Skimming Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us, I found it it to be a fascinating yet problematic book. Its premise is incredibly intriguing; it asks, what would the world look like if humans suddenly disappeared? And Weisman’s answer? The world would, more or less, be better off without us. This is a depressing sounding conclusion, and it […]
Environmental Literature Lab
Audrey Stuart, Liza Tugangui, Blake Slattengren Background With the massive amounts of environmental literature being published that analyze the condition of the world today, there is a lot said about global conditions and local, more situated conditions. Many of the ideas portrayed in this literature situated environmental issues in the terms of the common expression, […]
GIS Reflections
After using GIS for the past two labs, I finally think I can call myself proficient at ArcGIS. Not good, but good enough to get by. ArcGIS has proved itself to be a super useful program, but also not super intuitive. It has a lot of techie features that would be almost impossible to figure […]
Concentration Proposal – Entrepreneurial Methods in High-Tech Agricultural Innovations
Descriptive: What current AgTech innovations are being successfully implemented? How are successful AgTech innovations currently being implemented? Explanatory: What are the key characteristics of successful AgTech innovations? What are the best ways to market AgTech innovations? Evaluative: How can breakthrough technologies make farming more efficient? Can private sector innovations be effective in causing large-scale impacts? […]
Environmental Justice GIS Lab
by Audrey Stuart, Liza Tugangui, Blake Slattengren Background This lab used arcGIS mapping features to examine issues of environmental injustice within the city of Portland. GIS is an easy way to look at trends across city blocks to understand how various factors may be related to environmental health. The ultimate goal of our analysis was […]
Agriculture tech: next big opportunity in Southeast Asia?
by Nadine Freischlad Agriculture has become – pardon the pun – a lucrative field for technology companies. A total of US$2.36 billion was invested into the global agriculture tech – or agtech – businesses in 2014, which put in on par with sectors like fintech, and ahead of clean tech, according to a recent report by […]
Bon Winners 2015
Place is a necessary method to view world. It is something that must exist to explain or even define an experience. Through this lens, place becomes a deeply personal connection between a person and a location. Yet, it is still ignored by the vast majority of people. This phenomenon is explored in Keith Basso’s ethnography, […]
Finding Scale
Gearing up for the concentration draft deadline, I have been thinking a lot about scale. A concentration is supposed to be larger than a situated project, but smaller than a broad environmental theme. Finding the perfect balance and focus has been difficult. I have narrowed down to the broad theme of agtech, but just agtech […]
Spatial Data Lab
by Audrey Stuart, Liza Tugangui, Blake Slattengren Spatial Data Lab
AgTech Is The New Queen Of Green | TechCrunch
by Rob Leclerc and Melissa Tilney Before Monsanto acquired Climate Corporation in late 2013 for nearly $1 billion, few investors gave much thought to technological innovation in our agriculture system. What a difference a year can make. In what can be described as the Netscape moment for agriculture technology, the sector had a breakout year […]