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Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
A Review And Comparison Of U.S. State Wildlife Action Plans For Stonefly (Insecta, Plecoptera) Species Of Greatest Conservation Need, Kathryn Greene
A Review And Comparison Of U.S. State Wildlife Action Plans For Stonefly (Insecta, Plecoptera) Species Of Greatest Conservation Need, Kathryn Greene
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
State Wildlife Action Plans (SWAPs) were created in order to identify Species of Greatest Conservation Need (SGCN) and develop plans to prevent their populations from further decline and the possibility of being listed as threatened or endangered. Which SGCNs are included are decided based on characteristics that determine their vulnerability. As of early 2021, approximately 720stoneflies (Insecta, Plecoptera) species are found in the U.S., but only 143 are listed as SGCN. Only 29 states have stoneflies included on their SGCN lists, but 37 states use EPT (Ephemeroptera + Plecoptera + Trichoptera) metrics when assessing water quality issues in running water …
Informing Sustainable Urban Forestry Policy With Carbon Sequestration Analysis, Ellen Danford
Informing Sustainable Urban Forestry Policy With Carbon Sequestration Analysis, Ellen Danford
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
Urban forestry is an environmental solution for an increasingly city-centered world. The ecosystem services that trees provide in natural settings, including carbon sequestration, oxygen production and aesthetic beauty, also apply in urban settings. Every tree in the Western Kentucky University (WKU) urban forest provides these services and each tree was measured to determine how much carbon they sequestered a year on average between 2015 and 2020. With an interactive map of the forest and its carbon sequestration, the condition of the forest and change over the five year period was analyzed. Comparing the welfare of the forest with the plans …
Enhancing Wku Sustainable Food Systems Through Education And Local Agriculture Development, Chloe Cooper
Enhancing Wku Sustainable Food Systems Through Education And Local Agriculture Development, Chloe Cooper
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
In an effort to increase the amount of locally sourced food utilized by dining services at WKU, the Office of Sustainability, WKU Restaurant Group, and the WKU Agriculture & Research Education Center have partnered to establish garden spaces on campus properties. This project developed a detailed plan for implementation of this effort. In addition, this project established a plan to educate students and the local community alike on the benefits of sustainable farming and locally-sourced food, while also creating profiles on local farmers from whom the university could buy crops in order to further supplement items for dining services. Using …
Bridging The Food Gap: Founding And Sustaining A Food Recovery Network Chapter At Wku, Elaine Losekamp
Bridging The Food Gap: Founding And Sustaining A Food Recovery Network Chapter At Wku, Elaine Losekamp
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
Food waste is a pervasive global issue with many environmental and social repercussions. While about one-third of all food produced for human consumption goes to waste, many people in the United States and the world are affected by food insecurity. Food recovery, the process of rescuing edible food that would otherwise go to waste and delivering to hungry people, is an effective solution for both food waste and food insecurity. The author of this capstone created a food recovery program at Western Kentucky University (WKU) in January 2019 and has grown the program’s scope and impact since that time. This …
Aggressive Acoustic Behavior In Yasuhikotakia Modesta: Does The Lombard Effect Hold Water?, Bethany Coffey
Aggressive Acoustic Behavior In Yasuhikotakia Modesta: Does The Lombard Effect Hold Water?, Bethany Coffey
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
The Lombard effect is the automatic and involuntary change in the intensity of vocalizations in the presence of background noise in order to maintain a constant signal to noise ratio. While this phenomenon is commonly found in vocalizing terrestrial vertebrates, it had not previously been examined in aquatic vertebrates such as fishes. This experiment tests the presence of the Lombard effect in the red-finned loach, Yasuhikotakia modesta, which make two types of sounds: butting and clicking. I recorded three pairs of Y. modesta during aggressive interactions over territory and compared the sounds produced in silence with sounds produced …
Development And Recycling Of Novel Arsenic Removal Technology, Morgan Jones
Development And Recycling Of Novel Arsenic Removal Technology, Morgan Jones
Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects
As of 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) changed the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for arsenic from 50 parts per billion (ppb), to 10ppb because of links to cancer. Current remediation technologies are expensive; therefore, this change will result in increased economic pressure on rural communities with high levels of arsenic in their drinking water. Lowering of the standard has spurred the development of a novel remediation technology that has shown the ability to reduce arsenic in drinking water at the source, with the added benefit of low-cost disposal of a stable and benign waste product in ordinary landfills. …