Digital Commons Network^™

Livestock Abundance Predicts Vampire Bat Demography, Immune Profiles And Bacterial Infection Risk, Daniel J. Becker, Gábor Á. Czirják, Dmitriy V. Volokhov, Alexandra B. Bentz, Jorge E. Carrera, Melinda S. Camus, Kristen J. Navara, Vladimir E. Chizhikov, M. Brock Fenton, Nancy B. Simmons, Sergio E. Recuenco, Amy T. Gilbert, Sonia Altizer, Daniel G. Streicker

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Human activities create novel food resources that can alter wildlife–pathogen interactions. If resources amplify or dampen, pathogen transmission probably depends on both host ecology and pathogen biology, but studies that measure responses to provisioning across both scales are rare. We tested these relationships with a 4-year study of 369 common vampire bats across 10 sites in Peru and Belize that differ in the abundance of livestock, an important anthropogenic food source. We quantified innate and adaptive immunity from bats and assessed infection with two common bacteria. We predicted that abundant livestock could reduce starvation and foraging effort, allowing for greater …

The Influence Of Spatiotemporally Decoupled Land Use On Honey Bee Colony Health And Pollination Service Delivery, Matthew D. Smart, Clint R. V. Otto, Benjamin L. Carlson, Cali L. Roth

Department of Entomology: Faculty Publications

Societal dependence on insects for pollination of agricultural crops has risen amidst concerns over pollinator declines. Habitat loss and lack of forage have been implicated in the decline of both managed and native pollinators. Land use changes in the Northern Great Plains of the US, a region supporting over 1 million honey bee colonies annually, have shifted away from historical grassland ecosystems bees rely on for forage toward landscapes dominated by corn, soybeans, and other row crops. We investigated how land use impacts honey bee colony population size during the growing season and subsequent colony population size for almond pollination …

Impact Of Vegetative Treatment Systems On Multiple Measures Of Antibiotic Resistance In Agricultural Wastewater, Lisa M. Durso, Daniel N. Miller, Christopher G. Henry

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Wastewater is an important vector of antibiotic resistant bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes (ARB/G). While there is broad agreement that ARB/G from agricultural (ag) wastewaters can be transported through the environment and may contribute to untreatable infectious disease in humans and animals, there remain large knowledge gaps surrounding applied details on the types and amounts of ARB/G associated with different agricultural wastewater treatment options and different ag production systems. This study evaluates a vegetative treatment system (VTS) built to treat the wastewater from a beef cattle feedlot. Samples were collected for three years, and plated on multiple media types to …

Falcons Using Orchard Nest Boxes Reduce Fruit-Eating Bird Abundances And Provide Economic Benefits For A Fruit-Growing Region, Megan E. Shave, Stephanie A. Shwiff, Julie L. Elser, Catherine A. Lindell

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

1. Suppression of pest species via a native predator is a regulating ecosystem service that has the potential to limit crop damage and produce economic benefits. American kestrels Falco sparverius are widespread, highly mobile, generalist predators that hunt in human-dominated habitats and have the potential to provide previously undocumented ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes.

2. We hypothesized that kestrel activity associated with nest boxes and artificial perches acts to increase perceived predation risk that, in combination with direct predation, can reduce fruit-eating bird abundances in orchards. We used counts and observations of fruit-eating birds from fixed-width transect surveys to investigate …

Zoning And Complementary Incentives To Protect Farmland: A Case For Missoula County, Kaitlin Mccafferty

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Urban sprawl reflects an inefficient use of land that diminishes both rural landscapes and quality of life turning farms, ranches and open space into siloed suburban communities. This results in less walkable cities with more traffic and air pollution, among other negative consequences. Farmland constitutes a particularly important resource that often faces degradation or loss due to sprawl. Higher quality agricultural soils are particularly desirable for development because they are flat and well-drained. Farmland is also important for urban communities concerning food security, environmental health, and economic well being. As American cities continue to grow, farmland around urban areas has …

Ecomorphological Associations And Abundance Of Birds Across The Agricultural Landscape Of Pothwar Plateau, Pakistan, Misbah Sarwar, Iftikhar Hussain

Turkish Journal of Zoology

Some species are exceptionally common in landscapes heavily impacted by humans, such as agricultural lands. This study was carried out over a period of 2 years (July 2012 to June 2014) in the arid agricultural landscape of Pothwar Plateau, Pakistan, to identify adaptations that govern bird distribution and abundance across 2 different cropping systems associated with differences in water availability. We used regular surveys and foraging observations to quantify species abundance, distribution, and habits. We then examined morphological correlations with ecological attributes. We found the following: (1) larger birds tended to spend more time in trees; (2) birds with small …

Caring For Horses In Cold Weather, Karl Hoopes

All Current Publications

This fact sheet gives tips for providing a suitable environment for horses to live outside in the winter and remain comfortable and healthy,

An Integrated Approach To Improving Rural Livelihoods: Examples From India And Bangladesh, Barry Croke, Wendy Merritt, Peter Cornish, Geoffrey J. Syme, Christian H. Roth

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

This paper presents an overview of work in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh and SW Bangladesh through a series of projects from 2005 to the present, considering the impact of farming systems, water shed development and/or agricultural intensification on livelihoods in selected rural areas of India and Bangladesh. The projects spanned a range of scales spanning from the village scale (∼  1 km²) to the meso-scale (∼  100 km²), and considered social as well as biophysical aspects. They focused mainly on the food and water part of the food-water-energy nexus. These projects were in collaboration with a …

Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad: How Slaughterhouse Safety Hasn’T Kept Up With The Times, Emily Ziemski

Capstones

From legal loopholes and outdated rules to undetectable infections and understaffing, the United States Department of Agriculture may not be doing all it can to make sure the American public’s health isn't at risk. As the people of the United States consume over 500 million pounds of beef a year, food safety policy and slaughterhouses are falling behind in proper procedural measurements in the beef industry.

emziemski.com/capstone

Holocene Fluctuations In Human Population Demonstrate Repeated Links To Food Production And Climate, Andrew Bevan, Sue Colledge, Dorian Fuller, Ralph Fyfe, Stephen Shennan, Chris Stevens

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

No abstract provided.

A Piece Of Me:Annierose Seifert And The Slo Cowparade, Annie Rose M. Seifert

Agricultural Education and Communication

CowParade is an international art movement brought to sunny San Luis Obispo, California during the summer of 2016. CowParade SLO showcased 101 painted fiberglass cows. Each cow has a different sponsor and artist. This event was created to give back to local charities, attract tourism and notoriety to hosting communities, and give local artists the chance to be on a global stage. CowParade is an international event hosted in more than 70 cities around the globe including Paris, France, Perth, Australia, China and Brazil. The event began in 1999 with the first parade being hosted in Chicago, Illinois.

Linkages Among Population, Food Production, And The Environment At Multiple Scales, Daniel Ervin Ph.D., Daniel López-Carr Ph.D.

Journal of International and Global Studies

Human population, its number and distribution on our planet, has a seemingly direct linkage to how much food we consume and how we practice agriculture. How this population-foodenvironment interface manifests across the globe is complex, non-linear, and both local- and scale-dependent. This essay is an overview of the population-food-environment nexus, providing recent history and statistics on these processes at several crude scales. We include a discussion of theory, review different drivers of the population-food-environment processes, provide a global overview of population and agricultural statistics from 1970 to 2010, and discuss trends and implications for Latin America, as well as some …

Avian Diversity, Abundance, And Nest Success Among Managed Prairies And Agricultural Plots In Oklahoma And Texas, Phillip J. Leonard, Douglas R. Wood, Wayne E. Meyer

The Prairie Naturalist

Over the last 50 years, grassland birds experienced rapid declines due to habitat loss and degradation as a result of agricultural practices. Our objective was to document the diversity, abundance, and nest success of bird communities using managed prairie and agricultural plots at the Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in southern Oklahoma and Hagerman NWR in northern Texas. From April 1 to July 15, 2013–2014, point count surveys, nest searches, nest monitoring, and vegetation sampling were conducted among three habitat treatments: managed prairie, unharvested wheat, and fallow agricultural plots. Species richness values for potential nesting species were higher in managed …

Accounting For Soil Inorganic Carbon In The Ecosystem Services Framework For United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Garth Raymond Groshans

All Theses

Soil inorganic carbon (SIC) is currently not included in the list of key soil properties related to ecosystem services (e.g., provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services). Soil inorganic carbon is a dynamic key soil property used in soil classification, taxonomy and fertility, therefore its inclusion in the framework of ecosystem services is important. With soils rapidly changing due to human use and climate change, the soil ecosystem services framework should not include only soil organic carbon (SOC), but SIC as well since it is of global importance to soil fertility and the long-term carbon cycle, especially in semiarid and arid …

Farmscapes : Picturing Land Transformation In Nineteenth-Century America., Eileen L Yanoviak

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines American farmstead imagery of the nineteenth-century and how those images reflect the environmental history of the North. In this study, images of farms illustrate, through the landscape, the transition from subsistence farming to agribusiness that fundamentally changed American life and the land over the century. By comparing the actual ecological and economic conditions of the farm and farmer to the images depicted by artists, it is possible to see both representations of change and the persistence of the agrarian myth in spite of dramatically different realities. This study focuses on the process of change in the American …

Precision Agriculture Technology Development And Utilization For Hay Production, Perry Jonathan Loftis

All Theses

Mass flow sensor algorithms were developed for a hay yield monitoring system using ultrasonic sensors to measure windrow height. The algorithms indicated accuracies of 17.34% to 9.51%, with a wide tolerance to mounting positions. The developed mass flow algorithms were used in a nitrogen rate strip test on a 25 ac irrigated Tifton 85 bermudagrass field. Results suggested that yield, crude protein content and profit was maximized with the highest nitrogen rate only during the first harvest of 2017. All other harvest suggested a lower rate of nitrogen should be applied in order to maximize profit. A second method of …

Animal Welfare Frames: How Social Media Messages Bridge The Gap Between The Protein Industry And Consumers, Olivia Norton

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The two articles in this thesis used content analysis to analyze and compare animal welfare related website and Twitter content of the top five animal protein producing companies in the United States. In the first article, the animal welfare website content of Cargill, Tyson Foods Inc., Smithfield, JBS® and Sysco were analyzed for persuasive frames, common topics, and key terminology to describe their corporate positions on animal welfare. Sysco’s main page devoted to animal welfare dominated the word count with 1,045 words, while JBS®’s main animal welfare page used only 265 words to communicate the company’s views. The most commonly …

Measurement Of Agriculture-Related Air Pollutant Emissions Using Point And Remote Sensors, Kori D. Moore

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Measuring air pollution emissions from agricultural activities is usually difficult because of their large area and variability. Traditional air quality sensors, called point samplers, measure conditions in one location, which may not adequately measure a plume. Remote sensors, instruments that measure pollution along a line rather than at a single point, are better able to measure conditions around large areas. This dissertation reports on four agricultural air emissions studies that used both point and remote sensors for comparison. The methods used to calculate the emissions are based on previous work and are further developed in these studies. In particular, an …

Capacity Management In Agricultural Commodity Processing And Application In The Palm Industry, Onur Boyabatli, Jason Quang Dang Nguyen, Tong Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the capacity investment decisions of a processor that uses a commodity input to produce both a commodity output and a byproduct in the context of agricultural industries. We employ a multi-period model to study the optimal one-time processing and (output) storage capacity investment decisions---in addition to the periodic processing and inventory decisions---when both input and output spot prices as well as production yield are uncertain. We characterize the optimal decisions and perform sensitivity analysis to investigate how spot price uncertainty affects the processor's optimal capacity and profitability. Using a calibration based on the palm industry, we study …

A Comparative Life Cycle Assessment Of Nutritionally Equivalent Meals With And Without Pork, Kelli Young

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The following report details a life cycle assessment of several dietary and meal scenarios with and without pork. The goal of the LCA was to identify the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, water use, and land use of pork containing and porkless diets and meal plans in a field-to-fork analysis. The dietary and meal plan scenarios are iso-caloric meaning they contain the same number of calories. The first set of diets is based on a USDA consumption pattern, 2000 kcal per day. This diet was used to create three other dietary scenarios with and without pork. The USDA recommended food …

Understanding Predictors Of Nutrient Management Practice Diversity In Midwestern Agriculture, Hanna Bates, J. Gordon Arbuckle Jr.

Journal of Extension

Agriculture's negative effect on water quality has become increasingly well documented. Farmers have a range of conservation practices available, yet rate of adoption is not optimal. Extension and other agricultural stakeholders play a key role in promotion of conservation practice adoption. We used survey data to examine relationships between farmers' integration in agricultural social networks and diversity of conservation practices used. Farmers who were more engaged in agricultural organizations and social networks tended to report greater diversity in nutrient best management practices. Conversely, less "connected" farmers reported less management practice diversity. Opportunities for Extension to engage with both groups exist.

Atay V. County Of Maui, Stephanie A. George

Public Land & Resources Law Review

As genetically engineered plants become more common, questions frequently arise regarding how the plants are regulated and who can regulate them. The Ninth Circuit attempted to answer these questions through preemption doctrine. The court left the door open for states and localities to regulate genetically engineered crops that have been deregulated by the federal government. This decision will implicate the future cultivation of genetically engineered crops, and the food industry as a whole.

Biosecurity Council Of Western Australia Annual Report 2016/2017, Biosecurity Council Of Western Australia

Biosecurity published reports

Developing constructive biosecurity advice to government requires a comprehensive understanding of the needs and challenges of industry, government and community. It also requires an understanding of the potential impacts of changes to the Western Australian biosecurity system on these groups as well as on the biosecurity of the State.

During 2016/17, the Council continued its commitment to engaging with key stakeholders. The strong consultative processes used by the Council enabled robust advice to be developed for government. The main area of focus during the year was government’s investment in Western Australia’s biosecurity. The key areas of advice that were progressed …

Nutrient Contamination From Non-Point Sources: Dissolved Phosphate In Surface And Subsurface Waters At Eku Meadowbrook Farm, Madison County, Kentucky, Hunter R. Evans, Reid E. Buskirk, Walter S. Borowski, Jonathan M. Malzone

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Farms are non-point sources for nutrient contaminants that drain into watersheds and contribute to eutrophication and other environmental problems. Eastern Kentucky University’s Meadowbrook Farm raises both crops and livestock, causing dissolved phosphorus in the form of orthophosphate (PO₄^3-) from fertilizer and animal manure to enter surface and subsurface waters, eventually flowing into Muddy Creek, a tributary of the Kentucky River.

We sampled surface water, springs, and water from French drains that emanate from the farm, and also sampled Muddy Creek waters from May through August 2016. Typically, 1 to 2 days after sampling, we colorimetrically measured dissolved …

The Detroit Frontier: Urban Agriculture In A Legal Vacuum, Jacqueline Hand, Amanda Gregory

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.

African Environmental Change From The Pleistocene To The Anthropocene, Colin Hoag, Jens-Christian Svenning

Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This review explores what past environmental change in Africa—and African people's response to it—can teach us about how to cope with life in the Anthropocene. Organized around four drivers of change—climate; agriculture and pastoralism; megafauna; and imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism (ICC)—our review zooms in on key regions and debates, including desertification; rangeland degradation; megafauna loss; and land grabbing. Multiscale climate change is a recurring theme in the continent's history, interacting with increasingly intense human activities from several million years onward, leading to oscillating, contingent environmental changes and societally adaptive responses. With high levels of poverty, fast population growth, and potentially …

Understanding The Contributions Of Beef Cattle To Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Elizabeth Stewart, Eric Thacker, Matthew D. Garcia, Juan J. Villalba

All Current Publications

This fact sheet describes current and projected beef consumption, methane, nitrogen, beef cattle production, and possibilities for more sustainable beef production.

Agricultural Biogechnology: United States Statutory Law, Jo Lynn Jeter

Oklahoma Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

The International Treaty On Plant Genetic Resources For Food And Agriculture: Friend Of The International Farmer, Steven M. Ruby

Oklahoma Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Jaggers, Katie (Fa 1066), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project FA 1066. Paper titled “Folk Beliefs” in which Katie Jaggers details various proverbs, remedies, superstitions, and predictions relating to childhood, agriculture, medicine, and other facets of daily life. Paper is based on data collected by Jaggers from immediate family in Edmonson County, Kentucky.