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Cornus Controversa (Giant Dogwood) Id #904, Rebecca Dopp

BIO 140 Arboretum Project

Location: Near Main Entrance to O’Hare and Spiritual Garden

Height (m): unknown

Diameter at Breast Height (cm): 10cm

Canopy Radius (m): 15m

Condition: good

Age Class: Mature

Water Quality Assessment Of The Lower Cache And The Bayou Deview Rivers, Arkansas: An Assessment Of Nutrients, Sediment, Lead, And Acute Toxicity Of Acephate And Thiamethoxam, Carlos Alberto Rosado-Berrios

Student Theses and Dissertations

The Cache River Watershed (CRW) is located in northeast Arkansas and flows through the Delta Ecoregion. The CRW has been modified for agricultural use, especially in the upper section where it was channelized decades ago. Its designated uses by Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) are for fish and wildlife propagation, primary and secondary recreation, and as a water source for domestic, agricultural and industrial supply. Unfortunately, the standards for these designated uses are not met due to the presence of toxic metals, elevated chloride levels, and dissolved solids. Consequently, the CRW is cited on the 303d list of the …

Sustainable Agriculture: Integration Of Aquaponics At Punta Leona Hotel And Club In Costa Rica, Cailin Sierra Dyer, Paris Riley Smith

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Sustainable agriculture is becoming an increasingly important method of food production. As human populations continue to grow, attendant food demand has been increasingly met via agribusiness, including monoculture crop production and factory farming. As is well documented, the rise of agribusiness has led to resource degradation and declining stocks on which “sustainable agriculture” relies. This paper describes a local attempt to re-establish “sustainable agriculture” through the development of an aquaculture system that mimics a naturally occurring cycle that integrates fish and plants. The system was constructed over a three-week period in Punta Leona, Costa Rica. First, the ground was cleared …

The Firece Green Fire: Vol. 8 Issue 24, Wofford College Environmental Studies Program

The Fierce Green Fire

No abstract provided.

Woodland Caribou Habitat Selection Patterns In Relation To Predation Risk And Forage Abundance Depend On Reproductive State, Rebecca Viejou, Tal Avgar, Glen S. Brown, Brent R. Patterson, Doug E. B. Reid, Arthur R. Rodgers, Jennifer Shuter, Ian D. Thompson, John M. Fryxell

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

The ideal free distribution assumes that animals select habitats that are beneficial to their fitness. When the needs of dependent offspring differ from those of the parent, ideal habitat selection patterns could vary with the presence or absence of offspring. We test whether habitat selection depends on reproductive state due to top‐down or bottom‐up influences on the fitness of woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), a threatened, wide‐ranging herbivore. We combined established methods of fitting resource and step selection functions derived from locations of collared animals in Ontario with newer techniques, including identifying calf status from video collar footage and seasonal …

Fagus Sylvatica (European Beech), Id: 1134, Olivia G. Thayer

BIO 140 Arboretum Project

Location: Wakehurst, near labyrinth

A Socioeconomic Valuation Of Urban Wetland Ecosystems And Policy Recommendation For College Lake, Michael Dunmyer

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Cityscapes in the United States are often viewed dichotomously in regards to natural environments. Preserved sites can be seen as an obstacle to urban development, and the concept of a functioning ecosystem within city limits is fictitious to many; we assume the two cannot coexist. Lynchburg, Virginia’s College Lake offers a unique case study for how urban ecosystems can not only subsist within cities but provide pivotal functions for them as well. With the potential for a dam-breaching storm event increasing in possibility with each passing year, concerns regarding the structural integrity of the College Lake dam in Lynchburg, Virginia …

Cyanobacteria Reduce Quagga Mussel (Dreissena Rostriformis Bugensis) Spawning And Fertilization Success, Anna G. Boegehold, Nicholas S. Johnson, Jeffrey L. Ram, Donna R. Kashian

Environmental Science and Geology Faculty Research Publications

Quagga mussels (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis) are highly fecund broadcast spawners invasive to freshwaters of North America and western Europe. We hypothesized that environmental cues from phytoplankton can trigger gamete release in quagga mussels. Nutritious algae may stimulate dreissenid spawning, but less palatable food, such as bloom-forming cyanobacteria, could be a hindrance. The objective of our study was to test whether exposure to cyanobacteria can inhibit quagga mussel spawning and fertilization. We assessed spawning in the presence of serotonin, a known spawning inducer, where adult quagga mussels placed in individual vials were exposed to 13 cyanobacteria cultures and purified algal toxin …

The Combined Effects Of Soil Fertility And Soil Amendments On The Growth And Mycorrhizal Associations Of American Ginseng (Panax Quinquefolius), Emily Ann Murray

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are fungi that form symbiotic associations with 70-90% of plant families. They are known to allow for the extension of the root system as well as an increase in plant size by assisting with the uptake of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. The role that AMF play in plant health and success has led to the development of commercial inoculum, which is used in agricultural settings. However, soil fertility, and soil amendments are known to affect AMF and plant associations. This study intends to look at how cultivated American Ginseng seedlings are affected by commercial …

Impacts Of Educational Programming At Dolphins Plus On Visitor Knowledge, Attitude And Behavior, Carley Rice

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Zoos, aquariums, and similar institutions have been transitioning for many years from venues of entertainment to institutions of informal environmental education. This transition has led to these institutions claiming missions of conservation and education. The conservation education impacts of zoos and aquariums are not well understood. The literature is limited and at times inconclusive. Claims of conservation and education should be formally evaluated through survey research projects to determine validity. These types of studies will shed light on these institutions and aid in improving educational programs to best benefit conservation of wildlife, habitats and the environment. The purpose of this …

Seabird Distribution And Oil & Gas Potential Along The Northern Sea Route, Russia: An Arctic Marine Conservation Case Study, Meghan Kelly

Sustainability and Social Justice

Seabirds are indicator species for the marine environment. Their populations are simultaneously affected by access to food resources and anthropogenic pressures including direct disturbance and habitat degradation associated with industrial development (Parsons et al. 2007). Therefore, using seabird distribution as a policy-relevant indicator for the Arctic marine environment supports an ecosystem based management approach aimed at protecting sensitive habitats from increased offshore oil and gas development.

This research identifies seabird habitat in the Russian Arctic utilizing in situ seabird observations from the Northern Sea Route to create a species distribution model. The spatial location of these areas will be compared …

Analysis Of Surface Soil Lead Contamination In Urban Neighborhoods Of Davenport, Ia, Joseph Teresi

Geology: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Davenport, IA, is a typical Midwestern city with a population of ~102,600 residents and is characterized by aging infrastructure and housing stock. Consequently, alarmingly high rates of child lead poisoning—as a result of deteriorating lead paint—constitute a major public health concern in some urban neighborhoods. Augustana College’s Upper Mississippi Center is an organization that helps urban and rural communities solve sustainability challenges by mobilizing the college’s resources. In conjunction with their Sustainable Working Landscapes Initiative (SWLI), a research team conducted free home lead screenings in vulnerable Davenport neighborhoods to better understand the severity of the problem. Via appointment, 27 homes …

Adam J. Liska: Curriculum Vitae, Adam Liska

Adam Liska Papers

Associate Professor, George Dempster Smith Chair of Industrial Ecology, Departments of Biological Systems Engineering and Agronomy & Horticulture, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 236 L.W. Chase Hall, Lincoln, NE 68583-0726, Ph: (402) 472-8744, e-mail: [email protected]

Ph.D. 2003 Biology (magna cum laude), Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology & Genetics, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany

Population Characteristics Of A Closed Northern Pike (Esox Lucius) Catch-And-Release Population In Minnesota, John Kempe

Biology Graduate Theses

Literature regarding catch-and-release populations of Northern Pike are rare and provide a unique perspective on their population dynamics. Shingobee Lake is a 64- ha mesotrophic lake with a maximum depth of 12.2 m located in northern Minnesota. Northern Pike fishing has been catch-and-release only since 2005, and there are no public accesses on the lake. Annual ice-out trap-netting occurred from 2009-2017, and a sizable amount of the Northern Pike recaptured via trapnet or angling had been previously tagged (37-59%). The lack of exploitation and high tagging percentage provided a unique opportunity to study the population dynamics of Northern Pike. Shinogbee’s …

Applying Place-Based Social-Ecological Research To Address Water Scarcity: Insights For Future Research, Jodi Brandt

Human-Environment Systems Research Center Faculty Publications and Presentations

Globally, environmental and social change in water-scarce regions challenge the sustainability of social-ecological systems. WaterSES, a sponsored working group within the Program for Ecosystem Change and Society, explores and compares the social-ecological dynamics related to water scarcity across placed-based international research sites with contrasting local and regional water needs and governance, including research sites in Spain and Sweden in Europe, South Africa, China, and Alabama, Idaho, Oklahoma, and Texas in the USA. This paper aims to provide a commentary on insights into conducting future solutions-oriented research on water scarcity based on the understanding of the social-ecological dynamics of water scarce …

Winter Bat Activity In A Landscape Without Traditional Hibernacula, Amy M. Hammesfahr, Rene E. Ohms

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

Prior to 2014, bat research at Devils Tower National Monument (DETO) focused on bats present during the summer months. Biologists at DETO assumed local bats were strictly summer residents due to the presumed lack of typical habitat features associated with bat hibernation, such as caves and mines. This lack of traditional hibernacula features at DETO discouraged staff and research cooperators from studying winter bat populations. Despite the earlier assumption that bats were unlikely to hibernate on the monument, DETO documented significant winter bat activity through passive winter acoustic monitoring. This study is the first study at DETO that documents …

Implementing Early Screening Methods To Detect Resistance To Phytophthora Cinnamomi In Backcross Chinese-American Chestnut Hybrids, Kirsten Hein

Honors Theses

Phytophthora root rot (PRR), caused by the oomycete Phytophthora cinnamomi Rands., is one of the two greatest obstacles to survival of American chestnut (Castanea dentata Borkh.). The other is chestnut blight, caused by the ascomycete Cryphonectria parasitica (Murr.) Barr. Developing early and reliable PRR screening methods can facilitate the efficient introgression of PRR resistance from Chinese chestnut (C. mollissima Blume.) into the populations of potentially chestnut blight resistant trees currently under development by The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF). This study tests the efficacy of a method for early identification of PRR-resistant hybrid chestnuts in a greenhouse/nursery setting. The chestnut blight …

Spatial Analysis Of Air Particulate Pollution Distributions And Its Relation To Real Property Value In Beijing, China, Yingyu Zhang

Great Lakes Center Masters Theses

Air particulate pollution contributes the major air pollution in Beijing, China. In this research, concentrations of air particulate pollutants were measured at a total of twenty-three field locations in the urban districts of Beijing applying a laser particle counter in June and December 2015. Geographic Information System (GIS) was utilized to study the two and three-dimensional spatial distributions of air particulate pollution (PM0.5, PM1.0, PM2.5, PM5.0, PM10). Geostatistical or spatial statistical models were applied to interpolate the spatial distributions of air particulate pollution and real property values in the study area. Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) was applied to analyze the …

The Adverse Environmental And Socio-Cultural Effects Of Tourism In Vietnam, Joshua Marx

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

An examination of the adverse environmental and socio-cultural impacts of tourism in Vietnam.

Nitrous Oxide Emissions From Rice Production On A Silt-Loam Soil In Arkansas, Casey Rector

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a common crop grown in Arkansas under flooded-soil conditions. The saturated to nearly saturated soil makes rice production an ideal environment for the production of potent greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide (N2O). The objectives of this study were to i) evaluate the impact of water management practice (full-season-flood and intermittent-flood) and cultivar (pure-line and hybrid) on N2O fluxes, season-long N2O emissions, and global warming potential (GWP; 2016) and ii) evaluate the impact of tillage practice [conventional tillage and no-tillage (NT)] and type of urea fertilizer [ N-(n-butyl) thiosphosphoric triamide (NBPT)-coated and non-coated urea] on …

Potential For Developing Run-Of-River Systems In Eastern Kentucky : A Gis Approach To Site Suitability., Thomas Jeffords

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Coal has a questionable future with the potential exhaustion of available coal. Alternate sources of energy production should be considered, such as hydropower dams, or the more environmentally friendly, Run of River (RoR) hydropower system. This study seeks to answer the question: What is the potential for RoR hydroelectric systems in Eastern Kentucky counties with significant decreases in coal production and employment? I hypothesize that GIS will identify suitable sites within Pike County for RoR systems. Site suitability for Eastern Kentucky was assessed and determined that Pike County did not have a suitable physical environment for RoR systems. The power …

Nebraska Wetland Condition Assessment: Intensification Of The National Wetland Condition Assessment Throughout Nebraska, Cody Dreier

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

Even though wetlands provide a habitat for many plants and animals and numerous services for humans, they were not always treated as areas of value. Less than half of the United States’ pre-colonial wetlands have survived to the present day. Seeing a need to understand the remaining wetlands more fully, the Environmental Protection Agency developed the National Wetland Condition Assessment to monitor target wetlands throughout the country every five years.

This study is an intensification of the National Wetland Condition Assessment for Nebraska wetlands that allowed us to sample more areas of the state and gather additional information. During the …

Investigating Mechanisms Of Hydraulic Conductivity Transience In Sandy Streambeds, Wilhelm Fraundorfer

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

Streambed hydraulic conductivity (K) is known to be spatially and temporally heterogeneous, but few attempts to understand the controls on temporal variability have been made. This study documents temporal K transience and demonstrates how hydraulic, geophysical, and sedimentological methods can be combined to understand the processes that give rise to changes in streambed K. Falling head permeameter tests and slug tests were conducted to determine vertical K (K_v) and K (slug test K), respectively. These tests were repeated three times over a twelve-week period on the same grid at a depth of 0.5 …

Investigating Initial Interactions Between Silver Nanoparticles And Wastewater, Casey Gibson

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The use of nanoparticles (NPs) has increased exponentially in the last 15-20 years, especially in the consumer market. NPs are currently found in over 1800 commercial products, including cosmetics, clothing, packaging, and toys. As a result, NPs can enter the environment via wastewater (WW) streams, leading to new challenges in WW treatment. This study focuses on the initial fate of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in WW. The AgNP interaction including aggregation and dissolution in both synthetic and real WW were studied. Real WW was collected from the primary-clarifier, secondary-clarifier, and effluent WW streams at two local WW treatment plants (Westside and …

Parental Care, Offspring Abandonment, And Filial Cannibalism, Mackenzie Davenport

Honors Theses

Parental care is a fundamental life-history trait that is found in many animals (reviewed in Royle et al. 2012). Parental care can include behaviors such as egg cleaning (Knouft et al. 2003), egg guarding (Royle et al. 2012, pg. 4), egg provisioning (Simmons & Parker 1989; Hilker & Meiners 2002; Royle et al. 2012, pg. 2), and oviposition-site selection (Refsnider & Janzen 2010). Such forms of parental care typically result in the spatial clumping of parents and their offspring. This often leads to density effects on within-clutch egg mortality, meaning that when within-clutch egg density increases, egg mortality also increases. …

Changes In Ant Biodiversity Across An Urban Gradient, Hao Brooks

Honors Theses

There are two aims to this study: compare diversity across an urban gradient and across seasons. We deployed traps and identified the collected 12 ant species at nine different sites centered at Chattanooga, Tennessee, for the purpose of relating levels of urbanization to the diversity of ant species at each site. We successfully sampled in the summer (June 27, 2017) and spring (March 31, 2018), and unsuccessfully sampled in winter (Feb. 16, 2018) when we collected zero ants, likely due to cold soil temperatures. To quantify “urbanization” we divided the sites into “Urban” core verses surrounding “Suburban” area using a …

Conservation And Collection Of Castanea Dentata Germplasm In The South, Trent Deason

Honors Theses

The American chestnut, Castanea dentata, has been devastated by the exotic invasive pathogens Cryphonectria parasitica and Phytophthora cinnamomi to which it has no resistance. The American Chestnut Foundation (TACF) has developed an interspecific backcross breeding program to introgress disease resistance from Asian chestnut species, primarily Castanea mollissima, into C. dentata hybrid populations. The genetic base of this program can be expanded by utilizing vegetative propagation through grafting in order to collect and conserve American chestnut individuals not amenable to traditional breeding. As the majority of the surviving American chestnuts are confined to the understory, they are shaded out by the …

Evaluation Of Agricultural Land Cover Representations On Regional Climate Model Simulations In The Brazilian Cerrado, Stephanie A. Spera, Jonathan M. Winter, Jonathan W. Chipman

Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications

Examining interactions between large-scale land cover and land use change and regional climate in areas undergoing dynamic land transformations, like the Brazilian Cerrado, is crucial for understanding tradeoffs between human needs and ecosystem services. Yet regional climate models often do not include accurate land cover data of these complex landscapes. We use National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model coupled to the Noah-Multiparameterization (Noah-MP) land surface model to run 10-year climate simulations across Brazil to assess (1) whether an accurate, regionally validated land cover data set with two, new agricultural land cover classifications improves model simulation …

Heat Stress Vulnerability: Analyzing The Socio-Environmental Factors Influencing Heat Stress Hospital Visits And Implementation Of Green Infrastructure In New York City, Jose Pillich

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this study was to identify factors leading to heat stress hospitalizations visits in New York City through the use of climatological and social science data, thus enabling greater targeting of individuals and groups with heightened vulnerability to extreme heat. Recent research has established that climate change will increase overall temperatures in New York City in the future. Heat waves are predicted to increase in frequency and severity, adversely impacting public health and increasing heat vulnerability that could lead to heat stroke or other comorbidities. This dissertation takes into account existing data to generate a new model that …

Low Offspring Survival In Mountain Pine Beetle Infesting The Resistant Great Basin Bristlecone Pine Supports The Preference-Performance Hypothesis, Erika L. Eidson, Karen E. Mock, Barbara J. Bentz

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

The preference-performance hypothesis states that ovipositing phytophagous insects will select host plants that are well-suited for their offspring and avoid host plants that do not support offspring performance (survival, development and fitness). The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae), a native insect herbivore in western North America, can successfully attack and reproduce in most species of Pinus throughout its native range. However, mountain pine beetles avoid attacking Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva), despite recent climate-driven increases in mountain pine beetle populations at the high elevations where Great Basin bristlecone pine grows. Low preference for a potential …