Digital Commons Network^™

Covid-19 And Transition To Distance Learning: Perspectives Of Postsecondary Teachers In Kenya, James Ogechi Kereri, Grace Moraa Kennedy, Dovison Kereri

Faculty Publications

Several countries have transitioned to online and/or virtual learning to minimize the impact of Covid-19 on education. In Kenya, schools were closed for the better part of 2020 and reopened back on relying on an online mode and/or virtual learning. However, very little is known about the impact of such transition on postsecondary educators. Therefore, this research aims to bridge this gap by investigating the impact of online and/or virtual learning transition on postsecondary educators based on age, gender, location, and academic rank. Using a nationally distributed web-based survey, the study utilized data from 117 educators across Kenya who participated …

Genomics And Geographic Diversity Of Bacteriophages Associated With Endosymbionts In The Guts Of Workers And Alates Of Coptotermes Species (Blattodea: Rhinotermitidae), Junyan Chen, Christopher R. Gissendanner, Chinmay V. Tikhe, Hou Feng Li, Qian Sun, Claudia Husseneder

Faculty Publications

Subterranean termites depend nutritionally on their gut microbiota, which includes protozoa as well as taxonomically and functionally diverse bacteria. Our previous metavirome study revealed a high diversity and novel families of bacteriophages in the guts of Coptotermes formosanus workers from New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. Two assembled bacteriophage genomes (Phages TG-crAlp-04 and 06, family Podoviridae) existed in all colonies and showed similarity to a prophage (ProJPt-Bp1) previously sequenced from a bacterial endosymbiont (Candidatus Azobacteroides pseudotrichonymphae, CAP) of protozoa in the gut of a termite species of the genus Prorhinotermes from Taiwan. In this study the genomes of Phage TG-crAlp-04 and …

We Will Rise No Matter What': Community Perspectives Of Disaster Resilience Following Hurricanes Irma And Maria In Puerto Rico, Elizabeth L. Petrun Sayers, Kathryn E. Anthony, Ashlyn Tom, Alice Y. Kim, Courtney Armstrong

Faculty Publications

Category 4 Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on 20 September 2017 and ploughed across the territory with sustained winds of 155 mph. Just two weeks earlier, category 5 Hurricane Irma had struck the island already damaging critical infrastructure making Hurricane Maria even more devasting. The hurricanes caused catastrophic damage, resulting in the largest and longest response to a domestic disaster in the history of the United States. This paper explores the recovery process in Puerto Rico using a community resilience lens. The study examines narratives, the media environment, trusted sources, and information preferences following the crisis. Community workshops, …

Precise Elevation Thresholds Associated With Salt Marsh–Upland Ecotones Along The Mississippi Gulf Coast, Carlton P. Anderson, Gregory A. Carter, Margaret C.B. Waldron

Faculty Publications

Coastal marshes provide essential ecosystem services related to biodiversity, water quality, and protection from erosion. As increasing rates of relative sea-level rise affect many coastal marsh systems, a thorough understanding of marsh responses to sea-level change, particularly the migration of marsh–upland boundaries, becomes essential. The goal of this study was to determine precise elevation thresholds associated with coastal marsh, the marsh–upland ecotone, and upland plant communities along Mississippi’s Gulf of Mexico coast (diurnal, microtidal). Elevations (NAVD88) were measured using survey-grade Global Navigation Satellite System solutions integrated with high-precision leveling. Plant species were sampled at approximately 1-m intervals along each of …

State Of Ex Situ Conservation Of Landrace Groups Of 25 Major Crops, Julian Ramirez-Villegas, Colin K. Khoury, Harold A. Achicanoy, Maria Victoria Diaz, Andres C. Mendez, Chrystian C. Sosa, Zakaria Kehel, Luigi Guarino, Michael Abberton, Jorrel Aunario, Bashir Al Awar, Juan Carlos Alarcon, Ahmed Amri, Noelle L. Anglin, Vania Azevedo, Khadija Aziz, Grace Lee Capilit, Oswaldo Chavez, Dmytro Chebotarov, Denise E. Costich, Daniel G. Debouck, David Ellis, Hamidou Falalou, Albert Fiu, Michel Edmond Ghanem, Peter Giovannini, Alphonse J. Goungoulou, Badara Gueye, Amal Ibn El Hobyb, Ramni Jamnadass, Chris S. Jones, Bienvenu Kpeki, Jae Sung Lee

Faculty Publications

Crop landraces have unique local agroecological and societal functions and offer important genetic resources for plant breeding. Recognition of the value of landrace diversity and concern about its erosion on farms have led to sustained efforts to establish ex situ collections worldwide. The degree to which these efforts have succeeded in conserving landraces has not been comprehensively assessed. Here we modelled the potential distributions of eco-geographically distinguishable groups of landraces of 25 cereal, pulse and starchy root/tuber/fruit crops within their geographic regions of diversity. We then analysed the extent to which these landrace groups are represented in genebank collections, using …

Adoption Trend Of Climate-Resilient Rice Varieties In Bangladesh, Swati Nayak, Muhammad Ashraful Habib, Kuntal Das, Saidul Islam, Sk Mosharaf Hossain, Biswajit Karmakar, Roberto Fritsche Neto, Sankalp Bhosale, Hans Bhardwaj, Sudhanshu Singh, Mohammad Rafiqul Islam, Vikas Kumar Singh, Ajay Kohli, Uma S. Singh, Lutful Hassan

Faculty Publications

Rice is a major crop in Bangladesh that supports both food security and livelihoods. However, a need remains for improved productivity and adaptation to the risks associated with climate change. To accomplish this, the increased adoption of climate-resilient and high-yielding rice varieties can be beneficial. Therefore, we conducted a study in Bangladesh over three consecutive years: 2016, 2017, and 2018. The scope of the study included the major cropping season (wet), Aman. The yield advantages of climate-resilient rice varieties were evaluated and compared with those of the varieties popular with farmers. We included new stress-tolerant varieties, such as submergencetolerant rice …

Delineation Of Cancer Service Areas Anchored By Major Cancer Centers In The United States, Changzhen Wang, Fahui Wang, Tracy Onega

Faculty Publications

Defining a reliable geographic unit pertaining to cancer care is essential in its assessment, planning, and management. This study aims to delineate and characterize the cancer service areas (CSA) accounting for the presence of major cancer centers in the United States. We used the Medicare enrollment and claims from January 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015 to build a spatial network from patients with cancer to cancer care facilities that provided inpatient and outpatient care of cancer-directed surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. After excluding those without clinical care or outside of the United States, we identified 94 NCI-designated and other academic …

Boron Proxies Record Paleosalinity Variation In The North American Midcontinent Sea In Response To Carboniferous Glacio-Eustasy, Wei Wei, Wenchao Yu, Thomas J. Algeo, Achim D. Herrmann, Lian Zhou, Jinhua Liu, Qian Wang, Yuansheng Du

Faculty Publications

Salinity variation in ancient epicontinental seas has long been challenging to reconstruct. We determined salinity variation in the Late Pennsylvanian North American Midcontinent Sea based on normalized boron concentrations (B/Ga) and isotopic compositions (δ11B) of bulk shale. We analyzed the Stark Shale Member of the Missourian Stage Dennis Limestone cyclothem in the Charleston core (CC) from the Illinois Basin (eastward, more proximal) and the Iowa Riverton core (IRC) from the Midcontinent Shelf (westward, more distal). Both cores exhibited the same pattern of secular variation, with lower B/Ga and δ11B values at their base and top, recording less saline conditions during …

Mastree+: Time‐Series Of Plant Reproductive Effort From Six Continents, Andrew Hacket-Pain, Jessie J. Foest, Ian S. Pearse, Jalene M. Lamontagne, Walter D. Koenig, Giorgio Vacchiano, Michał Bogdziewicz, Thomas Caignard, Paulina Celebias, Joep Van Dormolen, Marcos Fernández-Martínez, Jose V. Moris, Ciprian Palaghianu, Mario Pesendorfer, Akiko Satake, Eliane Schermer, Andrew J. Tanentzap, Peter A. Thomas, Davide Vecchio, Andreas P. Wion, Thomas Wohlgemuth, Tingting Xue, Katharine Abernethy, Marie-Claire Aravena Acuña, Marcelo Daniel Barrera, Jessica H. Barton, Stan Boutin, Emma R. Bush, Sergio Donoso Calderón, Felipe S. Carevic, Carolina Volkmer De Castilho, Juan Manuel Cellini, Colin A. Chapman, Hazel Chapman, Francesco Chianucci, Patricia Da Costa, Luc Croisé, Andrea Cutini, Ben Dantzer, R. Justin Derose, Jean-Thoussaint Dikangadissi, Edmond Dimoto, Fernanda Lopes De Fonseca, Leonard Gallo, Georg Gratzer, David F. Greene, Martín A. Hadad, Alejandro Huertas Herrera, Kathryn J. Jeffery, Jill F. Johnstone, Urs Kalbitzer, Władysław Kantorowicz, Christie A. Kilmas, Jonathan G.A. Lageard, Jeffrey Lane, Mateusz Ledwoń, Abigail C. Leeper, Maria Vanessa Lencinas, Ana Cláudia Lira-Guedes, Michael C. Lordon, Paula Marchelli, Shealyn Marino, Harald Schmidt Van Marle, Andrew G. Mcadam, Ludovic R.W. Momont, Lúcia Helena De Oliveira Wadt, Parisa Panahi, Guillermo Martínez Pastur, Thomas Patterson, Pablo Luis Peri, Łukasz Piechnik, Mehdi Pourhashemi, Claudia Espinoza Quezada, Fidel A. Roig, Karen Peña Rojas, Yamina Micaela Rosas, Silvio Schueler, Barbara Seget, Rosina Soler, Michael A. Steele, Mónica Toro-Manríquez, Caroline E.G. Tutin, Tharcisse Ukizintambara, Lee White, Biplang Yadok, John L. Willis, Anita Zolles, Magdalena Żywiec, Davide Ascoli

Faculty Publications

Significant gaps remain in understanding the response of plant reproduction to environmental change. This is partly because measuring reproduction in long-lived plants requires direct observation over many years and such datasets have rarely been made publicly available. Here we introduce MASTREE+, a data set that collates reproductive time-series data from across the globe and makes these data freely available to the community. MASTREE+ includes 73,828 georeferenced observations of annual reproduction (e.g. seed and fruit counts) in perennial plant populations worldwide. These observations consist of 5971 population-level time-series from 974 species in 66 countries. The mean and median time-series length is …

Can Research Be Sacred Ministry?, Desmond Murray

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Learning To Cycle: A Cross-Cultural And Cross-Generational Comparison, Rita Cordovil, Cristiana Mercê, Marco Branco, Frederico Lopes, David Catela, Elina Hasanen, Arto Laukkanen, Patrizia Tortella, Guido Fumagalli, Cristina Sá, Boris Jidovtseff, Linus Zeuwts, An V. De Meester, Farid Bardid, Ricardo Fujikawa, Sanne Veldman, Silvija Zlatar, Isaac Estevan

Faculty Publications

Background: Learning to cycle is an important milestone for children, but the popularity of cycling and the environmental factors that promote the development and practice of this foundational movement skill vary among cultures and across time. This present study aimed to investigate if country of residence and the generation in which a person was born influence the age at which people learn to cycle.

Methods: Data were collected through an online survey between November 2019 and December 2020. For this study, a total of 9,589 responses were obtained for adults (self-report) and children (parental report) living in 10 countries (Portugal, …

Composite Style Pixel And Point Convolution-Based Deep Fusion Neural Network Architecture For The Semantic Segmentation Of Hyperspectral And Lidar Data, Kevin T. Decker, Brett J. Borghetti

Faculty Publications

Multimodal hyperspectral and lidar data sets provide complementary spectral and structural data. Joint processing and exploitation to produce semantically labeled pixel maps through semantic segmentation has proven useful for a variety of decision tasks. In this work, we identify two areas of improvement over previous approaches and present a proof of concept network implementing these improvements. First, rather than using a late fusion style architecture as in prior work, our approach implements a composite style fusion architecture to allow for the simultaneous generation of multimodal features and the learning of fused features during encoding. Second, our approach processes the higher …

Scope For Pair-Wise Factor Substitution Strategies In Us Rural Transit Operations When Factor Prices Change, Gregory G. Lubiani, Albert A. Okunade

Faculty Publications

Rural transit providers face unique challenges beyond those of their urban counterparts, including worse road conditions, access to trained labor, tighter budget constraints, and higher miles per rider. To date, transportation economics and policy research is scarce for this essential service in rural geographies due to data paucity. Employing the Generalized Translog Cost-minimization model, the core innovation in this paper is presenting the first illustration of the cost-minimization strategies available to transit providers when faced with the constraints of sparsely populated geographic settings. Using a rich dataset of 42 U.S. rural transportation providers across 17 years, we estimate the operational …

Social Capital, Urbanization Level, And Covid-19 Vaccination Uptake In The United States: A National Level Analysis, Shan Qiao, Zhenlong Li, Jiajia Zhang, Xiaowen Sun, Camryn Garrett, Xiaoming Li

Faculty Publications

Vaccination remains the most promising mitigation strategy for the COVID-19 pandemic. However, existing literature shows significant disparities in vaccination uptake in the United States. Using publicly available national-level data, we aimed to explore if county-level social capital can further explain disparities in vaccination uptake rates when adjusting for demographic and social determinants of health (SDOH) variables, and if association between social capital and vaccination uptake may vary by urbanization level. Bivariate analyses and a hierarchical multivariable quasi-binomial regression analysis were conducted, where the regression analysis was stratified by urban–rural status. The current study suggests that social capital contributes significantly to …

Development And Structural Organization Of Mexico’S Mangrove Monitoring System (Smmm) As A Foundation For Conservation And Restoration Initiatives: A Hierarchical Approach, María Teresa Rodríguez-Zúñiga, Carlos Troche-Souza, María Isabel Cruz-López, Victor H. Rivera-Monroy

Faculty Publications

Mangroves provide ecosystem services worth billions of dollars worldwide. Although countries with extensive mangrove areas implemented management and conservation programs since the 1980s, the global area is still decreasing. To recuperate this lost area, both restoration and rehabilitation (R/R) projects have been implemented but with limited success, especially at spatial scales needed to restore functional properties. Monitoring mangroves at different spatial scales in the long term (decades) is critical to detect potential threats and select cost-effective management criteria and performance measures to improve R/R program success. Here, we analyze the origin, development, implementation, and outcomes of a country-level mangrove monitoring …

Flood Detection In Urban Areas Using Satellite Imagery And Machine Learning, Ahad Hasan Tanim, Callum Blake Mcrae, Hassan Tavakol-Davani, Erfan Goharian

Faculty Publications

Urban flooding poses risks to the safety of drivers and pedestrians, and damages infrastructures and lifelines. It is important to accommodate cities and local agencies with enhanced rapid flood detection skills and tools to better understand how much flooding a region may experience at a certain period of time. This results in flood management orders being announced in a timely manner, allowing residents and drivers to preemptively avoid flooded areas. This research combines information received from ground observed data derived from road closure reports from the police department, with remotely sensed satellite imagery to develop and train machine-learning models for …

Recently Evolved Francisella-Like Endosymbiont Outcompetes An Ancient And Evolutionarily Associated Coxiella-Like Endosymbiont In The Lone Star Tick (Amblyomma Americanum) Linked To The Alpha-Gal Syndrome, Deepak Kumar, Surendra Raj Sharma, Abdulsalam Adegoke, Ashley Kennedy, Holly C. Tuten, Andrew Y. Li, Shahid Karim

Faculty Publications

Background: Ticks are hematophagous arthropods that transmit various bacterial, viral, and protozoan pathogens of public health significance. The lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum) is an aggressive human-biting tick that transmits bacterial and viral pathogens, and its bites are suspected of eliciting the alpha-gal syndrome, a newly emerged delayed hypersensitivity following consumption of red meat in the United States. While ongoing studies have attempted to investigate the contribution of different tick-inherent factors to the induction of alpha-gal syndrome, an otherwise understudied aspect is the contribution of the tick microbiome and specifically obligate endosymbionts to the establishment of the alpha-gal …

U.S. Abortion Care Providers’ Perspectives On Self-Managed Abortion, Aleta Baldwin, Dana M. Johnson, Kathleen Broussard, Luisa Alejandra Tello-Pérez, Melissa Madera, Carol Ze-Noah, Elisa Padron, Abigail R.A. Aiken

Faculty Publications

State-level restrictions on abortion access may prompt greater numbers of people to self-manage their abortion. The few studies exploring perspectives of providers towards self-managed abortion are focused on physicians and advanced practice clinicians. Little is known about the wider spectrum of abortion care providers who encounter self-managed abortion in their clinic-based work. To gain a deeper understanding of this issue and inform future care delivery, we conducted in-depth interviews with 46 individuals working in a range of positions in 46 abortion clinics across 29 states. Our interpretative analysis resulted in themes shaped by beliefs about safety and autonomy, and a …

Transhiphop Pedagogy And Epistemic Disobedience In Senegal, Noella Binda Niati, Payal Pradip Shah Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

This study situates transnégritude within discussions that consider the ways in which young people in Senegal, with a shared transcolonial narrative, bound through an ‘imagined community,’ negotiate their space, their identities, and their ways of knowing through a Hip-Hop pedagogy. Our analysis is informed by Mignolo’s epistemic disobedience and the geo- and body-politics that challenge neo-colonial epistemologies. The global scope of Hip-Hop culture and its manifestations in West Africa nuances the ways in which young people view education and its impact on their social identity. A transnégritude perspective aptly ‘straddles’ black identity, agency, and deconstructionism and allows for a fluid …

Alignment Of Optical Backscatter Measurements From The Exports Northeast Pacific Field Deployment, Zachary K. Erickson, Ivona Cetinić, Xiaodong Zhang, Emmanuel Boss, P. Jeremy Werdell, Scott Freeman, Lianbo Hu, Craig Lee, Melissa Omand, Mary Jane Perry

Faculty Publications

Backscattering of light is commonly measured by ocean observing systems, including ships and autonomous platforms, and is used as a proxy for the concentration of water column constituents such as phytoplankton and particulate carbon. Multiple on-going projects involve large numbers of independent measurements of backscatter, as well as other biologically relevant parameters, to understand how biology is changing in time and space throughout the global ocean. Rarely are there sufficient measurements to test how well these instruments are inter-calibrated in real-world deployment conditions. This paper develops a procedure to align multiple independently calibrated backscatter instruments to each other using nearby …

Structural Problems Of Latin American Cities 450 Years After Caracas’ Foundation, Fabio Capra-Ribeiro

Faculty Publications

Latin American cities face many problems that compromise them from different angles such as lack of infrastructure, government fragmentation, and environmental degradation. At the same time, each city tries to come up with its own solutions, but there are so many difficulties that in many cases it is difficult to keep attention and efforts focused on all these directions. For these reasons, this research aims to define some of the most common problems faced by cities in Latin America. Disseminating these similarities could help to face those problems, since, if local governments recognize that they face the same situations as …

Global Gnss-Ro Electron Density In The Lower Ionosphere, Dong L. Wu, Daniel J. Emmons Ii, Nimalan Swarnalingam

Faculty Publications

Lack of instrument sensitivity to low electron density (N_e) concentration makes it difficult to measure sharp N_e vertical gradients (four orders of magnitude over 30 km) in the D/E-region. A robust algorithm is developed to retrieve global D/E-region N_e from the high-rate GNSS radio occultation (RO) data, to improve spatiotemporal coverage using recent SmallSat/CubeSat constellations. The new algorithm removes F-region contributions in the RO excess phase profile by fitting a linear function to the data below the D-region. The new GNSS-RO observations reveal many interesting features in the diurnal, seasonal, solar-cycle, and magnetic-field-dependent variations in the …

Accountability As A Key Virtue In Mental Health And Human Flourishing, John R. Peteet, Charlotte Vanoyen-Witvliet, C. Stephen Evans

Faculty Publications

We propose that accountability plays an implicit, important, and relatively unexamined role in psychiatry. People generally think of accountability as a relation in which one party is held accountable by another. In this paper, we examine accountability as a virtue, drawing on philosophy, psychiatry, and psychology to examine what it means to welcome being accountable in an excellent way that promotes flourishing. When people manifest accountability as a virtue, they are both responsive to others they owe a response, and they are responsible for their attitudes and actions in light of these relationships. Psychiatric treatment often aims to correct disordered …

Flood Depth Estimation During Hurricane Harvey Using Sentinel-1 And Uavsar Data, Sananda Kundu, Venkat Lakshmi, Raymond Torres

Faculty Publications

In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey was one of the most destructive storms to make landfall in the Houston area, causing loss of life and property. Temporal and spatial changes in the depth of floodwater and the extent of inundation form an essential part of flood studies. This work estimates the flood extent and depth from LiDAR DEM (light detection and ranging digital elevation model) using data from the Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)–Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) and satellite sensor—Sentinel-1. The flood extent showed a decrease between 29–30 August and 5 September 2017. The flood depths estimated using the …

Connectivity And Directionality In Estuarine Channel Networks, Matthew Hiatt, Elisabeth A. Addink, Maarten G. Kleinhans

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Global Virome In One Network (Virion): An Atlas Of Vertebrate-Virus Associations, Colin J. Carlson, Rory J. Gibb, Gregory F. Albery, Liam Brierley, Ryan P. Connor, Tad Dallas, Evan A. Eskew, Anna C. Fagre, Maxwell J. Farrell, Hannah K. Frank, Renata L. Muylaert, Timothée Poisot, Angela L. Rasmussen, Sadie J. Ryan, Stephanie N. Seifert

Faculty Publications

Data that catalogue viral diversity on Earth have been fragmented across sources, disciplines, formats, and various degrees of open sharing, posing challenges for research on macroecology, evolution, and public health. Here, we solve this problem by establishing a dynamically maintained database of vertebrate-virus associations, called The Global Virome in One Network (VIRION). The VIRION database has been assembled through both reconciliation of static data sets and integration of dynamically updated databases. These data sources are all harmonized against one taxonomic backbone, including metadata on host and virus taxonomic validity and higher classification; additional metadata on sampling methodology and evidence strength …

Global Patterns And Controls Of Nutrient Immobilization On Decomposing Cellulose In Riverine Ecosystems, David M. Costello, Scott D. Tiegs, Luz Boyero, Cristina Coimbra, Krista Capps, Michael Danger, Paul C. Frost, Mark O. Gessner, Natalie A. Griffiths, Halvor M. Halvorson, Kevin A. Kuehn, Amy M. Marcarelli, Todd V. Royer, Devan M. Mathie, Ricardo J. Albariño, Clay Arango, Jukka Aroviita, Colden V. Baxter, Brent J. Bellinger, Andreas Bruder, Francis J. Burdon, Marcos Callisto, Antonio Camacho, Fanny Colas, Julien Cornut, Verónica Crespo-Pérez, Wyatt F. Cross, Alison M. Derry, Michael M. Douglas, Arturo Elosegi, Elvira De Eyto, Verónica Ferreira, Carmen Ferriol, Tadeusz Fleituch, Jennifer J. Follstad Shah, André Frainer, Erica A. Garcia, Liliana García, Pavel García, Darren P. Giling, R. Karina Gonzales-Pomar, Manuel A.S. Graça, Hans-Peter Grossart, François Guérold, Luiz U. Hepp, Scott N. Higgins, Takuo Hishi, Carlos Iñiguez-Armijos, Tomoya Iwata, Andrea E. Kirkwood, Aaron A. Koning, Sarian Kosten, Hjalmar Laudon, Peter R. Leavitt, Aurea L. Lemes Da Silva, Shawn G. Leroux, Carri Leroy, Peter J. Lisi, Frank O. Masese, Peter B. Mcintyre, Brendan G. Mckie, Adriana O. Medeiros, Marko Miliša, Yo Miyake, Robert Mooney, Tim Moulton, Jorge Nimptsch, Riku Paavola, Isabel Pardo, Ivan Y. Parnikova, Christopher J. Patrick, Edwin T.H.M. Peeters, Jesus Pozo, Brian Reid, John S. Richardson, José Rincón, Geta Risnoveanu, Christopher T. Robinson, Anna C. Santamans, Gelas Simiyu, Agnija Skuja, Jerzy Smykla, Ryan Sponseller, Franco Texeira-De Mello, Sirje Vilbaste, Verónica D. Villanueva, J. R. Webster, Stefan Woelfl, Marguerite A. Xenopolous, Adam Yates, Catherine M. Yule, Yixin Zhang, Jacob A. Zwart

Faculty Publications

Microbes play a critical role in plant litter decomposition and influence the fate of carbon in rivers and riparian zones. When decomposing low-nutrient plant litter, microbes acquire nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) from the environment (i.e., nutrient immobilization), and this process is potentially sensitive to nutrient loading and changing climate. Nonetheless, environmental controls on immobilization are poorly understood because rates are also influenced by plant litter chemistry, which is coupled to the same environmental factors. Here we used a standardized, low-nutrient organic matter substrate (cotton strips) to quantify nutrient immobilization at 100 paired stream and riparian sites representing 11 biomes …

Presas Efímeras Of New Mexico, José A. Rivera Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

The main title of this paper mimics a groundbreaking investigation by anthropologist Teresa Rojas Rabiela and ethnohistorian Ignacio Gutiérrez Ruvalcaba titled: Las presas efímeras mexicanas, del pasado y del presente (Ephemeral diversion dams of Mexico, past and present). Their study inspired the addition of counterpart cases from Nuevo México, a former Mexican province directly north of the Juarez-El Paso border. The work here describes the traditional dams of the northern Río Grande region and also serves as a guide to future research and the development of historic preservation projects. After introducing readers to Las presas efímeras mexicanas, …

Off-Peak Ndvi Correction To Reconstruct Landsat Time Series For Post-Fire Recovery In High-Latitude Forests, Cuizhen Wang, Aiai Wang, Dianfan Guo, Haibo Li, Shuying Zang

Faculty Publications

Collecting long-term satellite image series in high latitudes has been challenging due to its short growing season. For off-peak imagery, its reflective properties need to be corrected to maintain the spectral consistency. This study compares three statistical approaches to reconstructing a 30-year normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) series for forest recovery assessment after the 1987 Black Dragon Fire in the Greater Hinggan Mountains Forest, Northeast China. To correct the off-peak NDVI to peak NDVI, the Landsat paired regression takes advantage of the scene-to-scene linear relationship between the two images, the GIMMS booster approach compensates the NDVI increment rate based on …

Fires On Ice: Emerging Permafrost Peatlands Fire Regimes In Russia’S Subarctic Taiga, Vera Kuklina, Oleg Sizov, Elena Rasputina, Irina Bilichenko, Natalia Krasnoshtanova, Viktor Bogdanov, Andrey N. Petrov

Faculty Publications

Wildfires in permafrost areas, including smoldering fires (e.g., “zombie fires”), have increasingly become a concern in the Arctic and subarctic. Their detection is difficult and requires ground truthing. Local and Indigenous knowledge are becoming useful sources of information that could guide future research and wildfire management. This paper focuses on permafrost peatland fires in the Siberian subarctic taiga linked to local communities and their infrastructure. It presents the results of field studies in Evenki and old-settler communities of Tokma and Khanda in the Irkutsk region of Russia in conjunction with concurrent remote sensing data analysis. The study areas located in …