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Effects Of Sludge Application On Prairie Establishment, Brenda Joan Durbahn

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Native prairie in Iowa has all but disappeared since the development of agricultural land by European settlers over the past 165 years. Reconstructing prairie is one way to replace some of the acreage that was lost. A byproduct of settling an area is the generation of garbage and other wastes. Currently there is a surplus of sludge, the waste product of waste water treatment facilities. This material is usually disposed of in landfills, used on agricultural land or reclamation projects.

A small area of prairie was reconstructed on the top of a closed portion of the Black Hawk County Solid …

The Use Of Rapd To Detect Genetic Variation In Populations Of Liatris Aspera Michx., Duane Joseph Kitchen

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The tall grass prairie is one of the most degraded and fragmented ecosystems on earth. Interest in conserving, restoring, and reconstructing tallgrass prairie began early in the 1900s, and has increased dramatically since the 1960s. Early restoration and reconstruction efforts relied primarily on seed collected from prairie remnants near the planting site, but with the increase in prairie planting efforts came a greater demand for large quantities of affordable, viable seed of native prairie species. Following an increase in the use of cultivated varieties (cultivars) of seed, concerns over the loss of genetic integrity of local populations and low genetic …