Perennial: The Undergraduate Environmental Journal of Berkeley - Issue 6

PERENNIAL

THE UNDERGRADUATE ENVIRONMENTAL JOURNAL OF BERKELEY

DEAR READER,

A MESSAGE FROM THE EDITORS

We are pleased to present the sixth issue of Perennial. Over the course of the fall semester, our Editorial team carefully constructed their articles by bringing together diligent research and expert interviews, to create a final body of work that we all take pride in. We would like to thank our staff writers for their commitment to the stories they pursued and their thoughtful approach to environmental journalism. Covering complex environmental issues with articles that are both thorough and accessible can be a daunting task, but our team consistently delivers impressive work. We would also like to thank our incredible design team for visualizing these stories and creating an engaging multi-media experience, a quality that is becoming increasingly important in modern journalism.

Our sixth issue covers a wide range of topics, from local stories that impact Berkeley students (like the status of Bart or the impacts of your vinyl record collection), to national and international issues that address themes relevant to all readers. For instances when the passion of our writers and guest contributors cannot be constrained to the format of an academic article, our Op-Ed section undoubtedly leaves fresh perspectives for your consideration. We are also happy to showcase research from the broader Berkeley community in the academic research paper portion of our journal.

Here at Perennial, we seek to promote awareness and knowledge for the wide-reaching and intersectional nature of environmental issues, and we hope that by reading through our sixth issue you are inspired to learn more about the complexities of the environmental sphere. We thank you for taking the time to enjoy our work.

CLAIRE SAUTER & JACQUELINE COX, EDITORS IN CHIEF

SINCERELY,

For this issue, our designers took note of elements of movement, hydrology, and dynamism found within the articles produced by the editorial team. Wanting to explore a relationship between these key themes, we began thinking of systems of motion that are found across both natural and artificially synthesized environments. How do materials and energy cycle within a natural biome, and how do they move similarly or differently in an urban city? This inherent idea of an existing urban metabolic system prompted a design exploration of the relationship between water and the built environment.

Utilizing cooler blues and contrasting this with warmer orange and pink tones, this color palette was meant to exemplify the merging between cyclical systems that are found in both the built and natural environment. The designs across the issue can be seen to relate to a conception of a world in which the metal and steel of the modern city becomes integrated with the biotic organisms and systems of a marine biome. We strived to create a design theme that would both capture the essence of, and exemplify the dynamic nature of the articles produced. We are proud to have led the design team thus far, and hope you can enjoy this experience created by the various teams of Perennial this semester.

SINCERELY, TIFFANY HO & ANDRE ZENDEJAS, DESIGN DIRECTORS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editorials:

How hydropower missed the boat on the American climate transition

By: Colin Mequet

Lawns and their Discontents: Creating the American Landscape

By: Elaine Zhang

Disinvestment to Reinvestment: Saving BART

By: Nishita Dashpute

Help the Kelp: Restoring the Ocean’s Forests

By: Sia Agarwal

Changing Their Tune: The Resurgence of Vinyl Records and its Environmental Impact

By: Rebecca Ding

Whaling and Southern Bluefin Tuna Hunting in Japan: Cultural Implications

By: Jessica Chan

Q&A with Kai Lepley: Modernizing our Agricultural System with Agrovoltaics

By: Lauren Gonzalez

Opinions:

Shocking: Pesticide Giant Likes Money More than People

By: Paige Thionnet

Guest Op-ed: Sedimentation and the Muddy History of the Berkeley Marina

By: Naomi Mint Levinthal

Research Papers:

Reproductive Biology of Endangered Thespesia Populnea in Comparison to its Common Relative Hibiscus Tiliaceus

By: Tina Li, UC Berkeley

No Water, No Life: Water Inequality in California’s Central Valley

By: Stella Singer, UC Berkeley

Should Your Mascara be Tested on Rats?

By: Riya Jain, UC Berkeley

How Hydropower Missed the Boat on the American Climate

by Colin Mequet

Graphic by Samantha Johnson

America’s dams are crumbling. Across the nation, aging embankments––sometimes centuries old––that once evoked human ingenuity and subjugation of nature are suffering from neglect and abandonment. Now, many dams are being removed to prevent collapse and flooding. In many cases, renewable energy infrastructure is implicated. Hydroelectric facilities are being decommissioned at increasing rates, a surprising phenomenon amid the world’s race to decarbonize.

Meanwhile, global hydropower development is experiencing unprecedented growth. Researchers have found that global hydroelectric dam development is expected to massively proliferate this decade in the name of sustainable development. The International Energy Agency estimates that hydropower must double its current five-year growth rate through 2030 if the world is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The United States, however, is still happy to watch from the sidelines. Even as climate change tasks the world with an existential imperative to decarbonize, largescale hydropower expansion is looking increasingly unlikely. America’s second-largest renewable energy source still suffers from the same sustainability issues that have plagued the country for decades, and environmental advocates want to explore other solutions to the climate crisis.

The strong opposition to dams in the United States draws its roots from hydroelectricity’s initial rise to prominence. The American dam boom lasted from the late 19th through the mid-20th centuries, in a period of rapid, virtually unchecked construction.

dams in the United States that was really part of Manifest Destiny,” said Meg Mills-Novoa, assistant professor within the Division of Society and Environment and the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. “These dams were about energy production, but they were also about claiming territory and generating electricity for things like mining, for urban expansion.”

“What we saw as a result of that was incredible ecological and environmental consequences,” she said. “And we also saw social backlash where communities were dispossessed and relocated, where control over water was held by external forces. There was both a social and environmental movement, and consciousness grew.”

Heavily criticized by environmentalists and a hard sell to local communities, hydropower development slowly halted as the 20th century wore on. Its share of the United States’ energy mix peaked at 5.02% in 1983 before plateauing between 2.4-3.4% until present. During its decades of stagnation, natural gas, wind, and nuclear energy all rapidly expanded, joined more recently by solar energy. Hydroelectricity earned the nickname “the forgotten giant of renewable energy” as its decline wore on.

However, as this dam boom infrastructure ages and deteriorates, it is beginning to re-enter the national consciousness. By 2025, 70% of U.S. dams will be over 50 years old, and many are already falling into decrepitude. The National Inventory of Dams classifies 17% of dams nationwide as “high hazard,” meaning that failure or misoperation would “probably cause loss of human life.”

“In the late 19th century, we saw an explosion of

With communities and property at risk, there is an

“We also saw social backlash where communities were dispossessed and relocated, where control over water was held by external forces. There was both a social and environmental movement, and consciousness grew.”

- Meg Mills-Novoa

imperative to act now. But in light of increasing knowledge of large hydroelectric facilities’ impacts on local environments, it is clear that centuries-old concerns surrounding large hydropower projects and their environmental impacts were never quelled. America’s robust dam opposition has been reignited, and it is being channeled into ensuring that the world’s dam boom does not infiltrate the United States.

Colleen McNally-Murphy, associate director of the Hydropower Reform Coalition, points to an increasing knowledge of large hydroelectric facilities’ reservoir emissions as a key reason for hydropower’s inability to renew itself today. “It’s important to recognize that hydropower is not emissions free,” she said. “In fact, at some reservoirs, the emissions coming out of these projects are significant. Some colleagues in Alabama just published their results from studying a couple of their dams, and one of these projects has emissions that are on par with natural gas facilities.”

McNally-Murphy references an Alabama Rivers Alliance study, part of the Hydropower Reform Coalition. It examined emissions from two Alabama reservoirs, finding that they released “substantial amounts of methane,” with total emissions that equated one and a half to four times the “clean energy” threshold proposed by Congress.

These studies have created major cleavages within environmental and energy communities on the ideal role of hydropower in the future energy grid. The resulting disharmony between allies of the climate transition, coupled with opposition from local communities that are broadly against mega-dam construction in their backyards, has created a unique, powerful alliance of dam obstructionists.

“Indigenous communities, indigenous coalitions, environmental activists, environmental institutions, even just local community groups are concerned,” Mills-Novoa said. “And most of those actors are relying on the permitting process to impede [large dams]. And in many cases, they have been really effective.”

The result: As dams reach the end of their life cycles, many will not be reconstructed. 21st-century dam opponents are building on the work of the 20th century to ensure that dams are aged into decommissioning. This was formalized by the United States Federal Government in the allotment of dam funding in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which passed in November 2021, contained $2.4 billion dollars to be spent on dam infrastructure, of which two-thirds were earmarked for dam removal and dam safety upgrades –– no money went to the creation of new hydroelectric facilities.

“We’re really done with the dam building era,” said McNally-Murphy. “Now, we’re realizing that the hydropower fleet that we have in this country is not necessarily the hydropower fleet that we need for a clean energy future.”

Even as the U.S. opens its checkbook to finance the climate transition, dam opponents have been successful in ensuring that large hydropower remains a forgotten energy source.

“The National Inventory of Dams classifies 17% of dams nationwide as ‘high hazard,’ meaning that failure or misoperation would “probably cause loss of human life.”

Lawns and their Discontents: Creating the American Landscape

By Elaine Zhang

White picket fences, single family houses, and a perfectly manicured flat green lawn—this ubiquitous image of the ideal American home pervades society. Lawns are convenient, cheap, and aesthetically pleasing. According to studies utilizing geospatial analysis to measure lawn area, they have come to dominate urban spaces around the world, constituting around up to 70% of urban greenspace, or around 23% of developed land cover in the United States. Yet, as we attempt to build greener cities, it has become increasingly transparent that this ideal may not be sustainable; the environmental cost is being overlooked and ignored.

Lawns first originated with the English aristocracy in the 18th or 19th century, where they symbolized wealth and power—it was only affluent aristocrats who could afford to have unused land. Later, with suburban area expansion and the invention of the

lawnmower, the lawn became central to the American paragon of suburban living for the middle class. The lawn was not only beautiful, but also provided open areas for recreation and other activities. And the idea of the perfectly manicured green lawn as a status symbol still endures.

The deep attachment to lawns manifests in many ways. For instance, when drought struck Los Angeles and resulted in drastic watering restrictions, some homeowners turned to spray-paint in order to keep their dried lawns verdant. Strict restrictions for landscaping and its maintenance are often set by local homeowner’s associations, with fines imposed for violations. The presence of a green lawn is also an important contributor to property value. Lawns are deeply socially embedded: as a cultural aesthetic, a product of corporate marketing by major fertilizer corporations, and a representation of enhanced community membership and responsibility.

Yet, with their prevalence across differing climates and environments, lawns also come with a host of ecological challenges. Grass species are often grown even in conditions they are not well suited for—creating primarily monocultures that displace native species and are not ecologically productive. Attaining the ideal lawn also requires a significant amount of inputs, including labor, mowing, and chemical application.

Furthermore, lawns consume a significant amount of water. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, landscape irrigation constitutes up to one third of residential water use. In arid areas, this proportion can jump up to 60%. Regular watering is also often inefficient, as an estimated 50% is wasted. Especially in regions projected to experience major droughts, such as California, critics argue that lawns are entirely unsustainable in the long term.

Maintaining lawns also entails intensive and indiscriminate chemical application from fertilizer, fungicides, herbicides, and pesticides. Compared to larger-scaled agricultural usage, homeowners on average use more than ten times more pesticides per acre. From an ecological standpoint, the widespread use of lawn chemicals threatens non-target species and ecosystems as chemicals accumulate up the food chain. Research has found the presence of lawn chemical residues in local water systems, ecosystems, as well as in the human body. It is challenging to evaluate the potential toxicity of the accumulation of these chemicals, but many common chemicals contain endocrine disruptors that may be adverse to human health, affecting fertility, neurological damage, and development.

As a first step to alleviating the environmental costs of lawns, the No Mow May movement advocates to reduce mowing during the spring months,

when pollinators are most active. Those who are looking to be more sustainable with their lawn practices do not necessarily have to commit to a full re-landscaping. Simply keeping the lawn less tightly mowed allows the opportunity for greater biodiversity and can provide critical habitat for pollinators in urban spaces.

“Especially in an urban area, there tends to be fewer floral resources early in the season,” says Laura Rost, a representative of BeeCity USA, which is a non-profit organization working to support pollinators. By reducing mowing and not using herbicides or pesticides, she explains, “You might see some white clover, or selfheal, or dead nettle––all these little plants that get interspersed with grasses. And a lot of those can be floral resources.”

An alternate solution is to find more sustainable and resilient lawn replacements, such as rain gardens, native gardens, or even simply using

native turfgrass species. Careful choice of better-adapted, low maintenance plant species can reduce water input and mowing frequency. Landscape designer Briana Lyon, owner of California Wild Gardens, a company that aims to provide customers with accessible sustainable landscaping options, explains her design mission:

“The idea is to work with natural ecology systems and mimic natural ecologies to create gardens that function for humanity and society in a productive way with minimal maintenance. People just need the vision of what the change is, so that’s why I’m trying to create this new vision of what landscapes can be.”

While the lawn continues to serve as the default landscaping option and choice of aesthetic, Lyon explains that there is also an increasing interest in alternatives. Expanding the garden aesthetic beyond the lawn to further kindle this interest can be a

critical step.

Artificial turf, though a popular substitute due to its appearance and simplicity, may actually be less sustainable than turfgrass. While requiring less water and maintenance than grass, artificial turf is not recyclable, may pollute local water systems, and overall would reduce ecosystem services. Compared to artificial turf, urban greenspaces––including conventional turfgrass despite its environmental costs––provide some amount of ecosystem services. These include carbon sequestration, drainage, air purification, cooling effects, and benefits to human wellness.

Nevertheless, it will take more than individuals changing their gardens, explains Paul Robbins, the dean of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“There’s a lot of opportunity to alter the aesthetic through slow, repeated practice. But it also counts on this moral authority, this social stigma–of people controlling one

another. We need to operate around sustainability as a scalar system problem, and not simply the immorality of your neighbor’s watering regime.” Too much focus on individual gardening choices can also “individuate environmental responsibility instead of looking at the structural conditions that produce this outcome, like the pesticide industry,” according to Robbins.

In many areas coming under water stress, there has been movement on the state and municipal policy levels to encourage a transition away from lawns. For example, in Berkeley, the East Bay Municipal Utility District offers rebates for lawn conversion for up to $2.50 per square foot depending on the project. In Nevada, the governor has mandated removal of “non-functional” lawn in areas around Las Vegas by 2027 and offers $3.00 per square foot in rebate.

To create far-reaching changes in the United States around lawns, it is important to adopt new approaches and policy to residential landscape man-

agement, including relaxing homeowners association rules and local ordinances. Some, like Robbins, argue that there would also need to be regulatory changes at the municipal, county, and state levels. “We need modest incentives to offset the cost,” says Robbins, “We have to be ready to commit resources to encouraging and subsidizing the alternatives.”

“Having good city ordinances around encouraging natural, native ecosystems in people’s landscaping—especially in new developments, if there can be revisions to the codes—can really help set new standards for beauty and what well-cared-for landscapes can look like,” states Rost. “And we can have some unique, beautiful landscapes that feel special to our own communities.”

The endurance of the lawn is a complex subject, entangled in neighborhood image and dreams of suburbia. In order to move away from lawns and their intensive maintenance practices, there needs to be effort on multiple fronts. Lyon hopes that “our residential and urban landscapes blend with our wild ones and bridge with habitats in a way that’s really beautiful and productive for wildlife and for humanity.”

While the perfect prim lawn may be beautiful, well-adapted and low-maintenance gardens may not provide beauty in other forms: perhaps wilder, yet thriving—flourishing with life of all kinds.

Saving BART Disinvestment to Reinvestment: Saving BART

by Nishita Dashpuyte

Faithfully serving the San Francisco Bay Area for the last 50 years, the sharp beep of the Clipper card as you tap out of a BART station is all too familiar to UC Berkeley students and Bay area natives alike. Yet, despite the best intentions of local policy makers, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) threatens to permanently shut down due to severe economic deficits caused by a lack of ridership and constant expansion costs.

Opening in 1972, BART was designed with the intention of transporting employees from Bay Area suburbs to their employers in San Francisco in a postwar world. Additionally, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit Commission hoped to reduce traffic and “dependence on

automobiles and freeways”. Initial construction of the railway took 15 years and $1.6 billion, with much of this money coming from a bond issue in conjunction with federal grants and additional investments from the San Francisco business community.

From the beginning, BART had some issues. Planners in the early stages of BART’s development envisioned the growth of communities alongside BART corridors, yet more development occurred in freeway dominated areas, such as in the city of San Ramon. Furthermore, BART also failed to generate significant high density housing around stations, which negatively impacted lower-income residents who tend to gravitate towards high density housing programs. A study con-

ducted in the 1970s revealed that few people further from the station preferred BART, since it was often slower than a car and only slightly faster than a bus.

Despite some of its failures, BART also had significant successes, playing a key role in paving the way for San Francisco to become the economic hub of the Bay Area³. More importantly, BART has offered commuters without personal vehicles an affordable and fast way to travel across the region––a commodity other major cities in California like Los Angeles do not offer.

As a bustling transit system, BART ridership steadily increased over the years, with trains packed full with commuters during the hours of 8-9 AM and 5-6 PM. However, ridership

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sharply declined following the COVID-19 pandemic with only essential workers commuting as other employees transitioned to working from home, sparking financial collapse.

But BART’s economic problems started before the pandemic, with expansion costs eclipsing revenue generated by fares. These were only exacerbated by the pandemic as BART is largely rider funded, with 70% of operational costs covered by fares. While the system received some state and federal funding, the severe economic debt has pushed BART to a fiscal cliff, from which it may not ever recover.

In the case of financial bankruptcy, 80% of BART’s services would be cut. This reduction would have a severely disproportionate impact on transit-dependent populations, which primarily consist of lower income families or economically vulnerable individuals. BART currently serves a mission to create a more equitable future, but these cutbacks would aggravate economic disparities and undermine the system’s mission statement.

As the world returns to in-person services, many public transit systems are rebounding, such as New York City’s subway system, which has set pandemic-era records for ridership. BART has struggled to meet this standard, as it fails to attract choice riders. Choice riders are those who consciously choose between modes of transportation while transit dependent riders are those who depend on public transit as their primary form of mobility. Thanks to its affordability, transit dependent riders have returned to BART. However, choice riders are driven away due to BART’s lack of safety, cleanliness, and infrequency of trains, according to Vice President of Public Policy at

the Bay Area Council Emily Loper.

Drastic changes are required in both these aspects of the system, as the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked elevated public health concerns. These qualms have not gone unnoticed by BART, prompting them to hire safety ambassadors, shifting their safety personnel from armed officers to trained social workers to de-escalate situations. More-

revenue to BART improvements. Once this money is available, BART will be able to implement its goals to a stronger degree, further attracting choice riders. “[ . . .] if you have a comfortable, enjoyable way to get back downtown, people do it, it’s just that we need to make BART feel that safe, clean, and enjoyable,” says Loper.

Tejus Shankar, a policy analyst in the transportation sector, also believes a key piece is getting riders from the very first mile to the last, demanding the growth of microtransit (shared mini buses with flexible stops) and micro mobility (bikes and scooters), a policy that Loper also strongly supports.

“The more likely people are to bike, the more likely they are to take public transit,” Shankar said, emphasizing the need to strengthen other forms of transit. Improving network connectivity increases the ease of public transit, convincing potential riders to shift to BART.

over, BART has also begun to improve system cleanliness through the relocation of unhoused persons and improvement of station lights. Increasing the frequency of trains will serve to not only alleviate the safety concern of riders, but also make BART easier to use and simply hop on, attracting those choice riders BART desperately needs.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest barrier to further improvements is the lack of funding. In response to this, Regional Measure 3, implemented in part by Loper, increased bridge tolls and allotted a significant portion of its

From its genesis, BART has aimed to serve the residents and commuters of the Bay Area, but in the last few years, it has been unable to adequately do so. The lack of safety, cleanliness, and frequency of BART trains has driven many choice riders away, reducing the system’s revenue, and ultimately leading to disinvestment. Losing the invaluable services BART provides would paralyze many transit dependent riders and low income communities who cannot afford the rising costs of owning a personal vehicle. Though BART’s economic situation continues to become more dire, policymakers across the field argue that the system can be revived through a combination of rider support and reinvestment, inspiring hope for the future of BART and other public transit in the Bay.

“

Kelp Farming in California

By Sia Agarwal

Swaying in the waves along the California coast in dazzling arrays of jewel greens and yellows is kelp, the spotlight organism of the environmental movement. Secured by holdfasts on the rocky sea floor, kelp stalks as tall as 175 feet have thrived off the shores of California for thousands of years.

Kelp forests are vibrant ecosystems that pump oxygen into California’s coastal waters, absorb carbon, and are considered the tropical rainforests of the ocean because of the biodiversity they harbor. San Francisco boasts its own local kelp ecosystem: the Sonoma-Mendocino bull kelp forest, which is home to organisms such as sea otters, sea stars, crustaceans, and sea lions.

However, kelp forests are shrinking in size around the world due to coastal development, pollution, and especially climate change. Marine heatwaves become more frequent as oceans warm, and beginning

in 2014, a particularly intense marine heatwave— nicknamed “the blob” by scientists—swept through California’s coastal waters.

Warm waters are an ideal condition for purple sea urchins, which are voracious feeders of kelp. Higher temperatures also make sea-stars—important predators of purple urchins—more susceptible to disease. At the same time as the marine heatwave, “a disease, whether it was a viral or bacterial disease, spread and really reduced the abundances of many sea star species, including one which is very critical in those Northern kelp forests, called the sunflower sea star,” said Scott Hamilton, a fish ecology and kelp restoration researcher at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. With populations left unchecked, purple sea urchins eat through entire kelp forests, leaving behind barrens. For thousands of kilometers, sea urchins carpet the sea floor after having

devoured a kelp forest.

The decline of the world’s kelp forests means the loss of an economic resource, a carbon sink, and one of the world’s most productive ecosystems. In order to save the kelp forests, California’s kelp forest restoration movement spans research labs, businesses, conservation organizations, and more.

At Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML), Dr. Scott Hamilton and Dr. Michael Graham are developing techniques to restore Northern California’s bull kelp forests by growing kelp in the lab. “We are trying to develop techniques to culture bull kelp in the laboratory in large land-based aquaculture tanks where we can complete the lifecycle,” said Dr. Hamilton. This technique can be used for a variety of kelp species which can be useful for preserving marine biodiversity.

“The challenge for us was to try to figure out how we can culture in the laboratory in tanks something that tends to grow thirty, forty feet deep,” explained Hamilton. “We came up with a process to modify the kelp, which is the bonsai kelp idea. In the laboratory, we were able to develop a perpetual spore bank, which is keeping populations going over multiple generations in the laboratory through a tumble-culture process.”

The MLML research team works with The Nature Conservancy and sea urchin divers to implement their kelp restoration methods. “Those collaborations are critical. We couldn’t have done the work without them… especially to do the urchin removal that needed to happen. Reef Check California … has been doing kelp restoration work in collaboration with commercial urchin divers at the site that we work at and a number of other sites,” said Dr. Hamilton, underscoring the advantages of collaboration between researchers and industry for kelp forests’ preservation. “Our work couldn’t have really happened without them.”

Another prong of the kelp restoration movement is kelp farming: the cultivation of kelp where part of or the entire life cycle of the organism is controlled,

Along the West Coast, companies such as Daybreak Seaweed grow kelp that can be used in kitchens and restaurants. Other businesses, such as Primary Ocean, sell kelp as biofuel, fertilizer, animal feed, bioplastic, and other sustainable products.

Further north in Alaska where access to nutritional food is difficult, seaweed and food security are linked; the Alaska Food Policy Council has recommended the increase of in-state food products, such as kelp. A superfood, kelp contains disease-preventing antioxidants, and alginates, which flush out toxins from the body. Kelp farming has the potential to provide economic welfare and nutrition to the state and its people.

To farm kelp, reproductive spores are grown in networks of ropes strung between buoys, creating a farm in the ocean. Once the kelp has reached a certain height, the ropes are hoisted from the ocean, and the kelp is harvested. A farm in New Haven, Connecticut is growing kelp and shellfish at the same time on vertical ropes that span the length of the water column.

“It’s not that difficult to grow [seaweed]. Kelp needs nutrients, sunlight, and good water temperature,” said Dr. Jackson Gross, an aquaculture specialist at UC Davis. Dr. Gross researches solutions for aquaculture systems, including seaweed farms. He explains that the challenge in kelp farming lies in harvesting the large amounts of kelp and finding a market for it.

In California, kelp farming faces a few barriers. State environmental regulations make it a long process to obtain a permit to establish a kelp farm. The review process for a farm can be expensive, ranging from $25,000 to $500,000, and applicants take the risk of not being approved by the end of it. California’s coastal waters, specifically the three miles from shore under state control, are coveted by different sectors from recreation to commercial fishing to military interests, making it difficult to find a place to put a kelp farm.

Additionally, the shape of California’s coastline adds to the challenge of anchoring a kelp farm along the coast.

“The decline of the world’s kelp forests means the loss of an economic resource, a carbon sink, and one of the world’s most productive ecosystems.”

It’s difficult to grow these types of systems because we don’t have a lot of protected areas. We don’t have sheltered areas like in Alaska or Maine where it’s flat and easy to work in,” explains Dr. Gross, positing that future systems could be large, floating structures away from the coast.

As an alternative, wild kelp harvesting is the practice of collecting kelp that is not maintained under a permanent agricultural/cultivation plot. In Sonoma County, Heidi Herrmann runs Strong Arm Farm, a company that sells hand harvested kelp varieties to chefs and grocery stores. Along with a team of five to ten people in the months of June and July, Heidi harvests kombu and nori, collecting around 200 pounds of kelp per day.

Before her team gets to work along the shore, Heidi instructs the group on how to cut the kelp sustainably. “It’s usually in an area called the meristem tissue where the cells regenerate. When we make our cut with our scissor, it’s still able to grow out about a foot a month,” said Heidi. “It is rewarding to see regrowth happen when I go out to sites some months later.” Kelp harvesters can contribute as much to an ecosystem as they benefit from it. By cutting at the correct site, Heidi and other harvesters enable the kelp to regrow at amazing rates, which allows the organism to capture more carbon. A 2020 study by researchers at the University of Western Australia discovered that Australian kelp forests capture 1.3-2.8 teragrams of carbon every year. This accounts for 3% of global blue carbon, which is the amount of carbon sequestered by the world’s marine ecosystems.

Proponents of kelp farming argue that the practice is a great example of how we can sustainably interact with the ocean in a way that provides us protection against climate change. “We’re enabling that plant to put on more growth and consume more carbon,” Heidi explains. “It’s rewarding to play that key role in intercepting [the kelp’s] life stage but in a way that enables it to still fulfill its natural process, but also gain food and nutrition out of it just from the knowledge of where to cut [the kelp] and when,” Heidi explains. Alongside running her business, Heidi conducts public educational tours through Forage SF on the Sonoma Coast from May to August in which people can learn about kelp harvesting by engaging with the natural ecosystem.

“We go down to the beach as a group and talk about ecology, nutrition, and how to use kelp in the kitchen,” said Heidi. “People share recipe ideas and take home about ten pounds of their harvested kelp.” Dates for Heidi’s tours are typically published in early spring on the Forage SF website.

In addition to its importance as an economic good, kelp holds cultural significance for indigenous communities along the West Coast. Kelp farming and harvesting is ingrained in these communities’ past and ongoing lifestyles. For example, the Haida people, a Pacific Northwest tribe, uses bull kelp as food. Kelp forests are also the fishing grounds for other food products utilized by the community. In another nation, the Coast Salish, there are shared stories about kelp: One Samish myth is about a girl, Ko-kwahl-alwoot, who marries a man from the ocean in order to provide a connection between the land and the sea for her people. As she lives in the sea for longer, she slowly transforms into a more ocean-like being, but the strands of her hair appearing on the shore (the bull kelp) tell her family that she continues to provide the resources of the seas.

Biologically, economically, and culturally important, kelp forests are a unique ecosystem. They present a chance to incorporate sustainability into the state’s economy. Opportunities such as Heidi’s educational tours can help individuals understand the role they play in preserving local ecosystems.

“It’s healthy for us to integrate all those choices in that moment when we are harvesting our food,” said Heidi. “It’s not a place we’re commonly in. I see people processing new feelings or thoughts that they’re being confronted with — a new trust, autonomy, role that they have put themselves in. To me, that’s empowering, and with education, they are more equipped to make a better decision about sustainable food practices.”

The power of citizens in ecological restoration has added great value to the movement. “Advocating for resources and support from our government officials and resource management is critical,” said Dr. Hamilton. “That is why there has been a fair amount of funding directed at this issue because the public has been concerned about these critical ecosystems.” Activists argue that public knowledge of the importance of our kelp forests is vital to the effort to restore them. The different facets of the kelp effort work to understand how humans can interact with the environment with balance, caution, and care. By conserving the kelp forests, scientists, activists, and environmentalists aim to provide hope for the Earth’s future.

Changing Their Tune: The Resurgence of Vinyl Records and its Environmental Impact

by Rebecca Ding

The resurgence of vinyl records has projected a dangerous mindset regarding the expendability of resources and energy in music consumption.

Vinyl records’ bold revival has escalated the conversation surrounding its environmental impacts, begging the question of whether vinyl music consumption can be eco-friendly. How can our music consumption preferences contribute to our ecological footprint?

The ease of accessibility and convenience with new technologies,

like CDs and tapes, drew music listeners away from the vinyl record boom of the 1960s-1980s. Since 2007, vinyl records slowly regained their public spotlight. Later in 2020, the pandemic bolstered its popularity tenfold. With a majority of present-day consumers from younger demographics, contemporary labels and artists are seeking solutions to make this trend more sustainable. This began with moving away from the traditionally toxic and harmful Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) pressing.

Green Vinyl Records is

innovative Dutch printing press founded and led by Harm Theunissel. Since 2015, it has taken the reins of modernizing vinyl technology through injection moulding machines using Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a durable and easily recyclable polymer resin that competes with PVC in sound and weight.

“You can take an old record player from your dad’s basement, and you can put our records on there. You don’t have to change anything, you don’t have to change the stylus. It is backwards

compatible,” says Theunisse, who reveals how this green vinyl replacement can alleviate the “energy we are wasting, and the CO2 that is going up like crazy.”

In Green Vinyl’s factory, a real-time energy monitor system displays their total energy reduction at around 90%, surpassing their initial estimate of 60% reduction rate. Compared to traditional production, Green Vinyl has conserved 530 million kWh per year, which equals to 26.5 million less planted trees required to compensate for the CO2.

“This is the new standard of making the vinyls, because we’re not using a boiler,” Theunisse explains, “I’m not using any natural gas, I’m only using electricity.”

Evidently, it is necessary that the process of making environmentally friendly products is equally sustainable.

In vinyl pressing, the difference between the traditional 140g vinyls and 180g vinyls are often debated — thicker records, which is often argued to provide better

sound quality, typically result in dirtier PVC production, increasing excess vinyls that are known as flash. .

“No, they don’t make a difference. In fact, you can go even thinner, but they do start to become a bit flimsy. In fact, there is some evidence that 140 might be better,” clarifies Peter Quicke, Chair of English independent record label Ninja Tune, who chooses to press in 140g, explaining how it is about making PVC in the most environmentally-friendly way possible.

Although Green Vinyls prints 180g vinyls, Theunisse claims their flash production is dramatically lower due to their innovative PET approach, “I only have 1 gram, [traditional vinyls] have 40 grams.”

Notably, due to the strict European Union environmental guidelines and protocols that restrict certain raw materials, eco-friendly printing is more accessible in Europe. Both companies, therefore, coexist in Europe alongside many other organizations taking initiative in greener approaches of manufacturing.

"PVC in Europe does not allow lead, whereas in the US they’re still using lead. In Europe, Tin is also not allowed…but the US is still using lead,” stresses Theunisse regarding the importance of avoiding harmful, yet easily accessible raw materials. Beyond the

actual production of vinyls, Ninja Tune has also chosen to make all vinyl sleeves from sustainably sourced FSC card and paper, where many are easily recyclable.

“The shrink wrap we use is a bioplastic and comes from plants,” Quike elaborates regarding the ways the company reduces the footprint of the company.

Ninja Tune is a participant of a trade association known as the Association of Independent Music (AIM), which Quicke says, “persuaded universal Sony and Warner brothers to commit to Net 0 by 2030, which means a reduction of their footprint from vinyl manufacture.The methods are just gonna need pressure from their biggest customers, not just the medium-sized customers.”

“It has to be the energy of the artists and the labels that can make the difference,” Theunisse adds. Ninja Tune’s recent increase of sales raises philosophical questions regarding why the resurgence of vinyls came about and what makes the practice of tangible music so special from main-

In Green Vinyl’s factory, a real-time energy monitor system displays their total energy reduction at around 90%

“We're never going to let go of what's old in us because we want to keep, that a lot of us want to keep, that youthful brand.”

-stream digital music. In response to the large Millenial and Gen Z consumer pool, Richard Grant of Rasputin Music, the largest independent chain record store in the San Francisco Bay Area founded in Berkeley, shares his theory as a passionate vinyl enthusiast.

“We're always gonna be in this style of beings,” says Grant. “We're never going to let go of what's old in us because we want to keep, that a lot of us want to keep, that youthful brand.” The attraction towards trends deemed “vintage” and “old school” can be viewed as a rising popularity in younger generations attempting to recreate the past through tangible and collectible assets. Inherent within human nature, people are interested in what is unfamiliar and uncommon to them. Similar to how Boomers or Gen X may find digital music and platforms new and fascinating, Millennials and Gen Z find vinyl records interesting because of its aesthetic and interactiveness. “I think maybe one day CDs will go hrough the same thing as vinyl,” hypothesiz-es Grant. Grant explains the significance behind vinyls as not only a form of tangible music its-

-elf with aesthetic values. It’s also a new found level of appreciation of the art on the album sleeves, the liner notes on the inner sleeves, the lyrics on the back, and occasional personalized messages written by the artists themselves.

"With streaming, you don't feel the emotion of the music… you click very fast either way,” says Theunisse. “But with the vinyl, you will have to go there, you listen to the whole.”

While vinyls are often compared with digital music and its ease of song selection, the use of algorithms to spotlight top hits and one’s favourite songs is of concern as research has suggested streaming may produce a larger carbon footprint than records itself.

“But I think nearly everyone who listens to vinyl will also stream, and people who do mainly streaming will sometimes buy vinyl,” says Quicke in regards to how vinyls and digital music need not to compete and can coexist.

A popular misconception people hold is digital music’s advanced sustainability against vinyls. In reality, behind the scenes of apparently eco-friendly streamings,

are immense servers that are constantly releasing and wasting energy, gravely increasing our digital footprints.

Theunisse elaborates on the wasted energy of a typical digital service provider’s warehouse, “You're sweating while you walk, they have so much cooling in those warehouses and because the servers are always on there's a lot of energy wasted because so many songs are not played, but are still there.”

Digital music and vinyl playing can co-exist in our world. Having the awareness and wherewithal that each time you stream or listen to vinyl there are different types of footprints created, it is crucial for music listeners to approach their choices with intent. Most importantly, it is up to listeners to develop a sustainable yet enjoyable balance between the different forms of music and to find harmony within.

“You don't want to stop people from buying records or enjoying music, and you don't want to stop people going to gigs because it's part of the joys of life, we just have to find ways of doing it better” sums up Quicke.

(Image via Book Riot)

Whaling and Southern Bluefin Tuna Hunting in Japan: Cultural Implications

by Jessica Chan

As the number of endangered species climbs, addressing species and biodiversity loss has become increasingly important. Which species should we protect? Which species should we hunt, and to what extent? The intricate controversies woven into species protection are exemplified in the story of whaling and southern bluefin tuna hunting in Japan.

In Japan, minke whale, Bryde’s whale, and sei whales are still commonly hunted commercially. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, the minke whale is listed as of least concern; the sei whale endangered; and Bryde’s whale data deficient, meaning they are at the very least endangered.

Overall, most whale stocks have made a global recovery and are no longer in imminent danger of extinction. Thus, many supporters of commercial whaling question why no changes to the moratorium have been

made. The Southern Bluefin Tuna is listed as endangered on the IUCN’s Red List. However, because the stock has not been depleted as far as whales were initially, only cache limits have been set in place.

In 1948, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) was created with the intention of managing whale stocks in a sustainable manner for future use. The IWC is recognized by the UN as being responsible for the conservation and management of whale stocks—what the IWC decides is essentially the law that all countries must follow.

IWC decisions are voted on by its 88 members, with claims of Japan “buying votes” from other countries to make things more favorable for them, since larger binding decisions require a ¾ majority vote. As a result, in recent years, political deadlock has gridlocked members and prevented change in either direction.

In 1986, the IWC placed a global moratorium on the commercial whaling of all whale species. However, Norway, Iceland, and Japan objected to the morat- this day, these countries continue to commercially hunt whales outside of IWC regulations.

The Commission for the Conservation of Southern Bluefin Tuna (CCSBT) is a regional fisheries management organization in charge of sustainably managing southern bluefin tuna stock. Main players in the commission include Australia, Japan, and New Zealand. The organization addresses the endangerment of the Southern Bluefin Tuna by setting quotas on how much each country can catch a year. The limits are set in three year periods and are based on scientific research and population data.

Whether or not cultural claims validate claims to commercial whaling is baked into the whaling debate. The cultural significance and origins of whaling

in Japan can be traced back to the stone age, with commercial whaling first beginning in 1606. However, experts agree that whaling only became a significant part of the Japanese diet and culture post WWII when the U.S., under occupational authority, encouraged the consumption of whale meat as a cheap protein to feed citizens. Since WWII, consumption of whale meat in Japan has shrunk

ial, or social.

In Japanese society, tradition is a key value. Whaling, depending who you ask, is considered to be of cultural significance to Japan, making it an issue of national pride. The combined (mainly Western) criticism and large value of tradition in Japanese culture then sets the stage for many in Japan to view whaling as an issue of racial and cultural prejudice against them.

especially in a post war world where protein was very scarce. Those arguments don’t hold anymore, and I think there’s been a move away from that. It’s not the same argument that I think it was say 40-50 years ago. You know the world evolves, tastes evolve, cultures evolve you know if they are going to be thriving.”

significantly. In 2019, individuals ate about 40 grams/year, an amount about the size of a slice of ham. This number is estimated to be even lower today.

Considering how little whale meat is consumed, many experts were curious as to why whaling has then continued today. The answer likely lies within Japanese social structure and culture. Studies have shown that we are likely to share the same ideas as the communities we consider ourselves to be a part of, whether that be economic, racial, famil-

The largely Western-influenced increase in whale consumption, alongside the recent addition of whaling to Japanese culture, has led many to question whether on the basis of cultural ties Japan should be allowed to whale when compared to other whaling countries like Iceland or Norway. Experts are faced with the issue of deciding if Japan really does have a cultural claim to whaling, and what a cultural claim would mean. Moreover, experts must decide which species circumstances entitle outside countries to intervene in the dealings of another.

Kate O’ Connell, a Marine Animal Consultant for the Animal Welfare Institute, says that cultural claims may not be enough to warrant continued commercial whaling in Japan’s case.

“I don’t think we hold any culture to a different standard than what we would expect,” said O’Connel. “At one point, perhaps, the need was there,

Doug Butterworth, an emeritus professor in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics and head of the Marine Resource Assessment and Management for the University of Cape Town, counters O’Connell’s view by asking about the ethics of intervening in other countries practices. “What would the West’s attitude be to India if they marched into the UN and said all the western countries must stop eating beef. You know they wouldn’t go very far. But isn’t that exactly what other people are doing with whaling[?]”

Southern bluefin tuna in both the past and present has played a large role in Japanese culture as one of the most prized fish in the Japanese restaurant industry. Bluefin tuna in general is largely sought after in highend restaurants. As supply shrinks due to climate change and warming waters, the market for bluefin tuna meat has become extremely profitable.

Since only cache limits were set in regards to the southern bluefin tuna, the question of whether or not cultural claims are valid have not had to be asked. However, the resulting knee-jerk response seen in whaling would likely be seen in response to a moratorium

“As supply shrinks due to climate change and warming waters, the market for bluefin tuna meat has become extremely profitable.”

by Samantha Johnson or lower cache limits because the southern bluefin tuna is so highly sought after.

The IWC was one of the first commissions to come together and set marine standards on a global level. However, the conditions under which the IWC’s moratorium was decided are simply not the same as today. Despite the increase in certain whale stocks, it’s been hard for the IWC to come to any new agreements regarding the moratorium due to the inter-member stalemate. As a result, the Japanese Fisheries Agency has raised concerns that should they concede on whale hunting they will have to make concessions on other species as well.

In an interview with David Mchneill, Nakamae Akira, Deputy Director General Of Japan’s Fisheries Agency, expressed concerns regarding more of Japan’s fishing practices coming under fire should they stop commercial whaling. “If we lose on whales, what will happen next?” asks Akira.

There’s a fear in Japan that by giving into global pressure and stopping commercial whaling, Japan will be forced to concede on other marine species such as tuna, further costing them both culturally and economically.

O’Connell would more or less disagree with the sentiment that should Japan concede on

whaling, they will have to concede in other areas, such as tuna. “If we see something going wrong with tuna fish management and tuna fish conservation we are gonna raise it. People do raise it,”said O’Connell. “There are organizations out there that concentrate on going to the regional fisheries management organizations and raising concerns about fishing.”

For her institute, it’s not so much that whaling is the invisible line. Rather, all animals should be treated well, and if they discover they are not, they will raise the issue, whether the species be the bluefin tuna or the factory farmed chicken.

Graphic

With cultural importance and economic gain driving both whaling and bluefin tuna hunting, the issues are often key points on which elected officials can win votes over. As a result, certain measures like promising to bring back commercial whaling become ways for current officials to keep their seats or new officials to be elected.

Butterworth explains that for politicians “what matters to you is getting sufficient votes to be reelected next time. It’s the same as Darwinian evolution, survival of the fittest. The politician has to act in such a way as he is best likely to survive, and for him survival means being elected in the next election. And for that you do not upset your constituents.” The resulting atmosphere is one that very rarely changes.

An issue for many animal activists regarding both whaling and bluefin tuna fish hunting is the fact that fish experience pain, and current fishing practices often result in excessively long and painful deaths for the fish.

Oftentimes, when fish are caught and pulled up from the nets in the ocean they begin to suffocate. Once pulled out of the water, the tuna are generally killed with harpoons. The process is often long, resulting in a painful and fearful death for the fish caught. International organization Animal Equality writes that “The tuna industry is not only terrible for the environment and human health, but it’s also hell for the animals who are trapped and killed.”

Whales are hunted and killed using large grenade harpoon guns, and the process can result in the whale suffering anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. The Animal Welfare Institute states that, “Whaling is inherently cruel. Is it nearly impossible to instantly kill a large moving animal from a moving vessel on a rolling ocean.”

Yet, many would argue that the way in which chickens are factory-farmed is equally inhuman, with the main differentiator being the species in question. As a result, the argument quickly snowballs out of control and becomes a question of personal morals and ethics.

Another factor affecting popular opinion on the whaling movement is speciesism, or the idea that one species is more important than another. Whales are notoriously iconic animals, which have made their way into the hearts of many, especially after Greenpeace’s “Save the Whales” movement. The resulting bias towards whales makes it harder for those with no cultural association to empathize or perhaps understand why others would whale.

“One of the fundamental differences is whales are, shall I say, more iconic than tuna,” states Butterworth. Bluefin tuna, on the other hand, generally don’t invoke the same sense of awe as whales.

However, in recent years, O’Connell has seen an increasing awareness of all ocean creatures.

“I think that you really have to

value each species and each individual within that species on an equal basis,” says O’Connell. “One thing I will say is that if people are interested in charismatic megafauna like whales, it perhaps can help have a trickle down effect for everything else that’s in their habitat.”

There are so many factors threaded into how we view and thereby act upon endangered species. Looking at the comparison between whaling and the southern bluefin tuna, it’s easy to see how protecting endangered species is a complicated and intricate process when culture, economics, politics, and animal welfare come into play and influence how we view topics that are often not as black and white as they initially seem.

“‘The tuna industry is not only terrible for the environment and human health, but it’s also hell for the animals who are trapped and killed.’”

Q&A with Kai Lepley:

Modernizing our Agricultural System with Agrovoltics

by LAUREN GONZALEZ

The planet is experiencing warming temperatures at an unprecedented rate, with a 1.1 degree Celsius temperature increase since the 1900s, and the effects are being seen on all levels of life. It brings into question

whether the things we rely on to uplift our current ways of living are sustainable.

Scientists recently conducted a study and found that extreme hot zones currently occupy only

0.8% of our land area at the moment. However, these hot zones could expand to over 19% of the global land surface area by 2070. Looking specifically at dryland expansion, it’s expected that, relative to 1961–1990, arid-like

Arfa Momin

conditions could grow to about 50% of total land mass.

Not only could these zones displace billions of individuals, but their growth raises the question: what will happen to our current agricultural model as desert-like land conditions become more common? Farmers will have to experience water shortages, warming temperatures, and other climate-related stressors more regularly. Taking this into account, the possibility of food scarcity in the future becomes likely.

Beyond expansion of arid-areas, agricultural land is being lost to population growth and further urbanization. Focusing on the U.S. specifically, American Farmland Trust recently used spatial mapping technology and found between 2001-2016 that 11 million acres of agricultural land was converted to residential or urban land use.

The agricultural system that relies heavily on excessive water usage, abundant fertile soil, steady labor, and stable conditions for crop production is now at risk as its requirements become scarce.

As human expansion, land-use conflict, and climate change continues to put extreme tension on local farmers, society has to rethink our approach to the current agricultural system.

This brings us to Arizona, where local researchers from the University of Arizona are taking it upon themselves to investigate how new technology, known as agrovoltaics, could expand crop production into desert-like locations, decrease water usage, increase efficiency of photovol-

taic systems, and help resolve urban-rural land conflicts.

Kai Lepley, a PhD student at the University of Arizona’s School of Geography, Development and Environment, is currently researching this new technology and using remote sensing platforms to bring a better understanding to its impact going forward. In a one-on-one Q&A interview, Lepley, as an expert on sustainable agriculture, explains the effectiveness of our current agricultural model, the impacts of climate change on food production, and the potentials of innovative solutions such as agrovoltaic systems.

On a general note, can you go more in-depth into the sustainability and effectiveness of our current agricultural model in the Southwest?

Flood irrigation is still widely used. We simply flood the field with water, and part of it evaporates into the air before it even goes into the soil. That’s a lot of wasted water. In Arizona, we use Colorado River water. To get that water, it must be pumped up a hundreds of miles long canal using electricity, because it’s going up in elevation.

Therefore, pumping that water to our cities and agricultural farms uses the majority of our state’s electricity, and it’s all done in these open canals where it’s evaporating along the way. A lot of these outdated practices and systems contribute to water use inefficiency. Agriculture used to take 90% of the water in Arizona, but now it takes 74%.

On a global scale, the World Resources Institute recently

found that 17 countries, accounting for a quarter of the population, currently have food systems under severe water stress and shortages due to climate change related factors. Going off this, how has climate change impacted our agricultural system in the Southwest region, and why is arid farming so integral to the future stability of our food systems?

We’ve already experienced over a degree Celsius of warming. The fact is that the warmer it is, the faster water evaporates. When it comes to plants growing in any environment, one of the key factors is vapor pressure deficit. Basically, the hotter it is, the quicker the air is going to dry out. And because the air is so dry, it’s pulling water out of the plants and out of the ground more quickly. When it comes to agriculture, it means we have to use more water. Also, it’s more stress on the plants. When you mix in high temperatures and extreme events, you have these plants that are pushed to their limit because of this added pressure.

Turning to a more locally defined view of these current agricultural issues, how has this affected the farming community specifically?

We have a lot of farmers who are struggling because of the pressures of climate change, the economics of farming, and the limitations with water supply — farmers this year have faced a 21% water cut. A solar developer will say, “We’ll buy your land and install a bunch of solar there.” It’s an easy way for a farmer to make a profit. Or, they might sell their land to residential development. In either case, you’re losing that

farmland and that food production.

How does this connect to the origins of agrovoltaics?

Agrovoltaics is just the combination of the words ‘agriculture’ and ‘photovoltaics’. Agriculture is simply growing food, and photovoltaics is the actual process that makes solar panels possible. The whole idea behind agrovoltaics is what if we shared the sun between solar panels and between crops. Instead of having to use more land doing these activities separately, we use the same land for both. If you can combine those activities, then the farmer can keep their identity, continue farming, and can make some more money.

How are solar panels affected when incorporated into these agrovoltaic farms?

In a place where it gets hot, above 77 degrees Fahrenheit, the solar panels start losing efficiency with

every degree you go higher. Once you’re at 100 degrees Fahrenheit, [the panels] lose about 10% of their efficiency. In agrovoltaics, we’re irrigating the ground beneath the solar panels, and the plants are essentially sucking up that water and then breathing it out through processes to cool the air above it.

In our research, we found at least a more than one degree Celsius cooling effect due to this agrovoltaic system. The closer those panels are to the soil, the greater the cooling effect, and you actually gain efficiency in the solar systems electrical production by growing plants underneath. It’s so cool how you have this dual benefit.

On the topic of water conservation, how does agrovoltaics work to efficiently minimize water usage?

It’s that effect of shade from solar panels cooling the soil and air slightly that prevents the mois-

ture we get from these plants from evaporating so quickly. We have essentially side by side gardens with one in the full sun, like traditional agriculture, and one in the shade with solar panels on top of it.

In the summer in Arizona, when we water them both with the same amount of water, the garden in the sun is going to need water the next day, or else, those plants are going to die. In the shade of the solar panels, because that soil is cooler and it doesn’t have that intense sun, you’re gonna see that we can water and wait almost a whole week before watering again.

One of the main questions people might wonder is: how effective is it to grow staple crops under agrovoltaic systems as compared to traditional, mainstream agricultural methods?

That’s another big question: can we even grow crops in the shade? We’ve grown beans, potatoes,

Jack’s Solar Farm – Photo by Werner Slocum: NREL

onions, tomatoes, basil, cilantro, carrots, eggplant, flowers, peppers, and more, and we’ve had success across the board with little differences when compared to traditional agricultural methods. However, one major difference is that we see a change in timing. The plants grown under the solar panels tend to be delayed when they start flowering. Possibly your crop is going to be done growing a few days to a week later. And that’s something farmers have to think about.

In terms of the yield, we’ve actually noticed little to no difference in yield. Sometimes we even find higher yields in the shade in the agrovoltaics, and that’s especially the case for Chiltepin Peppers.

How are farmers impacted from implementing these agrovoltaic systems?

Another thing to take into account with respect to farmworkers is when you are outside working in the sun all day, it’s life threatening. It’s a health crisis. But when you’re working in the shade, under solar panels, it’s night and day. Farmers experience severe health risks, especially undertaking their agricultural businesses in primarily arid, hotter regions such as Arizona. In that way, farmers stand to gain much from implementing agrovoltaic models.

Are there possible barriers or obstacles to entry for farmers looking to expand their services to include agrovoltaic models? More specifically, why hasn’t agrovoltaics become more mainstream in the agricultural field?

I think part of it is education. I think most people still have never heard of agrovoltaics. And then after that, I think we need policy. Every county has their own land use policy. Zoning, for instance, might allow or not allow for agrovoltaics to be possible. This is because energy and agriculture are two totally separate activities in our minds. There is the farm in Colorado that we are working with, and when the agrovoltaic concept was initiated, we actually had to work with the local government to create a new zoning code, so that they could combine agriculture and electrical production.

You also have utility companies. Every electrical utility in each different region has their own policy and practices, and it’s kind of at their whim. Do they want to allow this, because that means that they’re going to then be purchasing power from these farmers who are producing electricity or they’re going to be competing with these farmers to sell electricity to people. There’s just no standardization for enabling this technology to be quickly rolled out or adopted.

How do farmers specifically perceive this agrovoltaic idea?

There’s a big farming community just an hour north of us here in Tucson. They’ve had a lot of solar developers come in and buy out land from farmers and turn it into solar fields. The people there don’t like it. Sometimes, it’s just that they hate the way it looks. Other times, a neighbor made a ton of money by selling his land to this utility, but another cannot because they’re not close enough to the major power line.

What happens now is the majority of farmers in that community are very opposed to any type of solar. However, you then have a different community that’s totally on board. Therefore, it’s really this kind of patchwork landscape of thinking about where it can fit. I think a lot of the agrivoltaic farms that we’re gonna see pop up in the coming years are just going to be very opportunistic: someone who knows about it and then talks to the right people.

Before the idea for agrovoltaics came to the U.S., Kai Lepley describes how “back in 2020, we had the world’s first agrovoltaics conference. We went there, and some attendees from Japan said, ‘we have over 2000 agrovoltaic systems.’ Everyone was shocked. We had maybe three to five systems in the United States at this point. The thing is, there’s an incentive from the government. Because they have so little land and especially land that they can farm on, it was almost essential. If they wanted to adopt solar, it had to go over farmland. So it was just out of practicality.”

Agrovoltaics poses an alternative pathway forward for land cultivation. By rethinking how we utilize land, it can become multifunctional — these symbiotic relationships can evolve to make our current systems more efficient. While there might be boundaries to access, Japan’s example demonstrates a hopeful possibility for these technologies to become more integrated into these growing arid locations, such as Arizona. With this, we can modernize a network facing extreme pressures at the moment, our food system.

Shocking:

Pesticide Giant Likes Money More Than People

by PAIGE THIONNET

Though agrochemicals look quite different today than they did centuries ago, pesticides are no novel concept. Ancient civilizations applied elemental chemistries to manage unwanted organisms. Although, it wasn’t until World War II that cutting-edge compounds reached unprecedented levels of effectiveness and affordability.

Despite newfound productivity that followed the initial application of new pesticides, outlooks soon became less than promising. Emerging trends in environmental health inspired conversations and concerns that produced discourse like author Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring– the sacred text of anti-pesticide literature. Silent Spring was a catalyst for regulating certain agrochemicals (like DDT) that her research found to be harmful.

Contrary to Carson’s wishes,

pesticides are still widely used in the U.S. today– about 1 billion pounds are applied per year– and whether that should be the case is a highly controversial subject. When it comes to regulating the industry, policymakers are up against giants– pesticide companies like Syngenta, Bayer Corp, and Corteva, Inc. make up an industry with a U.S. market size of $16 billion.

In all their power, these pesticide giants have a reputation for silencing researchers who conflict with them. A UC Berkeley scientist with one such story, Professor Tyrone B. Hayes told The New Yorker how his relationship as a researcher for pesticide company Syngenta turned sour as he discovered that the chemical under study, atrazine, had startling effects on the endocrine system of frogs.

An herbicide, atrazine was

banned by the European Union in 2003 due to “ubiquitous and unpreventable water contamination.” Meanwhile, the U.S. has continued to use it liberally. Syngenta asked Hayes to conduct research on atrazine, in which he found the chemical to “demasculinize (chemically castrate) and completely feminize” male frogs. Such powerful impacts are alarming considering that atrazine commonly finds its way to human water sources, expanding the chemical’s impacts.

After Hayes cut ties with the company, the release of Syngenta’s internal documents revealed that representatives of the company kept a close watch on him long after they went their separate ways. Representatives of the company had Hayes closely surveilled, looking for any opportunity to discredit him. Syngenta scientists disparaged the quality of his research, and a years-

long battle ensued. In fact, the company’s ultimate goal was to ruin his reputation, thereby damaging his credibility and preventing his research from affecting Syngenta’s profits.

In their efforts to discredit Hayes, Syngenta attempted to puppeteer the conversation in favor of their own financial interests, making an unbiased public discourse on pesticides extremely difficult to achieve.

While the Syngenta documents in question were discovered nearly a decade ago, the company continues to fight to keep atrazine legal in the U.S. Recently, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made an attempt to limit atrazine application by restricting application conditions and offering runoff mitigation options such as cover crop, terrace farming,

The measure would modify a 2020 policy put in place during the Trump administration, requiring mitigation efforts from growers with atrazine concentrations of 3.4 μg/L or more, as opposed to the previous figure of 15. Syngenta clapped back with an article framing the proposed policy as financially and even environmentally damaging. With these arguments, Syngenta crafts a red herring that diverts attention from the biggest problem, atrazine itself.

Between massive PR bandwidth and the ability to completely bulldoze contradictory research efforts, Syngenta possesses the power to sway policy in whatever direction it so chooses. Some call it strategy, but a more appropriate term is manipulation.

dealt with an onslaught of personal attacks from agrochemical representatives.

Pesticides do have their benefits. They increase yield and prevent infestation of unwanted species. Yet research shows that they are also a significant danger to the health of people and wildlife– with impacts ranging from endocrine disruption (from chemicals like atrazine) to thinning bald eagle eggshells due to DDT.

This issue of the amount versus quality of food being produced creates a difficult question. While the debate about pesticides may be quite nuanced, one thing is certain: pesticide companies themselves should not be the only voices with power in these conversations.

Corporations– whether they’re in pharmaceuticals, fossil fuels, or agriculture– deserve to be held accountable for their actions. Public awareness of how corporate-backed lobbies may influence policy outcomes is essential, but just as necessary are advocates for scientists that provide a different voice. In the face of these weapons of business, researchers are responsible for doing the expository work that keeps them honest (or as close to truthful as possible).

Ultimately, we need to see legislative change. This means policy that prevents large corporations like Syngenta from steering regulations in a direction that suits their interests while largely ignoring public and environmental health.

“This issue of the versusamount quality of food producedbeing creates a difficult question.”

designed by TIFFANY HO

Sedimentation and the Muddy History of the Berkeley Marina

by NAOMI MINT-LEVINTHAL

Every Sunday morning, I ride down to the Berkeley Marina, lock my bike, and open up the clubhouse for the day. Setting down my stuff, I go to check the forecasted tides and jot them down on the whiteboard. I set dock time around whatever comes first: sunset or low tide. This is my second year working at the Marina, and I have long learned that every action on the water is dependent on the

highs and lows of the tides.

Right now the tide is high, so I roll my boat out of the yard to drop in the water. Climbing down the ladder, I hop into the boat, start the engine and peel off into the middle of the East Bay. I cut the engine once I’m a little way past the abandoned restaurant that overlooks the southwest end of the Marina. While waves lap up against the

side of the boat, I stare out at San Francisco, observing the cars, bridges, boats, and buildings. Here I am alone, yet surrounded by everything all at once.

I have a conundrum, one that I often face while sitting in this boat in the Bay. It is one found in the nexus between humans and nature – one that I have slowly realized is at the heart

of the Marina’s existence as a whole. The question is: what is natural, and what do we do with nature that has been irrevocably altered from what it once was?

The South Sailing Basin is known for its world-class winds, sailing, windsurfing, kayaking, and open water swimming. Recreational water sports are central to the Berkeley Marina’s economy, and through this lens, many people simply understand the space as a means of entertainment and enjoyment. Yet the Marina is much more than a break from the urban bustle, in terms of both its ecological significance and historical importance. One component of the Marina that illustrates this is its mud.

Tides are sort of like a curtain, opening up for the show. There is something behind the curtain that we can only observe when the tide drops. In one way, it is mud; in another, it is sediment. In many ways, it is history. The deposition of rock, organic matter, soil, and other materials that are transported by water, wind, ice, or gravity is a process known as sedimentation.

The muddy floor of the Berkeley Marina was created through sedimentation. When I paddleboard at low tide, drifting across the water, inches above mud, I can drop one foot off of my board, and then another, feeling the slick squelch as my feet sink in. With each step, I feel the ecological history layered within the sediment just below me.

“Imagine how much better it

would be if we just dredged the Marina” is a sentiment that has often been expressed by club members while sitting on the bench outside the clubhouse. With dredging, we could stay out longer – plus classes and recreational activities could continue without interruption! While some are enthused, this idea of massive “improvement” has always left me with a wary feeling.

In response, I have spent hours reading local news articles about dredging, with papers arguing for and against the act. Still, the idea of dredging the Marina holds a sense of moral ambiguity in my mind. This ambiguity falls someplace between the lines of natural and unnatural.

The issue is that though disruption and damage will occur from dredging, the Marina is a product of such damage from human life already. The sludge that would be dug out is not simply the result of an established ecosystem but is instead the aggregate of our human past flowing and collecting in the basin, creating the space as it exists today.

The Marina is unnatural in the inherent sense that every natural aspect of it has been changed by humans already. Two examples — Strawberry Creek and the 19th-century gold rush — do a good job of depicting just how much human life has fundamentally altered and shaped the Marina.

Strawberry Creek led to the location and founding of UC Berkeley, and thereby the development of much that the

East Bay is today. This creek lets out directly into the South Sailing Basin of the Berkeley Marina. I regularly bike to this estuary area to watch the various geese, ducks, seagulls, killdeer and other birds gather at sunset. It’s both strange and beautiful that such natural acts of life exist so close to the concrete walls of the East Bay. In this meeting of the Creek and the Bay, emerging from a small square concrete tunnel under a bridge, the birds paint a picture of life, of an ecosystem existing in spite of all that has been built around it.

One day, Robert Charbonneau was a guest lecturer for a class of mine. Charbonneau completed his Masters in Environmental Planning at UC Berkeley in 1988, and through the implementation of his thesis, The Strawberry Creek Management Plan, he was responsible for the planning and coordination of the Strawberry Creek restoration.

Though now a world-class example of river restoration, Strawberry Creek was once used as an easy dumping ground for waste of all kinds, including campus sewage that flushed directly into the Creek. From the 1890s up until 1987 when the Strawberry Creek Management Plan was introduced, the Creek was ostensibly a raw sewage system, and everything dumped into the toxic creek flowed directly out into the Bay. It is quite shocking to discover that such dangerous dumping took place at the University in the very recent past.

During Charbonneau’s lecture,

he described an incident where, when testing to see which toilets flowed into the Creek, an assistant accidentally added a bit too much green dye before flushing. The water flowed through the pipes and deposited into the Creek. From there it did not stop, traveling down the stream to make its way to the Marina – turning the entire South Sailing Basin green. This is one of the most vibrant physical examples of the connection that our actions have to the environment, highlighting that we were not just making the Creek a sewage drain, but the Marina a sewage dump for over 100 years. Though the Creek has been restored, the widespread, long-term ecological damage of such an event is sure to hold a lasting mark to this day, as this sewage has settled deep into the sediment of the Bay.

Beyond sewage, the slick and fine texture of the Marina floor is a result of another major event of the past: the 19th-century California gold rush. In Matthew Morse Booker’s book, Down By the Bay, he describes the complex urban and ecological history of the Bay Area. In the book, he explains that one of the largest defining factors of modern Bay Area ecology is the result of impacts from the gold rush.

To find gold in the Sierra Nevada, miners used hydraulic mining, dumping mountains worth of rock and soil into streams. This debris made its way down streams to the Sacramento River and eventually into the San Francisco Bay. While boulders and rocks filled riverbeds, fine sediments of sand and clayey

mud known as “slickens” made their way to pave the Bay.

The impacts of such mining were devastating, with the influx of sediment causing an outright smothering of the ecosystem of plants and animals that lived in the Bay before the mining event. There was an estimated 8 inches of depth lost in the San Francisco Bay, creating a sterile abrasive surface that was almost impossible for most biota to live in.

Additionally, this mining-based devastation happened to coincide with one of the most extreme climate events in California’s history. Between November 1861 and January 1862, a record-breaking amount of rain fell in California. This extreme rainfall caused so much river water to flow into the Bay that the area essentially became freshwater for nearly two weeks. Given their intolerance to freshwater, in conjunction with the already destructive gold rush mud, most estuary species were wiped out almost immediately, enacting a full reset of the Bay Area biota in a two-week flash.

The Strawberry Creek and the gold rush are just a drop in the bucket of the complex ecological history of the Bay. Yet, they are ideal in the way that they portray our inherent connection to and impact on our environment. Their reflection in the sediment is the aggregation of the world we have created — one that, as humans, we never will truly quantify. Our actions lead to ecological impacts that we are often too far removed from to actually see. Yet these impacts are real and alter our

world constantly.

Without a job at the Marina that places me at the forefront of this urban-ecological contention, I would never have asked why the bay mud underneath my feet feels such a way, or what happens when an urbanized creek flows into the Marina from a concrete opening in a wall. As we built the world we know today, we created the criteria through which the ecosystem of the South Sailing Basin is able to exist, while sheltering ourselves from that impactful reality.

The space for life in the Bay has almost always been undermined by human goals, and intentions to dredge are just a continuation of this. “To dredge or not to dredge” is one of many urban-ecological decisions that will shape our future world. As decision-makers, it is time to start asking questions about what exists in less visible parts of our environment — like the mud — to discover our impacts on those spaces. Through this practice, we can build forward in recognition of our influential membership within the dynamic ecosystem that surrounds us all.

Reproductive Biology Of Endangered Thespesia Populnea In Comparison To Its Common Relative

Hibiscus Tiliaceus

AUTHOR: TINA LI

ABSTRACT: Anthropological changes to the world have impacted ecosystems and affected the commonness of many organisms, including plants, which sustain life by providing oxygen and sugars through photosynthesis. I investigated how and why some plant species are rarer than others by comparing the reproductive biology (including pollination, dispersal, and establishment) of two related species native to Moorea, French Polynesia: the rare Thespesia populnea and common Hibiscus tiliaceus. I found that floral visitors frequented Hibiscus more often than Thespesia, that Hibiscus is a more effective disperser, and that Thespesia has a higher germination rate. I also found that the presence of man-made rock walls impacted Thespesia and Hibiscus similarly. The findings from this study will aid in conservation efforts, such as demonstrating how humans impact parts of the plant reproductive cycle, thus influencing their abundance and proneness to extirpation.

INTRODUCTION

As anthropological changes have increased, affecting the world and its ecosystems (Acosta et al., Lotze et al., Dugan et al.), scientists have investigated their impact on species abundance by raising the question, “What makes one species less common than another?” Deborah Rabinowitz and her colleagues defined three axes of rarity: (1) geographic range, i.e., whether an organism has a larger or smaller range on the map; (2) habitat specificity, i.e., niche breadth; and (3) local population size, i.e., the number of individuals in a given area (also known as population size) (Rabinowitz). The interactions of these three characteristics provide insight into the different forms of rarity and show that rarity is quite common.

Research conducted on islands is an excellent way to understand ecology and evolution (Kueffer et al.). Because they are separated from continents, often in considerable isolation, islands act as natural laboratories, allowing researchers to study organisms in simpler ecosystems to understand how they naturally survive and diversify (Kueffer et al.). Thus, because of these unique characteristics of islands, an island environment is a good place to study how the natural habitat impacts rarity (Kueffer et al.). One such place is Moorea, French Polynesia, a high volcanic island in the Society Archipelago, remote from any continents.

In Moorea, two native trees, Thespesia populnea and Hibiscus tiliaceus provide a good contrast for addressing rarity. Both trees have important roles in Polynesian culture as they are used in craft wood and tools, canoe/boat making, fuelwood, clothing, medicine, and decoration (Elevitch et al., Friday et al.). Each part of the tree has different uses: Hibiscus flowers can be used in dentistry; Thespesia

seeds can be used to treat eczema and to clear sinus infections; and the bark of Thespesia can be applied as a cast for sprain injuries (Valentine Brotherson, personal communication). Both trees have heartshaped leaves and bright yellow, bell-shaped flowers. However, despite belonging to the same family (Malvaceae) and having similar habitats and morphologies, Thespesia is found only along the coast, in increasingly more limited places, while Hibiscus is distributed throughout the island along an elevational gradient. The comparison of the dispersal and establishment of these two native trees allow us to study the larger question at hand: what makes an organism rare?

Interestingly, the fruit production of the two is quite different, suggesting that the reproductive cycle may have an impact on plant rarity. Thespesia fruit are originally green and small, but over time, mature into brown, indehiscent fruits. Upon opening the fruit, one can find dozens of large seeds (Elevitch et al., Friday et al.). On the other hand, Hibiscus tiliaceus has a fruit that dehisces when dry, splitting into separate valves that release many tiny seeds (Elevitch et al., Friday et al.). Thus, to investigate what makes Thespesia less common, the reproductive cycle (pollination, dispersal, establishment, and development) of Hibiscus and Thespesia was compared. A major part of a plant’s reproductive cycle is pollination (Miller-Struttmann); the type and number of visitors may influence the spread of each species as pollinator activity contributes to plant rarity (Gaskett et al.). In fact, Rymer et al. (2005) noted a positive correlation between pollinator effectiveness and reproductive success. Moreover, a plant’s reproductive cycle depends on its ability to disperse to an appropriate place and germinate. Kunin and Gaston (1993) discovered that plants with poorer dispersal abilities were often less common. Thus, dispersal ef-

fectiveness is correlated with plant rarity (Miller and Kwit). Lastly, the ability to successfully germinate plays an important role in understanding rarity, so the germination rate of Hibiscus and Thespesia as well as the ability to overcome potential obstacles to reach land must be studied.

In this study, I examined two of the three axes of rarity defined previously: habitat specificity and population size. To understand the habitat specificity of the two trees, the reproductive cycles of Thespesia populnea and Hibiscus tiliaceus were compared (Miller-Struttmann); specifically, relationships with potential floral visitors, dispersal abilities (fruit or seed drop rates, floating times, and abilities to move across seawalls), and establishment success (germination rates). Then, the entire shore of Cook’s Bay was sampled to estimate the population size of both trees. I tested the following hypotheses through both field surveys and laboratory experiments: (1) Floral visitors frequent Hibiscus tiliaceus more often than Thespesia populnea. (2) Thespesia populnea is dispersal limited compared to Hibiscus tiliaceus with respect to fruit or seed drop rates, floating time in saltwater, and ability to cross seawalls. (3) Thespesia populnea has a lower germination rate than Hibiscus tiliaceus. (4) The presence of rock walls impacts the distribution of Thespesia populnea more than the

distribution of Hibiscus tiliaceus.

METHODS Study sites

The study was based at the University of California, Berkeley Richard B. Gump Research Station, located in Cook’s Bay on the island of Moorea, French Polynesia (17°29’25.92”S, 149°49’34.30”W). The study sites were located around the shore of Cook’s Bay (Fig. 1), partly on the Gump Research Station property. The project included both field work and laboratory work (Appendix B, Fig. 15) and was conducted September 2021 to November 2021.

Study species

The species of interest were the rare Thespesia populnea and the common Hibiscus tiliaceus. Voucher specimens were deposited in the University and Jepson Herbaria, UC Berkeley. Photographs of Thespesia fruit, flower, and leaf and Hibiscus seed, flower, and leaf are presented in Appendix A (Appendix A, Fig. 11-14).

Statistical analysis

Fig. 1. Sites sampled in this study around Cook’s Bay.

All data collected in this study was analyzed using R (R Core Team 2020), as implemented in RStudio (R Studio Team 2020). All statistical tests used an α = 0.05 level.

Pollination

Five different, randomly selected Hibiscus and Thespesia trees were observed between 8:00 AM and 10:30 AM for 1-2 hours on five different days. The trees were counted around the Gump Research Station and given a number. Then, a random number generator was used to select five trees to conduct a pollinator-vegetation survey. Date, time of observation, the tree number, type of floral visitor (bird, bee, wasp, skink, or butterfly), and number of visitors present were recorded.

A Paired Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was performed on whether the visitor-day distribution of Hibiscus is different from the visitor-day distribution of Thespesia.

Dispersal effectiveness of fruits and seeds

To study the dispersal effectiveness of Hibiscus seeds and Thespesia fruits: (1) the fruit or seed drop rate was calculated, (2) the number of seeds present in dried Hibiscus flowers within 1.83 meters from the ground were counted to understand the method of Hibiscus seed dispersal, (3) the average length of time that the seeds and fruits can float in saltwater over a five week period was recorded, and (4) the average number of Hibiscus seeds and Thespesia fruits that crossed over a mock rock wall when under wave simulation was calculated.

A shade cloth was placed under two Hibiscus and two Thespesia trees. The shade cloth was periodically checked (morning, afternoon, and night) for a month to count the number of seeds and fruits that dropped onto the cloth. Additionally, the weather conditions (presence of wind and/or rain) as well as the start and end time of the recording was noted. The drop rate (per day per tree) of Hibiscus seeds and Thespesia fruits over a time interval was recorded (Fig. 2). A 95% confidence interval was used to

capture the true rate of fruits and seeds dropped on the ground, on the assumption that the droppings of fruits and seeds follow the Poisson Arrival Process (Garwood).

For Hibiscus flowers within 1.83 meters from the ground, I recorded the number of seeds in the dried flowers. Then, I ran a Mann-Whitney test to determine the mean dispersal amount of Hibiscus is greater than 0.

I performed an experiment to determine how long seeds and fruits can float in saltwater. Twenty Thespesia fruits, twenty Thespesia seeds, and twenty Hibiscus seeds were floated in running saltwater circulating in a cement tank with a mesh top. The number of seeds and fruits that float, sunk, or went missing were recorded. Seeds and fruits that had not touched the bottom of the tank were labeled as “floating;” seeds and fruits that had touched the bottom of the tank and remained at the bottom were labeled as “sunk;” seeds and fruits that had disappeared from the tank and could not be found were labeled as “missing.” In the process of running this experiment, one Thespesia fruit was destroyed and was removed from the experiment.

A Fisher’s Exact Test for Count Data on the number of floating, sunk, and missing fruits and seeds among Thespesia seeds and Thespesia fruits was used to test the hypothesis that the distribution of floating, sunk, and missing fruits and seeds were equally distributed between the two. A Fisher’s Exact Test for Count Data on the number of floating, sunk, and missing fruits and seeds among Thespesia seeds and Hibiscus seeds was used to test the hypothesis that the distribution of floating, sunk, and missing fruits and seeds were not equally distributed between the two. A Fisher’s Exact Test for Count Data on the number of floating, sunk, and missing fruits and seeds among Thespesia seeds and Hibiscus seeds was used to test the hypothesis that the distribution of floating, sunk, and missing fruits and seeds were not equally distributed between the two.

Lastly, a wave simulation experiment was performed to measure the ability of twenty Hibiscus seeds and twenty Thespesia fruits to cross over a model rock wall. To simulate waves, a brick was

Fig. 2. Drop rate of Thespesia and Hibiscus with 95% confidence interval calculation.

placed orthogonal to the bottom of the tank and pushed downward. There were six treatments, each representing a tank filled with seawater to a different degree (37.5% filled, 41.7%, 45.8%, 50.0%, 58.3%, and 66.7%). The experiment was repeated ten times for each treatment and the number and species of seeds and fruits that crossed over or stuck to the wall was recorded. The data was divided into six groups based upon the amount of seawater. Then, a Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was applied to each of the six datasets, comparing the crossing and/or sticking abilities of Hibiscus seeds and Thespesia fruits.

Germination and establishment

To study how scarification affects germination rate, thirty Thespesia seeds and fifteen Hibiscus seeds were either scarred or left intact (control). Both groups were rinsed with freshwater and dried before a scar was made by rubbing sandpaper once on the skin of the seed. Then, the seeds were placed in damp filter paper until the seeds germinated (Fig. 3). To test my hypothesis that scarification affects the germination rates of both Thespesia and Hibiscus, I ran a Chi Squared Test of Homogeneity.

To study how the length of saltwater exposure affects the germination rate, two hundred Hibiscus seeds and two hundred Thespesia fruits were equally divided into a control group (no saltwater exposure) or into one of three experimental groups (1-day saltwater exposure, 4-day saltwater exposure, and 7-day saltwater exposure) (Fig. 3). After one of these four treatments, Thespesia fruits and Hibiscus seeds were rinsed with freshwater, then dried. Next, Thespesia fruits were carefully broken open to extract the seeds. Then, every seed was briefly scarred by rubbing sandpaper on the outer layer of the seed. Fisher’s Exact Tests for Count Data were used to test my hypothesis that the average length of saltwater exposure on germination rates will differ among the control group and the three experimental groups (1-day, 4-day, 7-day) for each species.

Relationship with man-made rock walls

I kayaked around the coast of Cook’s Bay, starting from (-17.48488, -149.8293) and ending at

Fig. 4. Sites sampled in this study around Cook’s Bay with the location of man-made rock walls.

Fig. 3. Germination Experiments on Thespesia and Hibiscus.

(-17.48473, -149.81685), to map the location and number of Thespesia and Hibiscus within three meters from shore and to map the location of man-made rock walls (Fig. 4). For each section with and without rock walls, I counted the number of Thespesia and Hibiscus. I then ran Welch two sample t-tests to test if the number or species of trees in the presence of rock walls differs from non-rock wall sections. I also ran a Welch two sample t-test to compare the total number of Thespesia and Hibiscus present in Cook’s Bay.

RESULTS

Pollination

The Paired Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test showed that the visitor-day distribution of Hibiscus is different from the visitor-day distribution of Thespesia, the null hypothesis is rejected, indicating that there is a statistically significant (p=0.01189) difference between the visitor-day distribution between the two trees. The average difference between visitors of Hibiscus was higher than visitors of Thespesia (Fig. 5).

Dispersal Effectiveness of Fruits and Seeds

Thespesia’s drop rate per day per tree is λ=27/46. Hibiscus’s drop rate per day per tree is λ=40/46. The 95% Confidence Interval for the drop rate of Thespesia trees is (0.386808, 0.8539909), while the 95% Confidence Interval for the drop rate of Hibiscus trees is (0.6212301, 1.184101). The observed drop rate for Hibiscus trees does not appear in the 95% confidence interval for the drop rate of the Thespesia trees, and the observed drop rate for Thespesia trees does not appear in the 95% confidence interval for the drop rate of Hibiscus trees (Fig. 6). Therefore, the difference in drop rates between the two species is statistically significant, where Hibiscus had a higher average drop rate than

The Mann-Whitney test was used to determine that the mean seed dispersal amount of Hibiscus is greater than 0; the null hypothesis that the mean seed dispersal amount is equal to 0 was rejected. A 95% confidence interval of the true median was [0, 2], indicating that, on average, most or all the Hibiscus seeds disperse, leaving 0-2 seeds remaining (Fig. 7). This test demonstrates that Hibiscus is an effective seed disperser.

The null hypothesis that the distribution of floating, sunk, and missing Thespesia fruits and Thespesia seeds failed to be rejected (p= 0.2351), indicating that there is no difference in the distribution of floating, sunk, and missing Thespesia fruits and seeds. The null hypothesis that the distribution of floating, sunk, and missing Thespesia fruits and Hibiscus seeds was rejected (p=2.742e-08), indicating that there is a difference in the distribution of floating, sunk, and missing Thespesia fruits and Hibiscus seeds. The null hypothesis that the distribution of floating, sunk, and missing Thespesia and Hibiscus seeds was rejected (p=4.055e-07), indicating that there is a difference in the distribution of float-

Fig. 5. Bar Graph of the Distribution of Pollinators between Thespesia and Hibiscus.

Fig. 6. A graph of the 95% Confidence Intervals for the drop rate of Thespesia and Hibiscus.

Fig. 7. A histogram of the number of seeds found in dried Hibiscus flowers. The blue dotted line represents the median of the histogram.

Fig. 9. Bar Graph of the Control Group and Four Experimental Groups (1-day, 4-day, 7-day, and 1-day Thespesia seed soaked in saltwater).

Fig. 8. Bar Graph of the Distribution of Floating, Missing, and Sunk Thespesia fruits and seeds and Hibiscus seeds.

ing, sunk, and missing Thespesia seeds and Hibiscus seeds (Fig. 8).

The Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test indicated that, on average, Hibiscus seeds stuck on or crossed over the wall more often than Thespesia fruits.

Germination and establishment

The Chi-Squared Test of Homogeneity showed that the distribution of germinated seeds when scarred is different from the distribution of germinated seeds without a scar (p=1.706e-07).

A Fisher’s Exact Test for Count Data found a statistically significant difference in the germination rates of Thespesia seeds in the control and experimental groups (p=0.0006465). The germination rates of Thespesia seeds differed when they were exposed to various time lengths of saltwater. A Fisher’s Exact Test for Count Data found no statistically significant difference in the germination rates of Hibiscus seeds in the four groups (p=0.2557). The germination rates of Hibiscus seeds did not differ when they were exposed to various time lengths of saltwater. A Fisher’s Exact Test for Count Data found a statistically significant difference in the germination rates of Thespesia and Hibiscus seeds in the control and experimental groups (p=0.0013407499032238). The germination rates of Thespesia seeds were, on average, higher than that of Hibiscus seeds among the four groups. A Fisher’s Exact Test for Count Data found that there was no statistically significant difference in the germination rates of Thespesia seeds and Hibiscus seeds after being exposed to saltwater for one day (p=0.271415383029334). The germination rates of Thespesia and Hibiscus seeds did not differ after one day of saltwater exposure. A Fisher’s Exact Test for Count Data found that there was no statistically significant difference in the germination rates of Thespesia seeds and Hibiscus seeds after being exposed to saltwater for four days (p=0.268660207522161). The germination rates of Thespesia and Hibiscus seeds did not differ after four days of saltwater exposure. A Fisher’s Exact Test for Count Data found that there was a statistically significant difference in the germination rates of Thespesia seeds and Hibiscus seeds after being exposed to saltwater for seven days (p=0.0347310446394649). The germination rate of Thespesia seeds, on average, was higher than that of Hibiscus seeds after seven days of saltwater exposure.

Relationship with man-made rock walls

There was no statistically significant difference between the presence or absence of rock walls and the number of trees of either species (p=0.82)

(Fig. 10).

DISCUSSION

This study examined two of the three Rabinowitz axes of rarity (habitat specificity and population size) to help understand the relative rarity of Thespesia as compared to Hibiscus (Rabinowitz). The two trees’ relationships with visitors, their dispersal abilities, and establishment success were compared. To study their relative dispersal abilities, I observed fruit or seed drop rates, floating times, and their abilities to cross over mock walls. To study population size, the entire shore of Cook’s Bay was sampled, where I observed the distribution of Thespesia and Hibiscus under the presence or absence of rock walls.

Hibiscus had more visits of potential pollinators and a higher variety of visitors than Thespesia. This difference may in part account for the lower abundance of Thespesia. This finding supports the idea that the type and number of pollinators may influence the spread of each species (Gaskett et al.), and that there is a positive correlation between pollinator effectiveness and reproductive success (Rymer et al.). Since this study did not include pollinator observations, follow-up studies should examine whether effective pollen movement was occurring by each type of visitor, including studying night pollinator visits to understand the overall plant-pollinator relationships of Thespesia and Hibiscus. Scopece et al. (2019) showed that night pollinators, like moths, were most effective at pollinating Agarista revoluta, a coastal flowering plant.

The relative rarity of Thespesia may also be influenced by its poorer dispersal abilities (Kunin and Gaston). This study showed that, as compared to Hibiscus, Thespesia has a lower fruit drop rate, shorter floating time, and a weaker ability to cross over a rock wall. The differences in Hibiscus and

Fig. 10. Violin Plot of Thespesia and Hibiscus distributions in the presence and absence of rock walls.

Thespesia fruit morphology may play a role in these trends. Thespesia fruit are indehiscent and do not release its seeds, while Hibiscus fruit dehisces when dry, releasing its seeds (Elevitch et al., Friday et al.). Hibiscus seeds are small and light, allowing many modes of dispersal. Furthermore, because Hibiscus fruits dehisce and release its seeds, there is a higher amount of Hibiscus propagules released compared to Thespesia fruits, contributing to a difference in drop rate. Though both Thespesia fruits and Hibiscus seeds float well and could reach distant destinations, the small size of Hibiscus seeds allows them to move more easily and to be scattered across various locations. Lastly, Thespesia fruits were unable to disperse over an obstacle, while Hibiscus seeds often can cross over an obstacle or stick onto it. This finding further suggests that Hibiscus seeds are more effective in dispersing than their Thespesia counterparts, providing an explanation to why Hibiscus is more commonly found throughout Moorea than Hibiscus.

While Hibiscus is a more effective disperser than Thespesia, Thespesia may be more effective at germination, contrary to hypothesis number 4. This difference in germination rates could explain why, in certain regions of the coast, there are many clusters of Thespesia. Furthermore, in this study, I focused on how scarification conditions affected germination rates of Hibiscus and Thespesia seeds. Future studies could focus on finding the optimal temperature, humidity, and other environmental factors for germination post scarification.

Lastly, along the shore of Cook’s Bay, Thespesia did not occur significantly less often than Hibiscus where rock walls were present or absent. During my survey of Cook’s Bay, I noticed that some of the Thespesia trees may have been planted in privately-owned residences which may have confounded the results of the statistical test. Additional surveys noting whether the tree species was found in private residences are needed to determine if rock walls significantly impact the establishment of Thespesia and Hibiscus in its native environment and whether humans play a role in their distribution.

In summary, while Thespesia and Hibiscus share similar external morphological features and are closely related, Hibiscus has more effective dispersal and establishment mechanisms than Thespesia, offering a likely explanation as to why Hibiscus is more abundant than Thespesia. However, because Thespesia has a higher germination rate than Hibiscus, it still manages to maintain some population around the island. The results from this study will aid in conservation efforts, such as demonstrating how humans impact parts of the plant reproductive cycle, thus influencing their abundance and proneness to extirpation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Brent Mishler for his encouragement and feedback with this manuscript. I also thank Kira Wiesinger for her assistance in the field and Scott McIntyre for his guidance in data analysis.

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APPENDIX A: Species Identification

To differentiate Thespesia and Hibiscus, look at the width of both heart-shaped leaves. Hibiscus leaves tend to be wider than Thespesia leaves. Furthermore, Thespesia have green or brown fruits while Hibiscus have flower buds or dried flowers. All photographs by author Tina Li, unless otherwise specified.

APPENDIX B: A Summary of my Experimental Design and Statistical Test

Fig. 11. First two photograph of Hibiscus flowers and buds. Bottom photograph of dried Hibiscus flowers that hold Hibiscus seeds.

Fig. 12. Thespesia leaves and green Thespesia fruits.

Fig. 13. Thespesia buds and flowers. On the right photograph, there are some green and brown fruits in the background.

Fig. 14. Hibiscus seed (on the left), a Thespesia fruit (on the right), and scissors for size reference.

Fig. 15. Experimental design of my experiment is broken into four parts: pollination, dispersal effectiveness, germination and establishment, interaction with man-made rock walls development.

No Water, No Life: Water Inequality in California’s Central Valley

AUTHOR: Stella Singer

INTRODUCTION

Rows upon rows of budding citrus trees spread for miles, an orange smudge of sickly-sweet pulp and hardy leaves in an otherwise barren landscape. A couple miles down the row stand a smattering of houses, piled on crabgrass lawns are empty water jugs, corpses in the dilapidated landscape. Towering above the pockmarked orchards stands a billboard, its fading words proclaiming, “No Water = No Home.” Welcome to the Central Valley.

Lush orchards conceal a neglected issue of social justice: over 100,000 residents in the Valley do not have access to clean water. Below the veneer of The Central Valley’s agricultural abundance lies glaring disparity, clean water is a privilege afforded to the politically powerful and wealthy. In the midst of agricultural abundance unfolds a constant struggle by the local population for a reliable source of water. Afflicted are primarily low-income migrants, stewards of the land whose voices are consistently ignored due to their socio-economic background, which transforms an already complicated situation into an onerous social dilemma. Unincorporated communities of mostly farm workers struggle to access reliable sources of safe drinking water. Exclusionary policies and the social geography of the region systematically oppress these communities and exacerbate an already existing undercurrent of social inequality. Despite the host of barriers standing between local residents and water rights equity, there are a number of grassroots movements fighting for justice. There is hope for unincorporated communities in the Valley.

Water in California has always been a precious commodity; regulated and parsed out, access to water is woven in the fabric of political power and has shaped what the state is today. Where water flows, and more importantly where it can be controlled, life flourishes. The Central Valley has built its entire economy, infrastructure, and social system on this valuable resource. The cultivation of agriculture in the Valley supplies nearly a quarter of food consumed in the nation, it is the lifeblood not only of California but also the entire United States (Casey, 2020). However, this agrarian abundance comes at a hefty cost: intense water usage, a resource that

California notoriously lacks. Drought constantly looms over the state—year after year water levels hit record lows and dry spells last longer (Del Real, 2019). Suffering from drought, but still requiring immense amounts of water, farmers in the Valley resort to over pumping local aquifers. When groundwater is over pumped from a well, toxic chemicals like arsenic and nitrates leach into water supplies (Moore et al., 2011). Consequently, the water systems of unincorporated communities suffer most. Unable to obtain water from safer sources, like larger more funded towns can, unincorporated communities are left to drink the local groundwater. A participant in a 2021 interview series conducted in the San Joaquin Valley expressed that “clearly, crops are more important than people in this area” (Flores-Landeros et al., 2021). This belief is widespread and reinforced by the local government’s refusal to support towns on the fringes. The mighty reign that agriculture stockholders have over policy in the region further limits the possibility of enacting policy that would protect water from agricultural pesticide use. Commercial farming is the root cause of dangerously contaminated public drinking water supplies in the Central Valley; while the residents in the region grow the nation’s food, they cannot even drink their own water (Meadows, 2017).

To begin to delineate the landscape of water inequity in the Central Valley, one must first understand the social geography of the region. Unincorporated communities experience the majority of the fallout of inequitable water systems because they are excluded from many government-funded projects and are often overlooked in census data (Del Real, 2019). The demographics of these communities add an additional layer of concern. A 2013 study conducted by Policy Link found that sixty-five percent of the populations living in disadvantaged unincorporated communities were people of color, meaning that “people of color were disproportionately represented in Disadvantaged Unincorporated Communities in comparison to cities, counties, and Census Designated Places.” This data unearths the divide along racial and ethnic lines in the Valley; communities of color are systematically overlooked and suffer the harshest consequences. Stories of water injustice and disparity are recurrent across the expanse of the Central and San Joaquin Valleys. Town after town, one can find anecdotal evidence of the drastic impact contaminated water has had on families and communities. The impacts are daily and dis-

ruptive, tap water is dangerous and families avoid drinking or cooking with it; instead, they resort to jugs of water, bought themselves, to supplement their needs (Moore et al., 2011). Along with paying a monthly water bill, families must buy enough water to consume, which is expensive. Consequently, many families continue to shower and wash up with water from their home systems. In an interview conducted by the New York Times, Martha Sanchez describes how the water “makes their skin itch.” Beyond physical discomfort, consistent and frequent exposure to nitrate/arsenic laden water has been associated with increased cancer rates in the region. An Environmental Health paper reported that around 15,500 cases of cancer in California could occur within 70 years due to unsafe drinking water. The research concluded that “water systems serving small communities [are] often most in need of resources and infrastructure for safe drinking water” (Stoiber, 2019). As cancer rates and household costs rise, residents are left with financial burdens and stressors all attributed to unsafe drinking water.

Although the consequences are highly personal and felt deeply on a local level, the root of the contaminated water issue is systemic. It is a public health crisis furthered by politics on a local and state level. Historically, the social and political geography of the region is soaked in racism and bigoted policy (London et al., 2018). There have been attempts by the government to remediate the water safety issue, but ultimately there is an attitude of stubbornness in local government that halts any hope for long lasting change. One solution includes larger water districts absorbing unincorporated systems, supplying these smaller communities with the same water stability and safety afforded to larger towns.

However, this would mean tax increases for citizens in the incorporated communities, a proposal that is met with harsh disapproval. However, the cost of upgrading and incorporating smaller systems is marginal compared to the benefit (Del Real, 2019). Local government’s neglectful attitude towards the crisis has instilled a negative mindset in impacted citizens. Recurring sentiments in unincorporated Central Valley towns demonstrate a general distrust in local and state government: “we don’t exist to them,” “they only please the bigger voice,” “politicians are thieves,’’ etc. In many cases, “San Joaquin is described as ‘held hostage by bad leadership’” (Flores-Landeros et al., 2021). Most citizens in unincorporated regions view politicians and their programs as corrupt and uninterested in their concerns, a valid point of view considering the track record. Social apathy deepens the divide between communities and political avenues for change. This is where third parties come in and bridge the gap between local townspeople and

the state legislature.

Despite the host of barriers standing between local residents and water rights equity, there are a number of grassroots movements fighting for justice. The first step towards justice is community education. If members of the community are informed on their rights and avenues of action, they gain power. Outreach programs include guides like “Climate Change in the San Joaquin Valley: A Household and Community Guide to Taking Action,” which informs readers on the science and policy of their situation. Larger groups like the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water are working tirelessly in the state legislature to “empower the most under-served communities … throughout California to advocate for clean, safe, and affordable water” (EJCW). At a local level, there are activists like Pedro Hernandez, a key figure in the Leadership Council for Justice and Accountability, who educates and works with residents to fight for inclusion in larger water systems. In 2020, Hernandez led a push by unincorporated Tooleville’s residents to be included in nearby Exeter’s water system. Despite the residents’ poignant appeals, the attempt was unsuccessful because of Exeter’s hesitancy to take on any additional financial burden (Casey, 2020). This resistance by larger local governments to incorporation of smaller water districts is a common occurrence across the Central and San Joaquin Valley. Hernandez and many advocates like him are calling for a more radical state approach but fighting for clean water is an uphill battle in California. Without aggressive support from the state, grassroot attempts to fight for water justice are tedious and frequently unsuccessful.

Environmental threats are exacerbated by socio-economic inequalities, as demonstrated by the paradox in the Central Valley. The social geography of the region places low-income communities, composed predominantly of people of color, at the highest risk for unsafe water. Lacking the financial and political power to help themselves, residents are left paying water bills for unusable water and spending money on clean bottled water. There is hope for the fight for environmental justice in the Valley but the process for incorporation or fundraising to pay for new systems is tedious. It is hindered by stagnant policy and adamant attempts by larger districts to resist change. There is possibility for change; however, the political will of influential sources must support them. Innovation should uplift the disadvantaged, social justice and environmental protection must go hand in hand to aid marginalized communities.

WORKS CITED

1. Del Real, Jose A. “They Grow the Nation’s

Food, but They Can’t Drink the Water.” New York Times , 21 May 2019.

2. Flores-Landeros, Humberto, et al. “Community Perspectives and Environmental Justice in California’s San Joaquin Valley.” Environmental Justice (2021). July 28, Casey, director. The Great Divide. Yale E360, 2020, https:// e360.yale.edu/features/inside-the-uphillfight-for-clean-wate r-in-californias-central-valley. Accessed 2 Dec. 2021.

3. Lohan, Tara. Pacific Standard, 7 July 2017, https://psmag.com/environment/how-water-contamination-is-putting-this-california-town-at-risk. Accessed 2021.

4. London, Jonathan. UC Davis, Davis, CA, 2018, pp. 1–64, The Struggle for Water Justice in California’s San Joaquin Valley: A Focus on Disadvantaged Unincorporated Communities.

5. Moore, Eli, et al. “The Human Costs of Nitrate-contaminated Drinking Water in the San Joaquin Valley.” (2011).

6. Pannu, Camille. “Drinking water and exclusion: A case study from California’s Central Valley.” California Law Review (2012): 223268.

7. Stoiber, Tasha, et al. “Applying a Cumulative Risk Framework to Drinking Water Assessment: A Commentary.” Environmental Health, vol. 18, no. 1, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1186/ s12940-019-0475-5.

Should Your Mascara Be Tested on Rats?

AUTHOR: Riya Jain

Imagine curling your lashes as you try a new mascara for your friend’s birthday party. Sounds harmless, right? This seemingly usual task of putting on mascara became a nightmare for over a dozen women who lost their eyesight after using Lash Lure in the 1930s. Furthermore, one woman developed an infected ulcer that transgressed into a bacterial infection that ultimately took her life. Lash Lure products contained a chemical called p-phenylenediamine, which was not tested for its safety due to the lack of regulations. This chemical caused ulcers, abscesses, and blisters on the eyelashes, eyelids, and faces of the customers. If this chemical had been tested for its safety before use, perhaps the women would not have suffered. This paper seeks to understand the different testing methods for cosmetics and analyze if there is a better alternative to the most known way of testing: animal testing.

As the beauty industry is growing exponentially, we have seen an increase in both the demand and supply of make-up products, including eye makeup. Currently, products such as mascara are regularly tested on rats as a part of their process to become available for sale in the market. The current policies on using animals for testing eye makeup products need us to define what encompasses ‘cosmetics’ in the United States and how that affects regulations. While mascara, in general, is considered a cosmetic, if the product makes a claim that can impact the health of an individual, then it is considered an over-the-counter drug (or OTC). For instance, shampoo falls in the category of cosmetics, but if it makes the claim of being anti-dandruff, it is considered an OTC drug. In the United States, cosmetics are not required to be tested on animals (animal testing for cosmetics is not prohibited either), but OTC drugs are required to be animal tested.

Let us also consider the cruelty-free label on products—counterintuitively, there is no clear governmental guideline on the label “cruelty-free” which means the label does not guarantee that the product is not tested on animals. The use of animals to test cosmetics is a subject of ethical concern. The meaning of ethics varies depending on who it addresses: humans or non-humans. The Belmont Report re-

leased by the United States Department of Health and Human Services defines the three basic ethical principles concerning human subjects in research: Respect for Persons, Beneficence, and Justice. Respect for Persons means that human subjects involved should have autonomy and, in case of limited autonomy, need to be provided with protection. The second component of beneficence is defined as ensuring the well-being of individuals as an obligation, and “one should not injure one person regardless of the benefits that might come to others.” Injustice, the absence of which characterizes justice, is defined as denying a benefit or imposition of a burden. These are the clear guidelines defined for what’s considered ethical in society, but only for humans. Do similar principles hold for non-human animals?

Until recently, we did not have fundamental regulations regarding the safe handling of rats in research and experimentation. While humans, as research subjects, have regulations and strict checks on gaining consent, that is not the case with non-human animals. According to Title 9 Code of Federal Regulations by the US Department of Agriculture, the only law concerning the use of animals in research labs is the Animal Welfare Act. The lack of specifications for animal protection allows animals to be isolated, burned, starved, poisoned, shocked, and used in experiments that result in neurotrauma or addiction. Additionally, this law excludes a wide group of organisms, including rats and all cold-blooded animals. This means that over 95% of most used animals in laboratories nationwide do not even have these protections. According to a survey conducted by a group of researchers at Newcastle University in 2009, rats and mice who were subjected to procedures like invasive spinal and skull surgeries and burns were only about 20% of the time treated with postoperative pain relievers.

However, we can take a different stance when considering ethics by focusing on our relationship with animals as a whole in the United States. If consuming animals as food products is common practice, then conducting animal research and testing for the desire of luscious, black lashes cannot be objected to from a moral standpoint. A ground to argue against the use of rats for research to determine the effectiveness and safety of mascara would have to be first based on dramatically overhauling the entire foundation of the ethical relationship between humans and animals, which is not in sight currently.

Aside from ethics, does using animals to test eye makeup have environmental implications? In addition to a lack of regulations and mishandling of rats in research labs, more rats are prepared for the experiment than are actually used in testing, which creates the issue of waste disposal. According to a 2013 study cited in the Review of Evidence of Environmental Impacts of Animal Research and Testing, out of the 26,000 mice that were euthanized by a laboratory, only 500 were found to be usable for testing, and the rest were discarded. Alongside the amount of waste generated, the USDA does not require research and testing facilities to report the number of animals used and disposed of. As a result, there is a severe lack of environmental analysis on the impact of the use of animals in testing.

Now, a natural question is whether there is an alternative to animal testing. In-vitro testing is one way that involves the use of a medium of laboratory-grown animal (human and non-human animals) cells that mimic the targeted human anatomy and physiology. In this way of testing, the experiment is conducted in a closed system that can be controlled and regulated more precisely than working with live animals. However, in-vitro testing has a high rate of false positive results that can be misleading when judging the effectiveness and safety of a product. Does this mean in-vitro testing is not a feasible option at all? As it turns out, the rate of misleading results can be reduced by using cells that produce higher specificity. Concluding the research described in the International Journal of Drug Policy, using cell lines with low metabolic capabilities often results in misleading positives due to their inability to detoxify chemicals. TK6, Hep G2, and primary human lymphocytes have similar drug metabolism mechanisms to human hepatocytes and therefore minimize false positive results. As described in a NIH article, several countries have replaced eye irritancy tests on animals with in-vitro testing without compromising the product’s safety.

While animal testing could have potentially prevented the women from going blind after using Lash Lure, we cannot deny the prospect of non-animal testing that could have determined the safety of the product. With the current research on making testing more efficient and minimizing the use of animals, we can continue to educate ourselves on the currently existing methods and policies to determine our own stance.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

In India, there are ways of understanding animal testing that are not the same as the ones dominant in the US. As I discovered that animal testing for

eye makeup considerably depends on how we treat animals as a society, I sought to understand this approach from the perspective of Jainism, one of the most ancient religions in the world. Inherently detaching itself from anthropocentrism (the belief of humans being superior beings), a primary mantra in the Jain religion is that of Ahimsa. Ahimsa translates to nonviolence; it is the value of not hurting any sentient beings and respecting everything. Writing this paper is my way of understanding my standing between being a pre-med student who has to reconcile with doing dissections and being someone who deeply identifies with the moral value of Ahimsa.

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Editorials:

How hydropower missed the boat on the American climate transition

By: Colin Mequet

1. https://www.waterpowermagazine.com/features/featuredecommissioning-dams-costs-and-trends/

2. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00027-014-0377-0

3. https://www.iea.org/news/hydropower-has-a-crucial-role-in-accelerating-clean-energy-transitions-to-achieve-countries-climate-ambitions-securely

4. https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/united-states

5. https://damsafety-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/files/State%20Performance%20Reports%20Complete%20-%202019_Reduced.pdf

6. https://www.ferc.gov/sites/default/files/2020-04/fema-333.pdf

7. https://alabamarivers.org/reservoir_emissions_1/

Lawns and their Discontents: Creating the American Landscape

By: Elaine Zhang

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1618866715000436?via%3Dihub

2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837703000061?casa_token=-VW8-nMGMJYAAAAA:2vOUjKJdFyRteLL-iAgh0RVoe_AYv7Bp27GxTjGAUTl9tXxq8no1TLD67u2Poy1psyPplgL0

3. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Lawn_People/jcKH9K_DHd0C?hl=en&gbpv=0

4. https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/9/3/73

5. https://www.ebmud.com/water/conservation-and-rebates/rebates/lawn-conversion-rebate

6. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S161886671730763X?casa_ token=3SU5gbxho34AAAAA:KfNaYUASwucWvUCv_dppvqjp4z9mDLhPFMTETXlbg2e4jqQsogC-ctnOgmlF8PsOgFCxEjZh

7. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/drought-stricken-nevada-enacts-banon-non-functional-grass

8. https://beecityusa.org/no-mow-may/

9. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10393-011-0697-7

10. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969719346030?casa_token=kzyKHKkl54gAAAAA:BacIDZk63MgyG0mMfv3J1QOXThNKsKUzeG4yF5AFO3tc250K98tYgWKuTe_SuDE2i309KkQG

11. https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html

Disinvestment to Reinvestment: Saving BART

By: Nishita Dashpute

1. https://www.bart.gov/about/history

2. https://www.bart.gov/about/history/history3

3. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0965856496000274

4. https://www.nationalaffairs.com/public_interest/detail/the-bart-experience-

what-have-we-learned

5. https://trid.trb.org/view/618404

6. https://twitter.com/sfbart/status/1423801102806384641?lang=en

7. https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1136&context=datasciencereview

8. https://www.masstransitmag.com/management/press-release/21285558/metropolitan-transportation-authority-ny-mta-mta-sets-pandemic-era-ridership-record-on-nyc-subway-anniversary

9. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/14/barts-push-to-reinvent-its-policeforce-doubling-down-on-social-workers-unarmed-ambassadors/

Help the Kelp: Restoring the Ocean’s Forests

By: Sia Agarwal

1. https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/west-coast/habitat-conservation/kelp-forest-habitat-west-coast#:~:text=Because%20kelps%20are%20primary%20producers,of%20life%20that%20inhibits%20them.

2. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Companies-want-to-grow-seaweed-in-California-to-16741527.php

3. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2022/06/29/cultivating-seaweed-for-carbon-removal-in-california-barriers-and-recommendations/

4. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/california-critical-kelp-forests-disappearing-warming-world-can-they-be-saved

5. https://seagrant.noaa.gov/News/Article/ArtMID/1660/ArticleID/2796/New-research-to-address-kelp-forest-crisis-in-California

6. https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/organic/handbook/5022

7. https://nwstraits.org/media/2925/appendix_b_the-cultural-importance-ofkelp-for-pacific-northwest-tribes.pdf

8. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.00544/full

9. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/scientists-restore-worlds-kelp-forests/

10. https://environment-review.yale.edu/kelp-can-help-kelp-forests-reveal-hidden-potential-blue-carbon-sequestration#:~:text=This%20study%20revealed%20 that%20kelp,total%20global%20blue%20carbon%20budget.

11. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/bluecarbon.html#:~:text=Blue%20carbon%20is%20simply%20the,dioxide%2C%20which%20contains%20atmospheric%20carbon.

Changing Their Tune: The Resurgence of Vinyl Records and its Environmental Impact

By: Rebecca Ding

1. https://thehustle.co/the-insane-resurgence-of-vinyl-records/

2. https://greenvinylrecords.com/index.php/home-en-us/

3. https://ninjatune.net/home

4. https://ninjatune.net/sustainability

5. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-57572663

Changing Their Tune: The Resurgence of Vinyl Records and its Environmental Impact

By: Rebecca Ding

1. https://us.whales.org/our-4-goals/stop-whaling/whaling-in-japan/#:~:text=Whaling%20in%20Japan%20facts&text=Japanese%20whalers%20continue%20 to%20hunt,sold%20on%20the%20open%20market

2. https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/2475/130482064

3. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24910797

4. https://www.discoverwildlife.com/animal-facts/marine-animals/8-facts-you-didnt-know-about-the-international-whaling-commission/

5. https://www.ccsbt.org/en/content/origins-convention

6. https://theworld.org/stories/2019-04-17/japan-few-people-eat-whale-meat-anymore-whaling-remains-popular

7. https://communitywatchpaper.org/how-community-influences-your-behavior

8. https://nexusmedianews.com/fish-are-shrinking-53b2f4546522/

9. https://apjjf.org/-David-McNeill/2353/article.html

10. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-economy-of-japan.html

11. https://animalequality.org/blog/2019/08/23/reasons-stop-eating-tuna/

12. https://awionline.org/content/subsistence-whaling

13. https://thehumaneleague.org/article/factory-farmed-chickens

14. https://www.peta.org/features/what-is-speciesism/

15. https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/save-the-whales-35th-anniversary/#:~:text=On%20April%2027%2C%201975%2C%20Greenpeace,international%20ban%20 on%20commercial%20whaling

Q&A with Kai Lepley: Modernizing our Agricultural System with Agrovoltaics

By: Lauren Gonzalez

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02179-1

2. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1910114117

3. https://farmlandinfo.org/publications/farms-under-threat-the-state-of-thestates/

4. https://www.srpnet.com/grid-water-management/water-management/wherewater-from

5. https://www.cap-az.com/water/cap-system/power-operations/

6. https://new.azwater.gov/conservation/agriculture

7. https://www.wri.org/insights/17-countries-home-one-quarter-worlds-population-face-extremely-high-water-stress

8. https://www.abc15.com/weather/impact-earth/arizona-to-lose-21-of-its-colorado-river-water-in-2023

9. https://www.barrongafford.org/uploads/2/9/2/2/29222307/barron-gafford_et_ al_nature_sustainability_2019.pdf

Opinions:

Shocking: Pesticide Giant Likes Money More than People

By: Paige Thionnet

1. https://people.forestry.oregonstate.edu/steve-strauss/sites/people.forestry.oregonstate.edu.steve-strauss/files/PestUse1996.pdf

2. https://www.usgs.gov/centers/ohio-kentucky-indiana-water-science-center/science/pesticides#overview

3. https://www.ibisworld.com/

4. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/02/10/a-valuable-reputation

5. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16967834/

6. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0909519107

7. https://www.regulations.gov/document/EPA-HQ-OPP-2013-0266-1625

8. https://www.syngenta-us.com/thrive/policy/epa-deliberates-fate-of-atrazine. html

9. https://e360.yale.edu/features/fifty_years_after_rachel_carsons_silent_spring_ assacult_on_science_continues

Guest Op-ed: Sedimentation and the Muddy History of the Berkeley Marina

By: Naomi Mint Levinthal

1. Booker, Matthew. 2013. Down by the Bay: San Francisco’s History between the Tides. University of California Press.

2. Charbonneau, Robert, and Vincent Resh. 1992. “Strawberry Creek on the University of California, Berkeley Campus: A Case History of Urban Stream Restoration.” Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 2 (4): 293–307. https:// doi.org/10.1002/aqc.3270020402.

3. UC Berkeley. 2022. “Creeks of UC Berkeley - Strawberry Creek - History.” UC Berkeley. 2022. https://creeks.berkeley.edu/creeks-and-watersheds/strawberry-creek/history.

4. University of California Museum of Paleontology. 2022. “Sedimentation.” Understanding Global Change. 2022. https://ugc.berkeley.edu/background-content/ sedimentation/.

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