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Nexus Between Animal Welfare, Environment, And Sustainable Development: Resource Document, Wellbeing International

Nexus – UNEP – Animal Welfare, Environment, Sustainable Development

This Resource Document has been developed to explore the Nexus (links) between Animal Welfare, the Environment, and Sustainable Development. The document includes relevant citations and reports addressing the topics encompassed by the Nexus. It will be maintained as a “living document” (subject to revision) in the WellBeing International Studies Repository. The original document and subsequent revisions will be kept in the Repository to provide a record of the changes.

Green Strategic Planning Approach For International Shipping Activities, Xiaofang Wu, Luoping Zhang, Huan Feng

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Sustainability is a long-term and ultimate goal for international shipping, although it is slowly making progress. The shipping perspective that moves away from “port-to-port” operations to “door-to-door” services also requires international shipping to take a long-term and holistic view instead of fragmented efforts. How to achieve the long-term sustainability goal becomes a key issue for door-to-door international shipping. Hence, green strategic planning for door-to-door international shipping was proposed with green development that puts forward the eco-centric point of view as its basic theory for sustainability. This study used a strategic decision-making approach, a so-called multi-dimensional decision-making (MDDM), coupled with the …

Competition And Burn Severity Determine Post-Fire Sapling Recovery In A Nationally Protected Boreal Forest Of China: An Analysis From Very High-Resolution Satellite Imagery, Lei Fang, Ellen V. Crocker, Jian Yang, Yan Yan, Yuanzheng Yang, Zhihua Liu

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Anticipating how boreal forest landscapes will change in response to changing fire regime requires disentangling the effects of various spatial controls on the recovery process of tree saplings. Spatially explicit monitoring of post-fire vegetation recovery through moderate resolution Landsat imagery is a popular technique but is filled with ambiguous information due to mixed pixel effects. On the other hand, very-high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery accurately measures crown size of tree saplings but has gained little attention and its utility for estimating leaf area index (LAI, m²/m²) and tree sapling abundance (TSA, seedlings/ha) in post-fire landscape remains …

Potential Economic Impacts Of Allocating More Land For Bioenergy Biomass Production In Virginia, Thomas O. Ochuodho, Janaki R. R. Alavalapati, Pankaj Lal, Domena A. Agyeman, Bernabas Wolde, Pralhad Burli

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

The growing attention to renewable energy and rural development has created greater demand for production of biomass feedstock for bioenergy. However, forest growth rates and the amount of land in most existing forests may not be sufficient to sustainably supply the forest biomass required to support existing forest products industries and the expanding bioenergy industry. Additionally, concerns about agricultural land use competition have dampened expansion of biomass production on agricultural land base. One of the ways to meet the growing forest biomass feedstock demand for bioenergy production is by allocating currently marginal non-forested land for growing bioenergy feedstocks. In Virginia, …

Wildfire Alters Spatial Patterns Of Available Soil Nitrogen And Understory Environments In A Valley Boreal Larch Forest, Jianjian Kong, Jian Yang, Bo Liu, Lin Qi

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Wildfire, a primary natural disturbance in many forests, affects soil nutrient availability and spatial distributions of forest plants. However, post-fire changes in soil nutrients and spatial patterns of understory environments at fine scales are poorly understood. Here, we characterized spatial patterns of soil nitrogen availability and site characteristics at a 3-year-post-fire and an unburned site in a valley boreal larch forest. We also examined the relationship between soil nitrogen availability and site characteristics. The results showed that the burned site had higher NO₃⁻ and lower NH₄⁺ than the control. The herb, litter and coarse wood debris …

Dynamics Of Postfire Aboveground Carbon In A Chronosequence Of Chinese Boreal Larch Forests, Yuan Z. Yang, Wen H. Cai, Jian Yang, Megan White, John M. Lhotka

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Boreal forests store a large proportion of the global terrestrial carbon (C), while wildfire plays a crucial role in determining their C storage and dynamics. The aboveground C (AC) pool is an important component of forest C stocks. To quantify the turning point (transforming from C source to C sink) and recovery time of postfire AC, and assess how stand density affects the AC, 175 plots from eight stand age classes were surveyed as a chronosequence in the Great Xing'an Mountains of Northeast China. Linear and nonlinear regression analyses were conducted to describe postfire AC recovery patterns. The results showed …

Understory Community Assembly Following Wildfire In Boreal Forests: Shift From Stochasticity To Competitive Exclusion And Environmental Filtering, Bo Liu, Han Y. H. Chen, Jian Yang

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Understory vegetation accounts for the majority of plant species diversity and serves as a driver of overstory succession and nutrient cycling in boreal forest ecosystems. However, investigations of the underlying assembly processes of understory vegetation associated with stand development following a wildfire disturbance are rare, particularly in Eurasian boreal forests. In this study, we measured the phylogenetic and functional diversity and trait dispersions of understory communities and tested how these patterns changed with stand age in the Great Xing'an Mountains of Northeastern China. Contrary to our expectation, we found that understory functional traits were phylogenetically convergent. We found that random …

Impacts Of Climate Change And Bioenergy Markets On The Profitability Of Slash Pine Pulpwood Production In The Southeastern United States, Andrea Susaeta, Pankaj Lal

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In this study, we assessed the impacts of climate change on the production of pulpwood and biomass for bioenergy, and the profitability of slash pine stands in the Southeastern United States. We employed the 3-PG (Physiological Processes Predicting Growth) model to determine the effects of future climates on forest growth and integrated it with a stand-level economic model to determine their impacts on optimal forest management. We found that the average production of pulpwood increased for all sites by 7.5 m³ ha⁻¹ for all climatic scenarios and productivity conditions. In the case of forest biomass for bioenergy, the …

Does Environment Filtering Or Seed Limitation Determine Post-Fire Forest Recovery Patterns In Boreal Larch Forests?, Wen H. Cai, Zhihua Liu, Yuan Z. Yang, Jian Yang

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Wildfire is a primary natural disturbance in boreal forests, and post-fire vegetation recovery rate influences carbon, water, and energy exchange between the land and atmosphere in the region. Seed availability and environmental filtering are two important determinants in regulating post-fire vegetation recovery in boreal forests. Quantifying how these determinants change over time is helpful for understanding post-fire forest successional trajectory. Time series of remote sensing data offer considerable potential in monitoring the trajectory of post-fire vegetation recovery dynamics beyond current field surveys about structural attributes, which generally lack a temporal perspective across large burned areas. We used a time series …

Sampling Effort And Uncertainty In Leaf Litterfall Mass And Nutrient Flux In Northern Hardwood Forests, Yang Yang, Ruth D. Yanai, Craig R. See, Mary A. Arthur

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Designs for litterfall sampling can be improved by understanding the sources of uncertainty in litterfall mass and nutrient concentration. We compared the coefficient of variation of leaf litterfall mass and nutrient concentrations (nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, and potassium) at different spatial scales and across years for six northern hardwood species from 23 stands in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, USA. Stands with steeper slopes (P = 0.01), higher elevations (P = 0.05), and more westerly aspect (P = 0.002) had higher interannual variation in litter mass, probably due to a litter trap design that allowed litter …

Establishing Pine Monocultures And Mixed Pine-Hardwood Stands On Reclaimed Surface Mined Land In Eastern Kentucky: Implications For Forest Resilience In A Changing Climate, Geoffrey Bell, Kenton L. Sena, Christopher D. Barton, Michael French

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Surface mining and mine reclamation practices have caused significant forest loss and forest fragmentation in Appalachia. Shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata) is threatened by a variety of stresses, including diseases, pests, poor management, altered fire regimes, and climate change, and the species is the subject of a widescale restoration effort. Surface mines may present opportunity for shortleaf pine restoration; however, the survival and growth of shortleaf pine on these harsh sites has not been critically evaluated. This paper presents first-year survival and growth of native shortleaf pine planted on a reclaimed surface mine, compared to non-native loblolly pine ( …

Consequences Of Severe Habitat Fragmentation On Density, Genetics, And Spatial Capture-Recapture Analysis Of A Small Bear Population, Sean Mccarthy Murphy, Ben C. Augustine, Wade Allen Ulrey, Joseph Maddox Guthrie, Brian K Scheick, J. Walter Mccown, John J. Cox

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Loss and fragmentation of natural habitats caused by human land uses have subdivided several formerly contiguous large carnivore populations into multiple small and often isolated subpopulations, which can reduce genetic variation and lead to precipitous population declines. Substantial habitat loss and fragmentation from urban development and agriculture expansion relegated the Highlands-Glades subpopulation (HGS) of Florida, USA, black bears (Ursus americanus floridanus) to prolonged isolation; increasing human land development is projected to cause ≥ 50% loss of remaining natural habitats occupied by the HGS in coming decades. We conducted a noninvasive genetic spatial capture-recapture study to quantitatively describe the …

Mining Site Reclamation Planning Based On Land Suitability Analysis And Ecosystem Services Evaluation: A Case Study In Liaoning Province, China, Jiali Wang, Fuqiang Zhao, Jian Yang, Xiaoshu Li

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Restoration of the degraded ecosystem is a global priority for achieving sustainable development. Although increasing ecosystem service is an important goal of ecological restoration, it is rarely used to inform mine reclamation. This study proposed a reclamation strategy that incorporated land suitability analysis and ecosystem service evaluation for a mining site in Liaoning Province, China. We assessed the land suitability for three reclamation alternatives and identified suitable land uses for each location by comparing their suitability levels. For areas that were suitable for multiple land uses with the same suitability level, the future land uses cannot be identified by land …

Evaluation Of Modis Land Surface Temperature Data To Estimate Near-Surface Air Temperature In Northeast China, Yuan Z. Yang, Wen H. Cai, Jian Yang

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Air temperature (T_air) near the ground surface is a fundamental descriptor of terrestrial environment conditions and one of the most widely used climatic variables in global change studies. The main objective of this study was to explore the possibility of retrieving high-resolution T_air from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land surface temperature (LST) products, covering complex terrain in Northeast China. The All Subsets Regression (ASR) method was adopted to select the predictors and build optimal multiple linear regression models for estimating maximum (T_max), minimum (T_min), and mean (T_mean) air temperatures. …

Agenda: Flpma Turns 40, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment

FLPMA Turns 40 (October 21)

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) administers approximately 245 million acres of our public lands and yet, for most of our nation's history, these lands seemed largely destined to end up in private hands. Even when the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 ushered in an important era of better managing public grazing districts and "promoting the highest use of the public lands," such use of our public lands still was plainly considered temporary, "pending its final disposal." It was not until 1976 with the passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) that congress adopted a policy that …

Slides: Flpma In Its Historical Context, John D. Leshy

FLPMA Turns 40 (October 21)

Presenter: John D. Leshy, Sunderland Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, U.C. Hastings College of the Law

36 slides

This session traces the history of FLPMA including, among other things, its legislative, administrative, and historical antecedents, including for example, the Public Land Law Review Commission’s 1970 report, One Third of Our Nation’s Lands. It then considers FLPMA’s unique public lands policies and requirements and how they are reflected in the BLM’s management of public lands today.

See: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/blm/history/contents.htm

Assessment Of Streamside Management Zones For Conserving Benthic Macroinvertebrate Communities Following Timber Harvest In Eastern Kentucky Headwater Catchments, Joshua K. Adkins, Christopher D. Barton, Scott Grubbs, Jeffrey W. Stringer, Randall K. Kolka

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Headwater streams generally comprise the majority of stream area in a watershed and can have a strong influence on downstream food webs. Our objective was to determine the effect of altering streamside management zone (SMZ) configurations on headwater aquatic insect communities. Timber harvests were implemented within six watersheds in eastern Kentucky. The SMZ configurations varied in width, canopy retention and best management practice (BMP) utilization at the watershed scale. Benthic macroinvertebrate samples collected one year before and four years after harvest indicated few differences among treatments, although post-treatment abundance was elevated in some of the treatment streams relative to the …

Quantitative Evidence For The Effects Of Multiple Drivers On Continental-Scale Amphibian Declines, Evan H. Campbell Grant, David A. W. Miller, Benedikt R. Schmidt, Michael J. Adams, Staci M. Amburgey, Thierry Chambert, Sam S. Cruickshank, Robert N. Fisher, David M. Green, Blake R. Hossack, Pieter T. J. Johnson, Maxwell B. Joseph, Tracy A. G. Rittenhouse, Maureen E. Ryan, J. Hardin Waddle, Susan C. Walls, Larissa L. Bailey, Gary M. Fellers, Thomas A. Gorman, Andrew M. Ray, David S. Pilliod, Steven J. Price, Daniel Saenz, Walt Sadinski, Erin Muths

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Since amphibian declines were first proposed as a global phenomenon over a quarter century ago, the conservation community has made little progress in halting or reversing these trends. The early search for a “smoking gun” was replaced with the expectation that declines are caused by multiple drivers. While field observations and experiments have identified factors leading to increased local extinction risk, evidence for effects of these drivers is lacking at large spatial scales. Here, we use observations of 389 time-series of 83 species and complexes from 61 study areas across North America to test the effects of 4 of the …

Consequences Of Shifts In Abundance And Distribution Of American Chestnut For Restoration Of A Foundation Forest Tree, Harmony J. Dalgleish, Charles Dana Nelson, John A. Scrivani, Douglass F. Jacobs

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Restoration of foundation species, such as the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) that was devastated by an introduced fungus, can restore ecosystem function. Understanding both the current distribution as well as biogeographic patterns is important for restoration planning. We used United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis data to quantify the current density and distribution of C. dentata. We then review the literature concerning biogeographic patterns in C. dentata. Currently, 431 ± 30.2 million stems remain. The vast majority (360 ± 22 million) are sprouts < 2.5 cm dbh. Although this number is approximately 10% of the estimated pre-blight population, blight has caused a major shift in the size structure. The current-day population has a larger range, particularly west and north, likely due to human translocation. While climate change could facilitate northward expansion, limited seed reproduction makes this unlikely without assisted migration. Previous research demonstrates that the current, smaller population contains slightly higher genetic diversity than expected, although little information exists on biogeographic patterns in the genetics of adaptive traits. Our research provides a baseline characterization of the contemporary population of C. dentata, to enable monitoring stem densities …

The Optimal Foraging Of Equus Burchelli At Enashiva Nature Refuge, Edward Haubenreiser

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Within the country of Tanzania lies a vast ecosystem known as the Serengeti. This unique landscape, primarily of grasslands and woodlands, shapes the seasonal feeding habits of the abundant wildlife that call the area home. While these feeding habits on a large spatial scale are well understood, such behavior within a specie’s specific environment remains of interest. With the theory of optimal foraging in mind, which considers how animals should look for and select food (Green, 1990), I studied the foraging habits of resident Burchell’s zebra (Equus burchelli) by observing if they move and forage among distinct resource …

Smith Falls State Park Forest Enhancement Project For Aspen, Mike Groenewold

Nebraska Game and Parks Commission: White Papers, Conference Presentations, and Manuscripts

A 76-mile stretch of the middle Niobrara River, which includes Smith Falls State Park, is designated as a National Scenic River. This reach of the river is referred to as the biological crossroads of the Midwest as the river’s deeply incised valley is the intersection of a diverse mix of plant communities including several forest and prairie types. The mix of forests supports a rich diversity of species including rare plants such as glacial relict aspen and paper birch.

In recent decades eastern red cedar and ponderosa pine densities have increased substantially in the middle Niobrara River due to fire …

Upland Habitat Quality And Historic Landscape Composition Influence Genetic Variation Of A Pond-Breeding Salamander, Stephen C. Richter, Steve J. Price, Chelsea S. Kross, Jeremiah R. Alexander, Michael E. Dorcas

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Understanding the temporal and spatial scale at which habitat alteration impacts populations is important for conservation and management. Amphibians have declined more than other vertebrates, and pond-breeding species are particularly susceptible to habitat loss and fragmentation because they have terrestrial and aquatic life stages. One approach to management of pond-breeding species is protection of core upland habitat surrounding the breeding pond. We used genetic variation as an indicator of population status in a common amphibian species, spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum), to determine how amount of suitable upland habitat relates to population status in the greater Charlotte, North Carolina, …

Perdido En La Cadena: Un Análisis Del Impacto Económico Y Ambiental De Cajas De Embalaje En Baños, Ecuador, Zhang Yuan

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

La cuestión del calentamiento de la atmósfera causa de la pérdida del carbono de la biomasa está una preocupación a nivel mundial. Con la emisión de CO2 por la combustión de los combustibles fósiles, la temperatura ha subido aproximadamente 0.16 °C desde 1990 hasta 2000. El bosque, por otra parte, sirve como un tranque y el regulador de carbono mediante el intercambio de carbono entre la atmósfera y biosfera. Sin embargo, varios usos antropogénicos del bosque ha causado la desaparición de árboles y la gran pérdida de carbono de la biomasa global. Para medir la pérdida de carbono causada por …

Agenda: A Low-Carbon Energy Blueprint For The American West, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center, University Of Colorado Boulder. Renewable And Sustainable Energy Institute, Western Resource Advocates, Rocky Mountain Research Station (Fort Collins, Colo.)

A Low-Carbon Energy Blueprint for the American West (Martz Summer Conference, June 6-8)

The future of the planet may depend upon our ability to increase energy supplies even as we reduce carbon emissions. This conference will address how a low-carbon energy program might evolve with a particular focus on the American West. It will focus on the future of energy in the West--on a “managed transition” to a different energy mix, on the need to nest this effort in a framework that acknowledges interconnections, and on identifying the most salient opportunities to consider the legal, political, financial, and technical challenges.

Improving Woody Biomass Estimation Efficiency Using Double Sampling, David L. Parrott, John M. Lhotka, Songlin Fei, B. Scott Shouse

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Although double sampling has been shown to be an effective method to estimate timber volume in forest inventories, only a limited body of research has tested the effectiveness of double sampling on forest biomass estimation. From forest biomass inventories collected over 9,683 ha using systematic point sampling, we examined how a double sampling scheme would have affected precision and efficiency in these biomass inventories. Our results indicated that double sample methods would have yielded biomass estimations with similar precision as systematic point sampling when the small sample was ≥ 20% of the large sample. When the small to large sample …

Development And Deployment Of A Bioreactor For The Removal Of Sulfate And Manganese From Circumneutral Coal Mine Drainage, C. B. Mastin, J. D. Edwards, Christopher D. Barton, Anastasios D. Karathanasis, Carmen T. Agouridis, Richard C. Warner

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Surface mining, in the form of contour mining and mountain-top removal, is a common means for retrieving coal in the Appalachian Coal Belt region of Kentucky. Overburden or excess spoil generated by these two methods is placed in valley fills. Traditionally Constructed fills have been shown to adversely impact headwater ecosystems via stream burial and through alterations to the hydrology, sediment supply, water quality and biological composition of downstream reaches. Mine drainages emanating from the toe of valley fills often contain elevated levels of total dissolved solids and heavy metals. Drainage chemistry from Guy Cove, a valley fill located in …

Lakeview, Oregon: The Little Town That Collaboration Saved, Laura Singer, Emily Rome, Liubov Doerr, Mari Saint Pierre, Dick Townsend, Alexander Freed, Daniel Mcduffee, Greg Nugent, Gretchen Olsen, Kirk Rea, Melissa Long, Ross D. Lamberth, Shelley D. Searle

National Policy Consensus Center Publications and Reports

The assessment team was made up of a diverse group - eight undergraduate PSU students, two graduate teaching assistants and one instructor - representing all ages, interests and fields of study. However, one thing everyone had in common was an interest in learning about collaboration and how it might be used to improve the state of Oregon, the nation and even the world. To that end, everyone participating in the Capstone course hoped to enhance their “Skills for Being an Effective Collaborator.” As this is the first time this course has been offered, we hope our success in meeting its …

A Tale Of Two Carbon Sinks: Can Forest Carbon Management Serve As A Framework To Implement Ocean Iron Fertilization As A Climate Change Treaty Compliance Mechanism?, Randall S. Abate

Journal Publications

Any post-Kyoto climate change treaty regime must seek to fully engage the use of carbon sinks to complement emissions reduction measures in order to comply with the treaty's mandates. The Kyoto Protocol did not include avoided deforestation as a mechanism for earning emission reduction credits. However, reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) quickly gained popularity as a viable climate change compliance strategy in the period immediately preceding the negotiations at the Fifteenth Conference of the Parties (COP 15) in Copenhagen in 2009. The Copenhagen Accord is replete with references to REDD as a focus for the international community's progression …

Slides: Second Thoughts About The Antiquities Act: Does The Process For Public Land Decisionmaking Have An Ethical Dimension?, James R. Rasband

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: James R. Rasband, Dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University (Provo, UT)

32 slides

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