Environmental Science & Policy
University of South Florida St. Petersburg
Portfolio
Click the title to access each document.
Urban Forestry Mock Grant Proposal
Completed for my Community Ecology (BSC4933) class with Dr. Brian Maitner, this paper serves as a mock proposal for urban forestry research funding. My time spent working as an urban forestry intern for the City of St Pete taught me how the sinuosity of a tree's bole can play a role on its survival, particularly during storm events. Yet, little research has been done to formally test the correlation between a tree's straightness and its survival after experiencing an intense wind event, such as a hurricane. In response to the lack of research in this realm, this paper offers a free, community based approach to testing this relationship and a funded, professionally tested approach.
Growing Up Gold: The Impact of Urban Planning on Children's Livelihoods and Futures
This paper was completed as my final project for my Planning for Equitable Cities (URP4053) course with Dr. Elizabeth Strom. The task was to choose 3 sources from 3 different units used throughout the course in order to analyze each and culminate them into one cohesive document. My paper contains 3 different media sources - an NPR podcast, select chapters from the book There Is No Place For Us by Brian Goldstone, and a 20 minute interview Dr. Strom did with local Tampa Bay activist, Lena Young Green . I combined these in order to focus on the role that education, housing and public health have on children's lives and their potential to succeed as adults.
Assessing Mangrove Health in Central St. Petersburg
My first experience with true field research was in my sophomore year at USF in an Environmental Field Methods (EVR4051) lab led by Dr. James Ivey. This research focused on assessing the relationship between abiotic environmental conditions and relative species richness across 3 coastal sites in St. Pete in order to determine the ecosystems overall health. Sites chosen had prominent mangrove trees that made up the foundation of the system.
Florida's Freaks: Comparing Biodiversity Across Florida's 3 Longest Rivers
Conducted and presented for Dr. Whitman's Stream Ecology (PCB3006) course, this research presentations goal is to give a glimpse into the incredibly high biodiversity of a few of Florida's inland aquatic ecosystems and to understand the physical attributes of each ecosystem that can create changes in species richness.
Aviya's Road to Science: A Short Autobiography
Completed as an introductory assignment for my Science for All Students (SCE_) course, this short autobiography gives a personal look into my life as a child and the steps throughout it that helped me find my love for science and my passion for protecting our beautiful planet.
A few maps I created for practice when I took a GIS basics course, along with a short presentation completed for the same course on how mapping is used in modern music production.