Environmental Monitoring Commons^™

Review Of The Negative Influences Of Non-Native Salmonids On Native Fish Species, Kelly C. Turek, Mark A. Pegg, Kevin L. Pope

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Non-native salmonids are often introduced into areas containing species of concern, yet a comprehensive overview of the short- and long-term consequences of these introductions is lacking in the Great Plains. Several authors have suggested that non-native salmonids negatively influence species of concern. The objective of this paper is to review known interactions between non-native salmonids and native fishes, with a focus on native species of concern. After an extensive search of the literature, it appears that in many cases non-native salmonids do negatively influence species of concern (e.g., reduce abundance and alter behavior) via different mechanisms (e.g., predation and competition). …

An Integrated Research Approach To The Development Of Fungal Isolates As Bioherbicides For The Control Of Woody Weeds, Patrick Mershon

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Prickly acacia (Acacia nilotica) is an invasive weed tree in Australia, ranked seventh on the list of Weeds of National Significance because of its aggressiveness and its economic and environmental impacts. The significant downsides to manual and chemical control of this species drove the search for a biological control mechanism. Surveying and sampling stands of A. nilotica naturally exhibiting disease symptoms yielded several native Australian fungi capable of pathogenesis in this species, which are currently under assessment as potential bioherbicides for this weed. Three field trials were established at the same site in order to further advance current …

U.S. Drought Monitor, March 26, 2013, Anthony Artusa

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for March 26, 2013 (3/26/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

U.S. Drought Monitor, March 19, 2013, Anthony Artusa

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for March 19, 2013 (3/19/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

Continuous Monitoring Reveals Multiple Controls On Ecosystem Metabolism In A Suburban Stream, Jake J. Beaulieu, Clay P. Arango, David A. Balz, William D. Shuster

Biology Faculty Scholarship

1. Primary production and respiration in streams, collectively referred to as stream ecosystem metabolism, are fundamental processes that determine trophic structure, biomass and nutrient cycling. Few studies have used high‐frequency measurements of gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER) over extended periods to characterise the factors that control stream ecosystem metabolism at hourly, daily, seasonal and annual scales.

2. We measured ecosystem metabolism at 5‐min intervals for 23 months in Shepherd Creek, a small suburban stream in Cincinnati, Ohio (U.S.A.).

3. Daily GPP was best predicted by a model containing light and its synergistic interaction with water temperature. Water …

U.S. Drought Monitor, March 12, 2013, Matthew Rosencrans

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for March 12, 2013 (3/12/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

U.S. Drought Monitor, March 5, 2013, Matthew Rosencrans

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for March 5, 2013 (3/5/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

U.S. Drought Monitor, February 26, 2013, Brian Fuchs

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for February 26, 2013 (2/26/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

U.S. Drought Monitor, February 19, 2013, Brian Fuchs

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for February 19, 2013 (2/19/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

U.S. Drought Monitor, February 12, 2013, Michael J. Brewer, Liz Love-Brotak

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for February 12, 2013 (2/12/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

U.S. Drought Monitor, February 5, 2013, Michael J. Brewer, Liz Love-Brotak

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for February 5, 2013 (2/5/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

Oria Stage Ii Expansion: Keep River Baseline Aquatic Fauna And Targeted Sawfish Surveys - September/October 2011, Wetland Research And Management (Wrm), Landcorp

Irrigated Agricultural Development in the North

The Western Australian Government is developing additional land for irrigated agriculture adjacent to the existing Ord River Irrigation Area (Ord Stage 1), in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. The expansion, referred to as greater Ord Stage 2 has identified land along the lower Ord (Packsaddle, West Bank, Carlton Station and Mantinea), the Cockatoo Sands, as well as the Weaber, Keep River and Knox Creek Plains as suitable for development. The current development of the Weaber and Knox Creek Plains, referred to as the M2 Supply Area, will increase the current area under irrigation from 14,000 to potentially 30, 500 …

Ten Reasons To Take Peak Oil Seriously, Robert Brecha

Physics Faculty Publications

Forty years ago, the results of modeling, as presented in The Limits to Growth, reinvigorated a discussion about exponentially growing consumption of natural resources, ranging from metals to fossil fuels to atmospheric capacity, and how such consumption could not continue far into the future. Fifteen years earlier, M. King Hubbert had made the projection that petroleum production in the continental United States would likely reach a maximum around 1970, followed by a world production maximum a few decades later. The debate about “peak oil," as it has come to be called, is accompanied by some of the same vociferous …

U.S. Drought Monitor, January 29, 2013, Mark D. Svoboda

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for January 29, 2013 (1/29/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

An Intercomparison Of Drought Indicators Based On Thermal Remote Sensing And Nldas-2 Simulations With U.S. Drought Monitor Classifications, Martha C. Anderson, Christopher Hain, Jason Otkin, Xiwu Zhan, Kingtse Mo, Mark Svoboda, Brian Wardlow, Agustin Pimstein

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Comparison of multiple hydrologic indicators, derived from independent data sources and modeling approaches, may improve confidence in signals of emerging drought, particularly during periods of rapid onset. This paper compares the evaporative stress index (ESI)—a diagnostic fast-response indicator describing evapotranspiration (ET) deficits derived within a thermal remote sensing energy balance framework—with prognostic estimates of soil moisture (SM), ET, and runoff anomalies generated with the North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS). Widely used empirical indices based on thermal remote sensing [vegetation health index (VHI)] and precipitation percentiles [standardized precipitation index (SPI)] were also included to assess relative performance. Spatial and …

U.S. Drought Monitor, January 22, 2013, Mark D. Svoboda

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for January 22, 2013 (1/22/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

U.S. Drought Monitor, January 15, 2013, David Simeral

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for January 15, 2013 (1/15/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

U.S. Drought Monitor, January 8, 2013, David Simeral

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for January 8, 2013 (1/8/13) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

2013 Nebraska Water Monitoring Programs Report, Marty Link, Joe Kenning

Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality: Reports

The Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality (NDEQ) is charged with monitoring, assessing, and to the extent possible, managing the state’s water resources. The purpose of this work is to protect and maintain good quality water and encourage or execute activities to improve poor water quality. Monitoring is done on the over 16,000 miles of flowing rivers and streams, our greater than 148,000 acres of surface water in lakes and reservoirs, and the vast storage of groundwater in Nebraska’s aquifers.

Energy Assessment Of Smithtown, New York, Allyson Murray, David J. Tonjes

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Energy management and carbon mitigation plans, often created to address global issues, must be implemented locally. Each specific area has its own needs and problems. For this study, we used publicly available data to create an energy assessment for the Town of Smithtown, a municipality of 116,000 people on the north shore of Long Island (New York). We found that motor vehicles consume the largest amount of energy, followed by space heating for both residential and commercial-industrial purposes. Local policies probably can only modestly affect transportation energy use, although federal policies may have significant effects over the next several decades. …

Maximizing A New Quantity In Sequential Reserve Selection, Adam W. Schapaugh, Andrew J. Tyre

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The fundamental goal of conservation planning is biodiversity persistence, yet most reserve selection methods prioritize sites using occurrence data. Numerous empirical studies support the notion that defining and measuring objectives in terms of species richness (where the value of a site is equal to the number of species it contains, or contributes to an existing reserve network) can be inadequate for maintaining biodiversity in the long term. An existing site-assessment framework that implicitly maximized the persistence probability of multiple species was integrated with a dynamic optimization model. The problem of sequential reserve selection as a Markov decision process was combined …

Evaluating The Roles Of Visual Openness And Edge Effects On Nest-Site Selection And Reproductive Success In Grassland Birds, Alexander C. Keyel, Allan M. Strong, Noah G. Perlut, J. Michael Reed

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

In some species, habitat edges (ecotones) affect nest-site selection and nesting success. Openness, or how visually open a habitat is, has recently been shown to influence grassland bird density and may affect nest-site selection, possibly by reducing the risk of predation on adults, nests, or both. Because edge and openness are correlated, it is possible that effects of openness have been overlooked or inappropriately ascribed to edge effects. We tested the roles of edges and visual openness in nest-site selection and nesting success of two grassland passerines, the Bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivorus) and Savannah Sparrow (Passerculus sandwichensis), …

Cost Effectiveness Of Recycling: A Systems Model, David J. Tonjes, Sreekanth Mallikarjun

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Financial analytical models of waste management systems have often found that recycling costs exceed direct benefits, and in order to economically justify recycling activities, externalities such as household expenses or environmental impacts must be invoked. Certain more empirically based studies have also found that recycling is more expensive than disposal. Other work, both through models and surveys, have found differently. Here we present an empirical systems model, largely drawn from a suburban Long Island municipality. The model accounts for changes in distribution of effort as recycling tonnages displace disposal tonnages, and the seven different cases examined all show that curbside …

Estimating Greenhouse Gas Emissions From A Waste Lagoon, Arturo I. Quintanar, Rezaul Mamood, Nanh Lovanh, Justin M. Rawley, Evi Becerra-Acosta, John H. Loughrin

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

A cost-effective approach was used to investigate the relationship between emission of the greenhouse gases (GHG), namely, CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O and energy fluxes from a swine waste lagoon. Energy fluxes were calculated using the Penman method. The energy fluxes showed a diurnal pattern as expected of such fluxes. We found that air temperature and latent energy, lagoon surface temperature and solar radiation, as well as air temperature and wind speed can be used to predict for CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O emissions, respectively. Comparison of observed and predicted …

Regional Climate Trends And Scenarios For The U.S. National Climate Assessment Part 4. Climate Of The U.S. Great Plains, Kenneth E. Kunkel, Laura E. Stevens, Scott E. Stevens, Liqiang Sun, Emily Janssen, Donald Wuebbles, Michael C. Kruk, Devin Thomas, Martha Shulski, Natalie A. Umphlett, Kenneth G. Hubbard, Kevin Robbins, Luigi Romolo, Adnan Akyuz, Tapan B. Pathak, Tony R. Bergantino, J. Greg Dobson

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

This document is one of series of regional climate descriptions designed to provide input that can be used in the development of the National Climate Assessment (NCA). As part of a sustained assessment approach, it is intended that these documents will be updated as new and well-vetted model results are available and as new climate scenario needs become clear. It is also hoped that these documents (and associated data and resources) are of direct benefit to decision makers and communities seeking to use this information in developing adaptation plans.

There are nine reports in this series, one each for eight …

Droughtscape, Winter 2013, Kelly Smith

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

Contents

Director’s report

Climatological overview of drought in 2012

Climatological overview of drought, October-December 2012

Impacts of drought in 2012

Drought planning webinars scheduled for ranch advisors

UNL honors NDMC for exceptional service

Report from the emerging community of drought planners

Feb. 6 webinar on drought simulations

Climate Masters course starting

Climate Change in the Midwest book includes drought

Video highlights from coverage of drought of 2012

U.S. Drought Monitor Forum 2013

UN’s High Level Meeting on National Drought Policy

NDMC collaboration with India, Czech Republic

Degree-Day Accumulation Influences Annual Variability In Growth Of Age-0 Walleye, Christopher S. Uphoff, Casey W. Schoenebeck, W. Wyatt Hoback, Keith D. Koupal, Kevin L. Pope

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

The growth of age-0 fishes influences survival, especially in temperate regions where size-dependent over-winter mortality can be substantial. Additional benefits of earlier maturation and greater fecundity may exist for faster growing individuals. This study correlated prey densities, growing-degree days, water-surface elevation, turbidity, and chlorophyll a with age-0 walleye Sander vitreus growth in a south-central Nebraska irrigation reservoir. Growth of age-0 walleye was variable between 2003 and 2011, with mean lengths ranging from 128 to 231 mm by fall (September 30th–October 15th). A set of a priori candidate models were used to assess the relative support of explanatory variables using Akaike’s …

Impact Of Climate Change On Human And Ecological Use Of Karst Groundwater Resources: A Case Study From The Southwestern Usa, George Veni

National Cave and Karst Management Symposium 2013

Climate change models for the arid southwestern USA predict increasing temperatures and declines in precipitation. These changes will have multiple adverse impacts on water and ecological resources and pose diverse challenges on their management. The San Solomon Spring system of west Texas discharges from the western edge of the karstic Edward-Trinity Plateau Aquifer. It consists of six springs in Jeff Davis and Reeves counties, is one of the largest spring groups in the state, and provides water for agricultural use and habitat to two federally listed endangered species and three species proposed for listing. It serves in this paper as …

Climate Change: What Does It Mean For Nebraska?, Martha D. Shulski, Natalie A. Umphlett, Tapan B. Pathak, Kenneth G. Hubbard

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Because Nebraska’s location on the North American continent is far removed from large bodies of water, Nebraskans experience a strong continental type climate. As such, residents do not benefit from the moderating influence of the ocean, and temperatures can have wide swings from day to day and season to season. Typical characteristics for a continental climate at this latitude are large temperature variability with warm summers dominated by convective thunderstorms, and cold winters influenced by snow and wind from mid-latitude cyclones.

U.S. Drought Monitor, January 1, 2013, Richard R. Heim Jr.

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of the United States for January 1, 2013 (1/1/13) plus: United States crop areas experiencing drought (map), an approximate percentage of crop located in drought by state (bar graph), and the percentage of crop area located in drought during the past 52 weeks (line graph) for hay, cattle, and winter wheat.