Environmental Research Projects

The Effectiveness of Revegetation as a Remediation Strategy in the New Jersey Pine Barrens

The Warren Grove Bombing Range in New jersey covers 7000 acres of native Pine Barrens vegetation and protects several threatened and endangered species. The Air Force National Guard has undertaken various projects to revegetate areas that have been affected by roads and other clearing activities. This project seeks to measure the effectiveness of those efforts since 1988. Quantitative vegetation sampling in natural and revegetated areas is demonstrating the effectiveness of various remediation techniques.
Sponsor: Air National Guard

Investigator: Walter Bien and James R. Spotila
Phone: 215-895-2627
E-mail: spotiljr@drexel.edu

Nesting Ecology of the Leatherback Sea Turtle in Costa Rica

We have been conducting a long term study of the leatherback turtle at Playa Grande on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. We measure and mark every adult female turtle that nests on the beach from October till March. We move nests threatened by high tide and protect them in a hatchery. We determine the factors affecting the survival of nests, study the physiology and behavior of hatchlings and model the population dynamics of the population. We also do environmental education in the local schools. Our most recent paper was in NATURE 405:529-530.

Sponsor: EARTHWATCH Institute
Investigators: James R. Spotila, Harold W. Avery, Frank V. Paladino (Purdue University)
Phone: 215-895-2099
E-mail: spotiljr@drexel.edu, haltort@aol.com

Civil Society and the Environment:  The Mobilization of the U.S. Environmental Movement, 1900- 2000

This project analyzes the long-term mobilization of the environmental movement in the U.S. over the past century. We focus on three interrelated dimensions of mobilization: (1) the production of new discursive frames; (2) SMO development; and (3) collective action. This project addresses the following:
• What are the sociopolitical factors contributing to the long-term mobilization of the environmental movement?
Does this differ across environmental discursive frames, issue concerns, types of SMOs, and forms of collective
action?
• How has the organization of the environmental movement changed over the past century? Is there a decline in democratic participation and a rise of technocratic “astro-turf organizations” or “protest  businesses”? Are institutional philanthropy and professionalization creating movement centralization or a larger loose network of transitory issue coalitions?
• Is environmental mobilization stimulated or contained by the anti-environmental countermovement? Is there a spiral of movement/countermovement interaction in which similar discursive frames, organization and tactics (including protest) are adopted and diffused across these contending actors?

Ultimately our aim is to extend this effort to address the broader political and cultural outcomes of the U.S.
environmental movement so as address the National Research Council’s call for “a better understanding of how
social institutions influence environmentally significant human actions”. This will also address a major
shortcoming of environmental sociology, which has tended to focus on environmental attitudes and ideology to the
neglect of the mobilization and impact of the environmental movement on public policy and underlying
environmental problems. Our first step in this long journey is to better understand the long-term
mobilization of this complex and multi-faceted movement.

Sponsor: National Science Foundation: Robert Brulle, Craig Jenkins (Ohio State University)
Phone: 215-895-2294
E-mail: brullerj@drexel.edu