Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Differential Impacts Of Weather Anomalies On Household Energy Expenditure Shares: A Comparison Of Clustered Panel Analysis Methods, Jordan Champion

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

Recent emphasis on environmental justice has highlighted deficiencies in our energy system that produce disparities in accessibility and affordability for the most vulnerable. Meanwhile, the realities of a gradually warming climate and the onset of a global energy crisis (IEA 2022) have coincidently contributed to spikes in both energy prices and demand. These implications threaten to further exacerbate existing disparities for income-constrained and vulnerable populations, enhancing their risk of falling into prolonged insecurity. To ensure our transition to a just, sustainable future, we must first ensure equitable access to affordable and reliable energy for everyone. Combining household-level panel and state-level …

Naturally Occurring And Introduced Tracers For Examining Water Pathways In Urban Environments, Elizabeth Avery

Theses and Dissertations--Earth and Environmental Sciences

Naturally occurring stable isotopes of water and introduced water tracers allow researchers to examine water pathways and better understand spatial and temporal variability in water sources. Trends in naturally occurring stable isotope values can function not only as a tracer for precipitation patterns and moisture recycling but also as a confirmation of municipal data. Additionally, these data can provide an early signal for the effects of climate change on these sources, reducing uncertainty from physical measurements. To further assess water pathways, introduced tracers can be used to investigate surface and below ground surface flow for streams and rivers.

In chapter …

Diminishing Opportunities For Sustainability Of Coastal Cities In The Anthropocene: A Review, John W. Day, Joel D. Gunn, Joseph Robert Burger

Biology Faculty Publications

The world is urbanizing most rapidly in tropical to sub-temperate areas and in coastal zones. Climate change along with other global change forcings will diminish the opportunities for sustainability of cities, especially in coastal areas in low-income countries. Climate forcings include global temperature and heatwave increases that are expanding the equatorial tropical belt, sea-level rise, an increase in the frequency of the most intense tropical cyclones, both increases and decreases in freshwater inputs to coastal zones, and increasingly severe extreme precipitation events, droughts, freshwater shortages, heat waves, and wildfires. Current climate impacts are already strongly influencing natural and human systems. …

Gather, Educate, Prepare: Libraries As Champions To Build Informed And Climate-Resilient Communities, Adrian K. Ho, René Tanner, Monika Antonelli

Library Presentations

The past few years have witnessed increasing numbers of discussions and programs about the impacts of climate change, addressing topics from the devastating wildfires in California, relentless heat waves in Europe, to the accelerating thaw of the ice sheet in Greenland. The media has described the social atmosphere using such terms as climate angst, ecological grief, and existential crisis. Weighed down by a steady stream of climate news, some people have sought professional help for guidance on tackling emotional responses to natural disasters and climate trauma. Meanwhile, many of us are wondering what can be done. As a central player …

Global Pattern And Change Of Cropland Soil Organic Carbon During 1901-2010: Roles Of Climate, Atmospheric Chemistry, Land Use And Management, Wei Ren, Kamaljit Banger, Bo Tao, Jia Yang, Yawen Huang, Hanqin Tian

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

Soil organic carbon (SOC) in croplands is a key property of soil quality for ensuring food security and agricultural sustainability, and also plays a central role in the global carbon (C) budget. When managed sustainably, soils may play a critical role in mitigating climate change by sequestering C and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. However, the magnitude and spatio-temporal patterns of global cropland SOC are far from well constrained due to high land surface heterogeneity, complicated mechanisms, and multiple influencing factors. Here, we use a process-based agroecosystem model (DLEM-Ag) in combination with diverse spatially-explicit gridded environmental data to …

Vegetation, Rainfall, And Pulsing Hydrology In The Pantanal, The World's Largest Tropical Wetland, Sarah J. Ivory, Michael M. Mcglue, Stephanie Spera, Aguinaldo Silva, Ivan Bergier

Earth and Environmental Sciences Faculty Publications

Wetlands provide valuable ecosystem services and play a central role in global carbon cycling. Changes in rainfall and the flood-pulse are likely to disrupt the processes that maintain these landscapes; further, landscape modification may dramatically alter wetlands and promote terrestrialization. The Pantanal, South America, is the world's largest wetland due to flooding along the Upper Paraguay River. Predicting how water resources in the Pantanal may change is problematic due to a complex drainage network, resulting in the out-of-phase timing of rainfall and the flood pulse. We use remote sensing data of vegetation and climate to better understand the relationships among …

Effects Of Increased Precipitation On The Life History Of Spring- And Autumn-Germinated Plants Of The Cold Desert Annual Erodium Oxyrhynchum (Geraniaceae), Yanfeng Chen, Xiang Shi, Lingwei Zhang, Jerry M. Baskin, Carol C. Baskin, Huiliang Liu, Daoyuan Zhang

Biology Faculty Publications

Future increased precipitation in cold desert ecosystems may impact annual/ephemeral plant species that germinate in both spring and autumn. Our primary aim was to compare the life history characteristics of plants from spring-germinating (SG) and autumn-germinating (AG) seeds of Erodium oxyrhynchum. Plants in field plots with simulated increases in precipitation of 0, 30 and 50 % in spring and summer were monitored to determine seedling survival, phenology, plant size, seed production and biomass accumulation and allocation. Germination characteristics were determined in the laboratory for seeds produced by plants in all increased precipitation treatments. Increased precipitation in spring significantly improved survival …

Seed Germination Responses To Seasonal Temperature And Drought Stress Are Species‐Specific But Not Related To Seed Size In A Desert Steppe: Implications For Effect Of Climate Change On Community Structure, Fengyan Yi, Zhaoren Wang, Carol C. Baskin, Jerry M. Baskin, Ruhan Ye, Hailian Sun, Yuanyuan Zhang, Xuehua Ye, Guofang Liu, Xuejun Yang, Zhenying Huang

Biology Faculty Publications

Investigating how seed germination of multiple species in an ecosystem responds to environmental conditions is crucial for understanding the mechanisms for community structure and biodiversity maintenance. However, knowledge of seed germination response of species to environmental conditions is still scarce at the community level. We hypothesized that responses of seed germination to environmental conditions differ among species at the community level, and that germination response is not correlated with seed size. To test this hypothesis, we determined the response of seed germination of 20 common species in the Siziwang Desert Steppe, China, to seasonal temperature regimes (representing April, May, June, …

Does The Emission Trading System Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions & Coal Consumption And Lead To An Increase In Renewable Energy? – Evidence From Oecd Member Countries, Pilmu Ryu

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The Emission Trading System (ETS) on greenhouse gas (GHG) is a climate change policy well-known as a market-based mitigation mechanism. However, policymakers have faced strong opposition of many stakeholders and failed to persuade them in the process to introduce the ETS. Objective evidence on ETS impact not only provides information to policymakers but also may help alleviate controversy between stakeholders and policymakers. Also, empirical results on ETS will be able to contribute to the theoretical economic study of cap-and-trade. In this context, this research aims at empirical analyses of ETS impact with regard to GHG emissions, coal consumption, and renewable …

Does Environment Filtering Or Seed Limitation Determine Post-Fire Forest Recovery Patterns In Boreal Larch Forests?, Wen H. Cai, Zhihua Liu, Yuan Z. Yang, Jian Yang

Forestry and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Wildfire is a primary natural disturbance in boreal forests, and post-fire vegetation recovery rate influences carbon, water, and energy exchange between the land and atmosphere in the region. Seed availability and environmental filtering are two important determinants in regulating post-fire vegetation recovery in boreal forests. Quantifying how these determinants change over time is helpful for understanding post-fire forest successional trajectory. Time series of remote sensing data offer considerable potential in monitoring the trajectory of post-fire vegetation recovery dynamics beyond current field surveys about structural attributes, which generally lack a temporal perspective across large burned areas. We used a time series …

Contemporary And Future Characteristics Of Precipitation Indices In The Kentucky River Basin, Somsubhra Chattopadhyay, Dwayne R. Edwards, Yao Yu

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications

Climatic variability can lead to large-scale alterations in the hydrologic cycle, some of which can be characterized in terms of indices involving precipitation depth, duration and frequency. This study evaluated the spatiotemporal behavior of precipitation indices over the Kentucky River watershed for both the baseline period of 1986–2015 and late-century time frame of 2070–2099. Historical precipitation data were collected from 16 weather stations in the watershed, while future rainfall time-series were obtained from an ensemble of 10 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) global circulation models under two future emission pathways: Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) 4.5 and 8.5. Annual …

Century-Long Increasing Trend And Variability Of Dissolved Organic Carbon Export From The Mississippi River Basin Driven By Natural And Anthropogenic Forcing, Wei Ren, Hanqin Tian, Wei-Jun Cai, Steven E. Lohrenz, Charles S. Hopkinson, Wei-Jen Huang, Jia Yang, Bo Tao, Shufen Pan, Ruoying He

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

There has been considerable debate as to how natural forcing and anthropogenic activities alter the timing and magnitude of the delivery of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to the coastal ocean, which has ramifications for the ocean carbon budget, land-ocean interactions, and coastal life. Here we present an analysis of DOC export from the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico during 1901–2010 as influenced by changes in climate, land use and management practices, atmospheric CO₂, and nitrogen deposition, through the integration of observational data with a coupled hydrologic/biogeochemical land model. Model simulations show that DOC export in the …

Effects Of Epichloë Coenophiala−Tall Fescue Symbiosis On Plant-Microbe-Soil Interactions In A Temperate Pasture, Lindsey C. Slaughter

Theses and Dissertations--Plant and Soil Sciences

Plants interact in myriad ways with microorganisms to influence ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling, which can regulate ecosystem response to global change. One important plant-microbe symbiosis occurs between cool-season grasses and asexual fungal Epichloë endophytes, such as tall fescue (Schedonorus arundinaceus) and Epichloë coenophiala. Because the common toxic strain of the endophyte (CTE) harms grazing livestock, non-livestock toxic endophyte (NTE) strains have been developed and are increasingly deployed in pastures. Little is known about how these symbioses impact other plant-microbe interactions and microbe-mediated soil processes in grassland ecosystems. I conducted three studies to determine how E. …