Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment Commons^™

Lincoln’S Brightest Policy On Solar Energy, Jerin Tekolste

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

The push towards renewable energy is ubiquitous, with reasons varying from greater independence from foreign energy markets to environmental considerations or sustainable futures. Many countries, states, and cities all around the world are pursuing different ways to better their energy generation and Lincoln is no different. The current policy provides some incentive towards residential solar power but can be improved upon. There are typically three mechanisms used for residential photovoltaic (PV) solar generation: Feed-In Tariffs (FITs), Net Metering, and Net Purchase and Sale. This paper will compare the options Lincoln could use and will conclude with what would be the …

Save The Tax Break, Megan Bilstein

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

Saving 26% on inputting a clean form of energy sounds pretty good to me. According to the U.S. Department of Energy by inputting a solar panel into your house, property, or shop you could have 30% of the cost to install a solar panel system deducted from your federal income taxes, that was in 2019. Come 2020 it decreased to 26% and 22% in 2021 then completely gone in 2022. Unless something is done to save the tax credit this form of renewable energy may be completely forgotten about or put to the side in Nebraska while other forms will …

Public Power’S Addiction To Coal, Drew Havens

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

A benefit of living in Nebraska is the accessibility and reliability of our electricity. It powers our homes and businesses and allows us to be productive, hard-working people. But public power and its addiction to coal is not the path forward. Our state’s insistence on burning coal for electricity leaves us physically dependent, economically vulnerable, and financially burdened.

The U.S. Should Rejoin The Paris Agreement. Moral, Economic, And Political Reasons Why Rejoining Paris Agreement Is Right, Libert Niyonkuru

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

Climate change and global warming are not only environmental issues rather ethical and policy-driven issues that need global attention from all governments. This is the only way Climate equity and justice can be achieved.

Nebraska’S Need For A Renewable Standard Portfolio, Trevor Cutsor

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

Nebraska has the 3^rd highest potential for wind energy in the country but ranks 12^th in installed wind capacity. Our reliance on fossil fuels and lagging investment in generation technologies of the future mean that our beloved low cost of electricity will increase in the near future. We need a renewable portfolio standard.

Climate Change In Rwanda, Mig Shyaka

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

Climate change has become the world’s upmost threat. Different ideas of mitigation and adaptation have been develOp-ed to target climate change. These solutions stretch from development and innovation of different technologies like clean energy (solar and wind), to simpler local procedures (planting trees and simple green agroecological practices like farming). However, the need for the rapid action on climate change has created a narrow understanding of the issue and the necessary participation for the process to be smoother in developing and under-develOp-ed countries. It can be argued to be the case in some develOp-ed countries too.

The Prairie Post Quarterly Newsletter Of The High Plains Regional Climate Center- January 2020, Natalie Umphlett, Rezaul Mamood, Paul Flanagan, Logan Winters, Kierstin Blomberg, Emilee Lachenmeier, Crystal J. Stiles

Prairie Post: Quarterly Newsletter of the High Plains Regional Climate Center

Inside this issue:

Message from the director........................................1

Staff spotlight...........................1

Year in review............................2

Updates on engagement and tools.....................................3

Observer awards......................3

Overview of regional climate conditions..................................4

AMS annual meeting.............5

Recent and upcoming travel and activities.............................6

Mitogenome Of Northern Long-Eared Bat, Sarah Gaughan, Kevin L. Pope, Jeremy A. White, Cliff Lemen, Patricia Freeman

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

The complete mitogenome of the northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis) was determined to be 17,362 bp and contained 22 tRNA genes, 2 rRNA genes and one control region. The whole genome base composition was 33.8% GC. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that M. septentrionalis be positioned next to M. auriculus in the Nearctic subclade of the Myotis genus. This complete mitochondrial genome provides essential molecular markers for resolving phylogeny and future conservation efforts.

Use And Expenditures On Public Access Hunting Lands, Lyndsie S. Wszola, Lutz F. Gruber, Erica F. Stuber, Lindsey N. Messinger, Christopher J. Chizinski, Joseph J. Fontaine

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

The recreational and economic benefits of hunting on traditional permanent public lands are well-established. Increasingly popular “open fields” hunting access programs temporarily open private lands to public hunting through public-private partnerships. Open fields programs have the potential to create public hunting opportunities and economic development in rural communities, but the extent to which open fields programs compare to traditional public lands at providing benefits to hunters and rural communities has not yet been evaluated. We compared hunter use and expenditures on open fields lands and traditional public lands in Nebraska, USA. We used Convolution Likelihood Ecological Abundance Regression, a novel …

Exit Here: Strategies For Dealing With Aging Dams And Reservoirs, Henry H. Hansen, Emily Forzono, Alisha Grams, Lindsay Ohlman, Christine Ruskamp, Mark A. Pegg, Kevin L. Pope

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Aging infrastructure is prevalent throughout the world, but water control management structures, specifically dams, are of growing concern. Dams and their corresponding reservoirs have inherent, but separate, lifespans. The proportion of dams around the world that continue operation beyond their intended lifespans is growing at an alarming rate. Society will not only have to navigate the tradeoffs associated with the deterioration of services provided by reservoirs and dams, but also impending structural failures. Society is nearing a critical pinch point where we will have to decide how to deal with dams and reservoirs at scales that range from a single …

Applied Injected Air Into Subsurface Drip Irrigation: Plant Uptake Of Pharmaceuticals And Soil Microbial Communities, Matteo D'Alessio, Lisa M. Durso, Clinton Williams, Christopher A. Olson, Chittaranjan Ray, Ellen Paparozzi

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

The growing global food security crisis is complicated by the need for increased crop production with less arable land and limited water resources. Reuse of treated wastewater for agricultural irrigation is becoming more common, often paired with other conservation measures such as subsurface drip irrigation (SDI). Passively injecting air into SDI systems increases crop yields and overcomes root zone wetting issues. However, when used with treated irrigation water, contaminants in the water might be taken up by the crops. This paper investigates the impact of air-injected water containing caffeine, carbamazepine, and gemfibrozil on plant uptake and soil microbial communities in …

Droughtscape, Winter 2019, Cory Matteson

DroughtScape: Quarterly Newsletter of the National Drought Mitigation Center (2007–2023)

Contents

From the Director

4th quarter climate summary

2019 year in review summary

4th quarter drought impact summary

2019 drought impact summary

New form helps ‘see more’ drought

Landscape photographers invited to submit photos

Helping Central and South America planning

Database includes more drought planning

Comparative Evaluation Of Machine Learning Models For Groundwater Quality Assessment, Shine Bedi, Ashok Samal, Chittaranjan Ray, Daniel D. Snow

School of Computing: Faculty Publications

Contamination from pesticides and nitrate in groundwater is a significant threat to water quality in general and agriculturally intensive regions in particular. Three widely used machine learning models, namely, artificial neural networks (ANN), support vector machines (SVM), and extreme gradient boosting (XGB), were evaluated for their efficacy in predicting contamination levels using sparse data with non-linear relationships. The predictive ability of the models was assessed using a dataset consisting of 303 wells across 12 Midwestern states in the USA. Multiple hydrogeologic, water quality, and land use features were chosen as the independent variables, and classes were based on measured concentration …

The Fluxnet2015 Dataset And The Oneflux Processing Pipeline For Eddy Covariance Data, Gilberto Pastorello, Timothy Arkebauer, Dave P. Billesbach, Anatoly Gitelson, Adam Liska, Andrew Suyker, Elizabeth Walter-Shea, More Than 200 Other

Adam Liska Papers

The FLUXNET2015 dataset provides ecosystem-scale data on CO2, water, and energy exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and other meteorological and biological measurements, from 212 sites around the globe (over 1500 site-years, up to and including year 2014). These sites, independently managed and operated, voluntarily contributed their data to create global datasets. Data were quality controlled and processed using uniform methods, to improve consistency and intercomparability across sites. The dataset is already being used in a number of applications, including ecophysiology studies, remote sensing studies, and development of ecosystem and Earth system models. FLUXNET2015 includes derived-data products, such as …

Answering Global Warming’S Hottest Debate: A Better Way To Tax Carbon, Saleh Husseini

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

Some of you are sick of hearing about it, some of you don’t really care, and the rest of you are probably the reason the first group is sick of hearing about it, but regardless of which category you fall into, one thing is certain: climate change is real and it’s already happening. With that said, I’m moving forward under the assumption that all of us here believe in science and understand this phenomenon to be largely a result of post-industrial anthropogenic activity. In which case, reducing our emissions is the only way to prevent climate change from becoming a …

Neglecting A Wind Energy Portfolio Leaves Nebraska Behind Its Neighbors, Conner Vokoun

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

Nebraska is a state that prides itself on the productivity of our land. We dutifully don our foam corn hats at Memorial Stadium and boast that Nebraska beef is what’s for dinner. But Nebraska’s land holds an untapped resource that our neighboring states are taking advantage of: wind. Nebraska must adopt a renewable portfolio to double production of wind energy in our state over the next five years. A renewable portfolio is a regulation that sets a minimum amount of power that can be produced by renewable sources, such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric. Currently, Nebraska does not have any …

Subsidize Or Suffer, Dallas Smith

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

The standard for energy production and consumption in the US has historically been the use of coal or oil. In the earliest days of the industrial revolution, coal was king. For a society to achieve such a goal as the expansion and fortification of infrastructure, well, society as a whole, the means absolutely justify the ends. But what if the means of producing energy didn’t have to look like what they did over a hundred years ago? Well they don’t. The use of new renewable, sustainable energy could prove to be beneficial in many aspects, environmental health especially. By subsidizing …

Is More Investment Needed In Solar And Biogas Energy Sources In Rwanda?, Herve Christian Kabanda

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

The Rwanda Third National Communication Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change mentions that Green House Gas (GHG) emissions per capita increased from 532.39kg (2006) to 676.23kg (2015) with an annual increase of 2.46%. As of 2015, the dominant emissions are from agriculture (70.4%) followed by energy (20.11%). Urea application in agriculture have increased from 1,246,400 to 2,559,000 tons of CO2 eq. Charcoal or wood being the primary source for cooking; emissions from domestic energy use has increased from 626,800 to 741,400 tons of CO2 eq. If such trends continue severe health issues, deforestation, soil erosion and droughts …

People And Planet First—Time Permitting, Jennifer Gilbert

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

Is it just me or is there something about election time that makes politicians overly ambitious? The candidates for the 2020 presidential election are fighting to convince American voters they are the best choice. One of the most common tactics for accomplishing this is providing voters with an unattainable amount of promises for making our problems magically disappear. While these ambitions are “attention-grabbing” and somewhat successful in acquiring votes, so many of them go unaccomplished or un-addressed once the candidate enters the white house. No candidate, from any party, is immune to this infectious tendency that accompanies running a campaign. …

The Wind Energy Adaptation Of Nebraska, Samuel Bogert

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

The Wind Energy Adaptation of Nebraska

Today there are many things in the world that we rely on, heaters for warmth, cars for travel, and many other commodities that our way of living is dependent on. One of the most overlooked aspects of society is the need for power. Each and every American is dependent on power somehow, yet the vast majority of us do not think twice when flipping a switch. We all know that flipping a switch means the lights come on, when turning the ignition in our car we don’t think of the process behind the engine …

Making Renewables Profitable For Lincoln Electrical System, Jack Mensinger

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

The potential for Nebraska to integrate renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, in a financially sustainable and profitable method, has been proposed and shot down. Too many Nebraskans continue to doubt and reject renewables due to the perception that they are too expensive and the continued cost over traditional energy sources are too high. Most of Nebraska’s energy comes from coal, (63%) as of 2018, with the remainder lying primarily in nuclear (15%), and wind (14%). With the innovations and adoption of renewables by other states, what is keeping Nebraskans from joining the renewable party? The primary reason …

Positive Points Of Bernie's Green New Deal, Bailey Mullins

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

The Green New Deal will help will create jobs in the energy market. Many people fear that the workers in the coal mines or oil plants will be out of job but this is actually false. The Green New Deal will create jobs in the energy market, all while switching our infrastructure to 100% renewable energy. The Green New Deal is the best way for our country to become more sustainable, modernize our energy infrastructure, and do it without costing americans jobs. First off the Green New Deal will create 20 million new job openings according to Bernie Sanders campaign …

Adaptation To Climate Change, Pascal Ntaganda

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

Climate is changing rapidly. Some scientists say that the effects are now irreversible. The foundation on which government organizations, some of them being the congress in the United States, is not strong enough to stop climate change. The fact that the approaches being taken target market-based situations, makes it inefficient. Governments create solutions to reduce the impacts, as they make sure that these activities do not affect their economies. The level at which effects of climate change threaten life and resources of a country, is what stimulates the economy to adapt to the strategies set to mitigate climate change. In …

Facts, Not Feelings, Gannon Rush

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

“The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don't address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it? ” This is a direct quote from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a sitting U.S. congresswoman. In the next few sentences, she also proceeds to say that climate change is “our generations World War II”. 70 million people died in World War II, not only is it doing disrespect to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, but it is physically impossible to compare war to climate change. What she and others, such as Greta Thunberg and Al …

Wind Is The First Step To Winning, Martin Brannaman

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

Wind energy is the way of the future, and those who don’t have it will get left behind. Wind has already proven to be useful to countries in Europe, such as Denmark, Germany, and Spain. These countries are benefited from EU policy, to help alleviate some economic stress that might come from having diversified energy sources. This diversification of energy is good for countries economically and energy wise, allows them to not be too heavily reliant upon one source. This issue is clearly on display in America who is heavily reliant on oil and coal for example, the 1973 oil …

The Dirty Clean Fuel, Sawyer Krivanek

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

Hydraulic fracking began nearly 80 years ago and was initially headlined as a brand new, fuel efficient alternative to coal and oil. Natural gas has been disguised as a clean fuel, when in reality it is just another dirty, polluting, environmentally harmful fossil fuel. The detriments of fracking heavily outweigh the benefits, and it needs to be banned on public and private lands. Natural gas has been viewed as a cleaner alternative to coal and oil, so immediately fossil fuel industries took advantage of that narrative. Consumers, eager for cleaner alternatives, have been tricked into buying into the fracking fad. …

Don’T Give Up On Nuclear Energy, Daniel Gertner

Op-Eds from ENSC230 Energy and the Environment: Economics and Policies

The nuclear power plant failures at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl in the late 1970s and 1980s split Americans into two passionate camps. For some, nuclear plants posed serious threats to both environmental and national security, and, for others, nuclear energy remained the most viable path to clean, reliable power in the United States. But following the fervent debates of the late 20th century, the national conversation around nuclear power stagnated. A few ardent advocates and opponents notwithstanding, nuclear power left the public eye. Popular energy debates—especially among young people—now center around flashier topics like the Green New Deal, electric …

Umphlett Qci Dec 2019, Natalie A. Umphlett

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Highlights for the Basin

Temperature and Precipitation Anomalies

Soil Moisture Conditions

Agriculture

Energy

Infrastructure

Temperature

Precipitation

Hunters And Their Perceptions Of Public Access: A View From Afield, Joseph J. Fontaine, Alexis D. Fedele, Lyndsie S. Wszola, Lindsey N. Messinger, Christopher J. Chizinski, Jeffery J. Lusk, Karie L. Decker, J. Scott Taylor, Erica F. Stuber

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Declining hunter participation threatens cultural traditions and public support for conservation, warranting examination of the forces behind the downward trajectory. Access to lands for hunting, an often-cited reason for non participation, may play a critical role in the retention and recruitment of hunters. Meeting the access needs of a diverse hunting constituency requires understanding how hunters use and perceive access opportunities, particularly public-access sites. Given that perceptions of access are entirely place based and degrade with time, traditional postseason survey methods may fail to adequately quantify the value of public access to the hunting constituency. To overcome the potential limitations …

The Prairie Post Quarterly Newsletter Of The High Plains Regional Climate Center- October 2019, Crystal J. Stiles, Rezaul Mamood, Logan Winters, Paul Flanagan, Natalie Umphlett

Prairie Post: Quarterly Newsletter of the High Plains Regional Climate Center

Inside this issue:

Message from the director........................................1

Staff spotlight...........................1

Workshops focus on climate services in Kansas....................2

Research highlights................3

AMS Annual Meeting.............3

Update on regional climate conditions..................................4

New ACIS Climate Summary Maps available..........................5

Track precipitation with CLIMOD.......................................5

Recent and upcoming travel and activities.............................6