Digital Commons Network^™

A Regional Vulnerability Assessment For The Dungeness Crab (Metacarcinus Magister) To Changing Ocean Conditions: Insights From Model Projections And Empirical Experiments, Halle Berger

Master's Theses

Among global coastal regions, the Northern California Current System (N-CCS) is already experiencing effects from ocean acidification and hypoxia during the summer, primarily due to the region’s seasonal upwelling, current systems, and high productivity. Oxygen, pH, and temperature conditions are expected to become more stressful with continued fossil fuel emissions under global climate change, posing a serious threat to the region’s fisheries. N-CCS fishing communities rely heavily on the economically and culturally important Dungeness crab (Metacarcinus magister). The fishery is currently sustainably managed, but potential negative impacts from changing ocean conditions on Dungeness crab life stages and populations …

Floral Preformation In The Warming Boreal Forest: The Effects Of Temperature On The Development Of Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea, Eileen Schaub

Master's Theses

The boreal forest is experiencing climate change at twice the rate of other regions. Although changes in flowering phenology are a known consequence of warming temperatures, much is unknown about the effects of temperature anomalies on floral development. Boreal angiosperms preform flowers a year or more in advance and are consequently subject to varied environmental conditions across that time. My thesis examines the effects of temperature on floral development in order to understand how boreal taxa will respond to climate change.

Collection of Vaccinium vitis-idaeafrom natural populations in Fairbanks, Alaska was carried out over the growing seasons of 2017 …

Analysis Of A Newly Digitized Long-Term Dataset Of Environmental Observations From Long Island Sound, Jacob Snyder

Master's Theses

Project Oceanology, a non-profit oceanographic educational organization has been collecting data including pH, oxygen, and temperature conditions as well as abundances of benthic invertebrates and near-shore fish catches since 1972 from Eastern Long Island Sound. These data had been stored solely on single-copy paper sheets and were therefore inaccessible to analysis. I digitized more than 100,000 abiotic measurements and 50,000 species abundance and size data collected over the past 45 years, and developed a web-based SQL database housed on the Long Island Sound Integrated Coastal Observing System (LISICOS) server. The database will ultimately become a searchable, downloadable, user-friendly web-based tool …

Coastal Protection, Environmental Change, And The Heterogeneity Of Preferences: A Case Study Of The Eastern Shore Of Virginia, Ian T. Yue

Master's Theses

There is growing interest amongst the environmental management community to understand the feedback links between human and environmental systems, particularly the way humans value the natural environment and how such valuation affects behavior, choice, and actions. One prominent method for examining these linkages has been to consider the framework of ecosystem services: the naturally-occurring processes, functions, or outputs that are utilized (actively or passively) to produce human well-being. Especially in the context of climate change, ecosystem services can be used to gauge the value humans place on their surrounding environment, given that the supply of ecosystem services is expected to …

Manipulation Of Larval And Winter Habitat Reveals Potential Effects Of Urbanization And Climate Change On Wood Frogs In Connecticut, Jason H. O'Connor

Master's Theses

Human activity can result in both local and global changes in the environment which in turn can affect other organisms and may result in population declines and loss of biodiversity. At the local scale, human activity often causes changes in habitat quality. For example, development and agriculture increase water turbidity which can influence wetland communities. At a global scale, carbon emissions are altering Earth’s climate, leading to increasing air temperatures. Using Wood Frogs, Lithobates sylvaticus, a wide-ranging, pond breeding amphibian, I sought to determine how sediment input affects larval amphibians and to assess how predicted loss of snow cover …

Effects Of Increasing Temperature And Ocean Acidification On The Microstages Of Two Populations Of Saccharina Latissima In The Northwest Atlantic, Sarah Redmond

Master's Theses

Saccharina latissima (Linnaeus) C.E.Lane, C.Mayes, L.D. Druehl and G.W.Saunders, is the most widely distributed species of kelp in the western North Atlantic, occurring from the Arctic to Long Island Sound. The effects of global climate change on these ecologically and economically important cold temperate species at the southern range of their distribution are unknown. This study investigated the impact of the combined stressors of increased temperature (16, 19, 22, 25 & 28°C) and reduced pH (7.9, 7.8, 7.7, & 7.6) on the gametophyte and juvenile sporophyte stages of sugar kelp populations from Maine and Long Island Sound. Spore germination and …

Can Acartia Spp. Adapt To Climatic Warming? Heritable Within-Population Genetic Variation In Life History Traits, Benjamin L. Cournoyer

Master's Theses

To predict the response of the biota to environmental change requires information on intrapopulation variation in life history traits and the proportion of phenotypic variation attributable to genes, heritability. Yet, knowledge of these parameters in marine populations is very limited. In the present study, I consider phenotypic plasticity and heritability of temperature-dependent, fitness-related life history traits in two coastal copepod species, Acartia tonsa and Acartia hudsonica, from Long Island Sound, a temperate estuary on the east coast of the USA. Acartia hudsonica is a purportedly cold-adapted species and A. tonsa a warm-adapted one. I used a full-sibling, split family design …