Life Sciences Commons^™

Habitat Selection By Desert Carnivores: How Water, Intraguild Predation, And Prey Impact Animal Space Use, Nadine A. Pershyn

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Across North America large carnivores have lost nearly half of their historic range, creating openings for smaller (< 15 kg) carnivores to take over their ecological roles. Coyotes (Canis latrans) have seen a significant range expansion, including into arid deserts. It was believed that the addition of artificial water sources by humans allowed coyotes to expand into desert ecosystems where they were previously unable to survive. The kit fox (Vulpes macrotis) is a small, desert-adapted carnivore with declining populations that faces threats from coyotes of intraguild predation. This is when carnivores compete over the same prey, and the larger carnivore (intraguild predator) kills the smaller carnivore (intraguild …

Invest In Farm Water Conservation To Curtail Buy And Dry, David E. Rosenberg

Publications

The term buy-and-dry plays to the fears of farm and ranch communities. In Owens Valley, CA in the early 1900s and Palo Verde Irrigation District, CA today, wealthy urban water providers buy up water rights, dry out farms and ranches, export purchased water out of basin to growing cities, or keep water in storage to counter reservoir draw down (James, 2021). As more farmers and ranchers sell their water rights, local businesses—irrigation, farm equipment, seed, and other agricultural firms—contract. Those contractions encourage more farmers and ranchers to sell 15 their water rights and farms. And a negative feedback loop gains …

Adapting Colorado River Basin Depletions To Available Water To Live Within Our Means, Jian Wang, David E. Rosenberg

Publications

The Colorado River’s two largest reservoirs are drawing down because releases exceed inflows and releases adapt to reservoir elevations instead of elevation and inflow triggers. To help slow reservoir drawdown and sustain target elevations, we introduced a new rule that adapted basin depletions to available water. We simulated inflow-based operations and validated existing operations in a new open-source exploratory model for the Colorado River Basin. We developed the exploratory model to more easily adapt Upper and Lower Basin depletions to available water, reduce run time, and lower costs to use compared to the proprietary RiverWare Colorado River Simulation System (CRSS) …

Dehydration And Mortality Of Feral Horses And Burros: A Systematic Review Of Reported Deaths, John Derek Scasta, Eric Thacker, Jacob D. Hennig, Karl Hoopes

Human–Wildlife Interactions

Water is a requirement for all organisms, including equids. Dehydration-caused mortality of feral horses (Equus ferus caballus) is often cited as a cause of concern and as justification for management of feral horses, yet a paucity of information exists on the matter. We conducted a systematic review from September 1, 2020 through January 15, 2021 of available news reports of feral horse and burro (E. asinus) dehydration mortalities and public interventions to save horses using a public search engine with a priori defined search term combinations and additional snowball sampling. We found 15 uniquely reported mortality …

Irrigation System Maintenance, Candace Schaible, Kelly Kopp, Jennie Hoover

All Current Publications

Irrigation system maintenance is necessary to ensure the most efficient use of the water that is being applied. Efficient irrigation is important because over two-thirds of the total water used in the average Utah home is applied to the landscape. With the natural drought cycles that occur in Utah and the growing population, efficient water use is critical. These maintenance recommendations will help you evaluate your irrigation system before using it each spring and also throughout the growing season.

Restoring Lake Urmia: Moving Beyond A Uniform Lake Level (2-Page Summary), Somayeh Sima, Dory Rosenberg, Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh, Sarah E. Null, Karin M. Kettenring

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

More than 5 million people live near Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran, one of the world's largest hypersaline lakes. Over the past two decades, the lake has lost 95% of its volume, lake level has dropped more than 7 m, and lake restoration has gained widespread interest. The government seeks a uniform "ecological" target lake level of 1274.1 m above sea level to lower salinity below 240 gL^-1 and recover brine shrimp (Artemia spp.) and flamingos (Phoenicopterus roseus).

We have synthesized over 40 years of available data, defined 8 ecosystem services for human health, water quality, ecology, recreation, and …

Modeling The Alkaline Hydrolysis Of Diaryl Sulfate Diesters: A Mechanistic Study, Klaudia Szeler, Nicholas H. Williams, Alvan C. Hengge, Shina C. Kamerlin

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Phosphate and sulfate esters have important roles in regulating cellular processes. However, while there has been substantial experimental and computational investigation of the mechanisms and the transition states involved in phosphate ester hydrolysis, there is far less work on sulfate ester hydrolysis. Here, we report a detailed computational study of the alkaline hydrolysis of diaryl sulfate diesters, using different DFT functionals as well as mixed implicit/explicit solvation with varying numbers of explicit water molecules. We consider the impact of the computational model on computed linear free-energy relationships (LFER) and the nature of the transition states (TS) involved. We obtain good …

Molecular Rotation In 3 Dimensions At An Air/Water Interface Using Femtosecond Time Resolved Sum Frequency Generation, Yi Rao, Yuqin Qian, Gang-Hua Deng, Ashlie Kinross, Nicholas J. Turro, Kenneth B. Eisenthal

Chemistry and Biochemistry Faculty Publications

This paper presents the first study of the rotations of rigid molecules in 3 dimensions at the air/water interface, using the femtosecond time resolved sum frequency generation (SFG) technique. For the purpose of this research, the aromatic dye molecule C153 was chosen as an example of a molecule having two functional groups that are SFG active, one being the hydrophilic −−C==O group and the other the hydrophobic −−CF₃ group. From polarized SFG measurements, the orientations of the two chromophores with respect to the surface normal were obtained. On combining these results with the known relative orientation of the two …

Relationships Between Borders, Management Agencies, And The Likelihood Of Watershed Impairment, Josh Epperly, Andrew Witt, Jeffrey Haight, Susan E. Washko, Trisha Brooke Atwood, Janice Brahney, Soren Brothers, Edd Hammill

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

In the United States, the Clean Water Act (CWA) establishes water quality standards important for maintaining healthy freshwater ecosystems. Within the CWA framework, states define their own water quality criteria, leading to a potential fragmentation of standards between states. This fragmentation can influence the management of shared water resources and produce spillover effects of pollutants crossing state lines and other political boundaries. We used numerical simulations to test the null prediction of no difference in impairment between watersheds that cross political boundaries (i.e. state lines, national or coastal borders, hereafter termed “transboundary”) and watersheds that cross no boundaries (hereafter “internal”). …

Wetland Plants Of Great Salt Lake, A Guide To Identification, Communities, & Bird Habitat, Rebekah Downard, Maureen Frank, Jennifer Perkins, Karin Kettenring, Mark Larese-Casanova

All Current Publications

Wetland Plants of Great Salt Lake: a guide to identification, communities, & bird habitat is a wetland plant identification guide, resulting from collaborative research efforts about Great Salt Lake (GSL) wetland conditions and bird habitat. Dr. Rebekah Downard collected dissertation field data from GSL wetlands during 2012–2015, the majority of which informed this work. Dr. Maureen Frank contributed her guide to GSL wetland vegetation and how to manage native plants as high-quality habitat for birds. The intended purpose in producing this guide was to create an informative source that could assist researchers, land managers, birders, and wetland enthusiasts in identifying, …

Brine Shrimp Grazing And Fecal Production Increase Sedimentation To The Deep Brine Layer (Monimolimnion) Of Great Salt Lake, Utah, Piotr Maszczyk, Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Great Salt Lake (Utah) has a monimolimnion with high concentrations of salts, particulate matter, nutrients, and mercury. To test the importance of brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) grazing on particulate matter flux, we created salinity gradients in 160-cm high columns, reflecting the lake’s gradient. Two experiments were performed in replicated columns with or without Artemia. Sediment traps were positioned at the bottoms of the mixolimnion (95 cm), chemolimnion (105 cm), or monimolimnion (140 cm). We hypothesized that because of the high salt densities of the monimolimnia, greater accumulation of sediments would be in the lower chemocline, than in …

Utah Master Naturalist Watershed Investigations Manual, Mark Larese-Casanova

All Current Publications

The Utah Master Naturalist Watershed Investigations Manual provides a comprehensive view of watershed ecosystems in Utah, from high mountain streams to Great Salt Lake, and the plant and animal communities and their unique adaptations for survival. The Manual explores how people interact with watersheds, including water demands in a desert, water quality issues, and current management.

Impacts Of Water Development On Great Salt Lake And The Wasatch Front, Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh, Craig Miller, Sarah E. Null, Peter Wilcock, Maura Hahnenberger, Frank Howe

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Although droughts and floods produce short‐term fluctuations in the elevation of Great Salt Lake, water diversions since the arrival of 19th Century pioneers represent a persistent reduction in water supply to the lake, decreasing its elevation by 11 feet and exposing much of the lake bed. As Utah moves forward, we need to be aware of the impacts of lowered lake levels and make decisions that serve the interests of all Utahns. In particular, proposals to further develop the water supply of the Great Salt Lake should carefully consider potential impacts to the health of the lake and examine the …

Water Decision-Making Under Uncertainty, Augustina Yaa Oye Odame

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This dissertation is made up of three separate studies under the unifying theme of “Water Decision-Making under Uncertainty.” The first study analyzed a farmer’s decision to invest in a more efficient irrigation system given uncertainty about future water supplies and his post-investment efficiency. It found the price at which farmers would no longer produce to be a bigger consideration in irrigation investment than previously thought. It also found support for a careful identification and consideration of all significant sources of uncertainty in order to create better policy incentives for irrigation technology investments.

The second study extended the first to allow …

Rain Barrels In Utah, Brian Greene, Nancy Mesner, Roslynn Brain

All Current Publications

Rain barrels are an easy way to conserve rain water and help protect our environment. This fact sheet tells how to find out about the current regulations in Utah and how to build a rain barrel for your own home.

Approaches For Studying Fish Production: Do River And Lake Researchers Have Different Perspectives? – Extended Abstract, Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh, Nicholas A. Heredia, Brian G. Laub, Christy S. Meredith, Harrison E. Mohn, Sarah E. Null, David A. Pluth, Brett B. Roper, W. Carl Saunders, David King Stevens, Richard H. Walker, Kit Wheeler

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Biased perspectives of fisheries researchers may hinder scientific progress and effective management if limiting factors controlling productivity go unrecognized. We investigated whether river and lake researchers used different approaches when studying salmonid production and whether any differences were ecologically supported. We assessed 564 peer‐reviewed papers published between 1966 and 2012 that studied salmonid production or surrogate variables (e.g., abundance, growth, biomass, population) and classified them into five major predictor variable categories: physical habitat, fertility (i.e., nutrients, bottom‐up), biotic, temperature, and pollution. The review demonstrated that river researchers primarily analyzed physical habitat (65% of studies) and lake researchers primarily analyzed fertility …

Management Of The Great Salt Lake Ecosystem: Water, Economic Values And Competing Interests, Wayne A. Wurtsbaugh

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Home Gardening: Quick Tips To Efficient Watering, Jordan Burningham, Roslynn Brain

All Current Publications

No abstract provided.

Escherichia Coli: Levels Found In Suva Water And The Implications To Fijians: A Case Study Of The Vatuwaqa River, Hesper D. Kohler

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Urban migration is causing a high increase in the population of Suva, Fiji, and the population is growing at a rate that exceeds development planning and infrastructure. Several squatter settlements are established within the city limits where raw sewage, containing infectious pathogens and diseases, is released into the waterways. This study focuses on the area accumulation of the pathogenic bacteria from fecal contamination in the form of E. coli down the Vatuwaga River. E. coli is used as a water quality indicator because, if it is present, other possible pathogens and viruses such as cholera and salmonella could be present. …

Buying And Selling Corn Silage Or Other High Moisture Feeds: Value The Feed Not The Water, Dillon Feuz, Clark Israelsen, Allen Young, Lyle Holmgren

All Current Publications

Questions often arise among growers who have corn silage or alfalfa silage (haylage) to sell and dairy producers and feedlot operators who are looking to buy those feeds as to how to establish a fair price. Because of the high moisture content of these feeds (50-75% water) and other similar feeds (barley silage, oat silage, sorghum silage and wheat silage) the transportation costs are rather substantial relative to the value of the feed.

Terms And Tables For Water Measurement And Management, Kevin Heaton, Trent Wilde, Clark Israelsen, Robert W. Hill

All Current Publications

Dramatic land development of agriculture operations has resulted in the development of small acreage parcels of 1 to10 acres across Utah.

Basics For Raising Junior Market Turkeys For Junior Turkey Show, Allan Sulser, Jim Jensen

All Current Publications

This fact sheet is constructed to be used by 4-H and FFA youth for training or as a tool to aid in the growing of market turkeys for the Utah Junior Turkey Show or for local turkey shows. The basics of the Utah Turkey Show are fairly simple. Poults (day old turkeys) are ordered from your 4-H agent or FFA advisor usually by mid May of the current year. Your order is then placed by them and your poults are received by everyone in the show on the same day. Everyone receives the same breed of poult, the same age …

An Investigation Of The Utilization Of Soil Water And Nitrogen Among Diverse Forage Plant Species And Mixtures, Sallee Reynolds

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Species diversity achieved by adding novel functional groups (warm-season grasses and non-leguminous forbs) to pasture land, along with traditional grasses and legumes, could aid in the capture of nutrients and water in pasture systems by offering complementary rooting architecture to aid in water and nitrogen uptake and decrease nitrogen leaching. Because these species may differ from commonly used grasses and legumes in their seasonal pattern of productivity, they could also extend or enhance growing-season productivity. The goal of this project is to better understand the role of plant diversity in 1) nitrogen use and 2) distribution of rooting dynamics and …

The Regulation Of Epithelial Sodium Channels In Mammalian Taste Receptor Cells, Arian F. Baquero Gonzalez

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Nutrient recognition is one of the main physiological roles of the gustatory system. In mammals, it is well established that the taste of sodium salts is primarily mediated by sodium influx through the epithelial sodium channel. The epithelial sodium channel is a sodium-specific ion channel that is expressed across a wide range of transporting epithelia such as colon, kidney, and taste. In addition to its role as a salt taste receptor, sodium influx through the epithelial sodium channel is important systemically for maintaining sodium balance and blood pressure. Following our earlier work on the endocrine regulation of salt taste at …

Curl-Leaf Mountain Mahogany In The Landscape, Heidi Kratsch, Graham Hunter

All Current Publications

No abstract provided.

Growth And Water Relations Of Native Wheatgrass Populations, Brian P. Bell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Screening populations for development into released plant materials can be done inexpensively and in a timely manner. A common approach has been to quantify the amount of shoot dry mass produced as a surrogate for competitiveness. Besides dry mass production , other morphological characteristics have been employed , but physiological parameters have received less emphasis. Dry mass production may be an important characteristic, but identifying the traits responsible can be just as imperative . Populations with greater drought tolerance may be less impacted by competition for water from weeds, which could lead to greater establishment of desirable grasses on disturbed …

Caneberry Irrigation, Brent Black, Robert Hill, Grant Cardon

All Current Publications

No abstract provided.

Water-Wise Landscaping: Plant Maintenance, Taun Beddes, Heidi A. Kratsch

Gardening

No abstract provided.

Home Water Self-Check: Do-It-Yourself Water Check For The Home Landscape, Todd A. Mccammon

All Current Publications

In Utah, nearly two-thirds of the water consumed by residential homeowners is used to maintain landscapes. Recent water checks conducted by Utah State University Extension found that a typical homeowner applies 80 inches of water each growing season. This is twice as much as is needed.

The Influence Of Fat And Water On The Melted Cheese Characteristics Of Mozzarella Cheese, Robert Lloyd Fife

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The effect of reducing the fat content of low-moisture part-skim Mozzarella cheese from 19% to less than 5% on melted cheese properties, i.e., apparent viscosity, cheese melt, and cook color, was investigated. Functional properties of melt and stretch and cook color were evaluated at d 1, 7, 14, and 28. A rapid microwave oven method underestimated the moisture content of the low fat cheeses by approximately 10%. Low fat cheese did not melt as well as did the low-moisture part-skim Mozzarella cheese although the moisture content of the low fat cheese (moisture content ranged from 62.5% to 63.6%) was greater …