ABSTRACT

The global climate crisis continues to endanger the well-being of natural environments and the people who depend on them. Building elements of environmental identity may better connect youth to the changes underway. However, little work has investigated how experiencing a climate change-impacted landscape may support environmental identity shifts. This study explores such shifts in the context of a wilderness science program for youth in a glacier-dominated landscape with visible signatures of long-term change. We use a qualitative approach to investigate environmental identity development, relying on Clayton’s (2003) environmental identity model as a theoretical construct. We find that two aspects of environmental identity shifted the most: (1) relatedness to the natural environment and (2) pro-environmental motivation. Emergent themes from the analysis reveal that these changes arise from better understanding how ecosystems are interconnected, understanding human impacts on the environment, and witnessing first-hand the scale and rate of glacier loss. Our results imply that educators can privilege these aspects to support environmental identity shifts. Ultimately, our findings highlight that personally witnessing a visibly climate-impacted landscape may be powerful in promoting better environmental stewardship in response to the climate crisis.

摘要

全球气候危机继续危及自然环境和依赖自然环境的人们的福祉。环境特征的构建要素可以更好地将青年与正在进行的变化联系起来。但是，很少有研究调查受气候变化影响的景观如何支持环境特征的转变。这项研究在冰川主导的景观中为青年提供了长期变化的明显标志，在针对青年的荒野科学计划的背景下探索了这种变化。我们使用定性方法来研究环境身份发展，这依赖于Clayton（2003）的环境身份模型作为理论构建。我们发现环境认同的两个方面变化最大：（1）与自然环境的相关性和（2）亲环境动机。分析中出现的新主题表明，这些变化源于对生态系统之间如何相互联系的更好理解，对人类对环境的影响的了解以及亲眼目睹了冰川丧失的规模和速度。我们的结果表明，教育工作者可以优先考虑这些方面，以支持环境身份的转变。最终，我们的发现突出表明，亲眼目睹明显受气候影响的景观可能会强有力地促进应对气候危机的更好的环境管理。