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Books by Marcos Luna

Over the last 60 years, environmental politics and policy have shaped the modern world and sparke... more Over the last 60 years, environmental politics and policy have shaped the modern world and sparked some of the most controversial—and complicated—disputes in American history. On issues from toxic chemicals, endangered species, and pollution to Hurricane Katrina and global climate change, Americans have debated how to protect the planet and local communities while maintaining a vibrant economy and high standard of living. The environmental movement that emerged after World War II transformed American attitudes toward ecology, land use, and natural resources, raising issues that the nation had never previously confronted.

The Environment since 1945 examines numerous controversies in environmental politics and policy since 1945, including the Donora smog event of 1948, building dams in national parks, the passage of the National Environmental Protection Act, the banning of DDT, the Love Canal crisis, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Makah whale hunt, and environmental racism. Designed to spark discussion, this authoritative new resource is essential for anyone interested in this timely topic and how it affects American history.

Book Chapters by Marcos Luna

Disasters, Accidents, and Crises in American History: A Reference Guide to the Nation’s Most Catastrophic Events, 2008

Papers by Marcos Luna

Marine Policy, Feb 1, 2018

Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) offers the possibility of democratising management of the seas. MSP... more Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) offers the possibility of democratising management of the seas. MSP is, however, increasingly implemented as a form of post-political planning, dominated by the logic of neoliberalism, and a belief in the capacity of managerialtechnological apparatuses to address complex socio-political problems, with little attention paid to issues of power and inequality. There is growing concern that MSP is not facilitating a paradigm shift towards publicly engaged marine management, and that it may simply repackage power dynamics in the rhetoric of participation to legitimise the agendas of dominant actors. This raises questions about the legitimacy and inclusivity of participatory MSP. Research on stakeholder engagement within MSP has predominately focused on assessing experiences of active MSP participants and has not evaluated the democratic or inclusive nature of these processes. Adopting the Northeast Ocean Planning initiative in the US as a case study, this paper provides the first study of exclusion and non-participation of stakeholders in an MSP process. Three major issues are found to have had an impact on exclusion and non-participation: poor communication and a perception that the process was deliberately exclusionary; issues arising from fragmented governance, territorialisation and scale; and lack of specificity regarding benefits or losses that might accrue from the process. To be effective, participatory MSP practice must: develop mechanisms that recognise the complexity of socio-spatial relationships in the marine environment; facilitate participation in meaningful spatial decision-making, rather than in post-ideological, objective-setting processes; and create space for debate about the very purpose of MSP processes.

The Journal of geography, Oct 30, 2018

is an independent scholar in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA. He is interested in geography educat... more is an independent scholar in Manchester, New Hampshire, USA. He is interested in geography education, political geography, regional geography, and geography as part of a liberal arts education.

Nature Water

The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, has recently made national and international headlines ... more The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, has recently made national and international headlines as a major environmental catastrophe, impacting the public health and wellbeing of residents. Here we focus on Jackson’s most prevalent and vulnerable population, its children, by assessing how boil water alerts (BWAs) disrupt student learning. Using data on BWAs collected from the City of Jackson’s Water/Sewer Business Administration Office between 2015 and 2021, daily school attendance data from Jackson’s Public School District and community-level vulnerabilities from the American Community Survey, we add an important layer to the current conversation by analysing how BWAs disrupt student learning. After adjusting for community-level vulnerabilities, we show that each time a BWA is issued, unexcused absence rates statistically significantly increase by 1–10%. We also show statistically significant decreases in unexcused absences in schools where much of the student body receives free a...

The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, has recently made national and international headlines ... more The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, has recently made national and international headlines as a major environmental catastrophe, impacting the public health and well-being of its residents. Environmental justice concerns have focused primarily on race and class as 83% of Jackson’s residents are Black and 25% of all residents live in poverty. Lost in the conversation are the public health implications for Jackson’s most vulnerable–its children, who make up 25% of the population. Currently, the only mechanism by which residents understand the water quality issues in real-time are boil water alerts that are issued when the city determines that water is unsafe to drink. Using data on boil water alerts (BWA) collected from the City of Jackson’s Water/Sewer Business Administration Office; school attendance data from Jackson’s Public School District, and data from the American Community Survey, we add an important layer to the current conversation by analyzing how boil water alerts d...

A webinar on Climate & Equity moderated by Elizabeth Henry with Rep. Adrian Madaro, Dr. Gaurab Ba... more A webinar on Climate & Equity moderated by Elizabeth Henry with Rep. Adrian Madaro, Dr. Gaurab Basu, and Dr. Marcos Luna.The panelists discussed:Health equity and disproportionate environmental burdens on communities of color in MAProgress and opportunities for environmental justiceMinority participation in green industriesAchieving a green and equitable recovery for the Commonwealt

Presented at the annual National Environmental Health Association conference in 2008

A Report to ONE Lowell and the City of Lowell, Massachusett

Report of the 2002 Science, Engineering & Technology (SET) Services Program. The report i... more Report of the 2002 Science, Engineering & Technology (SET) Services Program. The report is designed to provide the Delaware General Assembly and the citizens of this State with an environmental profile that encompasses social, economic and environmental conditions in the City of Wilmington. URI: http://udspace.udel.edu/handle/19716/306

Data, R code, markdown documents, and supplementary material for an environmental justice analysi... more Data, R code, markdown documents, and supplementary material for an environmental justice analysis of distribution-level natural gas leaks across Massachusetts. Analyses are based on American Community Survey 2015-19 population estimates at the Census Block Group, Census Tract, and Census County Subdivision (i.e., municipality) levels, and 2019 gas leaks data geocoded by HEET (http://heet.org) which are derived from Annual Service Quality Reports submitted to the state Department of Public Utilities from six of the seven investor-owned natural gas utilities in Massachusetts. The file "An Environmental Justice Analysis of Gas Leaks2.Rmd" is the final markdown document used to produce the PDF manuscript submitted for publication. To knit this document to a PDF, all of the RDS files listed in that document must be in the correct relative path. Necessary data files are located in the 'Data' folder primarily as RDS files to be imported using R. R code to clean, process,...

Disasters, Accidents, and Crises in American History: A Reference Guide to the Nation’s Most Catastrophic Events, 2008

Marine Policy, Feb 1, 2018

The Journal of geography, Oct 30, 2018

Nature Water

The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, has recently made national and international headlines ... more The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, has recently made national and international headlines as a major environmental catastrophe, impacting the public health and well-being of its residents. Environmental justice concerns have focused primarily on race and class as 83% of Jackson’s residents are Black and 25% of all residents live in poverty. Lost in the conversation are the public health implications for Jackson’s most vulnerable–its children, who make up 25% of the population. Currently, the only mechanism by which residents understand the water quality issues in real-time are boil water alerts that are issued when the city determines that water is unsafe to drink. Using data on boil water alerts (BWA) collected from the City of Jackson’s Water/Sewer Business Administration Office; school attendance data from Jackson’s Public School District, and data from the American Community Survey, we add an important layer to the current conversation by analyzing how boil water alerts d...

Presented at the annual National Environmental Health Association conference in 2008

A Report to ONE Lowell and the City of Lowell, Massachusett

This report presents an analysis of the equity implications of representation and voting power at... more This report presents an analysis of the equity implications of representation and voting power at the Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization's (MPO) sub-region and municipal level using Census 2010 demographic data. The results show that representation and voting power in the Boston MPO is inequitably distributed in terms of population and race.

This document presents an equity analysis of Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s (MBTA) ... more This document presents an equity analysis of Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority’s (MBTA) bus performance across three service metrics for the years 2015 to 2017: ontime performance, dropped trips, and overcrowding. These performance metrics are calculated to compare performance of bus lines serving historically underserved populations (i.e. minority, low income) to bus lines serving the rest of the population in the MBTA system. Special attention is paid to Route 111, an important transit connection between Chelsea and Boston, and a line with high percentages of minority and low income bus riders.

Marine Policy, 2018

Journal of Geography, 2018

" I became convinced of climate change when I saw blueberry bushes flowering in early April, a mo... more " I became convinced of climate change when I saw blueberry bushes flowering in early April, a month earlier than Thoreau had seen them on the shores of Walden Pond a century and a half ago ... " (227). So concludes Richard Primack in Walden Warming: Climate Change Comes to Thoreau's Woods, though he may just as well have begun his book with this simple but provocative statement. Primack's goal is to convince Americans that climate change is real and happening, not just in some faraway place or future time, but now, and in our own backyard.

Community presentation on research into natural gas leaks in Salem, Massachusetts in collaboratio... more Community presentation on research into natural gas leaks in Salem, Massachusetts in collaboration with Salem Alliance for the Environment (SAFE), Gas Safety Inc. and Boston University. Presented at the Enterprise Center, Salem State University (Nov 28, 2017). Online story map presentation at http://arcg.is/1DObuH . Presentation filmed and broadcast by Salem Access TV (SATV) (Dec 21, 2017) at http://cc.satvonline.org/Cablecast/Public/Show.aspx?ChannelID=2&ShowID=12186

A Presentation to the City of Boston Mayor's Office of Resilience and Racial Equity about the rea... more A Presentation to the City of Boston Mayor's Office of Resilience and Racial Equity about the realities of modern day racial segregation in Boston and surrounding communities. Despite decades of legal and social change, racial segregation remains a pernicious fact of life that continues to shape the geography of the city and the region. Segregation has material impacts on the health, welfare, and sustainability of the city, and requires both acknowledgment and engagement by residents, community leaders, and policy makers.

Our reliance on natural gas to produce electricity is an environmental justice issue. The environ... more Our reliance on natural gas to produce electricity is an environmental justice issue. The environmental benefits and burdens of natural gas are not distributed evenly or fairly. The benefits are simple: cheap, reliable electricity. These benefits are enjoyed by anyone who buys or sells electricity produced from natural gas. But the environmental burdens tend to be borne by other people, often people who are vulnerable and see less of the benefits: poor and marginalized communities, the very young and very old, people who are less healthy. Unlike the benefits, the burdens of natural gas fall on very specific places and very specific groups of people. So, there are environmental justice benefits to promoting cleaner forms of energy in Massachusetts, and these benefits happen at the local, regional, and even global level.

Since the earliest days of settlement, American references to the seasons (i.e. winter, spring, s... more Since the earliest days of settlement, American references to the seasons (i.e. winter, spring, summer, fall) have invoked a remarkably consistent set of images, ideas and tropes – the notion of four seasons and specific seasonal associations (e.g., snow in winter, planting in spring, summer verdure, harvest in autumn). This is the American seasonal imaginary. This seasonal imaginary has constituted an integral part of American culture and identity. Despite wide climatic diversity in the U.S. and its seasonal experiences, Americans have clung to this climatically and geographically specific seasonal imaginary.
In this presentation I present how the American seasonal imaginary was represented and constructed in almanacs from the late 18th to late 19th centuries, with particular attention to correspondences (or lack thereof) between climate and seasonal representations. Until the early 19th century, the almanac was the most widely read publication in America. Almanac representations of seasonality were part of the development of the American seasonal imaginary. I focus on two specific questions: How was seasonality represented in early American almanacs? To what extent did these representations of seasonality reflect local geography (i.e. climate, agriculture, culture, economy)? Finally, I consider the social and environmental implications of seasonal (mis)representation.

How unique is the situation in Ferguson, Missouri - racially speaking? What does the shooting of... more How unique is the situation in Ferguson, Missouri - racially speaking?
What does the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and the ensuing debates and protests say about race relations in America?
Before I get too far, let me lay out the more counter-intuitive take-home points I want to make:
The US is an increasingly diverse nation, and it is still very segregated
The most segregated racial group is Whites
Race relations in America are not Black and White; they are multi-racial and multi-ethnic
School children are the most diverse and the most racially isolated amongst us
Our regional stereotypes of where segregation is a problem, and where it is not, are probably wrong
Ferguson, Missouri is no different than any other community in America, and that's the problem

A talk about GIS and its applications to renewable energy analysis and planning, and the necessar... more A talk about GIS and its applications to renewable energy analysis and planning, and the necessary skills and routes to professional careers in GIS and energy.

"Patrimonialization is a process of social, cultural, and political construction through which el... more "Patrimonialization is a process of social, cultural, and political construction through which elements of the landscape, history, or nature are incorporated into a heritage, or patrimony. Patrimonialization creates associations and narratives that attach specific meanings to places and landscapes and exclude or ignore others.
In this presentation I will argue that the development of a common set of American ideas about what the seasons should look like represents a form of patrimonialization. Despite growing awareness, and even familiarity, with the varied geographies and climates of the North American continent, American representations of the seasons has continued to follow a limited and geographically specific set of seasonal tropes.
I explore this issue by tracing the development of seasonal representations in American almanacs from the late 18th through 19th centuries across the country. Until the mid 19th century, the almanac was the most widely read publication in America. These publications were uniquely geographical - self-consciously fitted to specific places and regions, and yet serving as the mass media of their day. As such, their representations of seasonality were part of the development of the American seasonal imaginary.

Keywords: historical geography, cultural geography, environmental history, social history, seasons, seasonality, weather and climate, environmental representation, patrimonialization, heritage"

The four-seasons motif is one of the most universally recognized and persistent themes in the Ame... more The four-seasons motif is one of the most universally recognized and persistent themes in the American environmental imaginary. The rich imagery and symbolism around seasonality have
served as important conceptual vehicles for American culture - metaphors for the human life cycle or religious faith, expressions of nostalgia for rural life, and celebrations of the American
landscape and nature. Despite wide climatic diversity in the U.S. and its seasonal experiences, Americans have clung to the notion of four seasons and to specific types of seasonal
associations (e.g., snow in winter, sprouting plants in spring, summer verdure, changing leaves in autumn). These seasonal associations are climatically and geographically specific. Where did this seasonal symbology come from? Why has it been so persistent? What does it mean to hold an environmental imaginary that differs from the lived experience of particular places?
I explore these questions by tracing the development of seasonal representations in American almanacs from the late 18th through 19th centuries across the country. Until the mid 19th
century, the almanac was the most widely read publication in America. These publications were uniquely geographical - self-consciously fitted to specific places and regions, and yet serving as the mass media of their day. As such, their representations of seasonality were part of the development of the American environmental imaginary. This presentation will focus on two specific questions: How was seasonality represented in early American almanacs? To what extent did these representations of seasonality reflect local geography (i.e. climate, agriculture, culture, economy)?

"Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are local government organizations legally charged wi... more "Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) are local government organizations legally charged with coordinating short- and long-range transportation planning for all
urbanized areas in the country with more than 50,000 residents. One of the original goals for creating MPOs was to improve local participation in transportation planning, but the voting structures of MPOs often give disproportionate representation to
suburban and white communities, raising serious concerns about social and environmental equity. In 2011, the Boston MPO proposed a new voting structure which appeared to seriously underrepresent urban and non-white communities in the greater
Boston metropolitan area. Local environmental and transportation justice organizations challenged the new scheme using GIS and various measures of representation at both
subregional and municipal scales. I will present the methods used by these organizations to analyze the equity implications of the MPO's proposed representation structure and discuss the strategy and counter-proposal to eliminate these geographic
and social biases."

The goal of this project is to build an energy atlas that is relevant to communities in Massachus... more The goal of this project is to build an energy atlas that is relevant to communities in Massachusetts. In order to do this we must do the groundwork and interview community organizations, local government officials, and businesses who work on energy-related issues to find out how such an atlas would be useful to them and what they would be interested in seeing. We will present preliminary finds from these interviews and discuss what it means to build a community energy atlas.