Ben presenting his research on stone walls
Last Wednesdays ENVS students and faculty were treated to a series of senior presentations about our student’s integrating experience. Maria kicked it off with a talk on altruism and organic markets, finding consumers of large-scale organic markets (think Whole Foods etc.) act mostly for selfish reasons (healthier, better for me), while shoppers in a local neighborhood co-op in Spain cited mostly social and community reasons for shopping at the co-op.
Shoppers at a small neighborhood co-op – image M. Wachtman
Rose and Kate presented their work performed while abroad with the School for Field Studies. Rose studied water management in the Ambroseli region of Kenya, while Kate told us about skinks from Whakatiwai regional park in new Zealand.
Shaina and Jenna both introduced us to their mapping projects. Shaina presented interactive maps of schools within the Park River watershed, while Jenna showed off her GIS wizardry skills estimating plant biomass based Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).
NDVI index for Know Preserve, Avalonia Land Conservancy, Stonington, CT. – image by J. Wilborne
Alessandro and Tori presented research on magnetic properties of lake sediments and data from our weather station respectively, while Ben brought us up to date on current animal studies on and around the stone walls (and compost piles) on professor Smedley’s property.
Our senior presentations will continue this Wednesday with five seniors presenting the results of their honors theses. Presentations will be held on 4/22 in McCook 115 from 1:30 until the bitter end.
Refreshments will be served.
(so, please come – Jon orders too much food anyway)