Natural Resources and Conservation Commons^™

Potential Contamination Risk In Tennessee Aquifers From Oil And Gas Drilling, Emma Reed

University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects

No abstract provided.

The Future Of Recreational Fisheries: Advances In Science, Monitoring, Management, And Practice, Jacob W. Brownscombe, Kieran Hyder, Warren Potts, Kyle L. Wilson, Kevin L. Pope, Andy J. Danylchuk, Steven J. Cooke, Adrian Clarke, Robert Arlinghaus, John R. Post

Nebraska Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Research Unit -- Staff Publications

Recreational fisheries (RF) are complex social-ecological systems that play an important role in aquatic environments while generating significant social and economic benefits around the world. The nature of RF is diverse and rapidly evolving, including the participants, their priorities and behaviors, and the related ecological impacts and social and economic benefits. RF can lead to negative ecological impacts, particularly through overexploitation of fish populations and spread of non-native species and genotypes through stocking. Hence, careful management and monitoring of RF is essential to sustain these ecologically and socioeconomically important resources. This special issue on recreational fisheries contains diverse research, syntheses ...

Call For Abstracts - Resrb 2019, July 8-9, Wrocław, Poland, Wojciech M. Budzianowski

Wojciech Budzianowski

No abstract provided.

Jefferson Currents: Fall Volume 17, Issue 2, 2018

Jefferson Currents: The Energy Conservation Newsletter

Jefferson Currents: Fall Volume 17, Issue 2, 2018

Jefferson Currents: Spring Volume 17, Issue 1, 2018

Jefferson Currents: The Energy Conservation Newsletter

Jefferson Currents: Spring Volume 17, Issue 1, 2018

Evaluation Of A Sequential Pond System For Detention And Treatment Of Runoff At Skypark, Santa's Village, Elizabeth Caporuscio

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Understanding the extent to which human activities impact surface water resources has become increasingly important as both human population growth and related landscape changes impact water quality and quantity across varying geographical scales. Skypark, Santa’s Village is a 233.76-acre tourism-based outdoor recreation area located in Skyforest, California residing within the San Bernardino National Forest. The park is situated at Hooks Creek, the headwaters of the Mojave River Watershed, and is characterized by a diverse landscape that includes forest cover and human development, including impervious surfaces, a restored meadow, and recreational trails. In 2016, Hencks Meadow was considered degraded ...

Landscape Structure And Dynamics Of Recreational Fisheries, Christine N. Ruskamp

Dissertations & Theses in Natural Resources

Angler populations and the waterbodies they use are patchily distributed, creating putatively complex user-resource dynamics on the landscape. Spatially and temporally dynamic relationships between anglers and waterbodies can be difficult to track, understand, and manage. We often focus our efforts on the angler (directly or indirectly) with far less attention devoted to understanding the spatial structure and dynamics of fisheries on the landscape. Waterbodies serve as dynamic attractors on the landscape, shaping landscape patterns in angler participation. We surmise that by understanding the spatial structure and dynamics of recreational fisheries we can gain tremendous insight to cross-scale patterns that shape ...

Spatial And Temporal Structure Of A Canid Community In Nebraska, Lucia Corral Hurtado

Dissertations & Theses in Natural Resources

Understanding patterns of space-use by individuals, their distribution, and how they coexist with ecologically similar species is crucial to address various issues in ecology, evolution, conservation biology, and wildlife management. However, the study of such patterns challenging because the relationship among species and their environment is shaped by multiple ecological processes, many of which are acting at different scales, often in a hierarchical manner. In the Canidae family, for instance, where interference competition appears critical, larger species such as coyotes (Canis latrans), can often affect smaller species, such as red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and swift fox (Vulpes velox), by killing ...

Managing For Vegetation Heterogeneity On Rangelands: An Exploration Of Rancher Attitudes, Stephanie Marie Kennedy

Dissertations & Theses in Natural Resources

Grasslands provide food, fiber, and numerous ecosystem services to human populations as well as habitat for wildlife. They are also some of the most endangered ecosystems in the world because of their productive soils and open topography. This problem is exacerbated by the accelerating conversion of grassland to cropland and encroaching trees and shrubs. The quality of remaining grasslands will be of increasing importance because of the biodiversity and vital ecosystem services they provide. Heterogeneity is a term specific to rangeland science that is illustrative of grassland health. Grassland species require very specific and differing habitats and without the variation ...

Cost Benefit Analysis Of Led Vs Florescent Lighting, Kurtis Clark, Phillip Humphrey

Student Research

Over the last few years, the state of Oklahoma has been looking at ways to reduce expenses to address concerns about a budget deficit. There have been efforts made to reduce expenses due to the use of energy. It has been said, when the lights are on, work is getting done. Running lights is therefore the cost of doing business. Our research examines the question, “is there a way to provide better lighting while operating at a lower cost.” This research examines the current lighting at Southwestern State University, primarily fluorescent lighting (FL), and a cost benefit analysis of switching ...

Conservation Decision Support System Design For West Indian Manatee Habitat Suitability And Protection, Ashleigh Nicole Wilson, Jeffery Lee Robertson

Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference (GURC)

Title: Conservation Decision Support System Design for West Indian Manatee Habitat Suitability and Protection.

Authors: Ashleigh Wilson, Jeffery Robertson, Sudhanshu Panda

Abstract

Manatees along Florida’s western coastline are being severely affected by major hazards such as watercraft collisions, red tide events, seagrass depletion, and cold stress. Conservation effort by public and government authorities is necessary to safeguard its population from the consequence of latest climate change impact and other human-induced hazards. Thus, the objective of this study is to develop an automated geospatial model analyzing all relevant features responsible for the West Indian Manatee habitat and to suggest proper ...

Groundwater Contamination At Coal Ash Deposit Sites In Kentucky, Brandon Rose

Scholars Week

No abstract provided.

Groundwater Recharge Response To Reduced Irrigation Pumping In Western Nebraska, Justin Philip Gibson

Dissertations & Theses in Natural Resources

Given current and continued investment in irrigation scheduling technologies, a need exists to better estimate the longevity and magnitude of water savings at watershed level to avoid the paradox of irrigation efficiency. This paradox occurs within a watershed as not all irrigation inefficiencies lead to the system losing water. For example, irrigation pumping rates in excess of crop water demand may lead to enhanced groundwater recharge or surface runoff that migrates to a stream. Thus, increases in efficiency may not lead to similar magnitudes of water savings. I hypothesize that water savings longevities are short given previous work demonstrating rapid ...

Examining Patterns In Nest Predation Using Artificial Nests, Victoria L. Simonsen

Dissertations & Theses in Natural Resources

The use of artificial nests to study the predation of avian nests has faced disregard by ecologists due to inconsistencies found between the survival rates of real and artificial nests across studies and reviews. The negative perception of artificial nests providing an inconsistent assessment of survival has thus fostered the perception that artificial nests are a secondary option to be used to overcome logistical hurdles associated with achieving sufficient sample sizes in systems where study species are rare or elusive, or as merely a preliminary method to study predation across gradients. We argue that the greatest mistake ecologists have made ...

Spatial Analysis Of Borrow Pits Along The Platte River In South-Central Nebraska, Usa, In 1957 And 2016, Nicole M. Pauley, Mary J. Harner, Emma M. Brinley Buckley, Paul R. Burger, Keith Geluso

Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences and Affiliated Societies

The Central Platte River Valley (CPRV) of Nebraska provides critical habitat for wildlife, while serving agricultural, indus­trial, and other human uses. Mining of sand and gravel from the floodplain of the Platte River has supported construction of roads and other uses, and this extraction has created many borrow-pit ponds, lakes, and other small bodies of standing water (hereafter borrow-pits), further transforming riparian and prairie habitats. The objective of this study was to compare the abundance, size, and distribution of borrow pits before construction of Interstate 80 (1957) and at present (2016) from Lexington to Chapman, Nebraska, a length of ...

Indirect Greenhouse Gas Dynamics In Karst Groundwater Systems Under Agricultural Land Use, Stacy Wayne Antle

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are a major global environmental concern, because their concentrations have continuously increased over the past few centuries, due to global population growth, fossil fuel dependency, and the Industrial Revolution. Since these gases are naturally occurring phenomena, they will never be completely eliminated. Efforts to reduce them span numerous scientific attempts, with minimal improvements in reducing their atmospheric concentrations. In agricultural land practices, greenhouse gases are common byproducts that affect the atmosphere and, potentially, the groundwater where livestock and fertilizers are key contributors. Little is known about the fate of such greenhouse gases in dissolved form, known as ...

Motivations, Specializations, Identities, And Constraints Associated With Hunting In Nebraska, Alisha Grams

Dissertations & Theses in Natural Resources

This research herein examines the statewide motivations, specializations, identities, and constraints of Nebraska resident hunters. An online survey was conducted in the fall of 2017 asking respondents about their motivations, skills, demographics, and constraints to personal hunting experiences to determine what factors affect hunters. We used factor analysis to examine the effect of motivations, specializations, and constraints to see which factors influence participation. By understanding multiple attributes of our hunters, we gain further insight into participation trends and recreationists needs and expectations. Results suggested that our biggest constraint to overcome is land access, while most people are motivated to hunt ...

Occupancy And Habitat Use By Six Species Of Forest Ungulates On Tiwai Island, Sierra Leone, Kathryn R. Mccollum, Emily Belinfante, April L. Conway, John P. Carroll

Papers in Natural Resources

Forest ungulates in West Africa are common bushmeat species and are subject to habitat degradation through deforestation. Based on historical data, there are possibly 12 species of forest Bovidae and Tragulidae found in eastern Sierra Leone. We used camera trapping to assess occupancy by forest ungulates on and around a small protected area, Tiwai Island, Sierra Leone. We then assessed habitat over two field seasons during 2008–2011 for those species where we had sufficient numbers of detections. We detected 6 of 12 potential species and obtained enough data to further assess the habitat of two species. Species detected included ...

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 ...

Testing The Utility Of Dna Barcodes And A Preliminary Phylogenetic Framework For Chinese Freshwater Mussels (Bivalvia: Unionidae) From The Middle And Lower Yangtze River, Rui-Wen Wu, Yi-Tong Liu, Sa Wang, Xiong-Jun Liu, David T. Zanatta, Kevin J. Roe, Xue-Lin Song, Chang-Ting An, Xiao-Ping Wu

Natural Resource Ecology and Management Publications

The middle and lower portions of the Yangtze River basin is the most species-rich region for freshwater mussels in Asia. The management and conservation of the taxa in this region has been greatly hampered by the lack of a well-developed phylogeny and species-level taxonomic framework. In this study, we tested the utility of two mitochondrial genes commonly used as DNA barcodes: the first subunit of the cytochrome oxidase c gene (COI) and the first subunit of the NADH dehydrogenase gene (ND1) for 34 putative species representing 15 genera, and also generated phylogenetic hypotheses for Chinese unionids based on the combined ...