Teaching systems thinking to 4th and 5th graders using Environmental Dashboard display technology.

Tackling complex environmental challenges requires the capacity to understand how relationships and interactions between parts result in dynamic behavior of whole systems. There has been convincing research that these "systems thinking" skills can be learned. However, there is little research on methods for teaching these skills to children or assessing their impact.

Electricity and Water Conservation on College and University Campuses in Response to National Competitions among Dormitories: Quantifying Relationships between Behavior, Conservation Strategies and Psychological Metrics.

"Campus Conservation Nationals" (CCN) is a recurring, nation-wide electricity and water-use reduction competition among dormitories on college campuses. We conducted a two year empirical study of the competition's effects on resource consumption and the relationship between conservation, use of web technology and various psychological measures. Significant reductions in electricity and water use occurred during the two CCN competitions examined (n = 105,000 and 197,000 participating dorm residents respectively).

Relationships between Spatial Metrics and Plant Diversity in Constructed Freshwater Wetlands.

The diversity of plant species and their distribution in space are both thought to have important effects on the function of wetland ecosystems. However, knowledge of the relationships between plant species and spatial diversity remains incomplete. In this study, we investigated relationships between spatial pattern and plant species diversity over a five year period following the initial restoration of experimental wetland ecosystems.

Dimensional approaches to designing better experimental ecosystems: a practitioners guide with examples.

Enclosed, experimental ecosystems ("mesocosms") are now widely used research tools in ecology. However, the small size, short duration and often simplified biological and physical complexity of mesocosm experiments raises questions about extrapolating results from these miniaturized ecosystems to nature. Dimensional analysis, a technique widely used in engineering to create scale models, employs "compensatory distortion" as a means of maintaining functional similarity in properties and relationships of interest.