Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluating Population Genetic Structure And Potential Genomic Signals Of Natural Selection In A Migratory Songbird (Protonotaria Citrea), Tyler A. Hohenstein

Theses and Dissertations

In this study I attempted to further resolve the population genetic structure in the Prothonotary Warbler (Protonotaria citrea), and conducted an outlier SNP analysis and exploratory gene ontology analysis to investigate potential ongoing natural selection in the species. This analysis of population structure confirms previous work by DeSaix et al. (2019), where weak population structure was observed between eastern sites along the Atlantic Coastal Plain, and western sites in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley, possibly due to a genetic discontinuity across the Appalachian Mountains. I conducted two forms of outlier SNP analyses, a principal component analysis (PCA)-based approach to identify SNPs …

Iere Annual Report 2022, Erin Largo-Wight, James W. Taylor, Kelly A. Rhoden

Annual Reports

2022 Annual Report of the Institute for Environmental Research and Education

Evaluating Associations Between Pesticide Use And Kidney Function In The Biomarkers Of Exposure And Effect In Agriculture (Beea) Study: Using Cluster Models To Group Farmers With Similar Pesticide Use, Thomas Shao

Public Health Theses

Pesticides are commonly used in agrarian areas to control for certain forms of undesirable plant or animal life. The widespread use of pesticides and the variety of chemicals that make up this class pose adverse health effects to those exposed to pesticides. Farmers often use multiple pesticides, and their use is often correlated with other pesticides. However, analyses typically examine each pesticide individually and mixture analysis is not as heavily considered. To further evaluate the exposure of pesticide usage, hierarchical clustering methods were used to identify similar questionnaire response patterns. This technique has been used to quantify homogenous exposure estimates …

The Nexus Of Climate Change, Biodiversity, And Food Security: A Brazil Case Study, Andrew M. Berger

Dissertations and Theses

What is referred to as climate change today is the rapid warming of the climate, largely from human actions, and the effects that come with that warming. One study published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2021 argues that, “human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases have caused increases in global average temperatures, changes in precipitation timing and intensity, rising sea levels, and many other changes.” A Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) study found that when looking at the number of countries exposed to climate extremes in five year periods from 2000 to 2020, the number of countries “exposed …

Data Fusion And Synergy Of Active And Passive Remote Sensing; An Application For Freeze Thaw Detections, Zahra Sharifnezhadazizi

Dissertations and Theses

There has been a recent evolvement in the field of remote sensing after increase of number satellites and sensors data which could be fused to produce new data and products. These efforts are mainly focused on using of simultaneous observations from different platforms with different spatial and temporal resolutions. The research dissertation aims to enhance the synergy use of active and passive microwave observations and examine the results in detection land freeze and thaw (FT) predictions. Freeze thaw cycles particularly in high-latitude regions have a crucial role in many applications such as agriculture, biogeochemical transitions, hydrology and ecosystem studies. The …

Investigation Of Reactions Occurring In Municipal Solid Waste Residues, Tasnuva T. Moutushi

Dissertations and Theses

Each year more than 290 million tons of municipal solid waste (MSW) is generated in the U.S. Understanding the reactions occurring in waste during disposal, transport, and storage is important to move towards an integrated waste management strategy. Recently some landfills in the U.S. have been reported to exceed the regulatory temperature range, causing numerous regulatory challenges. The reason for this phenomenon is still unidentified. In addition, the co-disposal of the MSW ash in landfills lead to various reactions which can impact the landfill environment. Understanding the reactions occurring in the MSW and in ash is essential to minimize and …

Design Of Smart Iot Device For Monitoring Short-Term Exposure To Air Pollution Peaks, Eric Nizeyimana, Jimmy Nsenga, Ryosuke Shibasaki, Damien Hanyurwimfura, Junseok Hwang

All Rsif Scholars' Publications

Air pollution spikes have been causing harm to human beings and the environment. Most exposure to Air pollution spikes has demonstrated a significant impact on mental health, especially children at an early age. That lead to suicide or depression. Previous research concentrated on air pollution in general. Existing monitoring systems do not consider Short-term air pollution peaks. This paper presents the co-design of the hardware and software for IoT to monitor air pollution spikes for a short duration in real-time monitoring. The system comprises two technologies like edge computing to capture short- term exposure and a mathematical model for distribution …

Stakeholder Acceptance Of Wild Equid Fertility Control Mirrors Global Shifts In Attitudes To Wildlife Management, Giovanna Massei, Stephanie L. Boyles Griffin

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Wild equid (horses [Equus ferus] and burros [E. asinus]) populations have increased on public lands in the United States since the passage of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. As of March 1, 2022, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) estimated that wild equid populations on designated herd management areas (HMAs) may exceed 82,000 animals. In 2020, the total population of wild equids in the United States was estimated to exceed 300,000 animals. The BLM sets an appropriate management level (AML) for wild horse and burro herds on each HMA and removes animals …

Everything Is Bigger In Texas, Including The Need To Incentivize And Implement Innovative Decentralized Wastewater Treatment Systems As A Method Of Water Reuse, Haley Varnadoe

Water Law Review

Texas will need to adapt to a drier climate and reduced water supply in the 21st century as the negative hydrological effects of climate change continue. Rising temperatures will accelerate evaporation of surface water resources, which in turn both increases reliance on depletable groundwater resources and de creases the amount of surface water available for aquifer recharge. As a result, Texans who rely on either groundwater or surface water to meet their domestic water needs-particularly those in rural aid regions-may suffer as both quantities decrease in the coming decades. The practice of domestic water reuse presents one solution to a …

College Students' Engagement And Academic Outcomes In Online Learning During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Thuy Vy Tran, Olivia Aspiras

Modern Psychological Studies

This study examined the relationship among motivation, engagement, and academic outcomes in online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants were 41 students enrolled in at least two online classes. They completed a survey measuring motivation, engagement, and academic performance in their online courses. It was hypothesized that greater motivation and engagement would predict greater academic outcomes, and that engagement mediates the relationship between motivation and academic outcomes. Regression analyses showed that both motivation and engagement significantly predicted academic outcomes. Engagement was not a significant mediator between motivation and academic outcomes; rather, mediation analyses found that motivation mediated the relationship between …

Advancing Forest Structure-Function Relationships: Linking Above- And Belowground Structure To Soil Respiration, Laura J. Hickey

Theses and Dissertations

Variation in the soil-to-atmosphere C flux, or soil respiration (Rs), is influenced by a suite of biotic and abiotic factors, including soil temperature, soil moisture, and root biomass. However, whether canopy structure is tied to soil respiration through its simultaneous influence over these drivers is not known. We assessed relationships between measures of above- and belowground vegetation density and complexity, and evaluated whether Rs is linked to remotely sensed canopy structure through pathways mediated by established biotic and abiotic mechanisms. Our results revealed that, at stand-scale, canopy rugosity–a measure of complexity–and vegetation area index were coupled to soil respiration through …

How Is Biophilic Urbanism Being Used In Planning To Rejuvenate Post-Industrial Cities?, Andrea A. Kerley

Theses and Dissertations

ARE POST-INDUSTRIAL CITIES USING BIOPHILIC URBANISM TO MERGE NATURE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT? A PLAN EVALUATION OF FOUR U.S. LEGACY CITIES

By Andrea (Andi) Ames Kerley, Master in Urban and Regional Planning

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Urban and Regional Planning, at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Virginia Commonwealth University, 2020.

Major Director: Megan Z. Gough, Associate Professor, L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs,

Urban and Regional Studies and Planning

The re-imaging of U.S. post-industrial cities from desolate, impoverished, and polluted areas to unique, equitable, and environmentally aware cities …

Modification Of Culture Medium And Identification Of Microbial Contaminants For Improved In Vitro Propagation Of Freshwater Mussels, Raquel M. Wetzell

Theses and Dissertations

In vitro propagation efforts play an essential role in conserving and restoring threatened freshwater mussel populations by circumventing the need for a fish host. Across a broad range of taxa, transformation is induced with an artificial M199 medium and rabbit serum. However, such formulation may not be sufficient in culturing critical species with more specific physiological requirements. In this study, multiple serum mixtures were tested to improve in vitro transformation of two freshwater mussel species: yellow lampmussel (Lampsilis cariosa) and tidewater mucket (Atlantaconcha ochracea). These species were selected because they parasitize similar fish host species but …

Contributors - Quaker Religious Thought, No. 138, Jon R. Kershner

Quaker Religious Thought

No abstract provided.

Roundtable Two: Environmental Law Education: New Techniques In The Classroom And Beyond, Lincoln Davies, Karrigan Bork, Sarah Krakoff

Publications

No abstract provided.

An Analytical Network Process (Anp) Model For Choosing Optimal Public-Private Partnership (Ppp) Contract Types For Infrastructure Projects, Su Lae Yee Zaw

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

With the rapid social and economic development, a great deal of expenditure is crucial for the nation's infrastructure development. Nevertheless, the governments of many developing nations have been experienced with the limited budget and technical inability to deliver effective public infrastructures. Public-private partnership (PPP) has been adopted as an alternative collaboration arrangement between the government and the private sector in many nations to overcome these challenges. PPP can be defined as a long-term contract between a public agency and a private entity for rendering public facilities, including design, construct, finance, operate, and manage the project. The PPP contract types can …

Youth Systemic Advocacy And Collective Care Program Report, Kylie Wrigley

Reports accepted as research outputs

Climate Justice Union trained 13 diverse participants aged 12-18 across Noongar Boodja in systemic advocacy and collective care. The program was co-designed by CJU and 5 young people and delivered online over 7 weeks. It emphasised critical reflection, collective care and identifying climate (in)justice in our communities. Participants said they enrolled because they want to learn how to create change, and wanted to create that change by getting involved, learning skills and sharing them with their peers. This report provides an overview of the program, it's aims and why this program and more like it are needed. We report on …

Impact Of Prairie Restoration On Geochemistry And Microbial Communities In Groundwater, Kayla Koenig

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Prairie restoration is important for reversing the loss of biodiversity and repairing ecosystem functions humanity is dependent on diverse ecosystems. This study looks at the impact of the beginning phases of prairie restoration on groundwater geochemistry and microbial communities the relationship between them. This research project studied the geochemistry and microbial communities in five wells before, during, and after the beginning phases of the first year of a prairie restoration on the Northern Illinois University campus. Water samples were collected bimonthly for a year and analyzed on an Ion Chromatograph. Microbial samples were collected monthly and underwent DNA extraction, amplification, …

Marx, Critical Theory, And The Treadmill Of Production Of Value: Why Environmental Sociology Needs A Critique Of Capital, Alex Stoner

Journal Articles

This chapter explores the domestication of Marx’s critique of political economy within Marxist-oriented environmental sociology, and treadmill of production (ToP) theory, in particular. The aim is to explicate the theoretical resources for a rigorous critique of capital-induced planetary degradation. Shortcomings of ToP theory pertaining to the conceptualization of capital and value are identified. The reasons for these shortcomings, including how they might be addressed, are elaborated by reconsidering key aspects of Marx’s critical theory of modern capitalist society. The chapter contributes to current discussions in both critical theory and environmental sociology by demonstrating the continued relevance of Marx’s critical theory …

Departments, Schools, Divisions, And Colleges: Organization Of Academic Units In Public Master’S Institutions In The United States, Brent Graves, Brian Cherry

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Collaborating In Cattle Country: Developing A Collaborative Process To Protect The Ecological, Economic, And Cultural Integrity Of Ranching In The Northern Rockies, Emily Jochem

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper explores the creation of a collaborative group that is being convened by Future West, a nonprofit organization based out of Bozeman, MT, to address issues surrounding the loss of ranchlands to alternative land uses in the Northern Rockies. Using literature and theory on collaboration this paper outlines a framework for the development of a collaborative group that includes seven ranchers as advisors to Future West in the development of their program. This framework includes the following elements:

1. A survey that was administered to each participant to assesses their ability to represent their community, and to gauge their initial …

Seeding Resilience: An Examination Of The Impacts Of A Seed Saving Network In Western Montana, Christina Leas

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Seed saving, a worldwide practice as old as agriculture, continues even in the context of an increasingly industrialized and globalized agricultural system. While some scholarship has focused on informal seed saving practices that continue to thrive in the global South, few studies have examined the dynamics of these practices in the global North, particularly in the American West. Informal seed saving systems have implications for the resilience of agroecosystems. The concept of resilience has become an important framework for conceptualizing agroecosystems as social-ecological systems, both in scholarship and in policy. However, operationalizing the concept of resilience, particularly in agroecology research, …

Factors Influencing The Effectiveness Of Managing Human–Robot Teams, Theodore B. Terry

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Certain factors can influence the capabilities of a robot–human team by affecting their social and behavioral dynamics in a work environment. But these factors were not known due to the progressive nature of human–robot partnerships and a lack of peer-reviewed literature on the topic. This e-Delphi study aimed to identify and understand these unknown influential factors based on the participants’ insights. The overarching research question asked about the need to determine factors that might influence the effectiveness of managing human-robot teams. The basis for the conceptual framework for this study was the theory of communication used in organizational management. Twelve …

Exploring The Integration Of Corporate Sustainability Into Small-Scale Business Activities, Olushola O. Odutola

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Small and medium-scale enterprises contribute 49% of the gross domestic product in Nigeria. The lack of research studies on how small and medium-scale enterprises integrate corporate sustainability into their business operations might present challenges for policymakers in achieving Nigeria’s sustainable development goals (SDG). The purpose of this descriptive phenomenological study was to explore how managers of small and medium-scale enterprises integrate the corporate sustainability dimensions into their business operations based on the concepts of the corporate entity, corporate nature, and corporate obligations. The central research question of this study was how managers of small and medium-scale enterprises integrate the economic, …

Revisiting A Jurisprudence Of Obligation, Ariel Evan Mayse, Kenneth A. Bamberger

Touro Law Review

Through his landmark exploration of obligation as the conceptual touchstone of what he describes as the “Jewish jurisprudence of the social order,” Robert Cover offered an alternate language for legal regimes grounded in a rhetoric of individual rights. The present essay revisits Cover’s account of the socially embedded nature of law and juridical process, taking seriously both its claims, as well as the cautions of its critics. The essay thus neither abandons the concept of rights as key to jurisprudence nor seeks to present a naïve or romantic characterization of Jewish legal thought, and proceeds wary of the pitfalls inherent …

Determination Of The Ecological Water Quality In The Orienco Stream Using Benthic Macroinvertebrates In The Northern Ecuadorian Amazon, Federico Sinche, Manuel Cabrera, Lenin Vaca, Edin Segura, Pablo Carrera

School of Environmental Sustainability: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In recent years, pollution of watercourses in nearby protected ecosystems has increased due to urbanization. Standard physiochemical methods and probes are one way to monitor watercourses for quality. However, they often do not provide the full ecological status of the body of water. In this work, we set out to assess the ecological water quality of an urban stream by using benthic macroinvertebrates as bioindicators. We conducted the work on the Orienco stream in Lago Agrio in the province of Sucumbíos in the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon (NEA). The stream has become a sink of raw domestic sanitary wastewater from rural …

Aircraft Interior And Seat Design: Priorities Based On Passengers’ Opinions, Peter Vink, Gerbera Vledder, Yu Song, Britta Herbig, Anna Sophie Reichherzer, Neil Mansfield

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Comfort is an important factor for passengers in the selection of airlines, and electric propeller aircraft will be an important element of future sustainable aviation. In this paper, we studied the order of importance of different (dis)comfort factors regarding traveling with propeller aircraft. Two experiments were conducted, one was a simulation flight on the ground with 33 participants and the other were two real flights with 97 participants. All participants were asked to rank the importance of different (dis)comfort factors in different phases of flights. Results indicated that though there are differences between the simulation and the real flights, noise, …

A Comprehensive Review On The Decontamination Of Lead(Ii) From Water And Wastewater By Low-Cost Biosorbents, Jonas Bayuo, Mwemezi Rwiza, Kelvin Mtei

All Rsif Scholars' Publications

The disadvantages of conventional methods in water and wastewater management including the demand for high energy consumption, the creation of secondary toxic sludge, and operation cost are much too high for developing countries. However, adsorption using low-cost biosorbents is the most efficient non-conventional technique for heavy metals removal. The high adsorption capacities, cost-effectiveness, and the abundance of agricultural waste materials in nature are the important parameters that explain why these biosorbents are economical for heavy metals removal. The present investigation sought to review the biosorption of lead [Pb(II)] onto low-cost biosorbents to understand their adsorption mechanism. The review shows that …

Applying Landscape Fragmentation Analysis To Icescape Environments: Potential Impacts For The Pacific Walrus (Odobenus Rosmarus Divergens), Anthony Himmelberger, K E. Frey, Florencia Sangermano

Geography

Sea-ice cover across the Arctic has declined rapidly over the past several decades owing to amplified climate warming. The Pacific walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens) relies on sea-ice floes in the St. Lawrence Island (SLI) and Wainwright regions of the Bering and Chukchi seas surrounding Alaska as a platform for rest, feeding and reproduction. Lower concentrations of thick ice floes are generally associated with earlier seasonal fragmentation and shorter annual persistence of sea-ice cover, potentially affecting the life history of the Pacific walrus. In this study, 24 Landsat satellite images were classified into thick ice, thin ice or open water to …

Market Surveillance To Support Quality Assurance And Consumer Protection For The Solar Payg Products Market In East And West Africa, Hamidah Naishur Nakimuli

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Off-grid Pay As You Go (PAYG) solar products have become one of the fastest-growing approaches to providing basic electricity services to off-grid households not only in Sub-Saharan Africa but also in many other parts of the world with limited or no access to the grid connection. However, sustainably growing the PAYG solar industry requires paying close attention to product quality from the point of manufacturing to the end user. This research examines how to best design market surveillance programs that ensure quality in off-grid PAYG solar products and strengthen the implementation and enforcement of quality standards in the off-grid solar …