Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment Commons^™

Land-Use/Land-Cover Changes And Their Influence On The Ecosystem In Chengdu City, China During The Period Of 1992–2018, Xiaojuan Lin, Min Xu, Chunxiang Cao, Ramesh P. Singh, Wei Chen, Hongrun Ju

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Due to urban expansion, economic development, and rapid population growth, land use/land cover (LULC) is changing in major cities around the globe. Quantitative analysis of LULC change is important for studying the corresponding impact on the ecosystem service value (ESV) that helps in decision-making and ecosystem conservation. Based on LULC data retrieved from remote-sensing interpretation, we computed the changes of ESV associated with the LULC dynamics using the benefits transfer method and geographic information system (GIS) technologies during the period of 1992–2018 following self-modified coefficients which were corrected by net primary productivity (NPP). This improved approach aimed to ...

Shorescape-Level Factors Drive Distribution And Condition Of A Salt Marsh Facilitator (Geukensia Demissa), Robert E. Isdell, Donna Marie Bilkovic, Carl Hershner

VIMS Articles

Ribbed mussels (Geukensia demissa) are a highly abundant bivalve filter feeder throughout the salt marshes of the U.S. Atlantic Coast. These mussels form a mutualistic relationship with smooth cordgrass Spartina alterniflora wherein the grass provides habitat and shade to the mussels, and the mussels stabilize the sediment and fertilize the grass. Salt marshes are, however, rapidly changing and eroding as humans modify the coast, and the rate of sea level rise is accelerating. In order to understand how ribbed mussels may respond to their changing habitat, we collected mussel density and distribution data from 30 marshes covering the range ...

Preventing Extinction Of At-Risk Plant Species In A Complex World, Holly Lee Bernardo

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Earthճ current biodiversity crisis is now considered a true mass extinction event, with species level extinction rates well above background rates and population level extinction rates orders of magnitude more common that species extinctions. There are many threats driving this loss of biodiversity. How each threat impacts the viability of a species is highly context dependent, but all are anthropogenic in origin and so as the human population continues to increase, so too will the pressure of these threats on our natural systems. Ultimately, how much a threat decreases the viability of a species depends on how that threat influences ...

Increasing Health Threat To Greater Parts Of India Due To Crop Residue Burning, Sudipta Sarkar, Ramesh Singh, Akshansa Chauhan

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

"Rice crop residue burning during mid-October to November every year is becoming a serious health threat because of increased burning by farmers in the states of Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh in northern India. Crop residue burning started in the late 1980s with the start of mechanised harvesting in Punjab. Farmers found burning to be an economical way of cleaning crop stalk residues that are left over by mechanised harvesters. In doing so, farmers ignore the impact of this practice on health and air quality in the cities located in the Indo-Gangetic Plains. In the winter season, the severity ...

Estimating Watershed Residence Times In Artificially-Drained Landscapes And Relation To Nutrient Concentrations, Emma Beck, Lisa Welp, Alexandra L. Meyer

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Nutrient runoff from agricultural lands feeds harmful algae blooms that create a variety of problems in freshwater ecosystems. In order to reduce the effects of this nutrient runoff, Best Management Practices (BMPs) are being put in place in agricultural lands. Most of these BMPs focus on slowing down the flow of water through the watershed to give nutrient concentrations time to deplete before the water flows to the stream or river. However, the effectiveness of these BMPs are highly unknown and the process of monitoring nutrient runoff is often complex and costly. The data in this study consists of 7 ...

Sequence Stratigraphy Of The Andrill And-2a Drillcore, Antarctica: A Long-Term, Ice-Proximal Record Of Early To Mid-Miocene Climate, Sea-Level And Glacial Dynamism, Christopher R. Fielding, Greg H. Browne, Brad Field, F. Florindo, D. M. Harwood, L. A. Krissek, Richard Levy, K. Panter, Sandra Passchier, Stephen F. Pekar

Sandra Passchier

Present understanding of Antarctic climate change during the Early to Mid-Miocene, including major cycles of glacial expansion and contraction, relies in large part on stable isotope proxies from deep sea core drilling. Here, we summarize the lithostratigraphy of the ANDRILL Southern McMurdo Sound Project drillcore AND-2A. This core offers a hitherto unavailable ice-proximal stratigraphic archive from a high-accommodation continental margin setting, and provides clear evidence of repeated fluctuations in climate, ice expansion/contraction and attendant sea-level change over the period c. 20.2–14.2 Ma, with a more fragmentary record of Late Miocene and Pliocene time. The core is ...

Sedimentology And Stratigraphy Of The And-2a Core, Andrill Southern Mcmurdo Sound Project, Antarctica, Christopher R. Fielding, C. B. Atkins, K. N. Bassett, G. H. Browne, G. B. Dunbar, B. D. Field, Tracy D. Frank, L. A. Krissek, K. S. Panter, S. Passchier, S. F. Pekar, S. Sandroni, F. Talarico

Sandra Passchier

During the 2007 – 2008 austral spring season, the ANDRILL Southern McMurdo Sound Project recovered a core 1138 metres long (AND-2A) from a location in the southern McMurdo Sound near the Dailey Islands. This core contains a range of lithologies, including various types of terrigenous clastic diamictite, conglomerate and breccia, sandstone and mudrocks, volcanic lava, pyroclastic and reworked volcanic sedimentary rocks, and diatomite. The succession is divided into fourteen lithostratigraphic units (LSUs), two of which (LSUs 1 and 8) are further subdivided into three and four sub-units, respectively, based on changes in abundance of lithologies. Thirteen lithofacies are recognized, ranging from ...

Iceland: The Heat Of Change Empirical Study On Icelanders Perceptions And Observations Of Global Warming, Katalina Montalvo

Student Works

Iceland as a northern country glazed with snow and ice, beholding a diverse ecosystem. Temperature has a large impact and climate change has made its presence immediately felt. The increase in water temperature has brought new species to the land and seas of Iceland causing others to reduce in populations or having to move away to find more food or both. The research project reviews the effects of climate in Iceland, the damage the increase in temperature is causing to its fragile ecosystem, and Icelanders account of this change. Data was collected through interviews of native Icelanders, field observations, and ...

Ozone Pollution In Us National Parks Is Nearly The Same As In Large Cities, David Keiser, Gabriel E. Lade, Ivan Rudik

Economics Publications

Most Americans associate U.S. national parks with pristine environments that represent the very best of nature. In the 1916 law that established the National Park Service, Congress directed the new agency to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

Review Of Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards And Risk Reduction In The Modern World, Kira H. Hamman

Numeracy

Timothy H. Dixon. 2017. Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards and Risk Reduction in the Modern World. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press) 300 pp. ISBN 978-1108113663.

In Curbing Catastrophe, Timothy H. Dixon explores commonalities among natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and the meltdown at Fukushima. He identifies communication failure between scientists and policy makers as a major culprit in the devastation that results from such events and offers strategies for improving that communication. He includes optional in-depth scientific and quantitative examinations of the events and the resulting devastation, making the book appropriate for use in teaching ...

Aerosol And Meteorological Parameters Associated With The Intense Dust Event Of 15 April 2015 Over Beijing, China, Sheng Zheng, Ramesh P. Singh

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The northeastern parts of China, including Beijing city, the capital of China, were hit by an intense dust storm on 15 April 2015. The present paper discusses aerosol and meteorological parameters associated with this dust storm event. The back trajectory clearly shows that the dust originated from Inner Mongolia, the border of China, and Mongolia regions. Pronounced changes in aerosol and meteorological parameters along the dust track were observed. High aerosol optical depth (AOD) with low Ångström exponent (AE) are characteristics of coarse-mode dominated dust particles in the wavelength range 440–870 nm during the dusty day. During dust storm ...

Protecting Energy Infrastructure Against The Uncertainty Of Future Climate Change: A Real Options Approach, Thomas Prime, Karyn Morrissey, Jennifer M. Brown, Andrew J. Plater

Journal of Ocean and Coastal Economics

The coastal impacts of climate change, including flooding and erosion due to storms and sea-level rise, and the possible adaptation responses have been studied using very different approaches; from very detailed site-specific, process-based investigations and interventions to global macroeconomic assessments of coastal zone vulnerability. This paper presents a flood defense real option analysis methodology that values potential investment decisions made in the building and maintaining of flood defenses around electricity infrastructure at local spatial scales for a large region. Real option analysis embraces uncertainty in future climate conditions and flexibility in the management of investment projects to produce a more ...

Desalination Concentrate Disposal: Ecological Effects And Sustainable Solutions, Ryan Hanley

Global Honors Theses

Freshwater availability is a growing global concern, and desalination is often presented as the solution, but from this important technology comes issues of toxic waste. Ecosystems are delicate areas that contain species adapted to that specific location, and any chemical or physical changes can disrupt the fitness of species. The concentrate byproduct waste from desalination plants is toxic to species if the concentrate is not compatible with the receiving water body. A critical review of scientific articles, industry-leading books, conversations with industry experts, and information from the American Membrane Technology Association conference was used to analyze the current knowledge. Species ...

An Empirical Analysis Of Climatic, Geographic, And Cultural Determinants Of International Tourism, Ethan Straus

Honors Theses

Each year, billions of people visit different countries all around the world. For many of those countries, tourism is their primary industry, leading to millions of jobs and dollars in revenue. It is expected that by 2020 total International Tourism Receipts will reach 2 trillion US dollars annually. Currently, tourism employs an estimated 200 million people around the world. With the continued progression of climate change, the tourism industry is facing a newfound threat. Global temperatures and the seal level are both expected to rise significantly by the end of the century. Additionally, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has ...

Life Cycle Assessment Of Four Different Sweaters, Sarah Nolimal

DePaul Discoveries

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a methodological tool to describe the impacts of a product over its lifetime, from ‘cradle to grave.’ Despite increased employment of LCA, textile LCA studies are often private, outdated, not transparent, or lack accurate data. Further, we know of no LCA study specific to sweaters. This screening LCA combines published literature and data from OpenLCA databases (Ecoinvent 3.3 and GaBi Professional) to conduct a comparative LCA for four sweaters. To determine the composition of these sweaters, we massed and assessed the material composition of 117 sweaters in October 2015. Based on results, our study ...

Functions Of Ecosystems: Stream Metabolism As An Efficient And Effective Means To Gage The Health And Understand The Interworking Of Urban Streams In A Watershed Of Rock Island, Il, Ryan Johnson, Dr. Kevin Geedey

Celebration of Learning

Stream metabolism is a critical functional measure of stream health that integrates physical parameters like slope and discharge, with ecosystem functions like photosynthesis and respiration. Stream metabolism is widely studied; however, urban stream metabolism remains poorly understood. Stream metabolism was measured for five streams ranging from 1^st to 5^th orders from October 11^th to October 18^th 2017 and four streams ranging from 1^st to 4^th order from October 22^nd to 25^th 2017 located within an approximately 9.3 square kilometer watershed of Rock Island, IL that has an urban to suburban type ...

A Quantitative Analysis Of The Effects Of Urbanization, Mesophication And Prescribed Burns On Oak Woodlands In The Chicago Metropolitan Area, Chad Populorum

Celebration of Learning

Urban expansion has had devastating impacts on forest ecosystems, especially within the past century. Human attempts to dominate nature have diminished natural disturbance regimes, which have maintained the biodiversity and historic composition of these ecosystems. Fires have been a prominent force in maintaining the structure of oak, hickory and other heliophytic (sun loving and fire-adapted) forest systems. Human induced fire suppression has led to mesophication across North America. Mesophication is the transition from drier conditions with open canopies to wetter conditions with closed canopies. These new conditions decrease the survival rates of these important species and begin to favor mesophytic ...

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim ...

Supply Chain Sustainability: Understanding The Financial Impact, Matthew J. Guinn

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

The purpose of this study is to determine if there is a differential impact on the financial performance of a company between environmental and social events.

This study uses a randomization of publicly traded companies within specific, pre-determined SIC codes, which is a collection of 66 companies, split between manufacturing and retail, to get the most accurate representation.

This study utilizes multiple regression models via STATA to analyze data compiled from the Wharton Research Database Services (WRDS) utilizing the MSCI ESG KLD, and Bloomberg, to analyze the percent increase in stock price which is the overarching models independent variable. Then ...

Environmental Assessment Of Road Brining And Injection Wells For Disposal Of Oil And Gas Liquid Waste, Marissa Madia

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The dramatic increase in oil and gas drilling operations in Pennsylvania over the last decade has presented a challenge for their wastewater disposal (e.g., flowback, produced water). Currently, these fluids are treated in permitted brine treatment plants or exported out of state to deep injection well facilities. In Pennsylvania, road brining for dust control is permitted for conventional well brines, and permits for three injection wells for unconventional brines are pending. This study focused on water quality impacts due to road brining in Farmington Township (45 samples) and ground and surface water in Grant Township (41 samples) prior to ...