Term
| Values and attitude survey or questionnaires |
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Definition
| Distributing a Likert-scale questionnaire to residents near a newly proposed wind farm to gauge public willingness to accept renewable energy infrastructure near their homes. |
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Term
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Definition
| Conducting semi-structured, one-on-one interviews with local indigenous leaders to document traditional ecological knowledge regarding historical wildfire patterns and forest management. |
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Term
| Issue -based inquiries to form decision making |
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Definition
| Organizing a town hall consensus conference or citizens' jury where community members review expert data on a polluting local factory, debate options, and vote on a policy recommendation for city council. |
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Term
| Observational field work (Natural Experiments) |
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Definition
| Measuring and comparing tree canopy recovery rates in two identical forest plots, where one plot was naturally struck by wildfire and the other was untouched, without any researcher intervention. |
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Term
| Field manipulation experiment |
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Definition
| Deliberately setting up open-top warming chambers over specific patches of Arctic tundra to artificially raise the local temperature and measure how the plant community responds to simulated climate change. |
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Term
| Ecosystem modelling(including mesocosms or bottle experiments |
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Definition
| Filling a series of large, outdoor aquatic tanks (mesocosms) with lake water, sediment, and fish, then intentionally adding varying levels of agricultural fertilizer to study the real-time progression of eutrophication. |
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Term
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Definition
| Using a spectrophotometer in a clean lab to test water samples collected from a local river for exact concentrations of heavy metal contaminants like lead or mercury. |
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Term
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Definition
| Applying the "Doughnut Economics" framework to a city’s resource consumption, mapping out exactly where local waste exceeds environmental planetary boundaries while falling short on social equity. |
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Term
| Use of system diagrams or other valid holistic modelling |
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Definition
| Drawing a feedback loop diagram that links deforestation, reduced local rainfall, soil erosion, and decreasing crop yields to visually map out a regional ecological collapse. |
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Term
| Elements of environmental impact assessments |
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Definition
| Conducting a formal acoustic profiling study to predict how the underwater drilling noise from a proposed offshore oil rig will disrupt the migration routes of local marine mammals. |
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Term
| Secondary demographic, development and environmental data |
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Definition
| Downloading and analyzing historical census data alongside World Bank GDP records and NASA satellite imagery to track the relationship between urban sprawl and deforestation over 20 years. |
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Term
| Collection of both qualitative and quantitative data |
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Definition
| Evaluating a community recycling program by measuring the total tonnage of waste diverted from landfills (quantitative) while simultaneously running focus groups to understand barriers to resident participation (qualitative). |
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