Preface | October 17, 2015

To Converge or Not to Converge. Sustainability, conservation, and climate change are demanding, yet complex focuses—with no one precise solution. Each intricately interlaced within greater aspects of every society—as well as the global community .To affect change, it is essential to consider these complexities.

By Dr. Lucille Mazo, Editor-in-Chief

Conservation | October 17, 2015

Seeds of Good Lessons. Developing countries are now setting up new role models and practices in curricula of environmental communication. The traditional theory based environmental communication curriculum of the last century is now actively investigated and restructured through community based learning, affirmative actions, and student-centered participatory curriculum.

By Nithin Kalorth & Rohini Sreekumar

Sustainability | October 17, 2015

A Tale of Garbage. In 1973, American archaeologist, Dr. William Rathje, sought to create a method that would help his students understand the intricacies of archaeological fieldwork. Over time, this process would come to be known as garbology, which has come to inform both past research and present-day disciplines such as economics and public policy.

By Ian McTaggart

Sustainability| October 17, 2015

Breaking the Cycle. Although oil and gas royalties, paid to the province for the right to use crown land for capital gain, provide considerable financing to support Alberta’s infrastructure, redirecting a large portion of those royalties back into the energy sector has contributed to the provincial budget surplus plummeting into a budget deficit.

By A. Rachelle Foss

Sustainability | October 17, 2015

Bridge the Nutrition Gap. Researchers’ recommendations for the sustainability of healthy living include a standardized curriculum regarding nutrition starting in primary school in order to influence a sustainable level of nutrition education, as well as a standardized and mandatory format for food labelling.

By Brittany Pitruniak, Kathryn Adachi & Morgan Messelink

Conservation | October 17, 2015

Fire for Well-Being. Indigenous peoples of the Northern Alberta Boreal Forest have used fire knowledge and burning practices to maintain their environment for generations. Prescribed burning is vital to Indigenous peoples’ relationships with the environment, and was essential to their hunting and gathering subsistence.

By Chantal Roy-Denis

Conservation | October 17, 2015

Snow Leopards Impacts and Assessments. Panthera uncia lives across the high-alpine regions of Central Asia, with China containing most of their habitat. It is estimated that only 550,000 km² of this territory is good quality habitat. Under the Conservation Monitoring Centre of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), they have been listed as endangered since 1996.

By Averil Jones

Sustainability| October 17, 2015

The Sixth Species Event. Though there are many different definitions of what a mass extinction is and gradations of extinction intensity, a conservative approach is used to assess the seriousness of the current ongoing extinction crisis, setting the highest level of recognition for mass extinction, in extreme diversity loss associated with the Big Five extinction events.

By Victor John Nazarevich

Earth Common Journal

An online journal dedicated to supporting and promoting student research projects on the topics of sustainability, conservation and climate adaptation