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Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The Impact Of Land Use On Nitrate-N Movement And Storage In The Vadose Zone Of The Hastings’ Whpa, Craig Adams Apr 2018

The Impact Of Land Use On Nitrate-N Movement And Storage In The Vadose Zone Of The Hastings’ Whpa, Craig Adams

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Nebraska has one of the largest agricultural economies in the United States and relies heavily on irrigation and fertilizer application to maintain crop yields. Over-irrigation and continuous application of nitrogen (N) in many areas has led to accumulation of nitrate-N in soils and sediments throughout the state’s vadose zone. Because nitrate-N is both persistent and mobile, groundwater concentrations in many areas of Nebraska and other agriculturally intensive states are increasing. Nitrate-N contamination of public and private drinking water supplies that utilize groundwater are of particular concern. Vadose zone sampling is an important method for rapidly assessing the effect of changing …


A Framework For Tracing Social–Ecological Trajectories And Traps In Intensive Agricultural Landscapes, Daniel R. Uden, Craig R. Allen, Francisco Munoz-Arriola, Gengxin Ou, Nancy Shank Jan 2018

A Framework For Tracing Social–Ecological Trajectories And Traps In Intensive Agricultural Landscapes, Daniel R. Uden, Craig R. Allen, Francisco Munoz-Arriola, Gengxin Ou, Nancy Shank

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Charting trajectories toward sustainable agricultural development is an important goal at the food–energy–water–ecosystem services (FEWES) nexus of agricultural landscapes. Social–ecological adaptation and transformation are two broad strategies for adjusting and resetting the trajectories of productive FEWES nexuses toward sustainable futures. In some cases, financial incentives, technological innovations, and/or subsidies associated with the short-term optimization of a small number of resources create and strengthen unsustainable feedbacks between social and ecological entities at the FEWES nexus. These feedbacks form the basis of rigidity traps, which impede adaptation and transformation by locking FEWES nexuses into unsustainable trajectories characterized by control, stability, and efficiency, …