Digital Commons Network^™

Irrigation Forbearance In The Middle Rio Grande: Using Remote Sensing To Improve Investments, Trevor Birt

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

In extremely dry years when there is a high premium on surface water, irrigation forbearance agreements help water managers maintain riparian health, fish populations, and ensure water delivery to downstream users. In order for these programs to maximize their effectiveness and limit their impact on agricultural communities, water managers should seek the highest return on investment - or the highest amount of water per acre entered into forbearance. This may be accomplished by assessing the water requirements of fields and then grouping by conveyance lateral, to target the highest among them as good forbearance participants. Unfortunately, irrigation measurement in the …

Executive Search, Office Of The President

UNM HLC 2018-19 Assurance Argument Evidence

Information on the university efforts to fill key administrative positions in 2019, as it is available on executivesearch.unm.edu. The screenshots here show the three main positions looking to be filled: the Provost and EVP for Academic Affairs, the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion, and the Senior Vice President, Finance and Administration. Each position has a tentative schedule, and included here are also position overview documents for two of the searches.

New Materialism: An Ontology For The Anthropocene, Melinda Harm Benson

Natural Resources Journal

This article argues that the Anthropocene is not simply a new geologic epoch; it is an opportunity to embrace a new ontology. In it, we can reconfigure our orientation to the material world. The current, dominant ontology casts humans as villains responsible for mass extinctions, polluted oceans, and climate change. This ontology reinforces a familiar binary—one in which humans are separate from and doing things to nature. Humans are ruining the planet, causing it to fundamentally change in ways that are not “natural” precisely because humans are the agent of change. This view is perhaps best described by environmentalist Bill …

Advances Of Standard And Nonstandard Neutrosophic Theories, Florentin Smarandache

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

In this book, we approach different topics related to neutrosophics, such as: Neutrosophic Set, Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set, Inconsistent Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set, Picture Fuzzy Set, Ternary Fuzzy Set, Pythagorean Fuzzy Set, Atanassov’s Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set of second type, Spherical Fuzzy Set, n-HyperSpherical Neutrosophic Set, q-Rung Orthopair Fuzzy Set, truth-membership, indeterminacy-membership, falsehood-nonmembership, Regret Theory, Grey System Theory, ThreeWays Decision, n-Ways Decision, Neutrosophy, Neutrosophication, Neutrosophic Probability, Refined Neutrosophy, Refined Neutrosophication, Nonstandard Analysis; Extended Nonstandard Analysis; Open and Closed Monads to the Left/Right; Pierced and Unpierced Binads; MoBiNad Set; infinitesimals; infinities; nonstandard reals; standard reals; Nonstandard Neutrosophic Lattices of First Type (as poset) and …

Pestel Analysis With Neutrosophic Cognitive Maps To Determine The Factors That Affect Rural Sustainability. Case Study Of The South-Eastern Plain Of The Province Of Pinar Del Río, C. Barrionuevo De La Rosa, B. Cárdenas Bolaños, H. Cárdenas Echeverría, R. Cabezas Padilla

Neutrosophic Sets and Systems

No abstract provided.

Essays On Energy Economics And Environmental Policies, Janak R. Joshi

Economics ETDs

This dissertation contains three distinct empirical chapters in applied energy and environmental economics. Each chapter focuses on a unique set of research questions, methods, and data. The unifying motivation therein concerns the development of renewable or alternative low-carbon energy sources as a policy response to the challenges of climate change mitigation, local and regional environmental quality issues, and energy security concerns. Economic and environmental evaluation of the energy policies coupled with understanding energy use patterns is of paramount importance. Together, the empirical chapters focus on demand, supply, and policy aspects of energy markets in the United States (US).

First, Chapter …

High-Resolution Digital Surface Characterization Of The Rio Chama In New Mexico, Rowan L. Converse

Shared Knowledge Conference

Over the past eighty years, the Rio Chama, a major tributary of the Rio Grande in New Mexico, has been subject to significant disruption of historic hydrological flow regimes due to water use demands. In recent years, a multiagency management effort has been initiated to restore some measure of historic flow regimes in the 39.6 km congressionally designated Wild and Scenic stretch through the Rio Chama Canyon Wilderness. We collaborated with managers at the US Army Corps of Engineers to collect approximately 15,870 frames of 10cm resolution multispectral imagery of the 82 km stretch of the river between El Vado …

"Sounding The Nile" In Nubian Musical Expression, Regan L. Homeyer

Shared Knowledge Conference

Nubians are indigenous peoples of the Nile River Valley whose ancient civilization parallels that of ancient Egypt. In 1964, 50,000 Egyptian Nubians were removed from their homeland along the Nile because of President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s initiative, the Aswan High Dam Project. With fertile lands and sacred temples doomed to inundation by the waters of what is now Lake Nassar, Nubians were resettled in government built villages that promised both preservation of culture and modern conveniences. What these riverine people received, in fact, were poorly constructed, unfinished dwellings located in the desert, more than five miles from the Nile. A …

The Effectiveness Of Albuquerque's "There Is No Poop Fairy" Campaign, Sergio Lozoya

Shared Knowledge Conference

This research seeks to understand the effectiveness of the There is no Poop Fairy campaign through a public survey of dog owners. The There Is No Poop Fairy campaign was initiated in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2014, with the goal of getting dog owners to pick up and properly dispose of their dogs’ waste. The Rio Grande is contaminated with E. coli bacteria that originates in part from dog waste, which is carried to the river through storm water. Levels of E. coli in the Rio Grande have decreased dramatically within the past few years, coincident with the campaign. The …

La Gota Que Colma La Caguama: How A Brewery Development Sparked Public Participation In Water Decisions, Anthony J. Meluso

Shared Knowledge Conference

Broad and diverse participation of actors is well recognized as a prerequisite for effective and equitable water management. However, scholarship in development and social movement literature in Latin America demonstrates that patterns of participation are shifting to more diverse strategies with non-traditional alliances. This project explores how an internationally owned brewery development sparked renewed participation from various urban and rural groups in the Mexicali Valley. I argue that widespread resistance from different groups was underpinned by neoliberal development tensions that have diminished local agency, but the strong symbolic nature of water, beer and politics provided the catalyst for a social …

The Last Oil: Students Respond, Unm Department Of Art

Art and Art History Faculty Publications

In February 2018, the University of New Mexico (UNM) convened the last oil: a multispecies justice symposium on Arctic Alaska and beyond.Twenty-nine artists, activists, attorneys, scientists, conservationists, curators, scholars, and writers from across the United States and Canada, gave talks and/or did creative performances—and ten colleagues from UNM and beyond chaired various sessions. the last oil was the first national convening to apprehend the reckless U.S. federal Arctic policy, and also brought impacts of climate change and Indigenous rights concerns in Alaska into conversation with similar impacts and struggles in New Mexico and the west.

Published on Indigenous …

Anthropology 2018 Apr Self-Study & Documents, University Of New Mexico

UNM Academic Program Review

UNM Anthropology APR self-study and review team report for Fall 2018, fulfilling requirements of the Higher Learning Commission.

Translating Global Nature: Territoriality, Environmental Discourses, And Ecocultural Identities, José R. Castro-Sotomayor

Communication ETDs

In this study, I explore environmental discourses circulating among Indigenous transboundary organizations working on environmental initiatives at the border between Ecuador and Colombia. I focus on three global environmental discourses –sustainability, development, and climate change– as they are at the core of the global environmental governance vernacular. La Gran Familia Awá Binacional (GFAB), one of the few transboundary Indigenous organizations working along the binational border, utilizes these global concepts to frame their environmental initiatives and projects. I use a critical and interpretive qualitative approach to investigate, deconstruct, and rearticulate global environmental discourses circulating among and translated by two of the …

Evaluating The Utility Of Object-Based Image Analysis For Ecological Monitoring Of Pinon-Juniper Mortality, Zachary C. Taraschi

Geography ETDs

Forested ecosystems in the American Southwest are experiencing change at an unprecedented rate, largely due to mortality events triggered by increased temperatures, drought, and insect infestations. Large-scale changes in the distributions of these ecosystems can potentially alter regional-scale carbon, water and energy dynamics. One biome in particular that has experienced increased mortality and altered forest composition over the past 30 years are Piñon-Juniper woodlands (Pinus edulis, Juniperus spp.) in the American Southwest. New fields of study, in particular, Remote Sensing, are applying and adapting traditional methods for ecological monitoring of these woodlands. Remote sensing offers the potential to synoptically …

Soil Properties Explain Changes In Soil Microbial Enzyme Activity With Depth In A Piñon-Juniper Woodland, Amanda B. Sacks

Biology ETDs

Semi-arid ecosystems play a major role in the global carbon cycle. These ecosystems, including piñon-juniper (PJ) woodlands, are experiencing extreme drought. As such, it is vital to characterize both above and below-ground processes in these systems in order to understand their vulnerability to future drought and other changes in climate.

Soils microbial communities play a critical role in nutrient cycles, as well as carbon storage, within PJ woodlands. More specifically, microbes aid the decomposition and mineralization of key nutrients, including carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus, through the use of extracellular enzymes. Measuring microbial enzyme activity, therefore, can provide insight into how …

Urban Animals: Gis Analysis Of Stray Canines And Felines In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Courtney Brock

Geography ETDs

While human influence and progress has shaped the cityscape of Albuquerque, New Mexico, many stray animals also consider this city to be their home. Albuquerque’s Animal Welfare Department holds a human responsibility over these urban animals and their habitat displacement, requiring them to either be registered and owned or euthanized. Although animal rights are a topic continually in debate, the habitat choices made by stray animals are rarely questioned, due to anthropocentrism in the city’s structure and laws.

Through observational field research with Albuquerque’s Animal Welfare Officers, stray animal locations were collected throughout the city for one week in July …

How The Proximity Of Crime Impacts Housing Prices: A Hedonic Pricing Study Of Inner-Loop Houston, Tx., Samuel D. Thompson

Geography ETDs

This research used data on over 2200 house sales in inner-city Houston, TX to estimate the impact of crime on house prices. A GIS was used to tabulate home sale data from the MLS, neighborhood characteristics and crime data published by the Houston Police Department. Hedonic Pricing Models were built to assess how crime effects housing price and if proximity to the criminal event matters. Results show that crime does have a measurable impact on home sale price and that proximity of crime is important. An increase in number of violent criminal events leads to a discount in home price. …

Modeling The Interdependencies Of Energy And Water In New Mexico: Historic Drivers, Hydrologic Impacts, And Energy Requirements, Catherine M. Zemlick 5774203

Civil Engineering ETDs

There is increasing need to understand the interdependencies between energy resource development and water resources, particularly in arid regions with vast energy reserves like New Mexico. The state has a long history of energy resource development, including both uranium and fossil fuels. These activities have and continue to impact scarce water resources. There exist gaps in knowledge regarding the drivers of historic uranium mining and the uncertainties inherent in past estimates of groundwater impacts because of mining activity and in current understanding of the energy required to manage water in the oil and gas industry. Although uranium has not been …

Virtuous Discourse In The Specialty Coffee Sector: How Social Responsibility Practices Fragment Pursuits For A Supply Chain, Jane H. Motsinger

Geography ETDs

A diversity of public and private initiatives strive to address the human-environment challenges confronting the global coffee industry, including certifications like Fairtrade, direct trade sourcing models, and efforts led by NGOs. Research examines the outcomes of major certification programs and the private initiatives of corporations like Starbucks. Much less is known about the business practices of the small specialty coffee businesses that increasingly advertise sustainable business practices. Yet, their collective business practices likely influence the industry-wide efforts to achieve a sustainable supply chain. This research examines how small specialty coffee roasting and importing companies represent their socially responsible business practices …

Three Essays On Understanding Municipal Water Demand In The Western United States, Michael J. O'Donnell

Economics ETDs

Scarce water resources in the Western United States, in concert with population growth and climate change, constitute a need to better understand factors that impact water demand. In this dissertation, Chapter 1 provides cultural and historical context for water use in the West and argues that understanding water demand is important, especially when managing scarcity is a goal. Chapter 2 uses aggregate city-level data from four municipalities in New Mexico to investigate seasonal trends and breakpoints. Although per premises and aggregate demand tend to decline in all geographies investigated, existence and timing of breakpoints varies by geography. Additionally, drivers of …

Water Quality Assessment In The Santa Fe River: Tracking Pollution Sources Via Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction Analysis, Hayley Aurora Hajic

Geography ETDs

Microbial contamination affects many water bodies in the United States and pathogens associated with contamination pose a threat to human health. While the nation’s lakes, streams and rivers have been monitored for decades, many still do not meet the requirements of the 1972 Clean Water Act. Due to the number of pathogens that occur in water bodies, it is not feasible to directly monitor all of them. Instead of testing for a plethora of pathogens, it is standard practice for water divisions to monitor fecal indicator bacteria (FIB) as a proxy to determine water quality. There are significant flaws, however, …

An Update And Analysis Of The Corrales Bosque Preserve Vegetation Map, Brett Feldhahn

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

An updated vegetation map of the Corrales Bosque Preserve in Corrales, New Mexico was developed for this project using Hink and Ohmart community-structure survey protocol and vegetation classifications. The vegetation composition was analyzed and compared to the Middle Rio Grande Conservation Action Plan (MRG-CAP) rating criteria for dynamic mosaic vegetation, also known as the Dynamic Patch Mosaic (DPM). The DPM attribute indicates the mix of vegetation community types—the vegetation mosaic—that facilitates the best outcome for ecosystem resilience and biodiversity in the bosque. The updated vegetation community-structure types were used to classify each polygon into general vegetation types per the MRG-CAP, …

Impact Of Drought On Land Cover Changes In Diné Bikéyah – A Study Through Remote Sensing, Anjanette A.J. Hawk

Geography ETDs

This study identifies land cover changes associated with a ten-year drought period and discusses the importance of vegetation change in Diné Bikéyah, a semi-arid land located in a remote part of the southwestern United States (US). This study concludes that drought produced slight changes in vegetation within a 540 km² study area in the Tselani-Cottonwood Chapter (TCC) in Diné Bikéyah. The data for this study consist of three Landsat images for the years 1998, 2002, and 2009. The methods used to analyze these Landsat images included image pre-processing, calculation of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) images, and supervised (maximum …

Academic Program Review, Process And Procedures (Eighth Edition), Office Of Assessment And The Academic Program Review Office

UNM HLC 2018-19 Assurance Argument Evidence

This is the eighth edition of the APR manual, efficacious since August 2018. This comprehensively details the APR process of UNM, including documenting its Guiding Principles (p. 6), and the format for a program's "Plan of Action" (p.11).

Assessment Of Vegetation Response To Wildfire At Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico: Case Study Of The Las Conchas Fire, Gladys Valentin-Gonzalez

Geography ETDs

In the past couple of decades, there has been an increase in the occurrence of wildfire events in the United States. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that over 73,000 wildfires on average occur annually in the U.S., burning about 7.3 million acres of land. Bandelier National Monument, in northern New Mexico, has been affected by several wildfires in the past 40 years, one of the most recent being the Las Conchas Fire in 2011, which burned over 60,700 hectaresin Bandelier National Monument and Valles Caldera National Preserve. This research explores a remote-sensing based assessment of vegetation response to and recovery …

Direct Potable Reuse In Small-To-Medium Sized Inland Communities: Lessons Learned For Public Education And Outreach, Claudia B. Pratesi

Architecture and Planning ETDs

Drought, growing populations, and potential conflict over water in the American Southwest have water authorities examining highly treated wastewater as an option to augment municipal supplies. Direct potable reuse (DPR) holds promise for improving sustainability and reliability of potable water supplies by generating high-quality drinking water from wastewater. Despite research demonstrating that DPR can be safe, one of the biggest hindrances to DPR is negative public perception. Attempts to implement some DPR project have failed, while others have proceeded quickly. Using insights from the literature and interviews with water managers, this study aims to: (1) examine existing community conditions related …

Drinking Our Stories:Food Sovereignty In Ecuador And Amazonian Runa Relations With Manioc And Guayusa, Jacqueline Michelle Kramer

Latin American Studies ETDs

Food sovereignty and the role of the state, international organizations, and social movements in its defense have been deeply researched. However, the role of small-scale farmers who continue traditional agricultural methods reflecting tenets of the food sovereignty movement, has been neglected in its relation to food sovereignty. This work aims to connect the plant-based ecological relationships with small-scale farmers using food sovereignty as an analytical discourse. Specifically, this thesis explores the relationship between Ecuadorian Amazonian Quichua people and two staple crops: manioc and guayusa. Through a gendered and epistemological analysis of food sovereignty, it argues that under the politics of …

Spatial And Temporal Intricacies Of Natural Resource Use: Studies In Water, Forests, And Hydrocarbons, Dadhi Adhikari

Economics ETDs

This dissertation examines spatial and temporal impacts of natural resource use. The second chapter integrates hydrological and economic systems to examine the impact of drought on these two systems and explores the spatial impact of policies aimed to mitigate the drought impact. The systems dynamics model developed for this chapter simultaneously considers the physical hydrology in the Middle Rio Grande water basin in New Mexico, the engineered water management system, and a behavioral model of residential water demand for three cities: Albuquerque, Rio Rancho, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The simulation results showed that droughts that occur in later periods, …

The Ivory Tower, Urban Growth, And State Subjugation: An Historical Analysis On The Construction Of Student Identities And The Public Good During University Generated Redevelopment Projects, Jacob R. Wolff

Geography ETDs

Having become almost cliché in academic discourses, the term gentrification offers a conceptualization of sociospatial transformation too narrow for contemporary understandings of inequality within the post-industrial city. Generalizations of a wealthy populous displacing working-class and marginalized populations fail to address the diversity, complexity, and scope of economic hollowing-out and fail to fully account for other incoming subpopulations such as the emergent “creative class,” comprised of university-educated individuals who are not necessarily considered affluent by traditional economic measures. To this end, scholars in the United Kingdom have identified university neighborhood formation as a significant yet distinct process of place production that …

Aldo Leopold, Estella Bergere, Mia Casita And Sheepherding In New Mexico And Colorado, Andrew Gulliford

Natural Resources Journal

Personal and regional history of Peggy Bergon, Aldo Leopold, and sheepherding.