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Proactive Assessment Of Climate Change And Contaminant Spill Impacts On Source Water Quality, Lillian C. Jeznach

Doctoral Dissertations

Managing the water quality of surface drinking water sources has become an increasingly difficult task for water suppliers due to increased watershed urbanization and climate change. Changes in source water quality may affect public perceptions, treatment effectiveness, and ultimately costs to treat water to drinking standards. Although there are increased threats to current and future drinking water quality, current approaches to managing these threats are typically reactionary. Prior detailed modeling efforts of hypothetical events that may impair raw water quality allow for an understanding of constituent fate and transport, including potential maximum concentrations and travel times to the drinking water …

Changing Sediment Transport Processes In Response To Anthropocene Forcing, Brian C. Yellen

Doctoral Dissertations

The denudation of uplands and sediment deposition within lowlands comprises one of the most fundamental earth processes. Much like plate tectonics or isostasy, sediment transport runs through nearly every geologic sub-discipline. Its importance extends to other fields as well, such as soil and plant science, archaeology, and engineering. Research in the field of sedimentology remains current, with changes in global sediment transport invoked as a primary line of evidence for the arrival of the Anthropocene, and sedimentary archives frequently employed to evaluate current processes relative to the past. In this vein, my doctoral studies have centered on understanding some aspects …

Modeling Historical And Future Range Of Variability Scenarios In The Yuba River Watershed, Tahoe National Forest, California, Maritza Mallek

Masters Theses

In California's northern Sierra Nevada mountains, the fire-dependent processes of forest ecosystems have been interrupted and altered by human land use and fire suppression. U.S. Forest Service policy directs land managers to plan for a future that includes multiple use and the restoration of resilient ecosystems. Planning decisions are to be informed by an analysis of the range of variability of ecological processes at multiple scales. Current climate trends in the northern Sierra are of increasing temperatures, increased precipitation, and earlier snowmelt, as well as changes to the frequency and duration of drought. These climate changes have and continue to …

Secondhand Communication Of Risk-Related Information: How Ideology And Relational Motives Affect Interpersonal Risk Communication, Daniel A. Chapman

Masters Theses

This research provides the first experimental investigation of the ways in which ideological and relational motives influence interpersonal risk communication. Drawing on the literatures in social and cognitive psychology, risk communication, and environmental decision making, this research examined whether individuals expressing concerns about tradeoffs between climate change adaptation and prevention were less likely to share climate change information with others if the information discussed adaptation policies. Participants were presented with an article about climate change framed as either relating to adaptation or prevention. Their willingness to share the article with others was measured, as well as their appraisals of how …

Beyond Dichotomies: Gender And Intersecting Inequalities In Climate Change Studies, Houria Djoudi, Bruno Locatelli, Chloe Vaast, Kiran Asher, Maria Brockhaus, Bimbika Basnett Sijapati

Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Faculty Publication Series

Climate change and related adaptation strategies have gender-differentiated impacts. This paper reviews how gender is framed in 41 papers on climate change adaptation through an intersectionality lens. The main findings show that while intersectional analysis has demonstrated many advantages for a comprehensive study of gender, it has not yet entered the field of climate change and gender. In climate change studies, gender is mostly handled in a men-versus-women dichotomy and little or no attention has been paid to power and social and political relations. These gaps which are echoed in other domains of development and gender research depict a ‘feminization …

Plant Distribution Data Show Broader Climatic Limits Than Expert-Based Climatic Tolerance Estimates, Caroline A. Curtis, Bethany A. Bradley

Environmental Conservation Faculty Publication Series

Background

Although increasingly sophisticated environmental measures are being applied to species distributions models, the focus remains on using climatic data to provide estimates of habitat suitability. Climatic tolerance estimates based on expert knowledge are available for a wide range of plants via the USDA PLANTS database. We aim to test how climatic tolerance inferred from plant distribution records relates to tolerance estimated by experts. Further, we use this information to identify circumstances when species distributions are more likely to approximate climatic tolerance.

Methods

We compiled expert knowledge estimates of minimum and maximum precipitation and minimum temperature tolerance for over 1800 …

Ecological And Management Implications Of Climate Change Induced Shifts In The Phenology Of Alewife (Alosa Pseudoharengus), Sam Stettiner, Michelle Staudinger, Adrian Jordaan, John Sheppard

Student Showcase

Climate change is causing species to shift their phenology, or the timing of recurring life events such as migration and reproduction, in variable and complex ways. This can potentially result in mismatches or asynchronies in food and habitat resources that negatively impact individual fitness, population dynamics, and ecosystem function. This project seeks to improve our understanding of shifts in the timing of seasonal migration and spawning of adult anadromous alewife, Alosa psuedoherengus in seven natal stream systems within the state of Massachusetts: Acushnet, Agawam, Herring, Jones, Nemasket, Stoney Brook, and Town Brook Rivers. Initial analyses examined if and how the …