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The Use Of Spanish Moss As A Biological Indicator To Examine Relationships Between Metal Air Pollution, Vegetation Cover, And Environmental Equity In Tampa, Florida, Yousif Abdullah
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Studies of inequality in exposure to less common air pollutants, like metals, are often limited by the costs of high spatial resolution measurements. Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is a promising bioindicator for measuring air pollution due to its lower cost, enabling capture of time-average environmental concentrations at high spatial resolution. This study had three major aims. First, I aimed to use Spanish moss as a bioindicator to characterize ambient concentrations of selected metals (Ti, Cr, Mn, Co, Ni, Cd, Hg, Pb, As, and Sb) in Tampa, Florida. My second goal was to determine the impact of vegetation cover on metals …
Spatiotemporal Changes Of Microbial Community Assemblages And Functions In The Subsurface, Madison C. Davis
Spatiotemporal Changes Of Microbial Community Assemblages And Functions In The Subsurface, Madison C. Davis
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
The subsurface hosts diverse microbial community assemblages and functions. These communities play an important role in biogeochemical cycling and groundwater purification. Many physicochemical factors affect microbial communities and can cause short-term or long-term perturbations. Subsurface microbes are susceptible to anthropogenic changes in the environment, which can be caused by nutrient inputs or municipal groundwater extraction. Despite the importance of the subsurface microbiome, these microbial communities are poorly characterized. This dissertation describes the characterization of spatiotemporal drivers of subsurface microbial communities through a variety of techniques that include eDNA analyses, bioinformatics, hydrochemical analyses, stable isotope geochemistry, and multivariate statistics. Three coastal …
Isotope-Based Methods For Evaluating Fish Trophic Geographies, Julie L. Vecchio
Isotope-Based Methods For Evaluating Fish Trophic Geographies, Julie L. Vecchio
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Data on the movement and diets of fish during a variety of life stages are important inputs to fisheries stock assessments and marine ecosystem models. Stable isotopes may provide previously inaccessible information on movement and diet of a variety of managed and forage fish species. Here I used several novel means of interpretation for stable isotope data to infer diets and movements of several important fisheries species over both short (weeks to months) and long (lifetime) timescales. To calculate a constant partitioning offset (CPO) between the δ15N of muscle and of liver tissue, I conducted a literature search …