Environmental Monitoring Commons^™

Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant Nebraska, Bryant Burnett, Karla Asberry

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

The 19-square mile Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant is a former U.S. Army Armament, Munitions, and Chemical Command facility. On standby status since 1973, the operation leases land for agriculture, grazing, and wildlife management activities. The plant was built in 1942 to produce munitions and provide support functions during World War II. It has been in and out of production over the years. The plant consists of five main components: five major production areas where munitions were loaded, assembled, and packed; a fertilizer manufacturer; two major storage facilities; a sanitary landfill; and a burning ground where materials contaminated with explosives were …

Maximum Size Of Fish Caught With Standard Gears And Recreational Angling, Kevin L. Pope, Gene R. Wilde, Daryl L. Bauer

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

We correlated maximum lengths of freshwater fishes captured during 10 years with standard gears (i.e., gill nets, boat electrofishers and trap nets) and angling from Nebraska water bodies to determine which methodology provided better estimates of maximum size of fishes produced within a given water body. In general, maximum length of fishes captured with standard gears was smaller than maximum length of fishes captured with angling. Although significant (based on sequential Bonferroni adjustment) correlation was found in only one of nine sport fishes assessed, all correlations were positive indicating a general trend between maximum size of fishes captured with these …

Water Quality Trading: What Can We Learn From 10 Years Of Wetland Mitigation Banking?, Eric Raffini, Morgan Robertson

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

In 2003 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued its Water Quality Trading Policy. Water quality trading allows facilities facing high pollution-control costs to meet their regulatory requirements by purchasing environmentally equivalent or superior pollution reductions from another source, often at a lower cost. The policy, which hopes to achieve "water quality and environmental benefits greater than would otherwise be achieved under more traditional regulatory approaches," established the ground rules for trading and encourages states, interstate agencies, and tribes to develop and implement water quality trading programs for nutrients, sediments, and other pollutants. The policy generated controversy among some stakeholder groups; …

Risk And Consequence Analysis Focused On Biota Transfers Potentially Associated With Surface Water Diversions Between The Missouri River And Red River Basins, Greg Linder, Ed Little, Lynne Johnson, Chad Vishy, Bruce Peacock, Heather Goeddecke

United States Geological Survey: Publications

Section 1 provides a brief overview of the project, including a cursory summary of the history of the “Garrison Diversion” and how that history relates to this work focused on the analysis of risks and consequences potentially associated with interbasin biota transfers. The present study was initiated under the auspices of the Dakota Water Resources Act (DWRA) of 2000, which directed the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a comprehensive study of the water quality and quantity needs of the Red River Valley and the options for meeting those needs. As such, the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) requested technical support …

Drought Preparedness Planning: Building Institutional Capacity, Donald A. Wilhite, Michael Hayes, Cody L. Knutson

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Past attempts to manage drought and its impacts through a reactive, crisis management approach have been ineffective, poorly coordinated, and untimely, as illustrated by the hydro- illogical cycle in Figure 1. The crisis management approach has been followed in both developed and developing countries. Because of the ineffectiveness of this approach, greater interest has evolved in recent years in the adoption of a more proactive risk-based management approach in some countries (see Chapter 6). Other countries are striving to obtain a higher level of preparedness through development of national action programs that are part of the United Nations Convention to …

A New Approach For Predicting Drought-Related Vegetation Stress: Integrating Satellite, Climate, And Biophysical Data Over The U.S. Central Plains, Tsegaue Tadesse, Jesslyn F. Brown, Michael Hayes

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Droughts are normal climate episodes, yet they are among the most expensive natural disasters in the world. Knowledge about the timing, severity, and pattern of droughts on the landscape can be incorporated into effective planning and decisionmaking. In this study, we present a data mining approach to modeling vegetation stress due to drought and mapping its spatial extent during the growing season. Rule-based regression tree models were generated that identify relationships between satellite-derived vegetation conditions, climatic drought indices, and biophysical data, including land-cover type, available soil water capacity, percent of irrigated farm land, and ecological type. The data mining method …

New Developments In The Remote Estimation Of The Fraction Of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation In Crops, Andrés Viña, Anatoly A. Gitelson

Center for Advanced Land Management Information Technologies: Publications

The fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation, fAPAR, is an important biophysical characteristic in models of gas exchange between the terrestrial boundary layer and the atmosphere, as well as in the analysis of vegetation productivity. Synoptic estimation of fAPAR has been performed by using NDVI as a linear proxy of fAPAR, despite the saturation of NDVI at fAPAR beyond 0.7. This paper analyzes the NDVI/fAPAR relationship in row crops (i.e. maize and soybean), and evaluates alternative vegetation indices to overcome the loss of sensitivity of NDVI at moderate-to-high vegetation biomass. Red-edge NDVI, which uses NIR and a band around 700 …

Discovering Associations Between Climatic And Oceanic Parameters To Monitor Drought In Nebraska Using Data-Mining Techniques, Tsegaye Tadesse, Donald A. Wilhite, Michael J. Hayes, Steve Goddard

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Drought is a complex natural hazard that is best characterized by multiple climatological and hydrological parameters. Improving our understanding of the relationships between these parameters is necessary to reduce the impacts of drought. Data mining is a recently developed technique that can be used to interact with large databases and assist in the discovery of associations between drought and oceanic data by extracting information from massive and multiple data archives. In this study, a new data-mining algorithm [i.e., Minimal Occurrences With Constraints and Time Lags (MOWCATL)] has been used to identify the relationships between oceanic parameters and drought indices. Rather …

Is Degradation A Major Problem In Semi-Desert Environments Of The Gobi Region In Southern Mongolia?, Karsten Wesche, Vroni Retzer

Erforschung biologischer Ressourcen der Mongolei / Exploration into the Biological Resources of Mongolia, ISSN 0440-1298

This paper tests predictions derived from the non-equilibrium theory of rangeland science. Data were collected in livestock enclosures situated in the relatively moist desert steppes of the Gobi Gurvan Saykhan region of southern Mongolia from 2000 to 2003. Plant community composition and species’ richness in enclosures showed clear differences between years, but these were equally strong in ungrazed controls. Thus, changes were mainly attributed to differences in precipitation between years as opposed to grazing, as no significant effects thereof were detected. This was also confirmed by data on above-ground standing biomass. This changed tremendously over the years, with differences between …

Natürliche Und Nutzungsbedingte Land- Und Bodendegradationsprozesse, Untersucht Am Unteren Orchon (Nord-Mongolei) = Naturally And Land Use Caused Land And Soil Degradation Processes, Studied At The Lower Orchon (Northern Mongolia), Christian Opp

Erforschung biologischer Ressourcen der Mongolei / Exploration into the Biological Resources of Mongolia, ISSN 0440-1298

Landscape-ecological investigations were carried-out within the forest steppe of Northern Mongolia. The site conditions of the partly by agriculture used area of Cagaan Tolgoj at the Lower Orchon (Aimag Selenge) were analysed in seven test areas. Results of soil analysis are given. The evaluation of soil cover and partly vegetation cover was carried-out with special regard, to degradation phaenomena. It is based on field analysis, measurements during the soil survey and the detection of soil degradation parameter with the help of laboratory analysis. Among naturally and land use caused factors of soil status and of the changing conditions within forest …

The Use Of Discontinuities And Functional Groups To Assess Relative Resilience In Complex Systems, Craig R. Allen, L. Gunderson, A. R. Johnson

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

It is evident when the resilience of a system has been exceeded and the system qualitatively changed. However, it is not clear how to measure resilience in a system prior to the demonstration that the capacity for resilient response has been exceeded. We argue that self-organizing human and natural systems are structured by a relatively small set of processes operating across scales in time and space. These structuring processes should generate a discontinuous distribution of structures and frequencies, where discontinuities mark the transition from one scale to another. Resilience is not driven by the identity of elements of a system, …

Factors Affecting Regional Variation In Growth Of Channel Catfish, Bart W. Durham, Kevin L. Pope, Gene R. Wilde

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

We related the length at age of channel catfish Ictalurus punctatus, an indirect measure of growth, to three climatic and five morphoedaphic variables in 144 Texas reservoirs. Growth of channel catfish ages 3 through 6 was negatively related to longitude, a factor that explained as much as 34% of the variation in length at age. Channel catfish length at age was not significantly related to latitude, conductivity, morphoedaphic index, mean depth, and maximum depth in all age-classes. Among age-7 channel catfish, length at age was positively related to reservoir area, which explained 35% of the variation in growth. A …

A Watershed-Based Classification System For Lakes In Agriculturally-Dominated Ecosystems: A Case Study Of Nebraska Reservoirs, Henry N. N. Bulley

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In recent decades substantial progress has been made in improving the quality of surface waters in the United States (Hawkins et al., 2000; EPA, 2000; EPA, 2001); nevertheless, much work remains to be done in assessing the state of impairment of lake waters. Impairment implies that the existing water quality of a lake, as measured by selected criteria (e.g., nitrogen, phosphorus, chlorophyll-a, Secchi depth), exceeds a threshold value or standard that presumably reflects optimal attainable lake water quality conditions (or "reference" conditions) (Hughes, 1995; EPA, 2000; EPA, 2001). Such impaired waters are not suitable for designated uses such as drinking, …

An Analysis Of Simulated Long-Term Soil Moisture Data For Three Land Uses Under Contrasting Hydroclimatic Conditions In The Northern Great Plains, Rezaul Mamood, Kenneth G. Hubbard

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Soil moisture (SM) plays an important role in land surface and atmosphere interactions. It modifies energy balance near the surface and the rate of water cycling between land and atmosphere. The lack of observed SM data prohibits understanding of SM variations at climate scales under varying land uses. However, with simulation models it is possible to develop a long-term SM dataset and study these issues. In this paper a water balance model is used to provide a quantitative assessment of SM climatologies for three land uses, namely, irrigated corn, rain-fed corn, and grass, grown under three hydroclimatic regimes in Nebraska. …

An Agricultural Drought Risk-Assessment Model For Corn And Soybeans, Hong Wu, Kenneth G. Hubbard, Donald A. Wilhite

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society. Published by Wiley InterScience. Used by permis-sion.

Drought Monitoring Using Data Mining Techniques: A Case Study For Nebraska, Usa, Tsegaye Tadesse, Donald A. Wilhite, Sherri K. Harms, Michael J. Hayes, Steve Goddard

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Drought has an impact on many aspects of society. To help decision makers reduce the impacts of drought, it is important to improve our understanding of the characteristics and relationships of atmospheric and oceanic parameters that cause drought. In this study, the use of data mining techniques is introduced to find associations between drought and several oceanic and climatic indices that could help users in making knowledgeable decisions about drought responses before the drought actually occurs. Data mining techniques enable users to search for hidden patterns and find association rules for target data sets such as drought episodes. These techniques …

National Water Quality Inventory: Report To Congress 2004 Reporting Cycle

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

Table of Contents

Section Page

List of Figures.............................................................................................................................iv List of Tables...............................................................................................................................iv List of Acronyms..........................................................................................................................v Executive Summary..........................................................................................................................1

I. Background...................................................................................................................5

About the Water Quality Assessment and TMDL Information Database (ATTAINS)..........................................................................................................................5

Assessing Water Quality................................................................................................................................7

II. Findings.......................................................................................................................13 Rivers and Streams...........................................................................................................................13 Lakes, Ponds, and Reservoirs.......................................................................................................................16

Bays and Estuaries.........................................................................................................................20 Other Waters..............................................................................................................................23 Coastal Resources.......................................................................................................................23

Great Lakes.....................................................................................................................24 Wetlands..........................................................................................................................24

III. Probability Surveys of Water Quality.......................................................................26

National Coastal Assessment....................................................................................26

The Wadeable Streams Assessment.......................................................................27

Survey of the Nation’s Lakes.......................................................................................29

National Rivers and Streams Assessment.............................................................30

National Wetland Condition Assessment...............................................................30

State-Scale Statistical Surveys..................................................................................31

South Carolina..............................................................................................................32 Indiana............................................................................................................................33 Florida.............................................................................................................................34 IV. Future Reporting......................................................................................................36

V. References………………………………………………………………………….37

Beginning A New Era Of Drought Monitoring Across North America, Jay Lawrimore, Richard R. Heim Jr., Mark D. Svoboda, Val Swail, Phil J. Englehart

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Drought experts from the United States, Canada, and Mexico met at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina, for a three-day workshop in late April 2002 to discuss the United States Drought Monitor program and to develop a plan for initiating a new program of drought monitoring for North America. Since its inception in 1999, the U.S. Drought Monitor (DM) has been extremely successful in assessing and communicating the state of drought in the United States on a weekly basis. This success, and the recognition that an ongoing comprehensive and integrated drought assessment was needed throughout all three …

The Drought Monitor, Mark D. Svoboda, Doug Lecomte, Mike Hayes, Richard Heim, Karin Gleason, Jim Angel, Brad Rippey, Rich Tinker, Mike Palecki, David Stooksbury, David Miskus, Scott Stephens

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

There is a need for improved drought monitoring and assessment methods in the United States. Drought is the most costly natural disaster [Federal Emergency Management Agancy (FEMA 1995; Wilhite 2000)], but it is often neglected by developers of assessment and forecast products. Drought is more nebulous than other disasters and does not lend itself to traditional assessments or forecast methods. Its relatively slow onset and the complexity of its impacts are reasons for the new assessment methodology. Improvements in drought monitoring and forecasting techniques will allow for better preparation, lead to better management practices, and reduce the vulnerability of society …

Land Use Change And Modification Of Near-Surface Thermal Records In The Northern Great Plains, Rezaul Mahmood, Ken Hubbard, Christy Carlson

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

The North American Great Plains have experienced a rapid overturning of natural grasslands to agricultural land use over the last century. Moreover, in some areas more than 80% of the land use has changed from dry land to irrigated agriculture during the second half of the twentieth century. It is speculated that these changes have modified near-surface atmospheric condition and our modeling study seems to support this. To identify changes in land surface- atmospheric modifications we have applied a soil moistureenergy balance model at three locations in Nebraska: Mead, York, and McCook. The model was applied for three land uses …

Intermediate Rings Between A Local Domain And Its Completion, Ii, William Heinzer, Christel Rotthaus, Sylvia Wiegand

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

We present results connecting flatness of extension rings to the Noetherian property for certain intermediate rings between an excellent normal local domain and its completion. We consider conditions for these rings to have Cohen-Macaulay formal fibers. We also present several examples illustrating these results.

Yellow Jackets (Vespula Spp.) Disperse Trillium (Spp.) Seeds In Eastern North America, Jennifer A. Zettler, Timonthy P. Spira, Craig R. Allen

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Approximately 70 plant families worldwide have ant-dispersed seeds (myrmecochory). In this putative ant-plant mutualism, ants are attracted to and disperse seeds that have a lipid-rich elaiosome. We observed yellow jackets (Vespula spp.) dispersing seeds of three elaiosome-bearing species-Trillium cuneatum, T. undulatum and T catesbaei-in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and South Carolina. Moreover, we estimated the mean distance yellow jackets dispersed seeds of T. cuneatum by placing intact fruits on index cards and recovering dispersed seeds on sheets placed on the ground surface. Of the seeds presented, 41% were recovered and the average dispersal distance …

Dynamic Fluvial Systems And Gravel Progradation In The Himalayan Foreland, Nicholas Brozovic, Douglas W. Burbank

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Although the large-scale stratigraphy of many terrestrial foreland basins is punctuated by major episodes of gravel progradation, the relationships of such facies to hinterland tectonism and climate change are often unclear. Structural reentrants provide windows into older and more proximal parts of the foreland than are usually exposed, and thus provide key insights to earlier phases of foreland evolution. Our magnetostratigraphic studies show that, although the major lithofacies preserved within the Himachal Pradesh structural reentrant in northwestern India resemble Neogene facies in Pakistan, they have a much greater temporal and spatial variability. From 11.5 to 7 Ma, major facies boundaries …

Close-Range And Satellite Remote Sensing Of Algal Biomass In The Iowa Great Lakes, Eric A. Wilson

Department of Geography: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The utility of both close-range and satellite remote sensing for assessing inland water quality was examined in the Iowa Great Lakes. The water quality of this system is of considerable interest because of its status as an environmental, recreational, and therefore, economic resource. The broad range of optical conditions present in the lakes and the wealth of literature on the system make it an ideal environment for water quality remote sensing research. The goal of this research was to survey the water quality of the Iowa Great Lakes via remote sensing, evaluate different predictive algorithms, and map the distribution of …

Intermediate Rings Between A Local Domain And Its Completion, William Heinzer, Christel Rotthaus, Sylvia Wiegand

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

We consider the structure of certain intermediate domains between a local Noetherian domain Rand an ideal-adic completion R* of R that arise as the intersection of R* with a field containing R. In the case where the intersection domain A can be expressed as a directed union of localized polynomial extension rings of R, the computation of A is easier. We examine conditions for this to happen. We also present examples to motivate and illustrate the concepts considered.

Monitoring The 1996 Drought Using The Standardized Precipitation Index, Michael J. Hayes, Mark D. Svoboda, Donald A. Wilhite, Olga V. Vanyarkho

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Droughts are difficult to detect and monitor. Drought indices, most commonly the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), have been used with limited success as operational drought monitoring tools and triggers for policy responses. Recently, a new index, the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), was developed to improve drought detection and monitoring capabilities. The SPI has several characteristics that are an improvement over previous indices, including its simplicity and temporal flexibility, that allow its application for water resources on all timescales. In this article, the 1996 drought in the southern plains and southwestern United States is examined using the SPI. A series …

Climate Change And Nebraska

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

The earth's climate is predicted to change because human activities are altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere through the buildup of greenhouse gases - primarily carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons. The heat-trapping property of these greenhouse gases is undisputed. Although there is uncertainty about exactly how and when the earth's climate will respond to enhanced concentrations of greenhouse gases, observations indicate that detectable changes are under way. There most likely will be increases in temperature and changes in precipitation, soil moisture, and sea level, which could have adverse effects on many ecological systems, as well as on …

How To Reduce Drought Risk, Cody Knutson, Mike Hayes, Tom Phillips

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

This guide describes a practical step-by-step process for identifying actions that can be taken to reduce potential drought-related impacts before a drought occurs. Step 1 begins with making sure that the right people are brought together and supplied with adequate data to make informed and equitable decisions during the process. Steps 2 and 3 narrow the focus of the study by identifying high priority drought-related impacts that are relevant to the user’s location or activity. Step 4 demonstrates that in order to reduce the potential for the identified impacts to occur in the future, it is necessary to understand the …

Chapter 2 Climate, Donald A. Wilhite, Kenneth G. Hubbard

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

The broad climatic patterns of the Sand Hills region are also characteristic of the central Great Plains environment. The spatial and temporal patterns of these climatic variables have a significant effect on the natural resources of the region.

Drought-Induced Shift Of A Forest–Woodland Ecotone: Rapid Landscape Response To Climate Variation, Craig Allen, David D. Breshears

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

In coming decades, global climate changes are expected to produce large shifts in vegetation distributions at unprecedented rates. These shifts are expected to be most rapid and extreme at ecotones, the boundaries between ecosystems, particularly those in semiarid landscapes. However, current models do not adequately provide for such rapid effects—particularly those caused by mortality—largely because of the lack of data from field studies. Here we report the most rapid landscape-scale shift of a woody ecotone ever documented: in northern New Mexico in the 1950s, the ecotone between semiarid ponderosa pine forest and pinon– juniper woodland shifted extensively (2 km or …