Digital Commons Network^™

University Of Richmond Climate Action Plan, University Of Richmond

Plans

The Climate Action Plan for the University of Richmond establishes the framework for achieving the University’s climate action goals under the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. The University of Richmond’s goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2020 and 100% by 2050. In addition to emissions reduction, the Climate Action Plan articulates goals for embedding sustainability into the curricular and co-curricular aspects of a Richmond education. The plan has been developed under the leadership of the Sustainability Working Group and the University’s Sustainability Coordinator. Climate Action Plan subgroups, with representation of staff, faculty, and students, drafted …

Integrating Climate Information Into Water Resource Decision-Making In South Florida, Jessica A. Bolson

Open Access Dissertations

Water resource decision making in South Florida is characterized by complexity. Factors including climate variability and change, population, land use, and shifting water demands contribute to this complexity. Integrated approaches are suggested as mechanisms to observe and manage complex management challenges, but the practical role of integrated models in environmental decision-making has not been thoroughly evaluated. This research evaluates the potential role for an integrated water model by applying an end-to-end research design in the context of South Florida water management stakeholders. Scenarios for future drivers of water demand and the integrated system dynamics water model, the SFIWM, which were …

Wind River Range Snowpack Reconstruction Using Dendochronology And Sea Surface Temperatures, Sallyrose Anderson

Masters Theses

Multiple reconstructions of April 1st snow water equivalent (SWE) are generated for the Wind River Range (WRR), located in west-central Wyoming, to determine the most accurate predictors. Predictors included climate signal data (Southern Oscillation Index), traditional predictors (tree-ring chronologies), and non-spatially biased Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures (SSTs). Incorporation of Pacific Ocean SSTs as a whole provides a more comprehensive representation of oceanic-atmospheric variability. Rotated principal component analysis (PCA) was used to regionalize April 1st snowpack data (1961 – 1999) from snow telemetry stations (SNOTEL stations). Tree-ring chronologies that were stable across the period of overlapping records (1961 – 1999) …

Improving Ensemble Streamflow Prediction Using Interdecadal/Interannual Climate Variability, Kenneth W. Lamb

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The National Weather Service’s (NWS) river forecast centers provide long-term water resource forecasts for the main river basins in the U.S. The NWS creates seasonal streamflow forecasts using an ensemble prediction model called the Extended Streamflow Prediction (ESP) software. ESP creates runoff volume forecasts by taking the current observed soil moisture and snowpack conditions in the basin and applying them to historical temperature and precipitation scenarios. The ESP treats every historic input year as a likely scenario of future basin conditions. Therefore improving the knowledge about how long-term climate cycles impact streamflow can extend the forecast lead time and improve …

Environmental Law, Caleb A. Jaffe, Sean M. Carney

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

An Application Of Statistical Technique To Correct Satellite Data Due To Orbit Degradation, Md Zahidur Rahman, Leonid Roytman, Run Jesmin

Publications and Research

This paper apply an statistical technique to correct radiometric data measured by Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometers(AVHRR) onboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites(POES). This paper study Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) stability in the NOAA/NESDIS Global Vegetation Index (GVI) data for the period 1982-2003. AVHRR weekly data for the five NOAA afternoon satellites NOAA-7, NOAA-9, NOAA-11, NOAA-14, and NOAA-16 are used for the China dataset, for it includes a wide variety or different ecosystems represented globally. GVI has found wide use for studying and monitoring land surface, atmosphere, and recently for analyzing climate and …

Slides: Intermountain Oil And Gas Bmp Project, Kathryn Mutz

Opportunities and Obstacles to Reducing the Environmental Footprint of Natural Gas Development in Uintah Basin (October 14)

Presenter: Kathryn Mutz, Natural Resources Law Center, University of Colorado at Boulder

21 slides

Measuring Effects Of Climate Change And Energy Efficiency Regulations In U.S. Households, Bishwa Koirala

Economics ETDs

The first chapter explains the human causes of climate change and its costs, which is estimated to be about 3.6% of GDP by the end of 21st century (NRDC, 2008). The second chapter investigates how projected July temperatures will increase the demand for electricity in the U.S. by 0.8%, while projected January temperatures will decrease the demand for natural gas and heating oil by 1% and 2.3%, respectively. This chapter further examines effects of the energy-efficiency building codes: IECC 2003 and IECC 2006 in the U.S. in reducing the energy consumption in the U.S. households. This study finds that these …

National Renewable Energy Policy 2009-2030, Ministry Of Energy And Mining

Latin American Energy Policies

This document presents Jamaica s National Renewable Energy Policy which is designed to achieve: A well-developed, vibrant and diversified renewable energy sector that contributes to Jamaica s energy security and a sustainable future. This policy supports the implementation of the National Energy Policy 2009-2030 which seeks to provide affordable and accessible energy supplies with long-term energy security. The creation of this policy was a specific response to the National Energy Policy which calls for the development of the energy sector especially in areas related to renewables, diversification fuels, biofuels and waste-to-energy.

Shale Weathering Rates Across A Continental-Scale Climosequence, Ashlee L.D. Dere, Tim White, Lixin Jin, David Harbor, Meredith Townsend, Susan L. Brantley

Geography and Geology Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

A transect of sites has been established in North America and England as part of the Critical Zone Exploration Network (CZEN) to investigate the rates of soil formation across a climate gradient. Sites reported here are all underlain by an organic-poor, iron-rich Silurian-age shale, providing a constant parent material lithology from which soil is forming. This climosequence includes relatively cold and wet sites in Wales, New York and Pennsylvania, with temperature increasing to the south in Virginia, Tennessee and Alabama. Puerto Rico provides a warm/wet end member for the transect, although this site does not lie on the same shale …

Influences Of Climate And Anthropogenic Disturbances On Wildfire Regimes Of The Zuni Mountains, New Mexico, U.S.A., Monica Tyson Rother

Masters Theses

This research examined the fire history of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Douglas ex P. Lawson & C. Lawson) forests in northwestern New Mexico. The study area included three sites in the Zuni Mountains of Cibola National Forest and one site along the boundary of El Malpais National Monument. I crossdated over 800 fire scars on 75 samples to reconstruct spatial and temporal characteristics of historic wildfire regimes. The Weibull Median Interval, Weibull Modal Interval, and Mean Fire Interval ranged from five to eight years across all sites and percent-scarred classes (all fires, 10% scarred, and 25% scarred) and indicated that …

An Intercomparison Of Regional Atmospheric Circulation And The Melt Season Loss Of Arctic Snow Cover And Sea Ice Extent Across The Land-Ocean Boundary, Angela C. Bliss

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study is designed to compare the monthly continental snow cover and sea ice extent loss in the Arctic with regional atmospheric conditions including: mean sea level pressure, 925 hPa air temperature, and mean wind direction among others during the melt season (March-August) over the 29-year study period 1979-2007. Little research has gone into studying the concurrent variations in the annual loss of continental snow cover and sea ice extent across the land-ocean boundary, since these data are largely stored in incompatible formats. However, the analysis of these data, averaged spatially over three autonomous study regions located in Siberia, North …

The Cooperative Extension Service As A Boundary Organization For Diffusion Of Climate Forecasts: A 5-Year Study, Norman E. Breuer, Clyde W. Fraisse, Victor E. Cabrera

The Journal of Extension

This article compares responses from two surveys in Florida to estimate how climate literacy has evolved as a result of the partnership of the Southeast Climate Consortium with the Cooperative Extension Services for diffusion of climate information. A 32-question survey was developed and posted to the Internet in 2004 and again in 2009. We found that climate knowledge evolved over the 5-year interval in two principal ways. Knowledge and willingness to use and provide information to end users increased on average, and agents had refined what types of climate information are actually useful and to what extent for their clients.

Climate Change Impact On Agriculture: Devils Lake Basin, Andrei Kirilenko

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Northern Great Plains is one of the most important agricultural regionsworldwide. This is also a region expected to be heavily impacted by climate change. Thisand two other papers in this session concentrate on studying climate change impacts onwater resources of the region, and on the impacts of these changes on agriculture. Themajor focus of our interest is Devils Lake watershed in North Dakota. The watershed islocated in the Northern Great Plains, the area where intensive agriculture has caused anextreme change in land use and land cover, followed by substantial water pollution. DevilsLake is an endorheic (terminal) lake, which makes it …

End-To-End Workflows For Coupled Climate And Hydrological Modeling, Kathy Saint, Sylvia Murphy

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In order to examine the effects of environmental changes on local watersheds, it has become increasingly important to be able to interoperate between diverse models and document and share the resulting data. To this end, we are prototyping an end-to-end workflow that executes multiple, distributed models, loosely couples the model components, and disseminates the model results and metadata using a data portal. This project is made up of three major components and is implemented in multiple phases. The main components include the interface to the models for configuration and execution, the interface to the portal for data dissemination, and the …

Climate Change Impact On Agriculture: Devils Lake Basin, Andrei Kirilenko

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Northern Great Plains is one of the most important agricultural regionsworldwide. This is also a region expected to be heavily impacted by climate change. Thisand two other papers in this session concentrate on studying climate change impacts onwater resources of the region, and on the impacts of these changes on agriculture. Themajor focus of our interest is Devils Lake watershed in North Dakota. The watershed islocated in the Northern Great Plains, the area where intensive agriculture has caused anextreme change in land use and land cover, followed by substantial water pollution. DevilsLake is an endorheic (terminal) lake, which makes it …

End-To-End Workflows For Coupled Climate And Hydrological Modeling, Kathy Saint, Sylvia Murphy

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

In order to examine the effects of environmental changes on local watersheds, it has become increasingly important to be able to interoperate between diverse models and document and share the resulting data. To this end, we are prototyping an end-to-end workflow that executes multiple, distributed models, loosely couples the model components, and disseminates the model results and metadata using a data portal. This project is made up of three major components and is implemented in multiple phases. The main components include the interface to the models for configuration and execution, the interface to the portal for data dissemination, and the …

Sediment Flux Through The Rio Grande River: A Monsoonal Effect, Troy C. Hiatt

Theses and Dissertations

Climate has historically been recognized as an influence on sediment flux and deposition. The North American Monsoon is suggested as the forcing mechanism of deltaic progradational events of the Rio Grande River delta. Interpretations of reflection seismic profiles reveal that eustatic rise in sea-level from the Last Glacial Maximum to present is accompanied by several regressional events of the Rio Grande delta 5.5, 9.5, and 11.5 ka BP. Much of the migration of depositional facies within a delta system is forced by hinterland tectonics and base-level rise and fall. However, we suggest that the movement of facies within the Rio …

Managing Kansas Flint Hills Grasslands, Clenton Owensby

Symphony in the Flint Hills Field Journal

The Tallgrass Prairie once encompassed some 150+ million acres in the central Great Plains area. Because of the relatively high rainfall in the region and the grassland dominance, the soils there were among the best in the world for crop production.

In Concert With The Ecosystem, Edward P. Bass

Symphony in the Flint Hills Field Journal

I first “discovered” the Flint Hills of Kansas in the mid-1980s after working for a period of ten years to develop sustainable rangeland practices for a challenging grassland system located in the dry tropics of northwestern Australia.

The Climatic Niche Diversity Of Malagasy Primates: A Phylogenetic Perspective, Jason Kamilar, Kathleen Muldoon

scholarworks@library.umass.edu

Slides: Climate Change And Public Lands: Examples From National Parks, Stephen Saunders

The Past, Present, and Future of Our Public Lands: Celebrating the 40th Anniversary of the Public Land Law Review Commission’s Report, One Third of the Nation’s Land (Martz Summer Conference, June 2-4)

Presenter: Stephen Saunders, President, The Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (Denver, CO)

40 slides

Climatic Cycles Recorded In The Middle Eocene Hemipelagites From A Dinaric Foreland Basin Of Istria (Croatia), Borna Lužar-Oberiter, Peter A. Hochuli, Ljubomir Babić, Bosiljka Glumac, Darko Tibljas

Geosciences: Faculty Publications

Middle Eocene hemipelagic marls from the Pazin-Trieste Basin, a foreland basin of the Croatian Dinarides, display repetitive alternations of two types of marls with different resistance to weathering. This study focuses on the chemical composition, stable isotopes, and palynomorph content of these marls in order to better understand the nature of their cyclic deposition and to identify possible paleoenvironmental drivers responsible for their formation. The less resistant marls (LRM) have consistently lower carbonate content, lower δ18O and δ13C values, and more abundant dinoflagellate cysts than the more resistant marls (MRM). We interpret these differences between the two marl types to …

Vascular Plants Of The High Sierra San Pedro Mártir, Baja California, Mexico: An Annotated Checklist, Robert F. Thorne, Reid V. Moran, Richard A. Minnich

Aliso: A Journal of Systematic and Floristic Botany

The Sierra San Pedro Mártir (SSPM) is the highest mountain range in Baja California, Mexico, the summit of Picacho del Diablo peak attaining 3095 meters. An annotated checklist describes the vascular flora of the SSPM high country, defined here as above 1800 m. It comprises almost 500 species in 251 genera and 78 families. The high country is dominated by coniferous forest species known from montane California and Arizona whose southern ranges terminate in the SSPM. The annotated checklist identifies 453 species in 236 genera as indigenous, of which 23 species and one variety are endemic to the SSPM. Over …

The Effect Of Salinity Variability On The Mesozooplankton Community Of Florida Bay, Christopher R. Kelble

Open Access Dissertations

The greater Everglades ecosystem, including Florida Bay, has undergone significant anthropogenic manipulation over the past century. These actions resulted in a series of ecologically undesirable events in the Everglades ecosystem, prompting passage of the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP). It is necessary to understand the variability in, and relationship between, salinity and ecology to fully evaluate the potential effects of CERP on Florida Bay. A seven-year dataset on surface salinity along with eleven-year and eight-year datasets on mesozooplankton and planktivorous fish were analyzed. Overall, mean Bay-wide salinity varied from a low of 24.2 just after the passing of Hurricane Irene …

Characterization Of An Urban Heat Island (Uhi) In The Tampa Region Of Florida, Joann Sullivan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Numerous research studies have been conducted on the modification of weather and local climate by the urban environment. In studying the urban environment effects, researchers have investigated the urban heat island (UHI), anthropogenic cloud condensation nuclei, anthropogenic heat emissions and other factors. Many of these studies used data sampling networks, while other studies relied solely on computer modeling. This research has taken an approach between the sampling network studies (which were often limited in spatial density) and the pure computer model studies (which lacked the benefits of observational data) to investigate the Tampa Bay Region UHI. The research utilized inexpensive …

The Voice Of Elementary School Principals On School Climate, Suzanne Elayne Scallion

Open Access Dissertations

School climate has been described as "the set of internal characteristics that distinguish one school from another and influence the behaviors of each school's members" (Hoy, Smith & Sweetland, 2005). In the landmark study by Brookover, Schneider, Beady, Flood and Wisebaker (1978), school climate was found to be a more significant factor in student achievement than the variables of race and socioeconomic status. Principals need training in the phenomena of school climate and to develop the skills needed to alter it as needed for the benefit of students. This phenomenological study explored the conceptual understanding of school climate by experienced …

Adapting Agriculture To Climate Variability: Executive Summary, Gary Lemme, David Mcinnes, Tony Szumigalski

Agricultural Experiment Station Circulars

These paired conferences were an outgrowth of a joint meeting of Canadian and American agricultural leaders at Fargo, N.D., on Sept. 30, 2009, to explore the potential impacts of increased climatic variability on agriculture. A committee was formed to bring together agricultural leaders from the prairie provinces of Canada and the Northern Central Region of the United States of America to increase awareness of the importance of a proactive approach by the agricultural sectors in addressing the research, education, public policy, and technology transfer challenges associated with climate variability on the long-term sustainability of agriculture. Paired conferences were conducted in …

Drivers Of Plant Population Dynamics In Three Arid To Subhumid Ecosystems, Luke J. Zachmann

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Understanding the relative importance of density-dependent and density-independent factors in driving population dynamics is one of the oldest challenges in ecology, and may play a critical role in predicting the effects of climate change on populations. We used long-term observational data to describe patterns in plant population regulation for 57 forb and grass species from three different ecosystems (arid desert grassland, semiarid sagebrush steppe, and subhumid mixed-grass prairie). Using a hierarchical partitioning approach, we (i) quantified the relative influence of conspecific density, heterospecific composition, and climate on temporal variation in population growth rates, and (ii) asked how the relative importance …

Greater Diversity Of Fungi On Atlantic Slope Of Costa Rican Cloud Forest, May 2010, Joshua Obermeyer

Tropical Ecology and Conservation [Monteverde Institute]

Biodiversity in much of the Neotropics is impacted by windward/leeward effects. North East trade winds dump moisture as they hit the mountains, creating a wetter Atlantic slope, and a drier more seasonal Pacific slope. These factors often favor higher biodiversity for a given taxon on the Atlantic slope. Fungi were collected between the two slopes of the Monteverde Cloud Forest. A total of 130 fungi specimens were collected from 1550 meters on both slopes of the Continental Divide to 1750 m. As predicted, fungal species richness (Pacific = 24 species, Atlantic = 39 species), abundance (Pacific = 40, Atlantic = …