The Environmental Studies Program challenges students to situate their research, bringing abstract concepts about environmental studies down to earth in observable contexts. After creating a broad foundation of scholarship that inform our overall framing questions, we focus on places where these interdisciplinary forces touch down, looking at the impacts where many dimensions intersect. Over the summer, Professors Liz Safran and Andrew Bernstein led a study abroad trip to Mount Fuji in Japan, where students practiced applying scholarship about myriad topics, including art, religion, geology, hazard, agriculture, and industry.
One aspect the program focused on was cultural – Mount Fuji is even listed as a Cultural World Heritage site rather than a Natural World Heritage site, reflecting the depth of its importance in the imaginations of world cultures. Students studied the many ways in which the mountain is represented in Tokyo, compiling extensive documentation and reflection of the many ways the mountain’s image adorns objects from souvenirs to dishes and clothing, which ENVS student Kiaora Motson ’19 described as an abundant icon of national pride and identity in “Mt. Fuji: More than Memento.”
Groups from this trip also explored the ecological dimension of Mount Fuji, surveying soils, plant communities, and butterfly populations in the three grasslands of Motosukōgen, Nojirisōgen, and Nashigahara on the north side of the mountain. Guided by ecologist Watanabe Michihito of the Mount Fuji Nature Conservation Center, students researched the effects of human intervention on regions around Mount Fuji, including satoyama, a type of landscape woven deeply into both ecology and culture (see Kobori and Primack 2003). In ways often evaluated as surprisingly positive, these human concepts and actions play an important role in the distribution and prevalence of endangered butterflies and other species in the studied regions. This student-conducted research included land surveys and a variety of spatial data displays.
Many of the discoveries students made on this trip involved encountering different views relating humans to wildlife. In her post “Deerly Beloved Nature,” ENVS student Rachel Aragaki ’19 wrote about how she found that nature was valued very strongly, but in different ways than she was expecting: how “wildness” was not as prized a characteristic in Japanese landscapes as she was used to in America, and about how assumptions of the ideal distance between humans and wildlife were vastly different.
The lessons of this trip to Mount Fuji highlight the importance of studying how environmental concepts intersect with specific places and situations. The situated research approach involves thinking of broader framing questions – How should humans interact with landscapes? How are endangered species currently dependent upon human actions? – and then zooming into a particular place to examine the more focused questions there – How are Japanese rural areas affected by changing demographics and behaviors? How are endangered butterflies around Mount Fuji impacted by a reduction in managed habitat? Conclusions from this focused research can then apply to the larger issues of environmental studies. In each area where we are able to observe specific impacts, we broaden our ability to answer questions with wider implications about the forces that interact to create and change the many environments we study.