1998 Annual Report
Prepared by Emil Morhardt, 9/16/98
Overview
The Roberts Environmental Center (REC) conducts environmental research and analysis to enhance understanding of the relationships among environmental protection, economic growth, and technological change. The overall goal of the REC is to involve students in real-world environmental issues and to train them to analyze the issues from as broad a perspective as possible, taking ecology, economics and policy into consideration. Students and faculty working in the REC have their main academic focus in one of these areas but are interested in the other areas as well, and many of the students involved with the REC have chosen the Environment, Economics, and Politics (EEP) major which incorporates all three disciplines.
In order to analyze an environmental issue properly, it is necessary to have a clear understanding of its physical scope, of the data that can be brought to bear in its analysis, and of the ecological, economic, and political processes related to it. Increasingly, this understanding is facilitated with computer technology.
The physical scope of projects—the basemaps, overlays, three-dimensional renderings, photographic records, and contaminant visualizations—are implemented in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), as is much of the spatial data analysis.
The relevant data, both those used by the GIS and those used for documentation and analytical purposes are stored in computer databases, and the design and maintenance of these databases has become an important discipline in itself.
Understanding the processes is the province of simulation models. Models initially exist at the conceptual level—they are, fundamentally, what someone thinks will happen to the environment or the economy when some disaster occurs or some policy is implemented. When conceptual models are formulated as mathematical constructs or computer simulations they tend to become more testable, more rigorous, and if they seem to be predictive, more influential.
Students anticipating careers related to the environment or expecting to hold positions that influence an organization's environmental posture need to understand these current methods of environmental analysis, and there is nothing quite as effective in cementing this understanding as having hands-on experience. The EEP clinics, thesis projects, outside contracts, and independent study opportunities in the REC provide an opportunity to conduct various aspects of environmental analysis using the latest technology and techniques.
EEP Clinic Program
The REC clinic program in 1997-1998 was based primarily on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. During the fall semester students did a variety of independent projects including downloading and processing U.S.Geological Survey Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) and Digital Line Graphs (DLG's). We also acquired the ArcView 3D analyst extension allowing three-dimensional mapping directly from DEMs. During the spring semester the clinic was conducted jointly with the Economics 176 Practicum in Real Property Economics taught by professors Ron Teeples and Brett House of the CMC economics department. The practicum was conducted for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California as an initial review and economic analysis of the value of agricultural land among their member agencies. EEP Clinic students mapped the member agencies and did a variety of spatial analyses within the GIS.
Several students also began planning for the fall 1998 EEP clinic which is based on one of the other principal focal points of the REC, organizational environmental information management, especially as implemented using the new international environmental standard, ISO 14000. The fall 1998 EEP Clinic has six CMC students and one Pitzer student enrolled.
Other Environmental Courses
Prof. Morhardt taught a course in Natural Resource Management (Biology 159) to 18 students in the fall of 1997, and a seminar in Advanced Topics in Environmental Biology: Endangered Species (Biology 165) to 11 students in the spring of 1998. The REC also continued to sponsor a course in Environmental Law (Government 120) taught by a practicing environmental attorney, Thomas McHenry, to 25 students in the spring semester.
The Mono Basin Field Station at the Burger Reserve
This summer we replaced much of the old (used) living room/kitchen furniture, and are contemplating adding a shower to the second bathroom (bids in progress). At the end of the summer the National Park Service approached us with a proposal to install permanent vegetation quadrats within the station boundaries.
Research and Summer Internships
The REC supported four students who spent the summer of 1998 at the CMC Mono Basin Field Station at the Burger Reserve, and two others who spent half the summer at the University of California Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory (SNARL) near Mammoth Lakes doing research with Emil Morhardt.
Kristen Staiger and B. J. Hoberg, CMC seniors, worked independently and with the U. S. Forest Service in Lee Vining to collect data for their upcoming senior theses on the use of public lands for grazing. They also had meetings with local representatives of the Bureau of Land Management, the California Department of Fish and Game, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Anna Christensen and Jodi Jensen (Scripps seniors) also lived at the Burger Reserve facility and worked as interns with the Mono Lake Committee in Lee Vining.
Chris Handlin (a Scripps sophomore) and Samuel Mulder (May 1998 CMC graduate) worked with Prof. Morhardt at SNARL testing the feasibility of using passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags to locate and identify wild rainbow and brown trout in the field, and using the new generation of ultrasonic doppler velocity meters to map the velocity fields around holding trout in natural streams. The $15,000 dollar instrument needed for this latter research was loaned to the Roberts Environmental Center by its manufacturer, SonTek of San Diego. A technical paper resulting from the PIT tag work, "Using Large Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) Tags to Locate and Monitor Wild Trout", with the two students as co-authors, has been submitted to the North American Journal of Fisheries Management.
Other EEP majors who used experience in the Roberts Environmental Center to find valuable summer internships included Billy Grayson who worked for the Center for Risk Excellence at Argonne National Laboratory doing a study on "Concerns of the U. S. Department of Energy Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Boards" and Rachel Richards who obtained her internship in Deloitte & Touche based on her GIS experience.
Finally, Justin Meek worked for the REC for part of the summer on the upcoming ISO 14000 EEP clinic.
Speakers
The REC brought two speakers to CMC for regular classroom lectures (Francis Spivey-Weber, Executive Director of the Mono Lake Committee; Peter Kavounis, City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power; and arranged two symposia at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum: Corporate Environmental Management, featuring Michael Hertel, Environmental Manager for Southern California Edison Company and Gerald Secundy, retired Environmental Manager for ARCO; and The Extraterrestrial Environment, featuring Robert Staehle, the NASA pre-project manager for the upcoming Fire and Ice missions and Dale Burger, an REC board member and designer of the power supply for the successful Mars Pathfinder expedition.
Graduating seniors
In June five CMC seniors graduated with the EEP major (thesis titles follow names):
Kathryn Gaffney—Meromixis at Mono Lake
Brett Lim—Race and Affirmative Action in University Admissions Policy
Tom Sheets—An Environmental Impact Statement for a Hotel Development in the British West Indies
James Uwins—Renewable Energy in California's Deregulated Utility Industry
Tina Wang— A comparative Evaluation of Environmental Protection in the European Union and the United States
Independent Study
James Uwins developed a GIS map of all FERC-licensed hydroelectric plants in California.
Current EEP majors
There are currently nine seniors, seven juniors, nine sophomores, and three incoming freshmen registered as EEP majors, a total of 28 majors, the same number registered at the beginning of Academic Year 1997-1998. Prof. Morhardt is the Senior Thesis Advisor for all nine of the seniors.
Roberts Environmental Center Activities and Goals for 1998-1999
Academic Activities
The principal goal of the REC for the past two years has been to provide students with hands-on experience in dealing with the full ramifications of real-world environmental issues. The current focus of the REC is Southern California and the Eastern Sierra, dealing both with the management approaches to natural resources, and with the management of industrial and corporate environmental matters. These are two very different activities—the former is administered by resources agencies such as the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U. S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and the California Department of Fish and Game; the latter by regulatory agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Natural Resources Management
The last two summers have involved 9 students in field studies of natural resources including studies of management policy and resource economics in the Mono Basin, and have begun to solidify relationships with the natural resources agencies there. Our goal is to have at least 4 students in the Mono Basin each summer. The mix of students working at the Mono Lake Committee and students working on their senior theses seems to go well, and as long as we have students interested in working for the Mono Lake Committee we will probably continue it.
Related activities include:
- Continuation of development of Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques and resources . We are maintaining our ArcView GIS system at the state-of-the-art, participating in the ESRI beta testing programs and aquiring all of the ArcView extensions as they are released. These now include 3D Analyst and Image Analyst so that our installation has capabilities of very sophisticated spatial analysis and modeling. Grant McMurren, a graduate student at Claremont Graduate University is working part time for the REC developing prototype techniques that can be used by students in their theses, by future EEP clinics, and in commercial contracts. Our experience is that virtually any level of GIS experience is extremely valuable to our graduates in opening doors of potential employers.
- Development of environmental databases and database management systems. We are using Microsoft Access to develop generic systems for storing data on environmental career opportunities and companies that offer them, and also doing prototype work on environmental image databases to manage our growing image collection from our target resource areas.
- Development and analysis of habitat suitability and environmental simulation models . This is a very active area in natural resources management, but we have not had many students interested in pursuing it. With the addition of Adam Landsberg to the Joint Science physics faculty, we have another faculty member with an interest in this area, and we will be attempting to generate more interest in it this year.
Commercial and Institutional Environmental Information Management
This is the first semester in which we have concentrated the EEP Clinic on commercial and industrial environmental information management systems and it remains to be seen if the activity is of sufficient interest to the business community to warrant our active involvement.
The clinic is identifying potential industries and businesses as well as potential software. We will try to obtain software donations, and to interest a local business in letting us implement an EMIS and begin the process of ISO 14000 certification.
If there is sufficient commercial interest, these activities my form the basis of future consulting assignments that would fully involve students in industrial environmental issues.
Public Involvement
Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum
Four speakers sponsored by the REC are scheduled for the fall Athenaeum series and others will be added in the spring
- Douglas Wheeler, Secretary of Natural Resources for the State of California
- Larry Goldzband, Director of the California Department of Conservation (who will also attend a class session of Prof. Morhardt’s Natural Resource Management).
- Sunniva Sorby, a member of the first all woman team to reach the south pole
- Jamail Tenzing Norgay, son of the first Sherpa to reach the top of Mt. Everest
White Papers—This year the REC will institute a series of white papers on controversial current environmental issues for distribution to the CMC community and to the media. We are presently investigating various approaches, including using well-edited student products. The current writing assignment in the Natural Resource Management Class is to produce prototypes, and with 26 students enrolled, it is possible we will achieve some that are suitable. We are also investigating formats using faculty writers, and using faculty editors to assemble various points of view on an issue from outside sources.
Student Technical Journals—We have been publishing student papers on environmental issues on our web site for the past two years, and have produced our first hard-copy prototype journal this fall. We are exploring the merit of systematic production and distribution of these or similar products which usually constitute the first publication on a student’s resume. The students really appreciate the opportunity for some external recognition and we have had a number of inquiries on how to cite the web-based ones from people who have found them using web search engines.
External Contracts
There is considerable desire on the part of the CMC administration that the research institutes engage in external contracting, and it is likely that the REC is one of the institutes that could successfully acquire and implement such contracts. We have been examining various possibilities but have not yet identified a truly suitable work product that we feel comfortable that students can perform. The genesis of the ISO 14000 EEP clinic was the intent of exploring a service that we could offer to Southern California businesses on a contract basis and that would put students in sufficiently close proximity to industry that it would enhance their employment opportunities. We will know considerably more about the feasibility of this approach at the end of the current semester. We also believe that if we can generate sufficient GIS skill level, we will be able to offer student-operated GIS services, and it is to that end that we are using a CGU graduate student to work on prototype products. These will include natural resource mapping, recreational area mapping, facility mapping, and image scanning and storage within databases. New software is just coming on line that will allow us to do interactive web map serving, and we are also exploring potential services that we might offer in this capacity.
Quadrennial Review
The REC underwent its first quadrennial review in 8 years and emerged with a strong sense of support from the review committee.
New Board Members
The REC is working with the Development Office to identify and recruit at least two CMC alumni to the board this year. Two invitations to consider board membership have gone out in the last month, and we are hoping that they will be reacted to favorably.
Roberts Environmental Center at Claremont McKenna College
W.M. Keck Science Center
925 N. Mills Avenue
Claremont, CA 91711-5916
(909) 621-8190 or (909)621 8698 or (909) 621-8298
FAX (909) 607-1185
emorhardt@cmc.edu