Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Magnetic Biomonitoring Of Polluted Trees In South Seattle, Lauren Templeton

College of the Environment Graduate and Undergraduate Publications

Particulate matter (PM) air pollution is a major public health issue across the United States. PM air pollution is sourced from a variety of industrial, transportation, and fuel combustion processes (EPA 2016). Through increases in regulation standards, PM air pollution has been gradually decreasing over the past twenty years (Appendix 1.1). Between 1990 and 2011 air toxins and toxicants in the United States decreased by over 60% according to the EPA (2016). Unhealthy air quality days, caused by ozone and particulate matter 2.5 microns (PM_2.5), also decreased from 2,076 days in 2000 to 675 days in 2014 (EPA …

Teaching Environmental/Stem College Access Curriculum In Two Western Washington Title I Elementary Schools, Wendelin Dunlap

WWU Graduate School Collection

This study attempts to answer the question: What are the best methods for designing Environmental/STEM College Access Curriculum for Title I Classrooms? Participants were 98 5^th-grade classes at two Title I schools. The treatment was 15 hours of College Access Curriculum: 7 hours occurred at the North Cascades Institute’s Mountain School, eight hours in the students’ regular classrooms. The curriculum was taught by Western Washington University students trained as coaches. Data were gathered from elementary students (pre- and post-program surveys, retrospective questionnaire and open-ended question), coaches (essays and teacher evaluations) and teachers (feedback form).

Data gathered from elementary …

Wisdom Of The Ancient Forests: Stories In The Living Thread, Nick Sky

WWU Graduate School Collection

In this project I am using my life experiences as an evolving environmental educator to create a theoretical and content base for an educational approach that combines holistic natural history education and complexity education. This approach is necessarily transdisciplinary. This educational approach is designed to be implemented using methods that are field based, inquiry based, narrative based, and learning communities based. The implementation of this educational approach is designed to take place in the ancient forests of the Cascadia/PNW region of North America.

Key Words: Complexity, Experiential education, Ancient forest, Resilience, Holistic, Emotion, Natural history, Perception, Time, Values

Spatial Variability Of Snow Chemistry Of High Altitude Glaciers In The Peruvian Andes, Lindsay K. Wallis

WWU Graduate School Collection

Atmospheric contaminants become incorporated in glaciers through both wet and dry deposition. Some of this particulate matter can act as a source of contamination to glacial streams, leading to a concern for the chemical contamination to cause downstream toxicity to aquatic organisms and toxicity to people ingesting that water. Other portions of this particulate matter, including black carbon, can decrease the amount of light reflected off the snow, thereby contributing to increased rates of glacial melting. These issues are especially of concern to tropical glaciers, which are receding rapidly and are relied on heavily to provide drinking water in the …

Black Cottonwood (Populus Trichocarpa) Nutrition In The Dewatered Lake Aldwell Reservoir On The Elwha River, Washington, Ezra H. Citron

WWU Graduate School Collection

Following dam removal on the Elwha River, WA, the ability of plants to access and uptake nutrients may be an important factor in ecosystem recovery. Foliage was collected in November 2014 from naturally-established black cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) saplings growing in the dewatered Lake Aldwell reservoir sediments and adjacent forest. Analysis of variance was used to assess variability among reservoir sediment textures and the adjacent forest with respect to foliar macronutrient (N, P, K, Ca, Mg) and micronutrient (Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, Ni) concentrations. Within the reservoir, foliar P, K, and Mn were higher, and foliar Ca was lower, …

Water Quality And Algal Diversity Of Ten Lakes Along The Mountain Loop Highway, Washington, Katy Pfannenstein

WWU Graduate School Collection

Water quality parameters, watershed characteristics and algal diversity and abundance were compared in ten lakes along the Mountain Loop Highway in Washington State. Water samples were collected in July and August 2014 and analyzed for temperature, dissolved oxygen, alkalinity, conductivity, pH, turbidity, chlorophyll, total phosphorous, total nitrogen, soluble reactive phosphorous, nitrate + nitrite, silica, chloride, sulfate, total organic carbon, dissolved organic carbon and total and dissolved metals (aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barium, beryllium, cadmium, calcium, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron, lead, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, potassium, selenium, silver, sodium, thallium, thorium, uranium, vanadium and zinc). The watershed characteristics measured were elevation, lake …

Creating A Community Hub For Natural History Education In The Methow Valley And Beyond, Mary Kiesau

WWU Graduate School Collection

I created and integrated three different methods of natural history education for my final project of my Masters of Education in Environmental Education in order to further establish myself as a professional educator, communicator and naturalist, and to create ways for people who live in or have an affinity for the Methow Valley to be more observant, informed and connected with the natural world. Building on previous graduate coursework as well as professional work as an environmental educator and photographer, I created a new natural history education website and Facebook page with a wide variety of online resources, while also …

Microzooplankton Grazing, Growth And Gross Growth Efficiency Are Affected By Pco2 Induced Changes In Phytoplankton Biology, Kelly Still

WWU Graduate School Collection

Accumulating evidence shows that ocean acidification (OA) alters surface ocean chemistry and, in turn, affects aspects of phytoplankton biology. However, very little research has been done to determine if OA-induced changes to phytoplankton morphology, physiology and biochemistry may indirectly affect microzooplankton, the primary consumers of phytoplankton. This is one of the first studies to explore how OA may indirectly affect microzooplankton ingestion, population growth and gross growth efficiency (GGE). I hypothesized 1) that the physiology, biochemistry and morphology of the phytoplankton Rhodomonas sp. would be directly affected by elevated pCO₂ and 2) that pCO₂-induced changes in Rhodomonas …

Fine-Scale Topoclimate Modeling And Climatic Treeline Prediction Of Great Basin Bristlecone Pine (Pinus Longaeva) In The American Southwest, Jamis M. Bruening

WWU Graduate School Collection

Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) and foxtail pine (Pinus balfouriana) are valuable paleoclimate resources due to the climatic sensitivity of their annually-resolved rings. Recent treeline research has shown that growing season temperatures limit tree growth at and just below the upper treeline. In the Great Basin, the presence of precisely dated remnant wood above modern treeline shows that this ecotone shifts at centennial timescales tracking long-term changes in climate; in some areas during the Holocene climatic optimum treeline was 100 meters higher than at present. Such phenomena has motivated this analysis; regional treeline position models built exclusively from climate …

Cluster Analysis As A Means Of Examining Topographically-Mediated Bristlecone Pine (Pinus Longaeva) Growth In The American Southwest, Tyler J. Tran

WWU Graduate School Collection

Tree-ring analysis can provide information about the surrounding environment of trees, as ring widths often reflect the variability of the factors that limit their growth. Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva D. K. Bailey) provides crucial tree-ring data to understand paleoclimate, but the growth signals can be difficult to interpret. The bristle- cone record could present a potentially confounding narrative because of its mixed growth signals; in many cases, not all trees at one site are limited by the same environmental variable. Trees that are sensitive to patterns in temperature tend to grow in the alpine upper treeline ecotone, and …

Emergent Contaminants And Effects On Field-Exposed Chinook Salmon And Cutthroat Trout In The Stillaguamish Watershed, Wa., Jody M. Pope

WWU Graduate School Collection

Contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are chemical compounds that have no regulatory standards, are recently discovered in the natural environment due to improved analytical methods, and can potentially cause adverse effects to aquatic life. More specifically, CECs affecting fish communities include endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which can produce developmental abnormalities or alter the epigenome, potentially affecting survival and reproductive success. This study assessed CEC occurrence as well as toxicological and epigenetic responses of caged, hatchery-reared Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and field-collected, wild, resident cutthroat trout (O. clarkii) at sites representing different land uses in the Stillaguamish River watershed, …

A Dynamic Bayesian Approach For Integrating Climate Change Into A Multi-Stressor Ecological Risk Assessment For The Mercury Contaminated South River And Upper Shenandoah River, Lara Gaasland-Tatro

WWU Graduate School Collection

Anthropogenic climate change is causing the earth to warm, and the consequences of warming will be on a continuum for species from extinction to thriving and expanding to larger ranges. There will be winners with climate change and there will be losers, and identifying species that management would benefit early makes management more effective. Environmental factors and contaminants complicate species responses to climate change. Sites with legacy contaminants, like mercury, that stay in the environment for extended periods will need to be managed for the mixed effects of climate change, environmental stressors and contaminants. In this study I use an …

Predicting Risk To Estuary Water Quality And Patterns Of Benthic Environmental Dna In Queensland, Australia Using Bayesian Networks, Scarlett E. Graham

WWU Graduate School Collection

Predictive modeling can inform natural resource management by demonstrating stressor-response pathways and quantifying the effects on selected endpoints. This study develops a risk assessment model using the Bayesian network-relative risk model (BN-RRM) approach, and, for the first time, incorporates eukaryote environmental DNA data as a measure of benthic community structure into an ecological risk assessment context. Environmental DNA sampling is a relatively new technique for biodiversity measurements that involves extracting DNA from environmental samples, sequencing a region of the 18s rDNA gene, and matching the sequences to organisms. Using a network of probability distributions, the BN-RRM model predicts risk to …

The Effect Of High-Intensity Visible Light On The Bloom Niches Of The Phototrophic Dinoflagellates Alexandrium Fundyense And Heterocapsa Rotundata, Elizabeth C. (Elizabeth Colleen) Cooney

WWU Graduate School Collection

Photosynthetic bloom-forming dinoflagellates heavily influence coastal ecosystems worldwide. Many of these protist algae bloom in surface waters during summer when light intensities are highest. Despite its likely role as a top-down regulator of bloom formation, the consequences of high-intensity sunlight exposure on cells are not well understood. This study sought to reveal the effect of high light exposure on cells, keeping in mind the potential consequences for bloom-formation. The suite of conditions under which a species is best adapted to bloom is referred to here as its “bloom niche”. To investigate, I measured physiological changes deemed relevant to bloom health …

Seagrasses (Zostera Marina) And (Zostera Japonica) Display A Differential Photosynthetic Response To Tco2: Implications For Acidification Mitigation, Cale A. Miller

WWU Graduate School Collection

Excess atmospheric CO₂ is being absorbed at an unprecedented rate by the global and coastal oceans, shifting the baseline pCO₂ and altering seawater carbonate chemistry in a process known as ocean acidification (OA). Recent attention has been given to near-shore vegetated habitats, such as seagrass beds, which may have the potential to mitigate the effects of acidification on vulnerable calcifying organisms via photosynthesis. Seagrasses are capable of raising seawater pH and calcium carbonate saturation state during times of high photosynthetic activity. To better understand the photosynthetic potential of seagrass OA mitigation, we exposed Pacific Northwest populations of …

Effects Of Zostera Marina Roots And Leaf Detritus On The Concentration And Distribution Of Pore-Water Sulfide In Marine Sediments, Alexandra G. (Alexandra Garcia) Simpson

WWU Graduate School Collection

Sulfide toxicity is implicated in seagrass declines worldwide. Studies examining the relationship between seagrass presence and sulfide concentrations have yielded conflicting results. Interpretation of the seagrass-sulfide relationship is complicated due to the opposing effects of the root system which can increase sulfide oxidation and the burial of organic matter from the plant itself which can increase sulfide production. To quantify the impact of eelgrass leaf detritus and the Zostera marina rhizosphere on pore-water sulfide concentrations, field samples of pore-water sulfide were collected in areas with and without eelgrass. To decouple the effects of live versus dead eelgrass tissue, laboratory studies …