Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Climate Diagnostics Of The Extreme Floods In Peru During Early 2017, Rackhun Son, Shih-Yu Simon Wang, Wan-Ling Tseng, Christian W. Barreto Schuler, Emily Becker, Jin-Ho Yoon

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

From January through March 2017, a series of extreme precipitation events occurred in coastal Peru, causing severe floods with hundreds of human casualties and billions of dollars in economic losses. The extreme precipitation was a result of unusually strong recurrent patterns of atmospheric and oceanic conditions, including extremely warm coastal sea surface temperatures (SST) and weakened trade winds. These climatic features and their causal relationship with the Peruvian precipitation were examined. Diagnostic analysis and model experiments suggest that an atmospheric forcing in early 2017, which was moderately linked to the Trans-Niño Index (TNI), initiated the local SST warming along coastal …

Evidence For Accelerated Weathering And Sulfate Export In High Alpine Environments, John T. Crawford, Eve-Lyn S. Hinckley, M. Iggy Litaor, Janice Brahney, Jason C. Neff

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

High elevation alpine ecosystems—the 'water towers of the world'—provide water for human populations around the globe. Active geomorphic features such as glaciers and permafrost leave alpine ecosystems susceptible to changes in climate which could also lead to changing biogeochemistry and water quality. Here, we synthesize recent changes in high-elevation stream chemistry from multiple sites that demonstrate a consistent and widespread pattern of increasing sulfate and base cation concentrations or fluxes. This trend has occurred over the past 30 years and is consistent across multiple sites in the Rocky Mountains of the United States, western Canada, the European Alps, the Icelandic …

Resurgence Of An Apex Marine Predator And The Decline In Prey Body Size, Jan Ohlberger, Daniel E. Schindler, Eric J. Ward, Timothy E. Walsworth, Timothy E. Essington

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

In light of recent recoveries of marine mammal populations worldwide and heightened concern about their impacts on marine food webs and global fisheries, it has become increasingly important to understand the potential impacts of large marine mammal predators on prey populations and their life-history traits. In coastal waters of the northeast Pacific Ocean, marine mammals have increased in abundance over the past 40 to 50 y, including fish-eating killer whales that feed primarily on Chinook salmon. Chinook salmon, a species of high cultural and economic value, have exhibited marked declines in average size and age throughout most of their North …

Beavers Alter Stream Macroinvertebrate Communities In Northeastern Utah, Susan E. Washko, Brett B. Roper, Trisha Brooke Atwood

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

1. Understanding changes in macroinvertebrate communities is important because they play a large role in stream ecosystem functioning, and they are an important food resource for fish. Beaver‐induced changes to stream morphology could alter macroinvertebrate communities, which in turn could affect food webs and ecosystem function. However, studies investigating the effects of North American beaver activities on macroinvertebrates are rare in the inter‐mountain west, an area with high potential for beaver‐assisted restoration.
2. The aim of this study was to quantify differences in the macroinvertebrate community between unaltered segments of streams and within beaver ponds in north‐eastern Utah, U.S.A. We assessed macroinvertebrate …

Supplemental Material For Cotterill Et Al. 2020: Parsing The Effects Of Demography, Climate, And Management On Recurrent Brucellosis Outbreaks In Elk. Journal Of Applied Ecology., Gavin G. Coterill, Johan T. Du Toit, Paul C. Cross

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Zoonotic pathogens can harm human health and wellbeing directly or by impacting livestock. Pathogens that spillover from wildlife can also impair conservation efforts if humans perceive wildlife as pests. Brucellosis, caused by the bacterium Brucella abortus, circulates in elk and bison herds of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and poses a risk to cattle and humans. Our goal was to understand the relative effects of climatic drivers, host demography, and management control programs on disease dynamics.

Synthesis and applications: Positive serostatus is often weakly correlated with infectiousness but is nevertheless used to make management decisions including lethal removal in wildlife disease …

Evidence For Large Holocene Earthquakes Along The Denali Fault In Southwest Yukon, Canada, Andrée Blais-Stevens, John J. Clague, Janice Brahney, Panya Lipovsky, Peter J. Haeussler, Brian Menounos

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

The Yukon–Alaska Highway corridor in southern Yukon is subject to geohazards ranging from landslides to floods and earthquakes on faults in the St. Elias Mountains and Shakwak Valley. Here we discuss the late Holocene seismic history of the Denali fault, located at the eastern front of the St. Elias Mountains and one of only a few known seismically active terrestrial faults in Canada. Holocene faulting is indicated by scarps and mounds on late Pleistocene drift and by tectonically deformed Pleistocene and Holocene sediments. Previous work on trenches excavated against the fault scarp near the Duke River reveals paleoseismic sediment disturbance …

Isotope Summary Data, Andrew Kulmatiski

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Data includes deuterium tracer uptake data from plant species at the US Sheep Experiment Station.

Individual Variation And Ecotypic Niches In Simulations Of The Impact Of Climatic Volatility, George P. Malanson, R. Justin Derose, Matthew F. Bekker

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Expectations of the impacts of climatic variation on species can depend on whether and how intraspecific variability is incorporated in models. Coefficients of variation from tree-ring records of Pinus albicaulis through time and across space were used to parameterize volatility and individuality, respectively. The records across sites were used to differentiate the average modes on an environmental gradient for Gaussian fitness of ecotypic niches, and to add further individual variation in mode and standard deviation of these functions in individual-based Monte Carlo simulations of reproduction and mortality with inheritance of individual variability. Ecotypic gamma and Shannon diversity decreased with volatility …

Why Weightlifters Grunt: A Classroom Exercise That Introduces Students To Evolution, H. Charles Romesburg

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

A classroom exercise is described in which college students take part in creating and supporting an evolutionary hypothesis that explains effort grunting. The exercise holds their interest throughout and readies them to understand hypotheses of animal and plant evolution. It informs them about the dependence of cultural evolution upon biological evolution, and it connects widely to curricula.

Cloud Cover And Delayed Herbivory Relative To Timing Of Spring Onset Interact To Dampen Climate Change Impacts On Net Ecosystem Exchange In A Coastal Alaskan Wetland, A. Joshua Leffler, Karen H. Beard, Katharine C. Kelsey, Ryan T. Choi, Joel A. Schmutz, Jeffrey M. Welker

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Rapid warming in northern ecosystems over the past four decades has resulted in earlier spring, increased precipitation, and altered timing of plant–animal interactions, such as herbivory. Advanced spring phenology can lead to longer growing seasons and increased carbon (C) uptake. Greater precipitation coincides with greater cloud cover possibly suppressing photosynthesis. Timing of herbivory relative to spring phenology influences plant biomass. None of these changes are mutually exclusive and their interactions could lead to unexpected consequences for Arctic ecosystem function. We examined the influence of advanced spring phenology, cloud cover, and timing of grazing on C exchange in the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta …

Quantifying Methane Emissions In The Uintah Basin During Wintertime Stagnation Episodes, C. S. Foster, Erik T. Crosman, J. D. Horel, Seth Lyman, B. Fasoli, R. Bares, J. C. Lin

Bingham Research Center

This study presents a meteorologically-based methodology for quantifying basin-scale methane (CH₄) emissions in Utah’s Uintah Basin, which is home to over 9,000 active and producing oil and natural gas wells. Previous studies in oil and gas producing regions have often relied on intensive aircraft campaigns to estimate methane emissions. However, the high cost of airborne campaigns prevents their frequent undertaking, thus providing only daytime snapshots of emissions rather than more temporally-representative estimates over multiple days. Providing estimates of CH₄ emissions from oil and natural gas production regions across the United States is important to inform leakage rates …

The Slow Displacement Of Smallholder Farming Families: Land, Hunger, And Labor Migration In Nicaragua And Guatemala, Lindsey Carte, Birgit Schmook, Claudia Radel, Richard Johnson

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Smallholders worldwide continue to experience processes of displacement from their lands under neoliberal political-economic governance. This displacement is often experienced as “slow”, driven by decades of agricultural policies and land governance regimes that favor input-intensive agricultural and natural resource extraction and export projects at the expense of traditional agrarian practices, markets, and producers. Smallholders struggle to remain viable in the face of these forces, yet they often experience hunger. To persist on the land, often on small parcels, families supplement and finance farm production with family members engaging in labor migration, a form of displacement. Outcomes, however, are uneven and …

Outreach In Archaeology With Agent-Based Modeling: Part 3 Of 3, Stefani Crabtree, Kathryn Harris, Benjamin Davies, Iza Romanowska

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

A major challenge facing archaeologists is communicating our research to the public. Thankfully, new computational tools have enabled the testing and visualization of complex ideas in an easily packageable format. In this article we illustrate not only how agent-based modeling provides a platform for communicating complex ideas, but also how these game-like computer models can be explored and manipulated by members of the public therefore increasing their engagement in archaeological explanations. We suggest that these new digital tools serve as an excellent aid for education on the importance of archaeological sites and artifacts. To illustrate the above we walk the …

Combining Geographic Information Systems And Agent-Based Models In Archaeology: Part 2 Of 3, Benjamin Davies, Iza Romanowska, Kathryn Harris, Stefani Crabtree

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Archaeologists are using spatial data in increasingly sophisticated analyses and invoking more explicit considerations of space in their interpretations. Geographic information systems (GIS) have become standard technology for professional archaeologists in the collection and management of spatial data. Many calls have been made to develop and adapt digital geospatial technologies for interpretation and understanding past social dynamics, but this has been limited to some extent by the static nature of map-oriented GIS approaches. Here, we illustrate how coupling GIS with agent-based modeling (ABM) can assist with more dynamic explorations of past uses of space and geospatial phenomena.

Climatization-Negligent Attribution Of Great Salt Lake Desiccation: A Comment On Meng (2019), Michael L. Wine, Sarah E. Null, R. Justin Derose, Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

A recent article reviewed data on Great Salt Lake (Utah) and concluded falsely that climate changes, especially local warming and extreme precipitation events, are primarily responsible for lake elevation changes. Indeed climatically influenced variation of net inflows contribute to huge swings in the elevation of Great Salt Lake (GSL) and other endorheic lakes. Although droughts and wet cycles have caused lake elevation changes of over 4.5 m, they have not caused a significant long-term change in the GSL stage. This recent article also suggests that a 1.4 °C rise in air temperature and concomitant increase in the lake's evaporative loss …

Gas Production Kinetics And In Vitro Degradability Of Tannin-Containing Legumes, Alfalfa And Their Mixtures., Sebastian Lagrange, S. Lobón, Juan J. Villalba

Wildland Resources Student Research

The aim of this study was to determine in vitro ruminal degradability and gas production kinetics of sainfoin (Onobrichis viciifolia; SF), birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus; BFT), alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.; ALF) and their binary or trinary mixtures using the gas production technique. The proportions in the mixtures represented: (1) those selected by lambs in a free-choice experiment (70:30 and 50:35:15 ratios for binary and trinary combinations, respectively), or (2) equal proportions (50:50 or 33:33:33 ratios for binary or trinary mixtures, respectively). Organic matter digestibility was greater in ALF and BFT than in SF (0.791 and 0.796 vs …

Mapping Valley Bottom Confinement At The Network Scale, Gary R. O'Brien, Joseph Michael Wheaton, Kirstie Fryirs, William W. Macfarlane, Gary Brierley, Kelly Whitehead, Jordan T. Gilbert, Carol Volk

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

In this article, we demonstrate the application of a continuous confinement metric across entire river networks. Confinement is a useful metric for characterizing and discriminating valley setting. At the reach scale, valley bottom confinement is measured and quantified as the ratio of the length of channel confined on either bank by a confining margin divided by the reach length. The valley bottom is occupied by the contemporary floodplain and/or its channel(s); confining margins can be any landform or feature that makes up the valley bottom margin, such as bedrock hillslopes, terraces, fans, or anthropogenic features such as stopbanks or constructed …

Is Grassfed Meat And Dairy Better For Human And Environmental Health?, Frederick D. Provenza, Scott L. Kronberg, Pablo Gregorini

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

The health of livestock, humans, and environments is tied to plant diversity—and associated phytochemical richness—across landscapes. Health is enhanced when livestock forage on phytochemically rich landscapes, is reduced when livestock forage on simple mixture or monoculture pastures or consume high-grain rations in feedlots, and is greatly reduced for people who eat highly processed diets. Circumstantial evidence supports the hypothesis that phytochemical richness of herbivore diets enhances biochemical richness of meat and dairy, which is linked with human and environmental health. Among many roles they play in health, phytochemicals in herbivore diets protect meat and dairy from protein oxidation and lipid …

A Performance Comparison Of Machine Learning Algorithms For Arced Labyrinth Spillways, Fernando Salazar, Brian M. Crookston

Publications

Labyrinth weirs provide an economic option for flow control structures in a variety of applications, including as spillways at dams. The cycles of labyrinth weirs are typically placed in a linear configuration. However, numerous projects place labyrinth cycles along an arc to take advantage of reservoir conditions and dam alignment, and to reduce construction costs such as narrowing the spillway chute. Practitioners must optimize more than 10 geometric variables when developing a head–discharge relationship. This is typically done using the following tools: empirical relationships, numerical modeling, and physical modeling. This study applied a new tool, machine learning, to the analysis …

Public Perceptions Of The Health Risks Of Extreme Heat Across Us States, Counties, And Neighborhoods, Peter D. Howe, Jennifer R. Marlon, Xinran Wang, Anthony Leiserowitz

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Extreme heat is the leading weather-related cause of death in the United States. Many individuals, however, fail to perceive this risk, which will be exacerbated by global warming. Given that awareness of one’s physical and social vulnerability is a critical precursor to preparedness for extreme weather events, understanding Americans’ perceptions of heat risk and their geographic variability is essential for promoting adaptive behaviors during heat waves. Using a large original survey dataset of 9,217 respondents, we create and validate a model of Americans’ perceived risk to their health from extreme heat in all 50 US states, 3,142 counties, and 72,429 …

Park And Neighborhood Attributes Associated With Park Use: An Observational Study Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Keunhyun Park

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning Faculty Publications

As the world becomes more urbanized, neighborhood parks are becoming an increasingly important venue where people engage in physical and social activities. Using park-use data collected by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), the aim of this study is to account for park use in light of park attributes and neighborhood conditions. The role of the built environment near a park receives particular attention as it is understudied in the literature. A regression model shows that neighborhood park utilization is positively associated with park attributes (i.e., larger area, a playground, a creek/pond, quality maintenance, and organized activities) and neighborhood attributes (i.e., fewer …

Examination Of The Climate Factors That Reduced Wheat Yield In Northwest India During The 2000s, Avik Mukherjee, Shih-Yu (Simon) Wang, Parichart Promchote

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

In India, a significant reduction of wheat yield would cause a widespread impact on food security for 1.35 billion people. The two highest wheat producing states, Punjab and Haryana in northern India, experienced a prolonged period of anomalously low wheat yield during 2002–2010. The extent of climate variability and change in influencing this prolonged reduction in wheat yield was examined. Daily air temperature (T_max and T_ave) was used to calculate the number of days above optimum temperature and growing degree days (GDD) anomaly. Two drought indices, the standard precipitation and evapotranspiration index and the radiation-based precipitation index, …

Soil And Vegetation Survey Of Antelope Pasture, Curlew Grazing Allotment, Oneida County, Id, Merran Owen, Kari E. Veblen, Thomas A. Monaco, Janis Boettinger

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Antelope Pasture, located in the Black Pine Valley of Oneida County, Idaho, is a 1500-acre portion of the Curlew Grazing Allotment, managed by the Pocatello Field Office of the BLM (Figure 1). The pasture is heavily invaded with exotic annuals such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), halogeton (Halogeton glomeratus), and clasping pepperweed (Lepidium perfoliatum), and grazing is temporarily discontinued. Land-use history of the pasture includes livestock grazing, possible homesteading and cultivation of Agropyron cristatum (crested wheatgrass).

Prioritizing Stream Barrier Removal To Maximize Connected Aquatic Habitat And Minimize Water Scarcity, Maggi Kraft, David E. Rosenberg, Sarah E. Null

Watershed Sciences Student Research

Instream barriers, such as dams, culverts, and diversions, alter hydrologic processes and aquatic habitat. Removing uneconomical and aging instream barriers is increasingly used for river restoration. Historically, selection of barrier removal projects used score‐and‐rank techniques, ignoring cumulative change and the spatial structure of stream networks. Likewise, most water supply models prioritize either human water uses or aquatic habitat, failing to incorporate both human and environmental water use benefits. Here, a dual‐objective optimization model identifies barriers to remove that maximize connected aquatic habitat and minimize water scarcity. Aquatic habitat is measured using monthly average streamflow, temperature, channel gradient, and geomorphic condition …

Introductory R For Water Resources - Fall 2019 - University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, David Gorelick, Gregory Characklis

All ECSTATIC Materials

This is all course material for R for Researchers, a one-credit course taught at UNC Chapel Hill in Fall 2019 to introduce upperclassmen and graduate students to the R programming language and apply learned skills in basic water resources applications, as well as other (semi-related) topics of interest to students.

Lecture notes were distributed before (as a subset of full lecture notes) and after lectures, and lectures involved collaborative coding exercises with students in class without any powerpoint material. Course material here includes:

Syllabus: rough schedule and description of lectures

Lectures: pdf lecture notes with embedded code, including …

Unclogging The Pipeline: Advancement To Full Professor In Academic Stem, Helga Van Miegroet, Christy Glass, Ronda R. Callister, Kimberly Sullivan

Ecology Center Publications

Purpose: Women remain underrepresented in academic STEM, especially at the highest ranks. While much attention has focused on early-career attrition, mid-career advancement is still largely understudied and undocumented. This paper analyzes gender differences in advancement to full professor within academic STEM at a mid-size public doctoral university in the western US, before and after the NSF-ADVANCE Program (2003-2007).

Methodology: Using faculty demographics and promotion data between 2008 and 2014, combined with faculty responses to two waves of a climate survey, the magnitude and longevity of the impact of ADVANCE on mid-career faculty advancement across gender is evaluated.

Findings: This study …