Digital Commons Network^™

Assessing Variation In Air Quality Perception: A Case Study In Utah, Karen Jayne Mendenhall

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In recent years, Utah has experienced poor air quality due to pollution-trapping winter inversions and summer ozone pollution. The resulting impacts of poor air quality include health issues, reduced visibility, economic impacts and ecological impacts. Utah’s topography and exploding urban population are factors which increase human exposure to these adverse impacts of air pollution. It is important for State and local governments to understand how people perceive air quality so that clean air campaigns target those who are most likely to foster pro-environmental behaviors. An analysis was conducted using data from a state-wide survey conducted in July 2017. The survey …

Historical Biogeography And Natural History Of Nocturnal Wasps In The Southwestern Deserts With Special Emphasis On The Genus Chyphotes (Hymenoptera: Chyphotidae), Emily A. Sadler

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Deserts are interesting places due to the large number of plants and animals that live there. Nocturnal wasps are extremely abundant in deserts, but they are difficult to identify and their life cycles are not well known especially the families of Chyphotidae, Tiphiidae (Brachycistidinae), and Mutillidae (velvet ants). In this dissertation, I determine how to correctly identify a particularly difficult group of species that all have black heads from the family Chyphotidae. This is important because these species make up a large proportion of specimens collected. Also, I expanded our knowledge on the distribution of the species of these three …

Learning Logic: A Mixed Methods Study To Examine The Effects Of Context Ordering On Reasoning About Conditionals, Christina W. Lommatsch

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Logical statements are prevalent in mathematics, the sciences, law, and many areas of everyday life. The most common logical statements are conditionals, which have the form “If H..., then C...,” where “H” is a hypothesis (or condition) to be satisfied and “C” is a conclusion to follow. Reasoning about conditionals is a skill that is only superficially understood by most individuals and depends on four main conditional contexts (e.g., intuitive, abstract, symbolic, or counterintuitive). The purpose of this study was to test a theory about the effects of context ordering on reasoning about conditionals. To test the theory, the researcher …

Assessment Of Potential Changes In Crop Yields In The Central United States Under Climate Change Regimes, Neil Matthews-Pennanen

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Climate change is one of the great challenges facing agriculture in the 21^st century. The goal of this study was to produce projections of crop yields for the central United States in the 2030s, 2060s, and 2090s based on the relationship between weather and yield from historical crop yields from 1980 to 2010. These projections were made across 16 states in the US, from Louisiana in the south to Minnesota in the north. They include projections for maize, soybeans, cotton, spring wheat, and winter wheat.

Simulated weather variables based on three climate scenarios were used to project future crop …

Building Up Biogeography: Pattern To Process, William D. Pearse, A. Marcia Barbosa, Susanne A. Fritz, Sally A. Keith, Luke J. Harmon, John Harte, Daniele Silvestro, Xiao Xiao, T. Jonathan Davies

Ecology Center Publications

Linking pattern to process across spatial and temporal scales has been a key goal of the field of biogeography. In January 2017, the 8th biennial conference of the International Biogeography Society sponsored a symposium on Building up biogeography—process to pattern that aimed to review progress towards this goal. Here we present a summary of the symposium, in which we identified promising areas of current research and suggested future research directions. We focus on (1) emerging types of data such as behavioral observations and ancient DNA, (2) how to better incorporate historical data (such as fossils) to move beyond what we …

Generational Gap Of Geographically Displaced U.S. Caribbean Families, Erin M. Geiger, Nicolas M. Spencer

Student Research Symposium

This research focuses on analyzing the diaspora of two specific cultures, the Cuban Americans and the Dominican Americans, and their dislocation from their countries of origin to the United States. Our literary analysis reveals the multiple difficulties and obstacles these families face in creating new lives for themselves. Many traditions and cultural facets are not carried over during the integration and assimilation into the U.S. mainstream culture due to the pressure these families feel to fit in. Family unity within the Latino culture is altered across seas and borders, affecting subsequent generations. Our cultural and literary analysis takes into considerations …

Stocks Or Stakeholders: Nonhuman Animals In Natural Resource Sociology, Michael Briscoe

Student Research Symposium

Human values and meanings for nonhuman animals are socially constructed. Nonhuman animals provide value through tangible means, such as food or economic value, but they also are valued for providing experiences, symbols, and ecosystem services like diversity. Nonhuman animals are afforded certain rights and considerations in modern society, but these have proved insufficient in ensuring positive outcomes for both social and ecological systems. Considering nonhuman animals as stakeholders could improve natural resource outcomes by more fully addressing transboundary and uncertainty issues.

Educational Policies Committee Agenda, April 5, 2018, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

• Curriculum Subcommittee
• Academic Standards Subcommittee
• General Education Subcommittee

Introducing And Evaluating A Knowledge Transfer Approach To Support Problem Solving In And Around Protected Areas, Brady J. Mattsson, Marie Fischborn, Mark W. Brunson, Harald Vacik

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Protected areas (PAs) can generate many benefits inside and outside their borders, and achieving objectives for diverse stakeholders raises many challenges. There are many examples of successful PA management around the globe, although a systematic and comprehensive approach to developing and sharing these solutions has been lacking. We present “solutioning” as a structured process of peer-learning, which can inform management strategies in and around protected areas. We explain how the PANORAMA—Solutions for a Healthy Planet initiative has put solutioning into practice through an interactive community and web portal to learn about protected area solutions around the globe. Unlike other web …

High Resolution Monitoring Of River Bluff Erosion Reveals Failure Mechanisms And Geomorphically Effective Flows, Sara A. Kelly, Patrick Belmont

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Using a combination of Structure from Motion and time lapse photogrammetry, we document rapid river bluff erosion occurring in the Greater Blue Earth River (GBER) basin, a muddy tributary to the sediment-impaired Minnesota River in south central Minnesota. Our datasets elucidated dominant bluff failure mechanisms and rates of bluff retreat in a transient system responding to ongoing streamflow increases and glacial legacy impacts. Specifically, we document the importance of fluvial scour, freeze–thaw, as well as other drivers of bluff erosion. We find that even small flows, a mere 30% of the two-year recurrence interval flow, are capable of causing bluff …

A Biogeographic Perspective On The Evolution Of Fire Syndromes In Pine Trees (Pinus: Pinaceae), Kevin J. Badik, Joshua P. Jahner, Joseph S. Wilson

Biology Faculty Publications

Our goals were to explore the relationship between biogeography and the evolution of fire-adaptive syndromes in the genus Pinus. We used a previously published time-calibrated phylogeny and conducted ancestral trait reconstruction to estimate the likely timing of diversification in Pinus, and to determine when fire-adaptive syndromes evolved in the lineage. To explore trait conservation among fire syndromes and to investigate historical biogeography, we constructed ancestral state reconstructions using the program RASP and estimated the degree of conservatism for fire-adapted traits in the program BaTS. Our reconstructions suggest that the Bering land bridge, which connected North America and Asia, probably played …

General Education Subcommittee Minutes, March 20, 2018, Utah State University

Educational Policies Committee

Course Approvals/Removals/Syllabi Approvals

Business

• Depth Courses and Categorization of Majors
• Departments submitting General Education proposals from outside of their General Education categorization
• Curriculog shutdown

Evaluating Strategies For Sustainable Intensification Of Us Agriculture Through The Long-Term Agroecosystem Research Network, Sheri Spiegal, Brandon T. Bestelmeyer, David W. Archer, David J. Augustine, Elizabeth H. Boughton, Raoul Keith Boughton, Michel A. Cavigelli, Patrick E. Clark, Justin D. Derner, Emily W. Duncan, Cathleen J. Hapeman, R. Daren Harmel, Philip Heilman, Michael A. Holly, David R. Huggins, Kevin W. King, Peter A. Kleinman, Mark A. Liebig, Martin A. Locke, Gregory W. Mccarty, Neville Millar, Steven B. Mirsky, Thomas B. Moorman, Frederick B. Pierson, James R. Rigby, G. Philip Robertson, Jean L. Steiner, Timothy C. Strickland, Hilary M. Swain, Brian J. Wienhold, J.D. Wulfhorst, Matt A. Yost, Charles L. Walthall

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Sustainable intensification is an emerging model for agriculture designed to reconcile accelerating global demand for agricultural products with long-term environmental stewardship. Defined here as increasing agricultural production while maintaining or improving environmental quality, sustainable intensification hinges upon decision-making by agricultural producers, consumers, and policy-makers. The Long-Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) network was established to inform these decisions. Here we introduce the LTAR Common Experiment, through which scientists and partnering producers in US croplands, rangelands, and pasturelands are conducting 21 independent but coordinated experiments. Each local effort compares the outcomes of a predominant, conventional production system in the region ('business as usual') …

Advancing Distributed Data Management For The Hydroshare Hydrologic Information System, Hong Yi, Ray Idaszak, Michael Stealey, Chris Calloway, Alva L. Couch, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

HydroShare (https://www.hydroshare.org) is an online collaborative system to support the open sharing of hydrologic data, analytical tools, and computer models. Hydrologic data and models are often large, extending to multi-gigabyte or terabyte scale, and as a result, the scalability of centralized data management poses challenges for a system such as HydroShare. A distributed data management framework that enables distributed physical data storage and management in multiple locations thus becomes a necessity. We use the iRODS (Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System) data grid middleware as the distributed data storage and management back end in HydroShare. iRODS provides a unified virtual file system …

Revisiting Who, When And Why Stakeholders Matter: Trust And Stakeholder Connectedness, Bret Crane

Management Faculty Publications

With limited resources and attention, managers have sought ways to categorize and prioritize stakeholders. The underlying assumption is that some stakeholders matter more than others. However, in the information age, stakeholders are increasingly interconnected, where a firm’s actions toward one stakeholder are visible to others and can impact members of the stakeholder ecosystem. Actions by a firm toward any of its stakeholders can signal its trustworthiness and determine to what degree other stakeholders will assume vulnerability and engage in future exchange relationships. In this conceptual article, I present a model of stakeholder connectedness and describe the conditions in which a …

Homogenization Of Plant Diversity, Composition, And Structure In North American Urban Yards, William D. Pearse, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Sarah E. Hobbie, Meghan L. Avolio, Neil Bettez, Rinku Roy Chowdhury, Lindsay E. Darling, Peter M. Groffman, J. Morgan Grove, Sharon J. Hall, James B. Heffernan, Jennifer Learned, Christopher Neill, Kristen C. Nelson, Diane E. Pataki, Benjamin L. Ruddell, Meredith K. Steele, Tara L. E. Trammell

Ecology Center Publications

Urban ecosystems are widely hypothesized to be more ecologically homogeneous than natural ecosystems. We argue that urban plant communities assemble from a complex mix of horticultural and regional species pools, and evaluate the homogenization hypothesis by comparing cultivated and spontaneously occurring urban vegetation to natural area vegetation across seven major U.S. cities. There was limited support for homogenization of urban diversity, as the cultivated and spontaneous yard flora had greater numbers of species than natural areas, and cultivated phylogenetic diversity was also greater. However, urban yards showed evidence of homogenization of composition and structure. Yards were compositionally more …

Global Macroevolution And Macroecology Of Passerine Song, William D. Pearse, Ignacio Morales-Castilla, Logan S. James, Maxwell Farrell, Frédéric Boivin, T. Jonathan Davies

Ecology Center Publications

Studying the macroevolution of the songs of Passeriformes (perching birds) has proved challenging. The complexity of the task stems not just from the macroevolutionary and macroecological challenge of modeling so many species, but also from the difficulty in collecting and quantifying birdsong itself. Using machine learning techniques, we extracted songs from a large citizen science dataset, and then analyzed the evolution, and biotic and abiotic predictors of variation in birdsong across 578 passerine species. Contrary to expectations, we found few links between life‐history traits (monogamy and sexual dimorphism) and the evolution of song pitch (peak frequency) or song complexity (standard …

Spatiotemporal Patterns Of Unburned Areas Within Fire Perimeters In The Northwestern United States From 1984 To 2014, Arjan J. H. Meddens, Crystal A. Kolden, James A. Lutz, John T. Abatzoglou, Andrew T. Hudak

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

A warming climate, fire exclusion, and land cover changes are altering the conditions that produced historical fire regimes and facilitating increased recent wildfire activity in the northwestern United States. Understanding the impacts of changing fire regimes on forest recruitment and succession, species distributions, carbon cycling, and ecosystem services is critical, but challenging across broad spatial scales. One important and understudied aspect of fire regimes is the unburned area within fire perimeters; these areas can function as fire refugia across the landscape during and after wildfire by providing habitat and seed sources. With increasing fire activity, there is speculation that fire …

Authors And Editors Assort On Gender And Geography In High-Rank Ecological Publications, Kezia R. Manlove, Rebecca M. Belou

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Peer-reviewed publication volume and caliber are widely-recognized proxies for academic merit, and a strong publication record is essential for academic success and advancement. However, recent work suggests that publication productivity for particular author groups may also be determined in part by implicit biases lurking in the publication pipeline. Here, we explore patterns of gender, geography, and institutional rank among authors, editorial board members, and handling editors in high-impact ecological publications during 2015 and 2016. A higher proportion of lead authors had female first names (33.9%) than editorial board members (28.9%), and the proportion of female first names among handling editors …

Export Competitiveness Of Central And Eastern Europe Since The Enlargement Of The Eu, John Gilbert, Eva Muchová

Economics and Finance Faculty Publications

We use constant market share (CMS) analysis to decompose changes in the export shares of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) economies in the period since the 5th enlargement of the European Union (EU) and measure changes in export competitiveness. We find that the CEE transition economies have generally increased their world export competitiveness, but gains in market share have been tempered by a poor match between both the commodity and regional export profiles of most of the CEE economies and the changes in the world import profile, and by generally slow adaptation of the region to changes in the …

Iterative Near-Term Ecological Forecasting: Needs, Opportunities, And Challenges, Michael C. Dietze, Andrew Fox, Lindsay M. Beck-Johnson, Julio L. Betancourt, Melvin Hooten, Catherine S. Jarnevich, Timothy H. Keitt, Melissa A. Kenney, Christine M. Laney, Laurel G. Larsen, Henry W. Leoscher, Claire K. Lunch, Bryan C. Pijanowski, James T. Randerson, Emily K. Read, Andrew T. Tredennick, Rodrigo Vargas, Kathleen C. Weathers, Ethan P. White

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

Two foundational questions about sustainability are “How are ecosystems and the services they provide going to change in the future?” and “How do human decisions affect these trajectories?” Answering these questions requires an ability to forecast ecological processes. Unfortunately, most ecological forecasts focus on centennial-scale climate responses, therefore neither meeting the needs of near-term (daily to decadal) environmental decision-making nor allowing comparison of specific, quantitative predictions to new observational data, one of the strongest tests of scientific theory. Near-term forecasts provide the opportunity to iteratively cycle between performing analyses and updating predictions in light of new evidence. This iterative process …

Bonding And Bridging Forms Of Social Capital In Wildlife Tourism Microentrepreneurship: An Application Of Social Network Analysis, K. C. Birendra, Duarte B. Morals, Erin Seekamp, Jordan Smith, M. Nils Peterson

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Tourism has been recognized as an important economic sector, requiring a high degree of involvement from the entrepreneurial sector to diversify tourism products and services to meet increasing demand. Tourism is often considered a tool for economic development and a strategy to improve the livelihoods of rural citizens. Specifically, nature-based tourism, such as wildlife tourism, is growing faster than tourism in general, providing a myriad of opportunities for small-scale entrepreneurial engagement. However, several obstacles exist for these small-scale tourism enterprises, such as a lack of social capital. This study examined a network of wildlife tourism microentrepreneurs for bonding and bridging …

Making Rewilding Fit For Policy, Nathalie Pettorelli, Jos Barlow, Philip A. Stephens, Sarah M. Durant, Ben Connor, Henrike Schulte To Bühne, Christopher J. Sandom, Jonathan Wentworth, Johan T. Du Toit

Wildland Resources Faculty Publications

1. Rewilding, here defined as “the reorganisation of biota and ecosystem processes to set an identified social–ecological system on a preferred trajectory, leading to the self‐sustaining provision of ecosystem services with minimal ongoing management,” is increasingly considered as an environmental management option, with potential for enhancing both biodiversity and ecosystem services.
2. Despite burgeoning interest in the concept, there are uncertainties and difficulties associated with the practical implementation of rewilding projects, while the evidence available for facilitating sound decision‐making for rewilding initiatives remains elusive.
3. We identify five key research areas to inform the implementation of future rewilding initiatives: increased understanding of the …

Data On Household Disaster Preparedness For U.S. States And Metropolitan Areas, Peter D. Howe

Browse all Datasets

This dataset contains model estimates of the proportion of the adult population who report having supplies at home to use in case of a disaster, at the state level and Core-Based Statistical Area (CBSA) level in the U.S.

“state_2015_table.csv” contains estimated proportion of adults (18+) who have set aside supplies at home in case of a disaster at the state level for 2015. “cbsa_2015_table.csv” contains estimated proportion of adults (18+) who have set aside supplies at home in case of a disaster at the Core-Based Statistical Area level for 2015.

The Utah Statesman, January 9, 2018, Utah State University

The Utah Statesman

Weekly student newspaper of Utah State University in Logan.

Faculty Senate Agenda, January 8, 2018, Utah State University

Faculty Senate & Faculty Senate Executive Committee

• EPC December Report
• Council on Teacher Education Annual Report/1-Page
• Scholarship Advisory Board Annual Report
• Policy 405.11.4 External Peer Reviews (first reading)

Belonging To The Imperial Nation: Rethinking The History Of The First World War In Britain And Its Empire, Susan R. Grayzel

History Faculty Publications

In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the First World War in 2014–18, the British government set aside funds for a range of commemorative activities. These included a number of “engagement centres” that aimed to bring together academics and local community members in addition to providing separate arts-related programming.1 The Imperial War Museum reworked its main First World War galleries, which opened with great fanfare at the centenary’s start. This denotes a kind of publicly sanctioned interest in a war that Britain had won, after all, but that popular memory had enshrined as something quite different, something that required …

Preparing The Next Generation Of Sustainability Scientists, Alexander K. Killion, Kelley Sterle, Emily N. Bondank, Jillian R. Drabik, Abhinandan Bera, Sara Alian, Kristen A. Goodrich, Marcia Hale, Rachel A. Myer, Quang Phung, Aaron M. Shew, Anastasia W. Thayer

Applied Economics Faculty Publications

Graduate programs emerging in universities over recent decades support the advanced study of sustainability issues in complex socio-environmental systems. Constructing the problem-scope to address these issues requires graduate students to integrate across disciplines and synthesize the social and natural dimensions of sustainability. Graduate programs that are designed to foster inter- and transdisciplinary research acknowledge the importance of training students to use integrative research approaches. However, this training is not available in all graduate programs that support integrative research, often requiring students to seek external training opportunities. We present perspectives from a group of doctoral students with diverse disciplinary backgrounds conducting …

The Body Disordered: Diagnosing The Philippine Nation In José Rizal’S Noli Me Tángere (1887), Azariah Alfante

Decimonónica

José Rizal (1861-1896) was a Philippine nationalist, writer, and physician, whose status as national hero is manifest in the mandatory study of his works in educational institutions across the Philippine archipelago since the enactment of the nationalist Rizal Law (Republic Act No. 1425) on 12 June 1956 (Francia, “José Rizal” 44-45). Joan Torres Pou describes Rizal as a “médico oftalmólogo, licenciado en Filosofía y Letras, políglota, filólogo, antropólogo, escritor, agricultor, liberal, asimilacionista, independentista y masón” (7). In his profile of the Filipino polymath, however, Torres Pou omits a salient dimension of Rizal’s identity: his Catholic religion. Although during his life …

From Folletos To “Fake News”: The Origins Of The Political Fragmentation Of Media, Catherine Sundt

Decimonónica

In 2016, many high-profile elections were influenced not only by a rigid division of the electorate, but also by notable differences in the voters’ sources of news and information. After the United States presidential election, numerous post-mortem think-pieces blamed “social media bubbles” and “echo chambers” as a central threat to democracy.¹ The social circles that people tend to inhabit, due to political, generational, and socio-economic divides, are reflected in their social media networks. Over time, these networks become echo chambers in which users select which sites provide their reading material and “hide” the friends and acquaintances who disagree with …