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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Urbanization Alters Communities Of Flying Arthropods In Parks And Gardens Of A Medium-Sized City, Edward Lagucki, Justin D. Burdine, Kevin E. Mccluney Sep 2017

Urbanization Alters Communities Of Flying Arthropods In Parks And Gardens Of A Medium-Sized City, Edward Lagucki, Justin D. Burdine, Kevin E. Mccluney

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Urbanization transforms undeveloped landscapes into built environments, causing changes in communities and ecological processes. Flying arthropods play important roles in these processes as pollinators, decomposers, and predators, and can be important in structuring food webs. The goal of this study was to identify associations between urbanization and the composition of communities of flying (and floating) arthropods within gardens and parks in a medium-sized mesic city. We predicted that flying arthropod abundance and diversity would respond strongly to percent impervious surface and distance to city center, measurements of urbanization. Flying arthropods were sampled from 30 gardens and parks along an urbanization …


Variation In Arthropod Hydration Across Us Cities With Distinct Climate, Kevin E. Mccluney, Justin D. Burdine, Steven D. Frank Jan 2017

Variation In Arthropod Hydration Across Us Cities With Distinct Climate, Kevin E. Mccluney, Justin D. Burdine, Steven D. Frank

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Increasing evidence suggests that altered environmental conditions within cities (e.g. temperature) can have strong effects on the biology and ecology of animals. Moreover, multiple abiotic (e.g. soil moisture, distributions of water bodies) and biotic factors (e.g. plant and animal communities) may be more similar among cities in distinct climate regions as compared to outside cities. But the mechanisms behind these patterns are unclear. We suggest that animal physiological condition responds to urbanization and may become more similar with urbanization among cities. As a first attempt at assessing this possibility, we measured hydration (water content) of field-collected arthropods, across variation in …


The Optical Trapezoid Model: A Novel Approach To Remote Sensing Of Soil Moisture Applied To Sentinel-2 And Landsat-8 Observations, Morteza Sadeghi, Ebrahim Babaeian, Markus Tuller, Scott B. Jones Jan 2017

The Optical Trapezoid Model: A Novel Approach To Remote Sensing Of Soil Moisture Applied To Sentinel-2 And Landsat-8 Observations, Morteza Sadeghi, Ebrahim Babaeian, Markus Tuller, Scott B. Jones

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

The “trapezoid” or “triangle” model constitutes the most popular approach to remote sensing (RS) of surface soil moisture based on coupled thermal (i.e., land surface temperature) and optical RS observations. The model, hereinafter referred to as Thermal-Optical TRAapezoid Model (TOTRAM), is based on interpretation of the pixel distribution within the land surface temperature - vegetation index (LST-VI) space. TOTRAM suffers from two inherent limitations. It is not applicable to satellites that do not provide thermal data (e.g., Sentinel-2) and it requires parameterization for each individual observation date. To overcome these restrictions we propose a novel OPtical TRApezoid Model (OPTRAM), which …


A Method For Reflectance Index Wavelength Selection From Moisture-Controlled Soil And Crop Residue Samples, Ali Hamidisepehr, Michael P. Sama, Aaron P. Turner, Ole O. Wendroth Jan 2017

A Method For Reflectance Index Wavelength Selection From Moisture-Controlled Soil And Crop Residue Samples, Ali Hamidisepehr, Michael P. Sama, Aaron P. Turner, Ole O. Wendroth

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

Reflectance indices are a method for reducing the dimensionality of spectral measurements used to quantify material properties. Choosing the optimal wavelengths for developing an index based on a given material and property of interest is made difficult by the large number of wavelengths typically available to choose from and the lack of homogeneity when remotely sensing agricultural materials. This study aimed to determine the feasibility of using a low-cost method for sensing the moisture content of background materials in traditional crop remote sensing. Moisture-controlled soil and wheat stalk residue samples were measured at varying heights using a reflectance probe connected …


Cropping Sequence Influenced Crop Yield, Soil Water Content, Residue Return, And Co2 Efflux In Wheat-Camelina Cropping System, E. Obeng, A. Obour, N. O. Nelson, I. A. Ciampitti, Donghai Wang, E. A. Santos Jan 2017

Cropping Sequence Influenced Crop Yield, Soil Water Content, Residue Return, And Co2 Efflux In Wheat-Camelina Cropping System, E. Obeng, A. Obour, N. O. Nelson, I. A. Ciampitti, Donghai Wang, E. A. Santos

Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station Research Reports

Camelina (Camelina sativaL. Crantz) is a short-seasoned oilseed crop with potential as a fallow replacement crop in dryland wheat (Triticum aestivum) - based cropping systems. Crop rotation management can affect the quality and quantity of crop residue return to the system. In addition, residue has the ability to sequester carbon and can affect plant available water. This study was conducted to investigate the effect of replacing fallow with camelina on crop yield, soil water at wheat planting, soil carbon dioxide (CO2) efflux from treatments, and residue return. Treatments were four rotation schemes, and included …