Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

From Forests To Fish: Mercury In Mountain Lake Food Webs Influenced By Factors At Multiple Scales, Ariana M. Chiapella, Collin A. Eagles-Smith, Angela Strecker

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Mountain lakes, while seemingly pristine, have been subjected to historical fish stocking practices and exposure to atmospherically deposited contaminants like mercury. Mercury bioaccumulation in these ecosystems varies widely due to strong environmental gradients, and there are complex, hierarchical factors that affect mercury transport and loading, methylmercury production, and food web biomagnification. We sought to assess how representative variables associated with watershed, lake, and food web-scale processes—specifically, catchment tree cover, lake benthic primary production, and fish diet, respectively—are associated with mercury concentrations in mountain lake fish. Mean fish mercury concentrations varied threefold between lakes, with nearshore tree cover and fish diet …

Mentoring Through Moss: Measuring Air Pollution With High School Youth In The Duwamish Valley, Nichole Vargas

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This report is a reflection on my participation in the Duwamish Valley Moss and Air Quality Study. In this internship experience, I am mentoring South Seattle high schoolers participating in the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps to collect, prepare, and analyze moss samples from trees in the Duwamish Valley. This project is in collaboration with Seattle community organizations such as the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, Dirt Corps, El Centro de La Raza, the South Park Area Redevelopment Committee; and Just Health Action. This is the second year that this study has been done. Last year, the study found hotspots of heavy …

Wandering Whatcom Falls, Hailey Schmidt

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Wandering Whatcom Falls is an interactive walking loop focused on connection and ecosystems. It takes place at Whatcom Falls and runs as a scavenger hunt with 7 different activities throughout the loop.

Environmental Impact Assessment: Nuyakuk River Small Scale Hydroelectric Project, Reed Squire, Amy Owen, Jessica Ngo-Ly, Tyler Sanderson

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

An environmental impact assessment of a proposed hydroelectric dam on the Nuyakuk River, AK. The proposed project was determined to have an impact of non-significance on the current environmental conditions.

Estimating The Denitrification Rate In Hood Canal Using Water Circulation, Spencer Johnson

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Hood Canal is a long, fjordal estuarine inlet. Because of a sill near its mouth, Hood Canal experiences regular low oxygen in its bottom water; recently, dissolved oxygen has been even lower than usual, leading to fish kills and other ecosystem damage. Anthropogenic nutrients, particularly nitrogen, may be the cause, so it is important to quantify the components of the nitrogen cycle, like denitrification. To my knowledge, there is only one estimate of denitrification from Hood Canal in the literature. This study sought to supplement that data with an independent estimate of denitrification using water circulation along with N2 concentrations …

Design Portfolio For The Tri-Cities Homestead 2.0: A Second Look At A Doe Solar Decathlon Net Zero Home Design, Talia Dreicer

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The redesign of a Solar Decathlon Design Challenge home attempts to correct inaccuracies and works to create a more energy efficient and cost-effective home design. Comparative analysis is conducted to identify design characteristics that created the greatest efficiency increases for the lowest cost. The comparative analysis results in three versions of a house design: a “worst” efficiency, “best” efficiency, and final home design. The final, reimagined design is significantly more efficient than the original design and the associated pricing and energy analysis are more accurate and robust than their counterparts in the original design.

Radioactive Future, Avery Garritano

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Prior to being decommissioned in 1987, the Hanford Site— a nuclear production complex located in Benton County, Washington— was the local for reprocessing a large portion of the nation’s supply of plutonium and uranium. Now, over 30 years later, 430 million curies of radioactive waste are kept on-site in surface facilities or underground tanks which are beginning to deteriorate, and nearly two thousand capsules of highly radioactive cesium and strontium sit in an aging facility. This waste includes cesium-135, a by-product of plutonium production which has a half-life of nearly two million years. While the proposed disposal method of burial …

Contamination In The Upper Columbia: Smelting And Its Impact To The Environment And Human Health, Brenden Murphy

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The objectives of this project include discussing the historical context of the smelting that occurred in Washington and Canada over the past century and how political events shaped the geographies of the region(s). Another objective will be to assess the level of environmental impact to the Upper Columbia region and the potential health effects to organisms and humans from the pollution released from the smelters. We will also explore the interaction of different agencies and stakeholders and the political processes of environmental cleanup to which parties are held responsible. Explaining the different advocacy and conservation groups already involved in the …

Lake Chelan Algae, Robin A. Matthews, Angela Strecker

Lake Chelan

Lake Chelan is the longest (81 km) and deepest (>400 m) natural lake in Washington, formed by glacial retreat at the end of the last Ice Age. Based on water quality data collected in the 1980s, it is considered an oligotrophic lake (Rector and Hallock 1990) and has some of the clearest waters in the state. The Stehekin River is the primary tributary to the lake. Lake Chelan is used extensively for recreation and fisheries (Schoen and Beauchamp 2010). Lake Chelan’s water level is maintained by a dam operated by Chelan County PUD. Water withdrawals include municipal, drinking water, …

Lake Whatcom Monitoring Project 2019/2020 Report, Angela Strecker, Michael Hilles, Joan Pickens, Robert Mitchell, Robin Matthews, Geoffrey Matthews

Lake Whatcom Annual Reports

This report describes the results from the 2019/2020 Lake Whatcom monitoring program conducted by the Institute for Watershed Studies at Western Washington University (www.wwu.edu/iws).

The major objectives in 2019/2020 were to continue long-term baseline water quality monitoring in Lake Whatcom and its major tributaries; collect storm runoff water quality data from representative streams in the watershed; and continue collection of hydrologic data from Austin and Smith Creeks.

Fatty Acid Stable Isotopes Add Clarity, But Also Complexity, To Tracing Energy Pathways In Aquatic Food Webs, Ariana M. Chiapella, Martin J. Kainz, Angela Strecker

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Tracing the flow of dietary energy sources, especially in systems with a high degree of omnivory, is an ongoing challenge in ecology. In aquatic systems, one of the persistent challenges is in differentiating between autochthonous and allochthonous energy sources to top consumers. Bulk carbon stable isotope values of aquatic and terrestrial prey often overlap, making it difficult to delineate dietary energy pathways in food webs with high allochthonous prey subsidies, such as in many northern temperate waterbodies. We conducted a feeding experiment to explore how fatty acid stable isotopes may overcome the challenge of partitioning autochthonous and allochthonous energy pathways …

Salish Sea Circulation Diagram, Aquila Flower

Salish Sea Maps

. Direction and relative magnitude (line width) of net water flow in the Salish Sea. Deep water flows represent primarily marine waters entering the Salish Sea from the Pacific Ocean. Intermediate depth and surface flows represent a mix of marine waters and freshwater from rivers in the Salish Sea. Actual circulation patterns are highly complex and seasonally variable, this diagram shows a simplified model of net exchanges. Labels indicate percent of the total water exchange that moves in and out of the Salish Sea through the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the south and through the northern boundary of …

Salish Sea Stream Discharge Diagram, Aquila Flower

Salish Sea Maps

Major rivers of the Salish Sea and average stream discharge (cubic meters per second). Data are based on annual averages from 1981 to 2010.

Figure 2.3 in the

Salish Sea Bioregion Reference Map, Aquila Flower

Salish Sea Maps

Map of the Salish Sea, major waterways, and surrounding watersheds, which when combined form a distinct transboundary bioregion.

Figure 1.1 in the

Salish Sea Population Density, Aquila Flower

Salish Sea Maps

Human population density in the Salish Sea. People per square kilometer mapped for each census block. Data from 2010 in the US and 2011 in Canada.

Figure 3.1 in the

Salish Sea Jurisdictions, Aquila Flower

Salish Sea Maps

US Counties, Canadian Regional Districts, and major cities in the Salish Sea Bioregion.

Figure 1.3 in the

Marine Basins, Aquila Flower

Salish Sea Maps

Subbasins and bathymetry of the Salish Sea. Basins are delineated based on water depth and circulation. Shallower areas associated with underwater sills separate many of the basins, creating distinct oceanography.

Figure 2.5 in the

Salish Sea Land Cover, Aquila Flower

Salish Sea Maps

Land cover in the Salish Sea bioregion. Land cover categories modeled using 30x30 meter resolution gridded satellite data from 2015.

Figure 3.2 in the

Salish Sea And Western North America Watersheds Contextual Landscape, Aquila Flower

Salish Sea Maps

No abstract provided.

City Of Austin Nature And Science Internship, Finnick Hampton

College of the Environment Internship Reports

Nestled between the western edge of Zilker Park and the beginning of Zilker Nature Preserve, sits the Austin Nature & Science Center (ANSC) where I worked as a Wildlife Keeper from the months of June to September 2021. Since the 1960s, the Nature Center has provided nature education through hands-on activities, exhibits and programs. Their goal has been to foster curiosity and appreciation for the natural world, especially the native flora and fauna that live in our very own backyards. The site accomplishes this by focusing on engagement. Guests are encouraged to touch, examine, and interact with various natural objects, …

The Origin, Development, Application, Lessons Learned, And Future Regarding The Bayesian Network Relative Risk Model For Ecological Risk Assessment, Wayne Landis

Institute of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry Publications

In 2012, a regional risk assessment was published that applied Bayesian networks (BN) to the structure of the relative risk model. The original structure of the relative risk model (RRM) was published in the late 1990s and developed during the next decade. The RRM coupled with a Monte Carlo analysis was applied to calculating risk to a number of sites and a variety of questions. The sites included watersheds, terrestrial systems, and marine environments and included stressors such as nonindigenous species, effluents, pesticides, nutrients, and management options. However, it became apparent that there were limits to the original approach. In …

Running Whidbey: The Physiological And Psychological Impacts Of A 60 Mile Ultramarathon, Bree Daigneault

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

No abstract provided.