Environmental Monitoring Commons^™

Lake Mead National Recreation Area Monitoring And Evaluation Of Sensitive Wildlife: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Ending June 30, 2007, Margaret N. Rees

Wildlife Monitoring

Project 1. Relict Leopard Frog Monitoring, Management, and Research

• Nocturnal surveys completed at all natural and translocation sites – the most striking finding was the lack of frogs observed at Rogers Springs and lower Blue Point despite repeated survey efforts.
• Relict leopard frog annual translocation effort completed – a total of 1957 tadpoles and juvenile frogs released at six translocation sites.
• Potential translocation sites within Gold Butte assessed during site visits in late March.
• Coordination and assistance provided to UNLV research efforts on habitat improvements at Blue Point and Rogers Springs, and with proposed FWS actions to construct a tadpole …

State Of The Fisheries Report 2006/2007, W J. Fletcher, Karen Santoro

Status Reports of the Fisheries and Aquatic Resources

The State of the Fisheries Report is published annually to provide a detailed level of reporting on the management of fish stocks and their environment undertaken by the Department of Fisheries. A summary report from this document is included in the Department's Annual Report to Parliament, which includes the Department's nonfinancial (fishery) performance indicators. The Annual Report is no longer printed but is available through the Department's website. The State ofthe Fisheries Report summarises the outcomes of many departmental activities including management changes, compliance work and research to assess stock levels, monitor breeding stocks and undertake environmental assessments. This document …

A Comprehensive Wetland Program For Fringing Salt Marshes In The York River, Maine, Pamela A. Morgan, Jeremy Miller, Christopher Cayce Dalton, Michele Dionne

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

The overall goal of this project was to assist the Town of York, Maine, in its efforts to monitor and protect the fringing salt marshes along the York River. In particular, the project focused on potential impacts to the marshes due to shoreline development pressures. Specific objectives included (1) gathering baseline data about the marshes (2) developing a set of indicators to be used in future monitoring, and (3) generating management recommendations.

Cooperative Conservation: Increasing Capacity Through Community Partnerships Interagency Volunteer Program: Final Project Report, May 31 2007, Margaret N. Rees

Get Outdoors Nevada

• Was recognized with two consecutive National Take Pride in America Awards (2005 and 2006) in the Federal Program category.
• Created a central clearinghouse created for Southern Nevada public lands volunteers, including:─ an online volunteer data‐management application (Volgistics) adopted and customized for the program and populated with 2,866 active and 974 prospective volunteer records ─ a community outreach Web site that currently averages 57,930 hits per month and has aided in the recruitment of 1,211 volunteers ─ branding development and marketing and outreach tool creation
• Developed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all areas of Interagency Volunteer Program Management—recruitment, training, recognition, retention …

Following Fall Brook

Watershed Access Lab Projects

This was a study of two sites along Fall Brook, located in Middleborough, MA. Fall Brook has been monitored by MHS students over the past 10 years and is a major tributary of the Taunton River Watershed. The purpose of the study completed this year was to determine how land use affects the nitrate and phosphate levels of Fall Brook. The Wareham Street Site is located next to a horse farm and downstream from several cranberry bogs in a heavily wooded area. The Wood Street Site is located in conservation land, downstream from the Wareham Street Site and has a …

Is The Nemasket River Stressed Out?

Watershed Access Lab Projects

What is the effect of the waste water treatment plant on the water quality of the Nemasket River? Students chose three sites to study. These were located at the headwaters near Assawompset Pond, Route 105 (reference site), and Murdock Street (impact site). Murdock Street had a greater expanse of aquatic vegetation than the Route 105 site. The treatment plant is located between these two sites and deposits nitrates and phosphates into the river with its effluent. Phosphates are more readily removed from effluent via chemical reactions, while nitrates are more difficult to remove. Nitrates can be removed using BNR (biological …

Agawam River Project – Year 6 – River Water And Eel Grass

Watershed Access Lab Projects

The Agawam River begins in Long Pond in Plymouth, Masssachusetts and travels 13 miles downstream converging with the Wankinco River in Wareham. This brackish water then flows into Wareham River and finally, into the salt waters of Buzzards Bay.

Six different groups of 7th and 8th grade students have waded into the Agawam River to collect data over the past six years, with the expert and dedicated assistance of Dr. Curry and Kim McCoy. Our project has focused on the quality of the river ecosystem at two sites, about one mile apart, upstream from the Water Pollution Control Facility (WPCF). …

Abbott Run River Study

Watershed Access Lab Projects

The purpose of our study was to make certain that the river met the Massachusetts water quality standards of a Class A river. We are concerned that the Abbott Run remains a Class A river because it is the source of the drinking water for Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Abbott Run is located in the western section of North Attleboro within the Blackstone River Watershed. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the west, Plainville to the north and Attleboro to the south. The watershed section in North Attleboro is approximately four square miles.

Land use is predominately single-family, residential except …

River Characterization Of The Assonet River

Watershed Access Lab Projects

Students conducted a characterization study of the Assonet River above Locust Street in Assonet, MA. They chose three sites in a third order segment of the river. Malbone Street was the most accessible site near the headwaters and was downstream from the confluence of the Cedar Swamp River and the Assonet River. The Cedar Swamp River drains a large area of wetlands (Cedar Swamp). Beechwood Street is downstream from another small wetlands and is close to Malbone Street. Locust is downstream from the Quaker Brook confluence and a section of the Assonet River called Forge Pond. The pH of all …

Footprints

Watershed Access Lab Projects

The Whitman-Hanson Regional High School now occupies a new facility which was opened in September of 2005. The school was built as a “green school,” with numerous energy saving and environmentally beneficial features. Several new wetlands were created to deal with runoff from the grounds and building. Students in the RiverNet Club began investigating the on site wetlands which were being utilized by vernal pool animals for breeding. The observations led to questions about our environmental footprint. The runoff from the roof is collected and is used to flush the toilets. There are solar collectors on the roof. The parking …

Rivernet Watershed Access Lab Program Overview 2007, Kevin Curry

Watershed Access Lab Projects

Brief overview of the RiverNet Watershed Access program - its history and the achievements of the many participating teachers and students from throughout Southeastern Massachusetts.

Modeling Environmental Justice: A Comparative Analysis Of Multiple Environmental Metrics, Trevor K. Fuller

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Environmental justice, the study of interactions between environmental disamenities and socioeconomic conditions, has been a focus of policy debates and research since the late 1970s. To date, environmental justice research has relied heavily on a few selected metrics, including, but not limited to, Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Facilities (TSDF), and Super.fund site Jocations. In this study, I will examine the efficacy of these environmental quality datasets, as well as that oflocal blood-lead level data (in children), to predict observed socioeconomic conditions and compare these results to an emerging metric, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Based on …

Case Studies Of Urban And Rural Lakes In Minnesota, Lisa M. Becker

Honors Capstones

Capstone submitted as a graduation requirement for the BSU Honors Program.

Factors Contributing To Dust Emissions In Clark County, Nevada Quarterly Progress Report: Period Ending April 15, 2007, Margaret N. Rees

Dust Emissions from Public Lands

• Post-doctoral scholar commenced work
• Discussions with BLM personnel and site assessment necessitate additional project funds through Task Agreement Modification

Factors Contributing To Dust Emissions In Clark County, Nevada Quarterly Progress Report 2: Period Ending April 15, 2007, Margaret N. Rees

Dust Emissions from Public Lands

• Post-doctoral scholar commenced work
• Discussions with BLM personnel and site assessment necessitate additional project funds through Task Agreement Modification
• Preliminary Fieldwork and data collection initiated.

Everglades National Park – Surveying The Southernmost Cave In The Continental United States, Lee J. Florea, Amber J. Yuellig

Earth, Environmental, and Atmospheric Sciences Faculty Publications

Everglades National Park encompasses 1.5 million acres of grassland glades, tree islands, cypress strands, and mangrove marshes and is world renowned for natural vistas and wonders at the surface. The cave and karst resources in this park, however, are little known even though much of the park is underlain by limestone. In a recent communication to the authors, Alan Cressler (U.S. Geological Survey, written communication, 2006) described his visit to Palma Vista Cave in Everglades National Park last November that he originally explored and described over 13 years ago (Cressler, 1993).

Droughtscape, Spring 2007, National Drought Mitigation Center

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

2007 Spring Drought Outlook & Winter Summary

VegDRI Expands to 15 States, Refines Views

DroughtScape

State Spotlight: Utah

International Panel Foresees Drought as Part of Climate Change

NIDIS Portal Advancing

Extensions Of Local Domains With Trivial Generic Fiber, William Heinzer, Christel Rotthaus, Sylvia Wiegand

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

We consider injective local maps from a local domain R to a local domain S such that the generic fiber of the inclusion map R -> S is trivial, that is P R (0) for every nonzero prime ideal P of S. We present several examples of injective local maps involving power series that have or fail to have this property. For an extension R -> S having this property, we give some results on the dimension of S; in some cases we show dim S = 2 and in some cases dim S = 1.

Impact Of Minimum Winter Temperatures On The Population Dynamics Of Dendroctonus Frontalis, J. KhảI TrầN, Tiina Ylioja, Ronald F. Billings, Jacques Régnière, Matthew P. Ayres

Dartmouth Scholarship

Predicting population dynamics is a fundamental problem in applied ecology. Temperature is a potential driver of short-term population dynamics, and temperature data are widely available, but we generally lack validated models to predict dynamics based upon temperatures. A generalized approach involves estimating the temperatures experienced by a population, characterizing the demographic consequences of physiological responses to temperature, and testing for predicted effects on abundance. We employed this approach to test whether minimum winter temperatures are a meaningful driver of pestilence from Dendroctonus frontalis (the southern pine beetle) across the southeastern United States. A distance-weighted interpolation model provided good, spatially explicit, …

Dynamics Of A Eutrophic Lake (Wilgreen Lake, Madison County, Kentucky): A First Step In Cleansing A Lake System Impaired By Nutrient Loading, Erin C. Jolly, Walter S. Borowski

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Wilgreen Lake (Madison County, Kentucky) is a eutrophic lake formed by damming Taylor Fork, part of the Silver Creek watershed. The lake is listed “nutrient impaired” by the Commonwealth and the EPA, and it is likely that nutrient input from human activities is affecting water quality. Our study aims first to characterize the physical characteristics and water quality of the lake (2006), and then to determine the specific proportion of nutrient inputs (2007) to the lake with the ultimate aim of improving its water quality.

Research started in May 2006 with work occurring throughout the 2006 field season with the …

Cooperative Conservation: Increasing Capacity Through Community Partnerships -- Interagency Volunteer Program: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Ending March 31, 2007, Margaret N. Rees

Get Outdoors Nevada

• Volunteer database increased 10 percent over last quarter to contain 3,243 records.
• Website activity increased, recording an average of 57,930 hits per month, with an average of 5,839 pages viewed per month (17 percent increase in pages viewed).
• Volunteer orientation program delivered to 30 active volunteers.
• Volunteer survey related to communication, training, and recognition complete.
• Volunteer spring training scheduled, developed, and publicized.
• Volunteers contributed 1,400 hours in the Great American Cleanup.
• National volunteer week recognition plan developed.

Lake Mead National Recreation Area Vegetation Monitoring And Analysis: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Ending March 31, 2007, Margaret N. Rees

Vegetation Monitoring

Executive Summary

• Weed Sentry staff surveyed for exotic species on 208 miles of roads on NPS land and on 61 miles of BLM land. Due to sparse precipitation this winter, exotic species are much less abundant this year compared to last year at this time.
• Other exotic species projects initiated this quarter included an assessment of invasion patterns below native shrubs for early detection of potential invasion “hotspots,” and a community invasibility experiment established near the NPS nursery with substantial involvement from NPS ATR Ms. Alice Newton.
• A manuscript detailing several experiments with the invasive species Sahara mustard was submitted …

Lake Mead National Recreation Area Monitoring And Evaluation Of Sensitive Wildlife: Quarterly Progress Report, Period Ending March 31, 2007, Margaret N. Rees

Wildlife Monitoring

Project 1. Relict Leopard Frog Monitoring, Management, and Research

• Spring-time diurnal surveys for relict leopard frogs were conducted at all sites.
• Relict leopard frog annual translocation effort was initiated. Currently, 2,153 tadpoles are being reared at the Hill Top and Willow Beach Fish Hatchery facilities. Quagga mussels found at the hatchery might not be as problematic for this program as originally thought. Current prophylactic protocols for disease treatment in tadpoles and frogs are being evaluated for their ability to kill quagga mussel larvae.
• Coordination and monitoring was provided to EPMT crews conducting tamarisk control at relict leopard frog sites in …

Summary Of Presentation: Climate Of Environmental Justice Conference, Michael B. Gerrard

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Michael B. Gerrard, Partner, Arnold & Porter LLP, New York, NY

2 pages.

Indigenous Peoples And Environmental Justice: The Impact Of Climate Change, Rebecca Tsosie

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Rebecca Tsosie, Professor of Law, Arizona State University

1 page.

Healing Earth, Helping Neighbors: Using Brownfield Remediation Projects To Advance Environmental Justice [Outline], Willie Shepherd

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Willie Shepherd, Chairman and Co-Founder, Kamlet Shepherd & Reichert, LLP

2 pages.

"Presentation Outline"

Deadly Waiting Game: An Environmental Justice Framework For Examining Natural And Man-Made Disasters Beyond Hurricane Katrina [Abstract], Robert D. Bullard

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Clark Atlanta University

1 page.

Action On Global Warming: Making Room For Tribal Governments In The New Kind Of Wedge Issue, Dean B. Suagee

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Dean B. Suagee, Of Counsel, Hobbs, Straus, Dean & Walker LLP, Washington, D.C.

1 page.

Second Generation Environmental Justice: Challenges And Opportunities, Rachel D. Godsil

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Rachel D. Godsil, Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School

3 pages.

Slides: Environmental Justice: Comprehensive Approach, Nicholas Targ

The Climate of Environmental Justice: Taking Stock (March 16-17)

Presenter: Nicholas Targ, Holland & Knight, former Associate Director for Environmental Justice Integration, Office of Environmental Justice, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

16 slides