Modern sonar systems have greatly improved their sensor technology and processing techniques, but little effort has been put into display design for sonar data. The enormous amount of acoustic data presented by the traditional frequency versus time display can be overwhelming for a sonar operator to monitor and analyze. The recent emphasis placed on networked underwater warfare also requires the operator to create and maintain awareness of the overall tactical picture in order to improve overall effectiveness in communication and sharing of critical data. In addition to regular sonar tasks, sonobuoy system operators must manage the deployment of sonobuoys and ensure proper functioning of deployed sonobuoys. This thesis examines an application of the Ecological Interface Design framework in the interface design of a sonobuoy system on board a maritime patrol aircraft. Background research for this thesis includes a literature review, interviews with subject matter experts, and an analysis of the decision making process of sonar operators from an information processing perspective. A work domain analysis was carried out, which yielded a dual domain model: the domain of sonobuoy management and the domain of tactical situation awareness address the two different aspects of the operator's work. Information requirements were drawn from the two models, which provided a basis for the generation of various unique interface concepts. These concepts covered both the needs to build a good tactical picture and manage sonobuoys as physical resources. The later requirement has generally been overlooked by previous sonobuoy interface designs. A number of interface concepts were further developed into an integrated display prototype for user testing. Demos created with the same prototype were also delivered to subject matter experts for their feedback. While the evaluation means are subjective and limited in their ability to draw solid comparisons with existing sonobuoy displays, positive results from both user testing and subject matter feedback indicated that the concepts developed here are intuitive to use and effective in communicating critical data and supporting the user’s awareness of the tactical events simulated. Subject matter experts also acknowledged the potential for these concepts to be included in future research and development for sonobuoy systems. This project was funded by the Industrial Postgraduate Scholarships (IPS) from Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the sponsorship of Humansystems Inc. at Guelph, Ontario.

This thesis examines the feasibility of fostering “sustainable foodscapes” in urban communities. A review of the literature on the topics of sustainability, resilience, sustainable food security, and healthy communities is used to determine to the definition of “sustainable foodscapes.” This thesis uses a framework of socio-ecological restoration to consider how communities might adopt sustainable foodscapes. A case study is conducted in the city of Waterloo, Ontario to test the criteria of sustainable foodscapes and explore some of the practical opportunities and barriers to developing sustainable foodscapes in an urban community. The methods for the case study include semi-structured interviews. Interview results indicate that a variety of sustainable foodscapes such as community gardening, individual gardening, and foraging are used in Waterloo already, and survey results suggest that various members of the community are open to the adoption of these foodscapes. The case study results reveal that diverse community members view sustainable foodscapes as an important contribution to community health, less for the purpose of ecological sustainability than for their usefulness as a way of promoting community interaction, social learning, and fostering a sense of place. Ways to conduct a socio-ecological restoration for sustainable foodscapes in Waterloo could include increasing areas for the purposes of foraging to occur in an ecologically benign manner, such as on marginal or private land; creating municipal policies and Official Plans that provide support for community gardens, and fostering more accepting attitudes towards sustainable foodscapes by providing increased opportunities for education and participation among community members.

The US anti-nuclear movement formed in opposition to the development of nuclear weapons and energy. Anti-nuclear activists have rallied since the late 1970’s opposed to the construction of Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro, Georgia due to the social and environmental justice issues related to the nuclear industry. In 2010, the nuclear industry proposed a nuclear resurgence in the US, proposing to construct new reactors at Plant Vogtle. This represented the first time new nuclear reactors had been proposed since the moratorium on new reactors as a result of the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. The aim of the study is to understand the experience of “first wave” anti-nuclear activists in Georgia (those engaged for twenty years or more). Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Framework was employed to locate anti-nuclear activists’ perceived facilitators and barriers to their activism. Semi-structured interviews with these activists yielded rich descriptions about their experience in the anti-nuclear movement. Activists endorsed facilitators and barriers related to individual characteristics however, the majority of activists perceived facilitators and barriers beyond the individual level. Specifically, the majority of activists mentioned facilitators and barriers relating to the media and political systems and the power and resource imbalances within society. The role of community psychology is discussed in relation to this field of inquiry.

Consumers today are becoming more aware of how their behavior and use of resources affect the environment. It is becoming increasingly important for companies to understand consumer’s attitudes in order to predict their behavior. Extensive research has been conducted on the attitude-behavioral relationship in various fields of study. However, no research has been made on the attitude towards environmentally friendly automobiles and how it affects purchase intentions. Our research has been made in collaboration with Volvo Car Corporation, which in 2010 was acquired by Geely Automobile. The acquisition meant that an opportunity presented itself on the Chinese market, which today is the largest automobile market in the world. The thesis will focus on young Chinese consumer’s attitude toward the environment and how this may affect their purchase intentions towards environmentally friendly automobiles. The basis for our reasoning is that the factors environmental values, environmental knowledge and responsibility feelings make up an individual’s environmental attitude. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how environmental values, environmental knowledge and responsibility feelings affect purchase intentions towards environmentally friendly automobiles among young Chinese consumers. We have used a quantitative approach in our collection of empirical data. With the help of a web-based self-completions survey we managed to send out the questionnaire to all Chinese students studying at Jönköping University and received a high response rate of 65%. We based the design of the survey on a model from Kaiser, Ranney, Hartig and Bowler (1999). The major findings from our research conclude that the used model does not substantially explain purchase intentions of environmentally friendly automobiles. Our research suggests that the factors environmental knowledge and responsibility feelings are not significant when predicting intentions to purchase environmentally friendly automobiles. However, the factor environmental values proved to be strongly correlated when predicting intentions to purchase environmentally friendly automobiles.

The main aim of this paper is to reveal if development and current state of the Turkish Economy are sustainable. Instead of the research tools offered in environmental economics, the holistic approach of ecological economics is used to answer this question. Within that context, the Turkish Economy is assessed within the concept of steady-state economics. Having assessed the data related to the three institutional changes suggested within the concept, this study shows the obstacles and advantages of the Turkish Economy to move towards the steady-state, in other words, sustainability.

This paper explores the contextual factors that promote and inhibit firms? motivations to adopt a voluntary environmental initiative that is good for the environment but does not provide a clear competitive or legitimating benefit to the firm itself. Using green electricity (e. g. , wind, solar, small hydro, and biomass) as an example of such an initiative, the study uses qualitative research to investigate the willingness of 20 Canadian businesses to voluntarily adopt green electricity for at least a portion of their total electricity requirements. <br /><br /> Although the corporate ecological responsiveness literature reveals that external factors (e. g. , economic, government, infrastructure), organizational factors (e. g. , industry cohesion), and individual factors (e. g. , leadership, individual interest, manager discretion) can all affect the types of environmental projects that firms will adopt, in the case of green electricity the external factors were the more significant obstacles to it being perceived as a viable means to improve corporate environmental performance. In firms currently using green electricity, these obstacles were largely overcome by the successful efforts of an internal champion motivated primarily by individual values. An important aspect of the champion?s success is her ability to attach her personal interest to a tangible business issue. This task is in turn aided by proactive or sustaining corporate environmental strategies that formalize continual environmental improvement processes and are predisposed to evaluating the success of an initiative on more than its financial or legitimizing contribution to the firm. <br /><br /> Based on these findings, the thesis concludes that the two most important factors associated with the willingness of firms to adopt an initiative that is good for the environment but not necessarily good for the firm are the development of decision-making criteria that extend beyond the bottom-line and the capability of concerned individuals to legitimize the initiative within the firm.

Once considered a 'green' industry, tourism and its associated ecological impacts are now widely acknowledged. Focus within tourism planning has aimed to reduce the ecological burden placed on a destination area, and move towards a more sustainable tourism industry. This research proposes the use of the Ecological Footprint (EF) as a tool to compare the ecological costs of different types of tourism. The EF shows the relative amount of productive land appropriated by the activities and choices of an individual tourist. The main goal of this study was to analyse and compare the ecological resource use of tourism in Ontario. Surveys were conducted with tourists staying at 9 different types of accommodations throughout Ontario. Additional data were collected from personal interviews with accommodation managers at each location and incorporated into the EF calculation. Four areas of tourism ecological impact were identified; tourists' personal consumption, transportation, activity, and accommodation costs. These four components contributed in varying degrees to each tourist Ecological Footprint, and this variation became the main area of analysis. The findings of this research demonstrated that air travel contributes significantly to the total ecological cost of a particular tourism experience. Comparably, travel by personal car made a much smaller contribution to the tourist EF. Thus, local area tourists who could drive to a destination had a smaller EF than those long-distance domestic and international tourists who flew. Accommodation ecological costs were primarily a factor of the amount of built space available, and total energy usage per guest. Accommodations that had a large number of occupants for a given area and level of energy consumption achieved a scale of efficiency. In this manner, larger, more efficiently constructed accommodations often made smaller contributions to the tourist EF than small-scale, but inefficient accommodations. The main conclusion was that the ecological impacts of tourism can be quantitatively recorded, and that a complete trip view of tourism ecological resource use is necessary. When considering practical applications in the tourism industry, an Ecological Footprint analysis could be used by tourism managers as an evaluative tool to compare the ecological outcome of various construction, programming, and operational changes. For the tourist, the EF can serve as an 'eco-label', to distinguish one type of 'green' tourism from another, creating a more informed consumer. Ultimately, the Ecological Footprint serves one purpose- to demonstrate that less ecologically consumptive tourism choices are possible for both tourists and tourism managers.

Modern sonar systems have greatly improved their sensor technology and processing techniques, but little effort has been put into display design for sonar data. The enormous amount of acoustic data presented by the traditional frequency versus time display can be overwhelming for a sonar operator to monitor and analyze. The recent emphasis placed on networked underwater warfare also requires the operator to create and maintain awareness of the overall tactical picture in order to improve overall effectiveness in communication and sharing of critical data. In addition to regular sonar tasks, sonobuoy system operators must manage the deployment of sonobuoys and ensure proper functioning of deployed sonobuoys. This thesis examines an application of the Ecological Interface Design framework in the interface design of a sonobuoy system on board a maritime patrol aircraft. Background research for this thesis includes a literature review, interviews with subject matter experts, and an analysis of the decision making process of sonar operators from an information processing perspective. A work domain analysis was carried out, which yielded a dual domain model: the domain of sonobuoy management and the domain of tactical situation awareness address the two different aspects of the operator's work. Information requirements were drawn from the two models, which provided a basis for the generation of various unique interface concepts. These concepts covered both the needs to build a good tactical picture and manage sonobuoys as physical resources. The later requirement has generally been overlooked by previous sonobuoy interface designs. A number of interface concepts were further developed into an integrated display prototype for user testing. Demos created with the same prototype were also delivered to subject matter experts for their feedback. While the evaluation means are subjective and limited in their ability to draw solid comparisons with existing sonobuoy displays, positive results from both user testing and subject matter feedback indicated that the concepts developed here are intuitive to use and effective in communicating critical data and supporting the user’s awareness of the tactical events simulated. Subject matter experts also acknowledged the potential for these concepts to be included in future research and development for sonobuoy systems. This project was funded by the Industrial Postgraduate Scholarships (IPS) from Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the sponsorship of Humansystems Inc. at Guelph, Ontario.

This thesis examines the feasibility of fostering “sustainable foodscapes” in urban communities. A review of the literature on the topics of sustainability, resilience, sustainable food security, and healthy communities is used to determine to the definition of “sustainable foodscapes.” This thesis uses a framework of socio-ecological restoration to consider how communities might adopt sustainable foodscapes. A case study is conducted in the city of Waterloo, Ontario to test the criteria of sustainable foodscapes and explore some of the practical opportunities and barriers to developing sustainable foodscapes in an urban community. The methods for the case study include semi-structured interviews. Interview results indicate that a variety of sustainable foodscapes such as community gardening, individual gardening, and foraging are used in Waterloo already, and survey results suggest that various members of the community are open to the adoption of these foodscapes. The case study results reveal that diverse community members view sustainable foodscapes as an important contribution to community health, less for the purpose of ecological sustainability than for their usefulness as a way of promoting community interaction, social learning, and fostering a sense of place. Ways to conduct a socio-ecological restoration for sustainable foodscapes in Waterloo could include increasing areas for the purposes of foraging to occur in an ecologically benign manner, such as on marginal or private land; creating municipal policies and Official Plans that provide support for community gardens, and fostering more accepting attitudes towards sustainable foodscapes by providing increased opportunities for education and participation among community members.

Lake Erie has undergone a substantial amount of ecosystem changes over the past century; including cultural eutrophication and several invasions by industrious exotic species. Simple mass balance models for phosphorus have been useful in guiding policy decisions that led to reduced eutrophication, but new, confounding threats to the ecological health of Lake Erie continue to appear and lake managers continue to need useful tools to better understand the lake. As more complex ecological questions are asked to guide future management decisions, more complex ecological models are developed in an effort to provide some clues. The walleye fishery in Lake Erie is economically very important. Walleye recruitment has been highly variable from year to year since the 1990s. Modelling zooplankton is desired as a diagnostic tool for elucidating the quality of habitat – spatially and temporally – that is available to walleye in their vulnerable larval state. ELCOM-CAEDYM (or ELCD) is a 3-dimensional, coupled hydrodynamic and ecological model, which has been successfully applied to Lake Erie to model the nutrients and phytoplankton. The objectives of this study were to better understand the ELCOM-CAEDYM model of Lake Erie through a sensitivity analysis (SA), which has not been done before, and to explicitly simulate zooplankton in this model. An SA is important for determining which of the uncertain parameters have the greatest impact on the output variables. Due to the complexity of the CAEDYM model and the highly interdependent functions and variables modelled, a local SA (comparing changes in output by perturbing parameters one-at-a-time from some baseline configuration) was not desirable. Local SA’s ignore the possibility of a parameter’s effects being correlated to the status of other parameters. However, quantitative global methods are enormously computationally expensive for a complex model. The Lake Erie ELCD model simulates temperature, mixing, nutrient cycles, and phytoplankton dynamics. Phytoplankton are represented by 5 functional groups. With the explicit inclusion of 2 functional groups of zooplankton (copepods and cladocerans), the model uses over 300 function parameters in addition to requiring meteorological data and river inflow characteristics throughout the simulation. The model is set up with a 2-km grid over 40 layers with a 5-minute timestep from April 11 to September 1. This full simulation takes 6 days to complete. A quantitative global method to evaluate all parameters potentially significant to zooplankton would be impossible. The Morris method was selected for its streamlined global sampling procedure combined with the manageable computational demands of a one-at-a-time analysis. This method provides the relative sensitivity of diagnostic outputs to perturbed parameters. Ninety-one parameters were selected to be evaluated in 3680 simulations for the Morris SA. The selection of which parameters to evaluate and their assigned ranges are critical components in any SA. The ranges for parameters that represent a measurable quantity were assessed based on observed values in Lake Erie and other relevant studies. For some parameters, a measured realistic range was unknown. In these cases, values from relevant published models or judgements based on experience with the ELCD-Erie model were used to choose a suitable range. To assess the sensitivity of CAEDYM variables to parameters, DYRESM was substituted for ELCOM to vastly decrease the computation time of a single run. DYRESM is not suitable to model the entire lake due to the large size and irregular shape of the entire lake. Therefore, only the West Basin was modelled and analysed using DYCD. The West Basin was of special interest for a sensitivity analysis of CAEDYM parameters with respect to zooplankton because it is an important area for walleye larval development. DYCD output profiles for temperature, total chlorophyll a (TChla as a surrogate for total phytoplankton concentration) were similar in magnitudes and seasonal dynamics compared to ELCD outputs in deep West Basin stations. The sensitivity of zooplankton, TChla and TP to each parameter was assessed using two single value diagnostics: the simulated seasonal maximum and the simulated day on which peak maximum was reached. Zooplankton were sensitive to almost all of the zooplankton parameters perturbed in the analysis. This may indicate that modelling zooplankton is extremely complex, relying on many dynamic processes, or that evaluated ranges were not constrained well enough. An example of sensitivity to a poorly known parameter is the messy feeding coefficient. Reducing the uncertainty of this parameter would improve the confidence in the zooplankton assimilation submodel. Other parameters that stood out for being especially significant to zooplankton were: the respiration rate, mortality rate, internal phosphorus to carbon ratio, the temperature multiplier and standard temperature for feeding dynamics, and the half saturation constant. Most of these are easily explained as they directly aid or impede growth or they directly affect zooplankton losses. The most significant phytoplankton parameters on TChla and zooplankton outputs were, not surprisingly, the maximum growth rate and the mortality and respiration coefficient. Some particulate matter parameters proved to be important to outputs as well. More than 2500 of the 3680 parameter configurations resulted in unrealistic zooplankton simulations: peak values that did not much exceed initial conditions on the first day of the simulation. The SA exercise pinpointed a few configurations that resulted in reasonable peak zooplankton values and timing; these runs were used as a starting point for calibrating the ELCD model. Parameters were further manually adjusted by quickly checking their impacts on DYCD before applying them to ELCD. Post SA and minor calibration, the modelled zooplankton results were dramatically better than initial modelling attempts prior to the SA. Zooplankton concentrations throughout the lake were close to measured ranges and in some parts of the lake seasonal patterns were also similar to measured patterns. Modelled zooplankton results were least consistent with observations in the south west area of the lake: zooplankton were overestimated in late June-early July and they subsequently crashed and were underestimated in late July-August. It is supposed that this is due to higher grazing pressure from fish larvae in that area of the lake, which is not explicitly modelled. Although it is not anticipated that the south west seasonal zooplankton patterns will improve through parameter calibration (since predator effects are uniformly characterized throughout the lake by the same mortality factor) , further calibration is needed to improve results in the rest of the lake since copepods are generally overestimated and cladocerans generally underestimated. Phytoplankton groups must also be calibrated simultaneously to ensure that they are still operating within reasonable concentrations given more successful zooplankton simulations.