Environmental Monitoring Commons^™

Shale Play: Poems And Photographs From The Fracking Fields By Julia Spicher Kasdorf And Steven Rubin, Kelly Shepherd

The Goose

Review of Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Steven Rubin's Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields

The State Of Canada’S Birds 2019, North American Bird Conservation Initiative Canada

Other Publications in Wildlife Management

BIRDS TELL US ABOUT THE HEALTH OF OUR WATER, AIR, AND LAND WE NEED TO LISTEN AND ACT

THE STATE OF CANADA’S BIRDS: Shorebirds, grassland birds, and aerial insectivores are in steep decline.

WATERFOWL AND WETLAND BIRDS CONSERVATION PARTNERSHIPS WORK

GRASSLAND BIRDS ARE RUNNING OUT OF TIME

SHOREBIRDS ARE LOSING GROUND

SEABIRDS A GLOBAL CONSERVATION CRISIS

FOREST BIRDS CONSERVATION WITHOUT BORDERS

BIRDS OF PREY AND AERIAL INSECTIVORES LEARNING FROM THE PAST

WHAT’S GOOD FOR BIRDS IS GOOD FOR US

CANADIANS ARE MONITORING THE STATE OF CANADA’S BIRDS

Seamless Lidar Surveys Reveal Rates And Patterns Of Subsidence In The Mississippi River Delta, Celeste E. Woock

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) data are used to report the temporal and spatial patterns of subsidence as well as the potential contributors to subsidence within the Barataria and Terrebonne Bays. In recent decades, subsidence in southeast Louisiana has become a topic of substantial and growing concern to the scientific community, the local residents, and all those invested in the region. Lidar data were acquired from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the LSU Center for Geoinformatics. The data has been manipulated to map the differenced Lidar, complete an instantaneous slope analysis, and determine the thickness of the Holocene …

Are Firm Emissions Data Likely To Be Accurate Under Carbon-Dioxide Cap & Trade Programs? An Economic Analysis, Kyle Beck

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Numerous policy makers around the world have implemented carbon dioxide (CO2) cap and trade programs in an effort to combat global climate change. However, under this policy option emitters face incentives to both overstate prior emission levels and then exaggerate emissions reductions induced by regulation. I first build a simple conceptual model which demonstrates these incentives for fraud, and then outline institutional conditions which could plausibly enhance, or else reduce, firm incentives to disseminate erroneous emissions data under this policy option. Next I analyze real world evidence suggesting that duplicitous emissions data, particularly for the pre-regulatory period, is a serious …

Cape Elizabeth Culvert And Habitat Assessment Study, Steve Harding, Jake Aman, Matthew Craig, Robert Malley, Maureen O'Meara

Publications

Executive Summary:

In early 2017, Jake Aman, representing the Wells National Estuary Research Reserve (WNERR), met with the Cape Elizabeth Public Works Director and Town Planner to talk about culverts. Jake shared aerial photos of culverts located in the Spurwink Marsh where scouring of adjacent habitat areas was evident. He inquired if the town was considering any culvert replacements, in which case WNERR and The Nature Conservancy might be able to partner with the town to promote a habitat sensitive replacement. The outcome of the meeting was a jointly sponsored assessment of major town culverts, including those located in the …

Limits To The World’S Green Water Resources For Food, Feed, Fiber, Timber, And Bioenergy, Joep F. Schyns, Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Martijn J. Booij, Rick J. Hogeboom, Mesfin Mekonnen

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Green water––rainfall over land that eventually flows back to the atmosphere as evapotranspiration––is the main source of water to produce food, feed, fiber, timber, and bioenergy. To understand how freshwater scarcity constrains production of these goods, we need to consider limits to the green water footprint (WFg), the green water flow allocated to human society. However, research traditionally focuses on scarcity of blue water––groundwater and surface water. Here we expand the debate on water scarcity by considering green water scarcity (WSg). At 5 × 5 arc-minute spatial resolution, we quantify WFg and the maximum sustainable level to this footprint (WFg,m), …

Assessing Landscape Scale Heterogeneity In Irrigation Water Use With Remote Sensing And In Situ Monitoring, T. Foster, I. Z. Goncalves, I. Campos, C. M.U. Neale, N. Brozovic

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Understanding how irrigation is used across agricultural landscapes is essential to support efforts to grow more food while reducing pressures on limited freshwater resources. However, to date, few studies have analyzed the underlying spatial and temporal variability in farmers’ individual water use decisions at a landscape scale.Wecompare estimates of irrigation water requirements derived using state-of-the-art remote sensing models with metered abstraction records for 1400 fields over a 13 year period in the US state of Nebraska, one of the world’s most intensively irrigated agricultural regions. Weshow that farmers’ observed water use decisions often diverge significantly from biophysical estimates of crop …

Twenty-Three Unsolved Problems In Hydrology (Uph) – A Community Perspective, Günter Blöschl, Christopher M. U. Neale, A Cast Of Thousands

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through online media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised, and synthesised. In spite of the diversity of the participants (230 scientists in total), the process revealed much about community priorities and the state of our science: a preference for continuity in research questions rather than radical departures or redirections from past and current work. Questions remain focused …

Impact Of The Application Of Domestic Wastewater By Subsurface Drip Irrigation On The Soil Solution In Sugarcane Cultivation, Aline Azevedo Nazário, Ivo Zution Gonçalves, Eduardo Augusto Agnellos Barbosa, Leonardo Nazário Silva Dos Santos, Daniel Rodrigues Cavalcante Feitosa, Edson Eiji Matsura

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

The agricultural use of domestic sewage is a viable alternative for recycling nutrients; however, there is concern regarding the impact of its use due to the concentration of chemical elements present in this type of effluent. The use of principal component analysis determines the existence or lack of anomalous samples and the relations between measured variables and their relative contribution among samples that help in monitoring the impact of the use of effluents on soil chemical components. Thus, the objective of this work was to identify nutrient ions present in the soil solution during the first ratoon sugarcane irrigated with …

Public Attitudes About Private Forest Management And Government Involvement In The Southeastern United States, Melissa M. Kreye, Renata Rimsaite, Damian C. Adams

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

In the southern United States the country’s top wood-producing region, factors such as intergenerational land transfer and population spillover from urban areas have resulted in forestland conversion and reduced production of critical ecosystem services associated with forest systems (e.g., timber, clean water supply, wildlife habitat). Public attitudes, which drive forestland policy prescriptions, may also be evolving due to the way people experience and perceive forests (e.g., recreation), and think about the role of government in private forest decisions. These changes have significant implications for forestland management and the forest-based economy, both locally and globally. We present the results of a …

Mapping Regional Turbulent Heat Fluxes Via Assimilation Of Modis Land Surface Temperature Data Into An Ensemble Kalman Smoother Framework, Xinlei He, Tongren Xu, Sayed M. Bateni, Christopher M. U. Neale, Shaomin Liu, Thomas Auligne, Kaicun Wang, Shoudong Zhu

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Estimation of turbulent heat fluxes via variational data assimilation (VDA) approaches has been the subject of several studies. The VDA approaches need an adjoint model that is difficult to derive. In this study, remotely sensed land surface temperature (LST) data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) are assimilated into the heat diffusion equation within an ensemble Kalman smoother (EnKS) approach to estimate turbulent heat fluxes. The EnKS approach is tested in the Heihe River Basin (HRB) in northwest China. The results show that the EnKS approach can estimate turbulent heat fluxes by assimilating low temporal resolution LST data from …

Agricultural Water Transfers In The Western United States, Richael Young, Nicholas Brozovic

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Irrigation for agricultural production represents the largest consumptive use of water in the western United States. Understanding the ways in which agricultural producers respond to physical and institutional water scarcity is therefore key to managing water risk. One of the important risk management tools available to agricultural producers is the ability to transfer water across space and time. Water transfers range from very informal handshake agreements between neighbors to very formal transfers of real property across large distances with mandatory state and federal reporting. Given the range of potential water transfer mechanisms, there are significant knowledge gaps on the variety, …

2019 Nebraska Water Productivity Report, Mesfin Mekonnen, Christopher Michael Usher Neale, Chittaranjan Ray, Galen E. Erickson, Adam Liska, Haishun Yang, Thiago L. Romanelli, Arjen Y. Hoekstra

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Nebraska’s agricultural production is diverse and vast, ranking the state fourth in total value of agricultural products in the U.S. The state is a national leader in terms of agricultural production: it is the third largest producer of corn and second largest in cattle production. Nebraska is also the second largest producer of ethanol and distillers’ grains. The production and use of these three commodities are highly interlinked. Corn is a major input in livestock feed and the ethanol industry. Ethanol plants then produce distillers’ grains as a co-product that is also used as livestock feed, thus forming what the …

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, …

Water For A Hungry World: Innovation In Water And Food Security: Proceedings Of The 2019 Water For Food Global Conference. Lincoln., Daugherty Water For Food Global Institute

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Administrative Materials

Welcome and Opening Remarks : Mike Boehm, Vice President and Vice Chancellor of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Nebraska ; Peter G. McCornick, Executive Director, Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute at the University of Nebraska

How the Irrigation Industry is Driving the Future through Efficient Technologies. Speaker: Deborah Hamlin, CEO, Irrigation Association

Sustainable Solutions for Water and Food Security — Business Perspectives. Speaker: Mark Edge, Director of Collaborations for Developing Countries, Bayer

Value of Water. Speakers: Dustin Garrick, Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford ; …

Growing A Water And Food Secure Future: Annual Report Fy2019 (July 1, 2018 To June 30, 2019), Robert B. Daugherty Water For Food Global Institute

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Administrative Materials

Ensuring water and food security for our growing world is an audacious goal – exactly what Bob Daugherty sought to achieve by creating the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute (DWFI) at the University of Nebraska nearly 10 years ago. He, along with leaders and supporters within the University of Nebraska, the state and well beyond, understood that a collective and committed effort on wise water management was essential to producing enough food to feed the world while sustaining our valuable and limited water resources. For decades, many dedicated people around the world have striven to overcome the challenges of …

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 …

Island Invasion: The Silent Crisis In Hawaii, Sophia Janssen

Pomona Senior Theses

Keeping out invasive species may, upon first review, seem like a trivial environmental cry from ecologists and deep environmentalists; a belated wish to return to an undeveloped world where nature was pristine. However invasive species create problems that impact all of us and can have far more severe consequences than changing a stunning landscape. These problems are heightened in islands like Hawaii, where the fragile ecosystems have developed over centuries of evolution and adaptation. The introduction of a disease-carrying mosquito can put the people of Hawaii at risk to many vector-born illnesses and create an epidemic, taking human life. The …

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 …

Preface: Earth Observation For Integrated Water And Basin Management: Challenges For Adaptation To A Changing Environment, María J. Polo, Maria P. González-Dugo, Christopher M.U. Neale

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Integrated river basin management involves a sound knowledge of water and land interactions, and impacts from and feedbacks to human activity. Remote sensing has been an efficient and increasingly promising means of gathering direct information of the Earth surface, as well as information on water and energy fluxes. The recent generation of high-resolution sensors offers a huge potential for monitoring, assessing, and modelling our changing environment in a context of uncertainty about how future climate conditions will affect the current water resource and basin management framework. Moreover, large amounts of data are now available posing a challenging opportunity to the …

Riverbank Filtration Impacts On Post Disinfection Water Quality In Small Systems—A Case Study From Auburn And Nebraska City, Nebraska, Matteo D'Alessio, Bruce Dvorak, Chittaranjan Ray

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Small water systems can experience a fluctuating quality of water in the distribution system after disinfection. As chlorine is the most common disinfectant for small systems, the occurrence of disinfection byproducts (DBPs) represents a common problem for these systems. Riverbank filtration (RBF) can be a valuable solution for small communities located on riverbanks. The objectives of this study were to evaluate (i) the improvements in water quality at two selected RBF systems, and (ii) the potential lower concentrations of DBPs, in particular, trihalomethanes (THMs), in small systems that use RBF. Two small communities in Nebraska, Auburn and Nebraska City, using …

Flow Analysis Through Collectorwell Laterals: A Case Study From Sonoma County Water Agency, California, Matteo D'Alessio, John Lucio, Ernest Williams, Donald Seymour, Jay Jasperse, Chittaranjan Ray

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

The Sonoma County Water Agency (SWCA) uses six radial collector wells along the Russian River west of Santa Rosa, to provide water for several municipalities and water districts in north-western California. Three collector wells (1, 2, and 6) are located in the Wohler area, and three collector wells (3, 4, and 5) are located in the Mirabel area. The objective of this paper is to highlight the performance of the three collector wells located in the Mirabel area since their construction. The 2015 investigation showed a lower performance of Collectors 3 and 4 compared to their original performances after construction …

Assessing The Feasibility Of Soil Infiltration Trenches For Highway Runoff Control On The Island Of Oahu, Hawaii, Martina Sobotkova, Jaromir Dusek, Ghasem Alavi, Laxman Sharma, Chittaranjan Ray

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

The coastal waters of Hawaii are extremely important for recreation as well as for the health of the marine environment. Non-point source pollution from storm runoff poses a great threat to surface water quality in Hawaii. The State of Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT) includes infiltration trenches as a best management practice (BMP) option to reduce pollution caused by stormwater runoff. HDOT guidelines state that the implementation of BMPs is needed to reduce sediment and pollutant loads to streams and the ocean. In this study, the suitability of soils adjacent to highways on Oahu for the siting of infiltration trenches …

Energy Demand And Water Footprint Study Of An Agricultural Machinery Industry, Mantoam E,J., Mesfin Mekonnen, T.L. Romanelli

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

The intensification of agricultural production systems demands power, supplied by agricultural machinery, besides more agricultural inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and seeds. Agricultural mechanization provides increase in the global production of food, fiber and bioenergy; and it brought economic benefits to producers, but causing larger energy consumption. Energy embodiment in agricultural machinery has been done in earlier studies, but data usually are from car industry. This study aimed to determine the energy demand and water footprint in a plant that assembles five types of agricultural machinery from a multinational manufacturer located in Piracicaba municipality in Sao Paulo state, Brazil. That …

Cost Benefit Analysis Of Led Vs Florescent Lighting, Kurtis Clark, Phillip Humphrey

Student Research

Over the last few years, the state of Oklahoma has been looking at ways to reduce expenses to address concerns about a budget deficit. There have been efforts made to reduce expenses due to the use of energy. It has been said, when the lights are on, work is getting done. Running lights is therefore the cost of doing business. Our research examines the question, “is there a way to provide better lighting while operating at a lower cost.” This research examines the current lighting at Southwestern State University, primarily fluorescent lighting (FL), and a cost benefit analysis of switching …

Evaluation Of The Weak Constraint Data Assimilation Approach For Estimating Turbulent Heat Fluxes At Six Sites, Xinlei He, Tongren Xu, Sayed M. Bateni, C.M.U. Neale, Thomas Auligne, Shaomin Liu, Kaicun Wang, Kebiao Mao, Yunjun Yao

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

A number of studies have estimated turbulent heat fluxes by assimilating sequences of land surface temperature (LST) observations into the strong constraint-variational data assimilation (SC-VDA) approaches. The SC-VDA approaches do not account for the structural model errors and uncertainties in the micrometeorological variables. In contrast to the SC-VDA approaches, the WC-VDA approach (the so-called weak constraint-VDA) accounts for the effects of structural and model errors by adding a model error term. In this study, the WC-VDA approach is tested at six study sites with different climatic and vegetative conditions. Its performance is also compared with that of SC-VDA at the …