Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment Commons^™

Mapping The Spatial-Temporal Dynamics Of Vegetation Response Lag To Drought In A Semi-Arid Region, Li Hua, Huidong Wang, Haigang Sui, Brian Wardlow, Michael Hayes, Jianxun Wang

Center for Advanced Land Management Information Technologies: Publications

Drought, as an extreme climate event, affects the ecological environment for vegetation and agricultural production. Studies of the vegetative response to drought are paramount to providing scientific information for drought risk mitigation. In this paper, the spatial-temporal pattern of drought and the response lag of vegetation in Nebraska were analyzed from 2000 to 2015. Based on the long-term Daymet data set, the standard precipitation index (SPI) was computed to identify precipitation anomalies, and the Gaussian function was applied to obtain temperature anomalies. Vegetation anomaly was identified by dynamic time warping technique using a remote sensing Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) …

Monitoring Spatial And Temporal Variabilities Of Gross Primary Production Using Maiac Modis Data, Marcos Fernandez-Martinez, Rong Yu, John Gamon, Gabriel Hmimina, Iolanda Filella, Manuela Balzarolo, Benjamin Stocker, Josep Penuelas

Center for Advanced Land Management Information Technologies: Publications

Remotely sensed vegetation indices (RSVIs) can be used to efficiently estimate terrestrial primary productivity across space and time. Terrestrial productivity, however, has many facets (e.g., spatial and temporal variability, including seasonality, interannual variability, and trends), and different vegetation indices may not be equally good at predicting them. Their accuracy in monitoring productivity has been mostly tested in single-ecosystem studies, but their performance in different ecosystems distributed over large areas still needs to be fully explored. To fill this gap, we identified the facets of terrestrial gross primary production (GPP) that could be monitored using RSVIs. We compared the temporal and …

Estimating The Use Of Public Lands: Integrated Modeling Of Open Populations With Convolution Likelihood Ecological Abundance Regression, Lutz F. Gruber, Erica F. Stuber, Joseph J. Fontaine

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

We present an integrated open population model where the population dynamics are defined by a differential equation, and the related statistical model utilizes a Poisson binomial convolution likelihood. Key advantages of the proposed approach over existing open population models include the flexibility to predict related, but unobserved quantities such as total immigration or emigration over a specified time period, and more computationally efficient posterior simulation by elimination of the need to explicitly simulate latent immigration and emigration. The viability of the proposed method is shown in an in-depth analysis of outdoor recreation participation on public lands, where the surveyed populations …

The Future Of Recreational Fisheries: Advances In Science, Monitoring, Management, And Practice, Jacob W. Brownscombe, Kieran Hyder, Warren Potts, Kyle L. Wilson, Kevin L. Pope, Andy J. Danylchuk, Steven J. Cooke, Adrian Clarke, Robert Arlinghaus, John R. Post

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Recreational fisheries (RF) are complex social-ecological systems that play an important role in aquatic environments while generating significant social and economic benefits around the world. The nature of RF is diverse and rapidly evolving, including the participants, their priorities and behaviors, and the related ecological impacts and social and economic benefits. RF can lead to negative ecological impacts, particularly through overexploitation of fish populations and spread of non-native species and genotypes through stocking. Hence, careful management and monitoring of RF is essential to sustain these ecologically and socioeconomically important resources. This special issue on recreational fisheries contains diverse research, syntheses, …

The Cost Of Forest Preservation In The Brazilian Amazon: The “Arc Of Deforestation”, Felipe De Figueiredo Silva, Lilyan E. Fulginiti, Richard Perrin

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

We estimate the trade-off between agricultural production and forest preservation for the municipalities in Brazil’s agricultural frontier, the so-called “arc of deforestation,” using census and deforestation data for 2006. We use a nonparametric directional output distance function that allows us to identify the gradients of the production possibility frontier, which are the trade-offs of interest. We found that, on average, $979 is forgone in annual livestock, timber, and grain revenues to conserve 1 hectare of forest. This translates, ceteris paribus, to an average present value of costs to permanently sequester CO2 of $16.36/t, higher than most previous estimates.

Influence Of Land Cover And Soil Moisture Based Brown Ocean Effect On An Extreme Rainfall Event From A Louisiana Gulf Coast Tropical System, Udaysankar S. Nair, Eric Rappin, Emily Foshee, Warren Smith, Roger A. Pielke Sr., Rezaul Mahmood, Jonathan L. Case, Clay B. Blankenship, Marshall Shepherd, Joseph A. Santanello, Dev Niyogi

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Extreme flooding over southern Louisiana in mid-August of 2016 resulted from an unusual tropical low that formed and intensified over land. We used numerical experiments to highlight the role of the ‘Brown Ocean’ effect (where saturated soils function similar to a warm ocean surface) on intensification and it’s modulation by land cover change. A numerical modeling experiment that successfully captured the flood event (control) was modified to alter moisture availability by converting wetlands to open water, wet croplands, and dry croplands. Storm evolution in the control experiment with wet antecedent soils most resembles tropical lows that form and intensify over …

The Total Solar Eclipse Of 2017: Meteorological Observations From A Statewide Mesonet And Atmospheric Profiling Systems, Rezaul Mahmood, Megan Schargorodski, Eric Rappin, Melissa Griffin, Patrick Collins, Kevin Knupp, Andrew Quilligan, Ryan Wade, Kevin Cary, Stuart Foster

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

A total solar eclipse traversed 37 the continental United States on August 21, 2017. It 38 was the first such event in 99 years and provided a rare opportunity to observe the atmospheric response from a variety of instrumented observational platforms. This paper discusses the high quality observations collected by the Kentucky Mesonet (www.kymesonet.org), a research-grade meteorological and climatological observation network consisting of 72 stations and measuring air temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, solar radiation, wind speed, and wind direction. The network samples the atmosphere, for most variables, every three seconds and then calculates and records observations every five minutes. During …

Irrigation Impacts On Minimum And Maximum Surface Moist Enthalpy In The Central Great Plains Of The Usa, Tianyi Zhang, Rezaul Mahmood, Xiaomao Lin, Roger A. Pielke Sr.

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Agricultural activities notably alter weather and climate including near-surface heat content. However, past research primarily focused on dry bulb temperature without considering the role of water vapor (dew point temperature) on surface air heat content. When using dry bulb temperature trends to assess these changes, for example, not including concurrent trends in absolute humidity can lead to errors in the actual rate of warming or cooling. Here we examined minimum and maximum surface moist enthalpy, which can be expressed as “equivalent temperature.” Using hourly climate data in the Central Great Plains (Nebraska and Kansas) from 1990 to 2014, the averages …

Enhancing Acis Maps: Increasing Usability Through A Gis Portal, Natalie Umphlett, Warren Pettee, Bill Sorensen, Crystal J. Stiles

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

The High Plains Regional Climate Center (HPRCC) is one of six NOAA Regional Climate Centers (RCCs) in the United States that aims to provide timely climate data and information to the public for cost-effective decision-making. As part of a three-tiered approach to climate services, the RCCs address needs on the national, regional, state, and local scales for a variety of sectors including agriculture, energy, natural resource management, research, transportation, and water resources. Working together, the RCCs develop and disseminate a wide range of valueadded climate products and services.

One of the HPRCC’s most popular products is the Applied Climate Information …

Conducting A Drought-Specific Thira (Threat And Hazard Identification And Risk Assessment): A Powerful Tool For Integrating All-Hazard Mitigation And Drought Planning Efforts To Increase Drought Mitigation Quality, Elliot Wickham, Deborah J. Bathke, Tarik Abdel-Monem, Tonya K. Bernadt, Denise Bulling, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Crystal J. Stiles, Nicole Wall

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

In the United States, drought is the second costliest natural disaster, which leads to the need for increased drought mitigation efforts over time. However, drought planning has lagged behind other hazard mitigation efforts, which is likely due to the lack of a national drought planning policy. Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requires all jurisdictions have a hazard mitigation plan (HMP) to receive pre-disaster mitigation funds, drought has only recently been a requirement in HMPs. In 2012, Nebraska witnessed its worse drought in recent history, which exposed the gaps in drought planning effectiveness at all jurisdictional levels. To address …

Age-0 Walleye Sander Vitreus Display Length-Dependent Diet Shift To Piscivory, Christopher S. Uphoff, Casey W. Schoenebeck, Keith D. Koupal, Kevin L. Pope, W. Wyatt Hoback

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

The ontogenetic diet shift to piscivory can be energetically beneficial for fish growth and allows larger, more energetically profitable prey to be consumed. A shift to piscivory may be easier for longer individuals within a cohort due to larger gape size, and an early shift is likely advantageous, potentially leading to increased growth rates and survival. Such length-dependent ontogenetic diet shifts may explain the intracohort variability in length that is common for age-0 walleye (Sander vitreus). The objectives of this study were to describe seasonal intracohort variability in length, identify the timing of the shift to piscivory and …

Ecosystem Size Predicts Social-Ecological Dynamics, Mark A. Kaemingk, Christopher J. Chizinski, Craig R. Allen, Kevin L. Pope

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Recreational fisheries are complex adaptive systems that are inherently difficult to manage because of heterogeneous user groups (consumptive vs. nonconsumptive) that use patchily distributed resources on the landscape (lakes, rivers, coastlines). There is a need to identify which system components can effectively predict and be used to manage nonlinear and cross-scale dynamics within these systems. We examine how ecosystem size or water body size can be used to explain complicated and elusive angler-resource dynamics in recreational fisheries. Water body size determined angler behavior among 48 Nebraska, U.S.A. water bodies during an 11- year study. Angler behavior was often unique and …

Droughtscape, Winter 2019, National Drought Mitigation Center

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

Contents

From the Director

Drought intensified in California and Nevada, eased elsewhere

Year in Review: Drought spread and intensified in the West; record precipitation in the East

Drought impact summary for 4th quarter 2018

Drought impact summary 2018

Five states began drought plan updates in 2018

New web-based form makes submitting drought observations easier

FEMA risk assessment process tailored for drought

Upcoming events

Isolation Of Rabies Virus From The Salivary Glands Of Wild And Domestic Carnivores During A Skunk Rabies Epizootic, Cornell University Jimenez, Terry R. Spraker, Jessica Anderson, Richard Bowen, Amy Gilbert

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Rabies is a fatal zoonotic disease of global importance. Rabies virus is shed in the saliva of infected hosts and is primarily transmitted through bite contact. Canine rabies has been eliminated from the US, but wildlife constitutes more than 90% of the reported cases of animal rabies in the US each year. In the US, several wild carnivore species are reservoirs of distinct variants of rabies virus (RV). After decades of apparent absence, the south-central skunk (SCSK) RV variant was detected in Colorado in 2007 and resulted in a large-scale epizootic in striped skunk (Mephitis mephitis) populations in northern Colorado …

Modeled And Measured Ecosystem Respiration In Maize–Soybean Systems Over 10 Years, Ming Zhan, Adam Liska, Anthony Nguy-Robertson, Andrew E. Suyker, Matthew P. Pelton, Haishun Yang

Adam Liska Papers

Crop residue is an abundant resource for the potential production of biofuels, but a better understanding of its use on net carbon emissions must be developed to mitigate climate change. This analysis combines two established crop growth models (Hybrid-Maize and SoySim) with a simple soil and crop residue respiration model to estimate daily ecosystem respiration (ERe) from maize and soybean; ERe was estimated to be the sum of CO₂ emissions from the oxidation of the growing crop, crop residue, and soil organic carbon (SOC). Model-estimated CO₂ fluxes from irrigated continuous maize and irrigated maize–soybean cropping systems in eastern …

Simulating Detection-Censored Movement Records For Home Range Analysis Planning, Lyndsie S. Wszola, Victoria L. Simonsen, Lucía Corral, Christopher J. Chizinski, Joseph J. Fontaine

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Home range estimation is an important analytical method in applied spatial ecology, yet best practices for addressing the effects of spatial variation in detection probability on home range estimates remain elusive. We introduce the R package “DiagnoseHR,” simulation tools for assessing how variation in detection probability arising from landscape, animal behavior, and methodological processes affects home range inference. We demonstrate the utility of simulation methods for home range analysis planning by comparing bias arising from three home range estimation methods under multiple detection scenarios. We simulated correlated random walks in three landscapes that varied in detection probability and constructed home …

Wave Energy In America, Chris Sukstorf

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

The United States has an untapped energy goldmine: our shores. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States his home to over 95,000 miles of shoreline. This shoreline is home to beaches, homes, and wildlife, but it could be home to more: wave energy.

Wave energy comes in many forms: some use the bobbing up and down motion of waves to generate energy in a similar motion of a piston; others store water during high tide and then release it during low tide like a dam. All said and done, the United States has the ability …

Why Lincoln Needs To Get Ahead Of The Emerald Ash Borer Outbreak, Bryce Meyer

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

The emerald ash borer was recently sighted in Lincoln, Nebraska this August. This was to be expected as they were also located in Douglas and Cass county. The emerald ash borer has been making its way west from Michigan and has also been detected in 61 counties in Iowa.

The emerald ash borer is a metallic green colored beetle that feeds on green ash, black ash, blue ash, and white ash trees. The insect can kill up to 99% of the ash trees that they come in contact with. The beetle is native to north-eastern Asia and is considered an …

“On-Bill Financing: A Bright Idea For Nebraska”, Lauren Taylor

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

In over 29 states, a program called On-Bill Financing (OBF) is being utilized to improve the energy efficiency of homes and livelihoods of the people living in them. These programs have been implemented all over the country for many years, in states like Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, and Michigan. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), OBF has been wildly successful, reducing energy inefficiency, cutting energy bills, and improving the comfort of homes across the country with no upfront costs.

But what exactly is this mysterious money-saving program, and why hasn’t Nebraska tapped into it yet?

The Department of …

Looking At The True Costs Of Environmental Degradation, Zachery Sehnert

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

Progress is why we change, and innovation drives that progress. It is already very clear to scientists around the globe that our current framework for living is not sustainable. 97 percent of climate scientists are in consensus that there is a major threat to our ecosystem and action needs to be taken. Overpopulation, pollution, water scarcity, natural disasters, overfishing, deforestation are all issues that must be reevaluated with sustainability in mind. However only 49 percent of the general population share this belief, and even less, only 29 percent of CEOs are actively addressing climate change. The shortcoming for the general …

“Renewable Energy Implementation”, William Newcomb

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

Finding and providing ways to produce energy in an environmentally clean way is becoming a major push for countries all around the world today. Renewable energy provides a clean way to produce energy efficiently without using our planets non-renewable resources. Renewable energy has been growing substantially in the United States in the last decade and is making its way towards becoming a major energy production method. So, what is stopping the United States from implementing renewable energy production into our country at a mass scale?

There are many barriers that are keeping renewable energy from becoming a main source of …

Nebraska’S Public Power Is Proof That Renewables Are (Literally) In The Public’S Best Interest, Jacob Monti

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

Nebraska is the only state that has every electric utility publicly owned. This gives Nebraska a unique advantage of serving its customers rather than out-of-state shareholders. Since the goal is cheap power instead of profit margins and keeping shareholders happy, Nebraska rates are 16.8% below the national average. (EIA.gov)

So what does that mean for Renewable sources of electricity if cheap power is the main focus? Does cheap but dirty coal reign supreme?

Some might think that’d be a death blow for Renewables. Renewables (wind, solar, and hydro-electric power) are expensive and not profitable, right? WRONG.

Renewables make up just …

Lift On E15 Ban: Should Nebraskan Farmers Be Cheering?, Samantha Wattier

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

The common gasoline-ethanol mixture available at gas station pumps is 10% ethanol (E10). The Environmental Protection Agency had a ban on 15% ethanol (E15) during summer months. The news has been covering the talks of President Trump to lifting this summer ban and supporters in Iowa are excited.

Should Nebraska shout Hoorah, too? It is common knowledge Nebraska is better than Iowa. We should be excited, too, right?! NO.

Iowa has been tracking Fuel Revenue sales including those from ethanol blends and has been pushing for the E15 ban lift. Considering Iowa produces MORE corn and MORE ethanol than …

Recycling Just Got More Expensive. Can It Be Done Better?, Zachery Homolka

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

There was a time in history that America led the world in recycling. In World War Two, Americans were asked to recycle tin, steel, paper, and rubber for the war effort. The University of Southern Carolina states that children were so eager to participate, they went door to door collecting recyclable scraps to turn in to be made into tanks, planes, and ammunition. Yet, in 2017 the National Geographic estimated about 91% of plastic produced globally has not been recycled and instead is landfilled or littered into the environment. America is no longer leading the recycling charge, the World Economic …

Social Change For A Global Problem, Isabella Catalano

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

Recently, the United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a new report[1], warning us that storms are becoming more volatile, sea surface temperatures are getting higher, global environment as a whole growing less predictable: in other words, things are about to get a whole lot worse than we predicted.

Unless, of course, we do something about it. The IPCC recommends cutting CO₂ emissions by 45% in order to curb just the worst of climate change's many effects.

There are a plethora of articles on the topic of just what, exactly, we as individuals can do: …

Why The Endangered Species Act Shouldn’T Be Endangered, Ryan Kendall

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

The Trump Administration has announced that they intend to rework the endangered species act. Unsurprisingly, they plan to rework in ways that have the potential to undermine its effectiveness.

One would think that reworking the act would potentially increase its effectiveness, given the nearly fifty years that we have had to advance our knowledge since it was passed. Unfortunately, the opposite may very well be true.

The new changes to the act would allow for the decision of whether or not to list an animal to be made not just by scientific data, but also by determining the economic impact …

Transition Pathways To Sustainable Agricultural Water Management: A Review Of Integrated Modeling Approaches, Erin M.K. Haacker, Vaishali Sharda, Amanda M. Cano, R. Aaron Hrozencik, Agustin Nunez, Zachary Zambreski, Soheil Nozari, Garvey Engulu B, Smith, Lacey Moore, Sumit Sharma, Prasanna Gowda, Chittaranjan Ray, Meagan Schipanski, Reagan Waskom

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

Agricultural water management (AWM) is an interdisciplinary concern, cutting across traditional domains such as agronomy, climatology, geology, economics, and sociology. Each of these disciplines has developed numerous process-based and empirical models for AWM. However, models that simulate all major hydrologic, water quality, and crop growth processes in agricultural systems are still lacking. As computers become more powerful, more researchers are choosing to integrate existing models to account for these major processes rather than building new cross-disciplinary models. Model integration carries the hope that, as in a real system, the sum of the model will be greater than the parts. However, …

Simulating The Impacts Of Irrigation Levels On Soybean Production In Texas High Plains To Manage Diminishing Groundwater Levels, Vaishali Sharda, Prasanna H. Gowda, Gary Marek, Isaya Kisekka, Chittaranjan Ray, Pradip Adhikari

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

There is an increasing need to strategize and plan irrigation systems under varied climatic conditions to support efficient irrigation practices while maintaining and improving the sustainability of groundwater systems. This study was undertaken to simulate the growth and production of soybean [Glycine max (L.)] under different irrigation scenarios. The objectives of this study were to calibrate and validate the CROPGRO-Soybean model under Texas High Plains’ (THP) climatic conditions and to apply the calibrated model to simulate the impacts of different irrigation levels and triggers on soybean production. The methodology involved combining short-term experimental data with long-term historical weather data (1951–2012), …

Umphlett Qci Dec 2018, Natalie A. Umphlett

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Highlights for the Basin

Temperature and Precipitation Anomalies

Mountain Snowpack

Water Resources and Drought

Agriculture

Temperature

Precipitation

Environmental Fate And Microbial Effects Of Monensin, Lincomycin, And Sulfamethazine Residues In Soil, Matteo D'Alessio, Lisa M. Durso, Daniel N. Miller, Brian Woodbury, Chittaranjan Ray, Daniel D. Snow

Nebraska Water Center: Faculty Publications

The impact of commonly-used livestock antibiotics on soil nitrogen transformations under varying redox conditions is largely unknown. Soil column incubations were conducted using three livestock antibiotics (monensin, lincomycin and sulfamethazine) to better understand the fate of the antibiotics, their effect on nitrogen transformation, and their impact on soil microbial communities under aerobic, anoxic, and denitrifying conditions. While monensin was not recovered in the effluent, lincomycin and sulfamethazine concentrations decreased slightly during transport through the columns. Sorption, and to a limited extent degradation, are likely to be the primary processes leading to antibiotic attenuation during leaching. Antibiotics also affected microbial respiration …