Digital Commons Network^™

Are All Renewable Energy Sources The Same? A Comparative Analysis Of Public Perceptions And Preferences For Renewable Energy Types In Southeast Asian Cities, Daniel Del Barrio Alvarez, Nan Wang, Masahiro Sugiyama, Masako Numata, Truong Dang Thuy, Azlina Abd Aziz, Rosalina Palanca-Tan, Aung Ze Ya, Ariel Anshory Yusuf, Awang Noor Abd Ghani, Gem Castillo, Martin Daniel Siyaranamual, Sengprasong Phrakonkham, Vilas Nitivattananon, Wunna Swe

Economics Department Faculty Publications

The realization of a sustainable energy transition in Southeast Asia will require the overcoming of the current high reliance on fossil fuels in the energy mix and the steady and rapid growth in energy demand in the region. To achieve an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable energy transition in the region, it is vital to utilize all available renewable energy sources to the greatest extent possible. It is therefore essential to gain an understanding of how citizens in each country perceive the available renewables. However, the majority of existing literature in this region has been constrained by a narrow focus …

Upside-Down Logics: Falsification Of The Truth And Truthification Of The False, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

This paper is about funny science, recreational mathematics, upside-down thinking, or contradictory reasoning (to think backward). Since a statement in some conditions may be true, in other conditions false, and a third type of conditions partially true and partially false. The paper presents for the first time two types of Upside-Down Logic, the first one is falsification of the Truth (when a true statement is transformed into a false one), and the second one is the opposite: Truthification of the False (when a false statement is transformed into a true one) - within the frame of Recreational Neutrosophy. All transformations …

Water Quality Contaminants Long-Term Spatial Analysis Along The Upper Clark Fork River Superfund Site Between Warm Springs And Garrison, Montana, Raegan Michele Osentowski

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Long-term data of heavy metal contaminants, cadmium, copper, lead, arsenic, and zinc were compiled from the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, DEQ, and the United States Geological Survey, USGS, to investigate the effects of remediation on water quality along the upper Clark Fork River superfund site. Long-term data sets were analyzed at CFR-03A, CFR-27H, CFR-34, and SS-25 along the upper Clark Fork River and Silver Bow Creek. CFR-03A and CFR-27H had full remediation in the immediate vicinity, SS-25 had on-going remediation in the immediate vicinity, and CFR-34 had no remediation in the immediate vicinity. Analysis of heavy metal contaminants is …

Groundwater Vulnerability Assessment And Dye Trace Of War Fork River In Daniel Boone National Forest, Will Hemenover

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Daniel Boone National Forest plays a key role in preserving much of Kentucky’s karst regions, natural resources including timber, mineral deposits, and biodiversity, including over 300 species of concern. The health of these environments is determined by surface and groundwater streams in the forest, and karst systems are an integral environment where these systems are active. War Fork, a tributary to the Kentucky River in Jackson County, Kentucky, is a remote and understudied hydrologic system in the Daniel Boone National Forest that contains recreational and logging land uses. Due to karst areas being susceptible to contamination because of rapid water …

Communicating Climate Change: Adaptive Silviculture In Central Appalachian Kentucky, Logan Baker

Theses and Dissertations--Forestry and Natural Resources

Climate change communication is an emerging field that requires a multidisciplinary understanding of both climate and social science. Communicating with underrepresented woodland owners about climate change, specifically climate change adaptation in forestry applications, necessitates appropriately adjusted approaches. In Central Appalachian Kentucky, outreach with underrepresented woodland owners on forest adaptation topics has not been examined in depth. The recent establishment of an Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change research site in the University of Kentucky’s Robinson Forest has created an opportunity to generate regionally specific climate adaptation information for Appalachian Kentucky forests. It is imperative to investigate how best to approach communicating …

The Efficacy Of Wetland Treatment Systems Used To Treat Runoff Mixtures From Different Landscapes Across Kentucky, Emily Nottingham

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

The overarching goal was to improve our understanding of the cumulative effect of increased use and occurrence of commonly detected contaminants of potential concern (CPCs) on nitrogen (N) transformation processes in wetlands. The central hypothesis was that those various mixtures of nutrients and CPCs entering treatment wetlands impact N removal pathways. The first study assessed the current state of the literature on the implications to N removal in wetlands in the presence of pesticides and antibiotics. 181 primary studies were identified. Removal efficiencies for nitrate varied widely across the studies, with CPCs impacting microbial communities. A knowledge gap remains in …

Mining Contamination Of Legacy Deposits On Floodplains Along Turkey Creek, Western Border Of The Ozark Highlands, Hannah Riley Eades

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Historical mining activities in the Tri State mining district in Southwest Missouri from 1850 to 1950 resulted in widespread metal contamination of stream sediments. Beginning in the 1840s, land disturbances associated with Euro-American settlement and agricultural expansion increased runoff and soil erosion rates resulting in the deposition of contaminated alluvium or legacy sediment on floodplains. This study assesses zinc (Zn) and lead (Pb) contaminated legacy deposits in cut-bank exposures along floodplains in Turkey Creek Watershed (119 km²) which drained mining areas in Missouri. Ore production histories were used date metal contamination profiles and calculate floodplain deposition rates in legacy deposits. …

Geographical Variation In Songs Of Bachman’S Sparrow (Peucaea Aestivalis), L. Nguyen, K. Doñas, J. Jackson, R. Kannan

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

We present an analysis of geographic variation in primary song components of the Near Threatened North American endemic, Bachman’s Sparrow (Peucaea aestivalis). These songs have 2 distinct portions: an introductory tweet we call the "whistle" and a more complex second portion that we call the "trill". We analyzed 327 songs from 111 recordings downloaded from eBird.org from the entire current range of the species. We grouped the recordings into 3 distinct geographic clusters, East, Central, and West. The data measured from spectrograms suggest a significant statistical difference among groups for 3 measured characteristics: frequency range of trill, number of horizontal …

Patterns Into Pathways For Improving Safety Culture: Refined Latent Class Analysis Informs Tailored Decision Support For South Carolina Dss Safety Culture Improvements, Michaela Voit

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

The rising prevalence of exposures to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) demands a coordinated public health response, as a significant body of research details the cumulative impact of ACEs on chronic morbidities contributing to reduced life expectancy. Child welfare workers (CWW) are embedded in this public health effort, tasked with preventing and mitigating the impacts of ACEs through family and prevention services. The National Partnership for Child Safety (NPCS) may improve the wellbeing of CWWs and the effectiveness of Child Welfare (CW) services by improving the quality of safety culture within CW organizations. To inform NPCS quality improvement efforts, our project …

Integrating Arcgis And Redux Using Middleware, Vishnu Vardhan Reddy Rapuru

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The integration of ArcGIS with Redux through middleware presents a novel approach to managing state in geospatial applications. This report outlines the process and benefits of combining ArcGIS’s robust mapping and analytics capabilities with Redux’s predictable state container for JavaScript apps. It begins with an introduction to both technologies, followed by a detailed discussion on the architecture design, focusing on the role of middleware as the linchpin in this integration[1]. The paper highlights the benefits, such as improved state management and application performance, and addresses the challenges encountered during the integration process. Implementation details are provided, including the setup of …

Governing Dynamic Watersheds Under Static Institutions – Examining How Local Governments Respond To Floods And Droughts In The United States, Jonathon R. Loos

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

The U.S. has seen a shift towards decentralized watershed governance in recent decades that has increased the delegation of management responsibilities to local governments and community organizations. This shift has precipitated the emergence of multilevel watershed governance systems (e.g. national, state, regional, local management levels) that are hypothesized to be more adaptive and responsive to local needs. However, multilevel governance systems risk complicating and overburdening the role of local governments within watershed management, and little is known about how local governments address socio-ecological change within multilevel institutions. Working within several U.S. watershed geographies, this dissertation seeks to interrogate theories of …

Hydrogeomorphic Response To Flooding In Northern Yellowstone National Park, Zachary P. Deluca

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Understanding and predicting flood-induced geomorphic change, and the relative influences of fluvial forces and valley-bottom geometry on system response, are persistent quandaries in geomorphic process studies. We combine field surveys, remote sensing, and hydraulic modeling to assess the hydrogeomorphic effects of historic flooding in northern Yellowstone National Park (YNP) in a variety of channel configurations. We compare impulse, a metric that incorporates a flow duration threshold based on threshold channel theory, grain size, channel-bed slope, and flood depth and stream power estimates with hydrogeomorphic response. Measurements of pre- and post-flood active-channel width change in aerial photos captured geomorphic response associated …

Slope Unit Maker (Sumak): An Efficient And Parameter-Free Algorithm For Delineating Slope Units To Improve Landslide Modeling, Jacob B. Woodard, Benjamin B. Mirus, Nathan J. Wood, Kate E. Allstadt, Benjamin A. Leshchinsky, Matthew M. Crawford

Faculty, Staff, and Affiliated Publications--KGS

Slope units are terrain partitions bounded by drainage and divide lines. In landslide modeling, including susceptibility modeling and event-specific modeling of landslide occurrence, slope units provide several advantages over gridded units, such as better capturing terrain geometry, improved incorporation of geospatial landslide-occurrence data in different formats (e.g., point and polygon), and better accommodating the varying data accuracy and precision in landslide inventories. However, the use of slope units in regional (> 100 km²) landslide studies remains limited due, in part, to the large computational costs and/or poor reproducibility with current delineation methods. We introduce a computationally efficient algorithm …

Pices At 32: An External Review, Eileen E. Hofmann, David Checkley, Fangli Qiao, Jörn Schmidt, Sinjae Yoo

CCPO Publications

[Introduction] The North Pacific Marine Science Organization (Pacific ICES, PICES) has been an effective voice and proponent for North Pacific marine science for more than 30 years. During this time, PICES has provided a safe and active venue for the open exchange of science, developed an international science network that includes participants from academic and government institutions, and non- and inter-governmental organizations, and has taken on leadership roles in studying North Pacific ecosystems.

Identifying Nutrient Dynamics And Relative Groundwater Contribution In Wetlands At Fish Lake Environmental Center, Lapeer Mi, Rose Allen

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

Wetlands are complex ecosystems that are dependent on hydrologic processes and water chemistry. Understanding the role that water chemistry and nutrients play in wetland ecosystems is crucial to wetland management and restoration. The Fish Lake Environmental Education Center near Lapeer Michigan, is glacially influenced, and contains a large bog. Between the bog and lake there are multiple kettles that contain ephemeral wetlands in the spring. Bogs are primarily precipitation sourced, whereas the kettle wetlands may be a combination of precipitation and groundwater sourced. Previous studies indicated that groundwater flow direction is towards Fish Lake, but it was unclear to what …

A Review Of Emerging Sensor Technologies For Tank Inspection: A Focus On Lidar And Hyperspectral Imaging And Their Automation And Deployment, Sergio Pallas Enguita, Chung-Hao Chen, Samuel Kovacic

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper reviews various sensor technologies for tank inspection, focusing on Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) and Hyperspectral Imaging (HSI) as advanced solutions for corrosion detection. These technologies are evaluated alongside traditional methods such as ultrasonic, electromagnetic, and thermographic inspections. This review highlights their potential to enhance inspection accuracy, reduce the limitations of manual inspection, and support integrated data analysis for comprehensive asset management. Additionally, this paper proposes a pathway for automating these techniques to streamline inspection processes and improve implementation in practical applications.

Targeting Ocean Conservation Outcomes Through Threat Reduction, Joseph A. Turner, Malcolm Starkey, Nicholas K. Dulvy, Frank Hawkins, Louise Mair, Adeline Serckx, Thomas Brooks, Beth Polidoro, Stuart H. M. Butchart, Kent Carpenter, Minna Epps, Rima W. Jabado, Nicholas B. W. Macfarlane, Leon Bennun

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Nations have committed to reductions in the global rate of species extinctions through the Sustainable Development Goals 14 and 15, for ocean and terrestrial species, respectively. Biodiversity loss is worsening despite rapid growth in the number and extent of protected areas, both at sea and on land. Resolving this requires targeting the locations and actions that will deliver positive conservation outcomes for biodiversity. The Species Threat Abatement and Restoration (STAR) metric, developed by a consortium of experts, quantifies the contributions that abating threats and restoring habitats in specific places offer towards reducing extinction risk based on the IUCN Red List …

Evolution Of Regulations Impacting Landowner Decision Making: A Comparison Of Private Forest Policies In California And Oregon, Claire E. Anderson

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

California and Oregon have long and dynamic histories of forest practice regulation on privately owned lands. Private lands remain connected to the larger environment despite arbitrary property boundaries, thus management decisions made on those lands impact ecosystem services across landscapes. Because forests have public trust resources such as clean water, there are policy tools that facilitate public involvement in private forest land decision making.

This study compares the trajectories of policy changes governing private corporate forest landowners in California and Oregon. Interviews with environmental advocates, agency members, and forestry professionals, along with document analysis, provide key insights to how private …

Utilizing Suas-Based Remote Sensing For Sustainable Outdoor Recreational Trail Design And Monitoring, Isaac C. Kinder

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study utilizes sUAS-based remote sensing and hydrologic models to analyze and predict locations susceptible to water-based trail erosion. Erosion is frequently cited as the most significant environmental impact of trails and often requires costly design and management considerations. A professionally designed trail totaling 4 km in length was segmented based on presence or absence of water-based erosion for analyses and then flown with sUAS technology. Three Logistic regression (LR) models were generated utilizing several hydrologic terrain models of varying resolutions to determine the effects of spatial resolution on the models’ predictive accuracies. Receiver operator characteristics, kappa, and overall accuracy …

Fire-Vegetation-Climate Interactions: An 8,000- Year Long Paleoecological Reconstruction From Round Lake, Idaho (Usa), Audrey Scott

All Master's Theses

The Idaho Transportation Department recently contracted archeologists from Eastern Washington University (EWU) to assess potential impacts to cultural resources near McArthur Lake in Bonner County, Idaho, as the result of rerouting U.S. Route 95. The goal of this research is to aid EWU archeologists in their interpretation of the artifacts recovered from the McArthur Lake site by providing them with a local paleoecological reconstruction. Lake sediment-based paleoecological reconstructions provide detailed information on fire history and vegetation change through time and indicate how landscapes responded to past climate variability and human activities. In summer 2022, a sediment core was extracted from …

Utah Growing Water Smart: The Water-Land Use Integration Guidebook For Southwestern Utah, Kelly Kopp, Joanna Endter-Wada

Utah Growing Water Smart

The Utah Growing Water Smart workshops bring together teams of key community staff and water and land use planning decision makers to help build a more resilient and sustainable water future. The workshops use a range of public engagement, planning, communication, and policy implementation tools to help community teams realize their water efficiency, smart growth, watershed health, and water resiliency goals.

This 3^rd edition of the Utah Growing Water Smart curriculum guidebook was prepared for the workshop focused on the Washington County Water Conservancy District service area and held on the campus of Southern Utah University in Cedar City, …

Late Holocene Fire History Reconstruction Of Beaver Lake In The Northwest Lowlands Of The Olympic Peninsula, Grace Mckenney

All Master's Theses

Fire is an essential component of the landscapes and forests of the Pacific Northwest, including the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula. Previous fire history reconstructions from the peninsula show that fire return intervals varied throughout the postglacial period, primarily in response to climatic changes and corresponding shifts in vegetation. However, much less is known about the fire history of the low-elevation forests of the Olympic Peninsula and the role of cultural fire regimes in these environments. The purpose of this study was to reconstruct the paleoenvironmental history of a low-elevation study site, Beaver Lake, located in the northwestern part …

Beach Erosion And Recovery Since Hurricane Ivan In 2004 Along A Headland-Bay Coast In Treasure Beach, Jamaica, Elandé Engelbrecht

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Anthropogenic climate change is causing sea-level rise and shoreline changes that threaten the environment and economy of coastal communities in Caribbean Island nations. To assess this risk, this study quantifies shoreline changes at Treasure Beach in St. Elizabeth Parish on the south coast of Jamaica from 2001 to 2023. The effects of storm events on erosion were also assessed. Over 10 km of shoreline are assessed with about half being sandy pocket beaches ranging from 300 to 900 m in length, separated by rocky headlands and beach rock outcrops. Sand beach erosion trends since 2001 are assessed for seven sandy …

Potential Landscape Connectivity For Invasive Wild Pigs (Sus Scrofa) Across The Northern Prairies Of North America, Corey J. Kramer, Melanie R. Boudreau, Ryan Powers, Kurt C. Vercauteren, Ryan S. Miller, Ryan K. Brook

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Understanding landscape scale connectivity is an essential component in the management of invasive species since connectivity facilitates their invasion potential. Invasive wild pigs (Sus scrofa) are among the most prolific invaders on the planet, causing billions of dollars in agricultural and environmental damage annually. Newly introduced to Canada in the 1980s, we examined wild pig invasion potential across the northern prairies from western Canada into the currently wild pig-free northern U.S. states. We used GPS collar data collected in the Canadian prairies to quantify resource selection and incorporated results into an electric circuit theory framework to evaluate potential …

Torque Teno Sus Virus 1: A Potential Surrogate Pathogen To Study Pig-Transmitted Transboundary Animal Diseases, Xiaolong Li, Brandon M. Parker, Raoul K. Boughton, James C. Beasley, Timothy J. Smyser, James D. Austin, Kim M. Pepin, Ryan S. Miller, Kurt C. Vercauteren, Samantha M. Wisely

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Understanding the epidemiology and transmission dynamics of transboundary animal diseases (TADs) among wild pigs (Sus scrofa) will aid in preventing the introduction or containment of TADs among wild populations. Given the challenges associated with studying TADs in free-ranging populations, a surrogate pathogen system may predict how pathogens may circulate and be maintained within wild free-ranging swine populations, how they may spill over into domestic populations, and how management actions may impact transmission. We assessed the suitability of Torque teno sus virus 1 (TTSuV1) to serve as a surrogate pathogen for molecular epidemiological studies in wild pigs by investigating …

Does Innovation Facilitate Meeting The Co2 Emission Reduction Targets Of China: A Non-Linear Approach, Yifan Wang, Nadia Doytch, Mohammed Elheddad, Wei Li, Mengna Chi

Ateneo School of Government Publications

China has been implementing energy efficiency and CO2 emission reduction schemes at the provincial level that have been embedded in the National Five Year Plans of the country. We set out to investigate the relationship between R&D expenditures and CO2 emissions in China at the province level in the context of the planned emissions reduction targets. We explore the possibility of the existence of a non-linear relationship between R&D expenditures and CO2 emissions with a non-parametric methodology, a fixed effect panel data quantile (FEQR) regression estimator applied to a panel of 30 provinces. We stratify the sample according to the …

Agricultural Groundcover Update December 2023, Justin Laycock

Natural resources published reports

Summary

• About 96% of the grainbelt had adequate vegetative groundcover (more than 50%) to prevent wind erosion in December 2023.
• In the northern half of the grainbelt, a larger-than-average area has 51–60% groundcover, which is expected to decrease to below 50% over the summer.
• Just under 4% of the grainbelt (553,000 ha) had less than 50% groundcover, which is inadequate to prevent wind erosion. West Midlands Ag Soil Zone had the highest risk of wind erosion and 11.4% of this farmland had inadequate groundcover.
• Less than 0.5% of the grainbelt had a high to very high risk of wind erosion …

Agriculture Against The Wall: Barriers And Opportunities For Agroecological Transitions In California’S Industrial Agricultural Landscapes, Estelí Jiménez-Soto, Madeleine Fairbairn, Joji Muramoto, Carol Shennan

School of Geosciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Agroecology emphasizes a shift from low diversity, high chemical input farming to more biodiverse agroecosystems cultivated in conjunction with natural ecosystem processes and embedded in socially just relationships. Yet achieving such agroecological transitions presents enormous challenges in industrial agricultural landscapes dominated by consolidation and overproduction. We examine both the challenges and the opportunities for agroecological transition in one particular industrial agricultural context: the fumigant-dependent strawberry production of California’s Central Coast. We do so by exploring adoption of Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation (ASD), an agroecological alternative to fumigation which has shown considerable promise but has been historically underutilized. Building on previously identified …

Glacial Deposits, Vol. 48, 2024, Department Of Geography, Geology, And The Environment

Glacial Deposits

Newsletter of the Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment

Investigating Drought Response And Paleoclimate Potential Of A New Network Of White Oak Chronologies In Western Kentucky, Usa, Audrey J. Heichelbech, Maegen L. Rochner, Megan Gibson

Undergraduate Research Events

In Kentucky, historic and paleo-climate data are limited, and current understanding of long-term climate change in the state relies on instrumental data spanning only 1895-present. Proxy data are necessary to extend the temporal and spatial span of climate information. One potential proxy source for Kentucky is tree ring data, but currently, only four such datasets are publicly available on the International Tree Ring Data Bank (ITRDB). Archaeological and archival timber sources may help to fill in this gap. In the 1940s, Florence Hawley-Ellis, the first woman dendrochronologist, collected samples of white oak (Quercus alba L.) from four counties in western …