Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

A Comparison Of Community Composition Analyses For The Assessment Of Responses To Wood-Ash Soil Amendment By Free-Living Nematodes, Paul B.L. George Dec 2014

A Comparison Of Community Composition Analyses For The Assessment Of Responses To Wood-Ash Soil Amendment By Free-Living Nematodes, Paul B.L. George

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Land-use changes can have far-reaching consequences for resident communities and ecosystem functioning. Developing appropriate assessment methods to observe and quantify this change is an important application of community ecology. Here I compare four methods of community assessment for free-living soil nematodes under forest harvesting disturbance and wood ash application. Neither morphological assessment (richness, abundance, diversity) nor molecular assessment (morpho-richness using T-RFLP) was responsive to experimental treatments. Trait-based approaches (Maturity Index (MI) and Body Size Spectra (BSS)) were more sensitive to forest harvest and wood-ash amendment treatments. The efficacy of these methods was also qualitatively compared. Of all methods, the BSS …


An Ecological Framework To Assess Sustainability Impacts For An Evolving Consumer Electronic Product System, Erinn G. Ryen May 2014

An Ecological Framework To Assess Sustainability Impacts For An Evolving Consumer Electronic Product System, Erinn G. Ryen

Theses

Consumer electronics have revolutionized the manner in which we work, read, and entertain ourselves. However, this transformation comes at a high cost, with significant energy input and emissions releases across all stages of the electronic product life cycle. The limited success of per product efficiency improvements, often formulated in the field of industrial ecology, does not address the electronic product system as a whole because escalating consumption may actually offset any individual impact reductions. Additionally, existing industrial ecology models fail to effectively capture energy, material, and waste flows associated with real consumption patterns, as consumers purchase, use, and discard a …