Life Sciences Commons^™

Understanding Context Dependent Responses To Climate Change In Arizona Tiger Salamanders (Ambystoma Mavortium Nebulosum), Kentrell Richardson

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Future emissions scenarios project climate change to increase average global temperatures by at least two ℃ in the next 50 years resulting in changes in local climate and causing increased variability within microclimates. Ectotherms are especially sensitive to climate change due to their dependence on environmental temperatures to regulate physiological functions. Changes in temperature are likely to impact thermally cued processes within amphibians and result in changes in variable magnitudes and directions within local populations.

Salamanders were placed in cups and partially submerged in a water bath and heated at a rate of ~0.27℃/ minute. Once salamanders were unable to …

Pasturelands As Natural Climate Solutions: A Socioecological Study Of Tree Carbon And Beef Production Trade-Offs, Bela Starinchak

Masters Theses, 2020-current

Forest restoration is the most effective natural climate solution, with the potential to sequester 37% of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) needed to reach the Paris climate mitigation goal. Cattle pastures offer an underutilized opportunity to increase global forest restoration efforts, improve biodiversity, and maximize carbon storage through the adoption of management strategies that prioritize the incorporation of trees into pasturelands. However, remote estimations of tree carbon storage in pastoral systems have never been field-verified and their accuracy is unclear. Furthermore, the effect of increased trees on cattle production is understudied across biomes. Lastly, the restoration potential of these …

Rapidly Changing Range Limits In A Warming World: Critical Data Limitations And Knowledge Gaps For Advancing Understanding Of Mangrove Range Dynamics In The Southeastern Usa, Rémi Bardou, Michael J. Osland, Steven Scyphers, Christine Shepard, Karen E. Aerni, Jahson B. Alemu I, Robert Crimian, Richard H. Day, Nicholas M. Enwright, Christopher A. Gabler

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Climate change is altering species’ range limits and transforming ecosystems. For example, warming temperatures are leading to the range expansion of tropical, cold-sensitive species at the expense of their cold-tolerant counterparts. In some temperate and subtropical coastal wetlands, warming winters are enabling mangrove forest encroachment into salt marsh, which is a major regime shift that has significant ecological and societal ramifications. Here, we synthesized existing data and expert knowledge to assess the distribution of mangroves near rapidly changing range limits in the southeastern USA. We used expert elicitation to identify data limitations and highlight knowledge gaps for advancing understanding of …

On The Resurrection Of Microbes: An Eco-Christological Approach To The Resurrection, Denys Janiga Osb

Obsculta

This article attempts to bring ecology and Christology into conversation through a transdisciplinary approach. It looks at the pastoral implications of eco-anxiety, resurrection ecology in the field of biotechnology, Church teaching on the Resurrection, and concludes by initiating an interpretation of the resurrection appearances in the Gospel of Luke through the lens of the microbiome.

Relationships Between Vector Mosquitoes And Climate Change Derived From Long Term Ecological Data In The United States, Nicholas Scott

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Climate change has significant ecological and societal consequences as evident from the past few decades. It has had a large impact on many species, including vector mosquitoes. Although how climate change impacts mosquitoes of the tropical world has been explored, temperate areas remain inadequately studied. Therefore, the medical and healthcare sectors are underprepared for treating mosquito-borne diseases (EEE and Western Nile virus). Based on a long-term ecological dataset covering the past ~10 years across 45 sites, we streamlined, processed, and subsequently analyzed data by building statistical models to understand changes among mosquito populations in the US in response to climate …

Hawk Mountain Raptor Migration Phenology’S Relation To Weather, Eric Burgos

Computer Science and Information Technology Faculty

We have been studying year-round raptor migration phenology across the United States and North America for multiple decades now. Hawk Mountain Sanctuary’s Autumn migration hawk count began in 1934 and is the longest running raptor migration count in the world. A decline in total raptor counts passing through Hawk Mountain’s North Lookout is well documented and much research has already been done in what could be the main causes for this decrease in counts year-over-year. We know that cold front passages have long been associated with autumnal migration in northeastern North America. Using updated analysis techniques, we examined 60 years’ …

Climate Change, Food Security, And The Myth Of Unlimited Abundance, Susan A. Schneider

Journal of Food Law & Policy

The Biden-Harris White House can be commended for convening the historic White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health highlighting the critical connections between access to healthy food and sustaining a healthy population. This article explores the impact of climate change and seeks to fill a critical gap in the national discussion. It argues that dramatic changes are needed in the way we think about domestic food security and that meaningful change will be required to assure an adequate supply of healthy food, as envisioned by the White House Conference. It explores the impact of the changes to the climate …

The Effects Of Recent Climate Change On Spring Phenology, With A Special Focus On Patterns Of Bee Foraging, Michael Stemkovski

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The date on which plants flower and on which bees begin to pollinate varies year-to-year depending on differences in weather. This seasonal timing is known as phenology, and it is already clear that climate change has pushed the spring phenology of many species earlier by increasing temperatures. This is particularly clear in flowering plants, but studying how and why the phenology of pollinators is shifting is more difficult. Most flowering plants rely on pollinators such as bees for their reproduction, and most bees rely on flowers for their sustenance, so bee and flower phenology has to overlap for the crucial …

Are Rising Seas Pushing Ghost Crabs Out Of Their Comfort Zone?, Finn Gillette

Honors Theses

Ghost crabs (Ocypode quadrata) can be found on sandy beaches bordering the western Atlantic Ocean. These semiterrestrial crustaceans are often found between the swash zone and the dunes on beaches. Dunes are critical refuges for ghost crabs during storms and extreme tide events. This makes them a useful indicator species for monitoring the effects of global warming-induced sea level rise on beach biota, as their distribution patterns among beach zones may correlate with shifts found in other species. Beach surveys conducted from 2015 onward assessed the population density of ghost crabs on beaches of Horry and Georgetown counties …

A Programmatic Geographic Information Systems Analysis Of Plant Hardiness Zones, Andrew Bowen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Plant Hardiness Zone Map consists of thirteen geographical zones that describe whether a plant can survive based on average annual minimal temperatures. As climate change progresses, minimum temperatures in all regions are expected to change. This work programmatically evaluates predicted future climate projection data and converts it to United States Department of Agriculture-defined hardiness zones. Through the next 80 years, hardiness zones are projected to move poleward; in effect, colder zones will lose area and warmer zones will gain area globally. Some implications include changes in crop growing degree days, which could alter crop productivity, migration and settlement of …

Higher Well-Being Individuals Are More Receptive To Cultivated Meat: An Investigation Of Their Reasoning For Consuming Cultivated Meat, Angela K. Y. Leung, Mark Chong, Tricia Marjorie Fernandez, Shu Tian Ng

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

It is evident that over-consumption of meat can contribute to the emission of hazardous greenhouse gases. One viable way to address such climate impact is to make people become more aware of more sustainable diet options, such as cultivated meat. However, it is challenging to instigate change in people's meat-eating habit, and empirical works have been examining the psychological factors that are related to consumers' willingness to consume cultivated meat. Research has suggested that psychological well-being can play a role in the meaning-making of food consumption, with higher well-being individuals showing more recognition of other sociocultural benefits of consuming food …

Local And Regional Landscape Characteristics Driving Habitat Selection By Greater Sage-Grouse Along A Fragmented Range Margin, Aidan T. Beers

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In response to ongoing landscape change, wildlife species are likely to respond in varied ways. By studying habitat specialists, we are able to better understand the most likely ways in which the denizens of threatened ecosystems will react to those changes. Among the most threatened ecosystem types in North America are sagebrush ecosystems of the Intermountain West, where one of its most well-known residents, greater sage grouse (hereafter, “sage-grouse), have lost more than 50% of their habitat due to fire, invasive species, climate change, encroachment by coniferous forests and avian predators using it, and human-caused landscape conversion. Sage-grouse rely on …

Evidence Of Continuing Downward Trends In American Kestrel Populations And Recommendations For Research Into Causal Factors, David M. Bird, John A. Smallwood

Department of Biology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

We analyzed long-term datasets from nest box programs, Breeding Bird Surveys run by the US Geological Survey, Christmas Bird Counts run by the National Audubon Society, and counts from two key fall migration watch sites, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary and Cape May Hawkwatch. We found that populations of American Kestrels (Falco sparverius) in North America are generally still declining, albeit with some caveats. Some populations are actually increasing, while others are remaining stable. Overall, the magnitude of annual change appears to be decreasing slightly during recent years. To understand potential causes of the decline, we recommend the following courses of action …

Climate Change, Admin Stem For Success

STEM for Success Showcase

This lesson plan teaches students about climate change and its effect on animals and insects. Students can then participate in a climate change fact or myth game and a climate change Pictionary game.

Physiological And Transcriptomic Responses Of Two Artemisia Californica Populations To Drought: Implications For Restoring Drought-Resilient Native Communities, Hagop S. Atamian Dr., Jennifer L. Funk

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

As climate change brings drier and more variable rainfall patterns to many arid and semi-arid regions, land managers must re-assemble appropriate plant communities for these conditions. Transcriptome sequencing can elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying plant responses to changing environmental conditions, potentially enhancing our ability to screen suitable genotypes and species for restoration. We examined physiological and morphological traits and transcriptome sequences of coastal and inland populations of California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), a critical shrub used to restore coastal sage scrub vegetation communities, grown under low and high rainfall environments. The populations are located approximately 36 km apart but …

Inorganic Carbon Outwelling From A Mediterranean Seagrass Meadow Using Radium Isotopes, Claudia Majtényi-Hill, Gloria Reithmaier, Yvonne Y. Y. Yau, Oscar Serrano, Nerea Piñeiro-Juncal, Isaac R. Santos

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Seagrass meadows are ‘blue carbon’ ecosystems widely recognised for their potential role in climate change mitigation. Previous studies have focused mainly on carbon storage within meadows and sediments. However, little is known about contribution of outwelling (i.e., lateral transport) to seagrass carbon budgets. Here, radium isotopes (²²³Ra and ²²⁴Ra) were used to assess dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and total alkalinity (TA) outwelling from a Mediterranean Posidonia oceanica meadow during early autumn. DIC outwelling was 114 ± 61 mmol m ^{− 2} day ^{− 1} and exceeded above-meadow CO2 outgassing (3 ± 1 mmol m ^{− 2} day …

Map The System: Presence And Impact Of Ppcps In Water, Emma Vandermeulen, Ruby Mitchell

OHSU-PSU School of Public Health Annual Conference

In a changing climate, there is growing emphasis on protecting our water sources and developing systems for conserving and reusing water. While many contaminants of concern are monitored and addressed by water treatment systems, pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are generally not accounted for. PPCPs in water systems have been an increasing concern as detection of these products has increased over the last few decades. Studies have been exploring the impact of antibiotics, antidepressants, contraceptives, and other anthropogenic products on our water system and how these substances interact with local ecosystems. Our main research questions are to understand what …

The Coastal Monitor: Vol. 10 No. 1, John Tanacredi Ph.D.

The Coastal Monitor

New Year’s Day has always been, for me, a time to reflect and project into the near future. Nature’s influence on us all certainly tops my listing with several environmental concerns. For example, the frequency and intensity of hurricanes to Long Island. A decade has passed since Superstorm Sandy re-opened the “Old Inlet” on Long Island which now has mostly naturally closed. So, the new year immediately prompts me to assess the previous year’s Hurricane Ian, a Category 4 system, with winds exceeding 150 mph, which had considerable impact in Florida, and then proceeded north resulting in over 2 inches …

Analysis Of Hawk Mountain Wind Speed To Raptor Count Trends From 1976 Through 2021, Dale E. Parson

Computer Science and Information Technology Faculty

This analysis of summer 2023 is a sequel to the summer 2022 Analysis of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Observation Data from 1976 through 2021, also available as a web page through end of 2024 here. A presentation of that and subsequent analysis presented at Kutztown University in November 2022 and to Hawk Mountain researchers in January 2023 is available as PDF slides here and also on the web through 2024 here. This work was funded by a Kutztown University Research Grant for spring 2022 through summer 2023. Analytical use of these data proceeded through a subset of projects in three courses …

Individual-Level Responses To Rapid Climate Change In Common Terns (Sterna Hirundo) And Arctic Terns (Sterna Paradisaea), Kaiulani A. Sund

Student Publications

This study examines fine-scale environmental changes and intraspecific variation in the diet and foraging behavior of two seabirds in the Gulf of Maine, one of the fastest-warming regions of the ocean. This variation on the individual level, or behavioral plasticity, may help long-lived species to persist in rapidly changing environments. As the water warms, seabirds’ preferred prey (hake and herring) follow cooler waters deeper and farther offshore. It is unlikely that all individuals respond to changing food availability in the same way. For common terns (Sterna hirundo) and Arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea) breeding on Petit Manan …

The Influence Of Range Shifts And Wind Energy On The Atlantic Surfclam (Spisula Solidissima) And Ocean Quahog (Arctica Islandica) Fisheries On The U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, Stephanie Stromp

Master's Theses

The Atlantic surfclam, Spisula solidissima, is a biomass dominant bivalve of the Northwestern Atlantic. The surfclam’s historic range extended from Cape Hatteras to Georges Bank, but recent decades of warming bottom water temperatures have caused the surfclam to shift its range to cooler waters north and offshore within the range of the ocean quahog, Arctica islandica. An ecotone now exists over much of the offshore range of the surfclam in which surfclams and ocean quahogs co-occur. Regulations prohibit fishers from landing both species in the same catch, limiting fishing to locations where the target species can be sorted …

Predicting The Impact Of Climate Change On The Distribution Of Rhipicephalus Sanguineus In The Americas, Marcos Sánchez Pérez, Teresa Patricia Feria-Arroyo, Crystian Sadiel Venegas Barrera, Carolina Sosa-Gutiérrez, Javier Torres, Katherine A. Brown, Guadalupe Gordillo Pérez

School of Integrative Biological & Chemical Sciences (Formerly Dept. of Biology)

Climate change may influence the incidence of infectious diseases including those transmitted by ticks. Rhipicephalus sanguineus complex has a worldwide distribution and transmits Rickettsial infections that could cause high mortality rates if untreated. We assessed the potential effects of climate change on the distribution of R. sanguineus in the Americas in 2050 and 2070 using the general circulation model CanESM5 and two shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), SSP2-4.5 (moderate emissions) and SSP2-8.5 (high emissions). A total of 355 occurrence points of R. sanguineus and eight uncorrelated bioclimatic variables were entered into a maximum entropy algorithm (MaxEnt) to produce 50 replicates per …

Unveiling The Nexus: The Interdependence Of Animal Welfare, Environment & Sustainable Development, World Federation For Animals (Wfa)

Nexus – UNEP – Animal Welfare, Environment, Sustainable Development

On 2 March 2022, the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) adopted the Animal Welfare - Environment - Sustainable Development Nexus Resolution. In this resolution, UNEA acknowledged that "animal welfare can contribute to addressing environmental challenges". UNEA further acknowledged animal welfare's contribution to "promoting the One Health approach and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals." To understand these links, UNEA requested the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to analyse and produce a report for the next convening of UNEA on the nexus between animal welfare, the environment, and sustainable development. "Unveiling the Nexus: The interdependence of animal welfare, environment & sustainable development" illuminates the …

Six Decades Of North American Bird Banding Records Reveal Plasticity In Migration Phenology, Kyle G. Horton, Sara R. Morris, Benjamin M. Van Doren, Kristen M. Covino

Biology Faculty Works

1. The timing of avian migration has evolved to exploit critical seasonal resources, yet plasticity within phenological responses may allow adjustments to interannual resource phenology. The diversity of migratory species and changes in underlying resources in response to climate change make it challenging to generalize these relationships.
2. We use bird banding records during spring and fall migration from across North America to examine macroscale phenological responses to interannual fluctuations in temperature and long-term annual trends in phenology.
3. In total, we examine 19 species of North American wood warblers (family Parulidae), summarizing migration timing from 2,826,588 banded birds from 1961 to 2018 …

Increased Floodplain Inundation In The Amazon Since 1980, Ayan Fleischmann, Fabrice Papa, Stephen K. Hamilton, Alice Fassoni-Andrade, Sly Wongchuig, Jhan Carlo Espinoza, Rodrigo Paiva, John Melack, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, Rafael M. Almeida

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Extensive floodplains throughout the Amazon basin support important ecosystem services and influence global water and carbon cycles. A recent change in the hydroclimatic regime of the region, with increased rainfall in the northern portions of the basin, has produced record-breaking high water levels on the Amazon River mainstem. Yet, the implications for the magnitude and duration of floodplain inundation across the basin remain unknown. Here we leverage state-of-the-art hydrological models, supported by in situ and remote sensing observations, to show that the maximum annual inundation extent along the central Amazon increased by 26% since 1980. We further reveal increased flood …

Irish Dairy Farming: Effects Of Introducing A Maize Component On Grassland Management Over The Next 50 Years, A. J. Brereton, N. M. Holden

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Typical management of Irish dairy units is based on a low-cost spring-calving strategy with 90% of annual feed derived from grass grown on the farm. Almost 70% of feed is from grazed grass managed by rotational grazing, the remainder is conserved forage and concentrates. The objectives of the work were to examine how the management system has to be modified when part of the dairy unit land is allocated to maize silage instead of grass silage production, and to examine how climate change over the next 50 years will impact on grass and maize management within the production system.

Plant Species’ Capacity For Range Shifts At The Habitat And Geographic Scales: A Trade-Off-Based Framework, Bailey H. Mcnichol, Sabrina E. Russo

School of Biological Sciences: Faculty Publications

Climate change is causing rapid shifts in the abiotic and biotic environmental conditions experienced by plant populations, but we lack generalizable frameworks for predicting the consequences for species. These changes may cause individuals to become poorly matched to their environments, potentially inducing shifts in the distributions of populations and altering species’ habitat and geographic ranges. We present a trade-off-based framework for understanding and predicting whether plant species may undergo range shifts, based on ecological strategies defined by functional trait variation. We define a species’ capacity for undergoing range shifts as the product of its colonization ability and the ability to …

Responses Of Extreme Discharge To Changes In Surface-Air And Dewpoint Temperatures In Utah: Seasonality And Mechanisms, Timothy E. Wright, Jacob Stuivenvolt-Allen, Grace Affram, Nahid A. Hasan, Cody Ratterman, Wei Zhang

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

The changes in stream discharge extremes due to temperature and seasonality are key metrics in assessing the effects of climate change on the hydrological cycle. While scaling is commonly applied to temperature and precipitation due to the physical connections between temperature and moisture (i.e., Clausius–Clapeyron), the scaling rate of stream discharge extremes to air and dewpoint temperatures has not been evaluated. To address this challenge, we assess the scaling rates between stream discharge and air temperature and between stream discharge and dewpoint temperature in Utah using a well-designed statistical framework. While there are deviations from the Clausius–Clapeyron (CC) relationship in …

Does Bergmann’S Rule Apply To North American Birds In The Context Of Climate Change?, Peridot Derrin Galloway

Student Theses and Dissertations

Over the past half century, birds have changed, including in their morphology. Biogeographic rules including Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules have been used to try to elucidate morphological changes; however, there has been dispute over the rules’ applicability. Thus, I aimed to identify 1) morphometric trends over time of 15 North American bird species, including eastern bluebirds (Sialia sialis); 2) if these morphometric trends follow Bergmann’s rule; and 3) if the observed morphometric trends are associated with life history and other traits, as well as climatic variables (e.g., average, maximum and minimum temperatures, and total precipitation). Using short- and long-term morphological …

Optimal Stomatal Theory Predicts Co2 Responses Of Stomatal Conductance In Both Gymnosperm And Angiosperm Trees, Anna Gardner, Mingkai Jiang, David S. Ellsworth, A. Robert Mackenzie, Jeremy Pritchard, Martin Karl Friedrich Bader, Craig V.M. Barton, Carl Bernacchi, Carlo Calfapietra, Kristine Y. Crous, Mirindi Eric Dusenge, Teresa E. Gimeno, Marianne Hall, Shubhangi Lamba, Sebastian Leuzinger, Johan Uddling, Jeffrey Warren, Göran Wallin, Belinda E. Medlyn

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Optimal stomatal theory predicts that stomata operate to maximise photosynthesis (Anet) and minimise transpirational water loss to achieve optimal intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE). We tested whether this theory can predict stomatal responses to elevated atmospheric CO2 (eCO2), and whether it can capture differences in responsiveness among woody plant functional types (PFTs). We conducted a meta-analysis of tree studies of the effect of eCO2 on iWUE and its components Anet and stomatal conductance (gs). We compared three PFTs, using the unified stomatal optimisation (USO) model to account for confounding effects of leaf–air vapour pressure difference (D). We expected smaller gs, but …