Natural Resources and Conservation Commons^™

Modeling The Response Of Black Walnut -Dominant Mixed Hardwoods To Seasonal Climate Effects With Uav-Based Hyperspectral Sensor And Aerial Photogrammetry, Tyler G. Bradford

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The development of compact sensors in recent years has inspired the use of UAS-based hyperspectral and aerial imaging techniques for small-scale remote sensing applications. With increasing concerns about climate change, spectrally-derived vegetation indices (VIs) have proven useful for quantifying stress-induced vegetation response. The goal of this study was to develop predictive models and assess methodology for modeling the biological response of a black walnut -dominant mixed hardwood stand to seasonal climate events using UAV-based hyperspectral remote-sensing. The derived VIs were evaluated against the means of four seasonal measures of climate calculated for a two-week period prior to the flight date. …

Evaluation Of A Sequential Pond System For Detention And Treatment Of Runoff At Skypark, Santa's Village, Elizabeth Caporuscio

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Understanding the extent to which human activities impact surface water resources has become increasingly important as both human population growth and related landscape changes impact water quality and quantity across varying geographical scales. Skypark, Santa’s Village is a 233.76-acre tourism-based outdoor recreation area located in Skyforest, California residing within the San Bernardino National Forest. The park is situated at Hooks Creek, the headwaters of the Mojave River Watershed, and is characterized by a diverse landscape that includes forest cover and human development, including impervious surfaces, a restored meadow, and recreational trails. In 2016, Hencks Meadow was considered degraded by human …

Groundwater Hydrogeolgy And Hydrochemistry Of Karst Springs In The Eastern Peninsula Of Fort Hood Military Installation, William Scribner Welles

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The eastern peninsula of Fort Hood Military Installation is underlain by a complex karst spring network. These springs are a primary water source in a protected habitat for endangered songbirds, which has only recently begun to be fully investigated. These Fredericksburg Group springs express both epigenetic and hypogenetic karst signatures. The study area is part of a paleo reef trend, a hydraulically disconnected segment of the northern section of the Edwards Aquifer. This study utilized standard ion index values, repeated measures, and principal component analyses on the chemical profiles of six perennial springs to classify spring water sources and their …

Keeping Pace With Relative Sea Level Rise: Marsh Platform Monitoring Shows Minimal Sediment Deficit Along The Louisiana Coast, Kelly Marie Sanks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent reports estimate that the marshes of the Mississippi Delta receive just 30% of the sediment necessary to sustain current land area1. An extensive monitoring campaign by the USGS and LCPRA provides direct measurements of sediment accumulation, subsidence rates, and deposit characteristics along the coast over the past 10 years2, allowing us to directly evaluate this sediment balance. By interpolating bulk density, organic fraction, and vertical accretion rates from 273 sites, a direct measurement of organic and inorganic sediment accumulation can be made. Results show that a total of 82 MT/year of sediment is delivered to the coast. Using a …

Effectiveness Of Prescribed Fire On Meeting Fuel Load And Wildlife Habitat Management Objectives In East Texas National Forests, Trey Wall

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Using standardized methodology outlined by the United States Forest Service and the National Forests and Grasslands in Texas’ Fire Monitoring Program for data collection, the efficacy of current Forest Service prescribed burn regimes were analyzed for 24 study sites in East Texas National Forests. Study sites were located within Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, and Angelina/Sabine National Forests. Efficacy was determined by comparing defined management objectives established by the Forest Service to the data collected at the study sites. The results conclude that most objectives, as outlined by the Forest Service, are not being met with the current practices. Re-visitation of …

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 …

Groundwater Contamination At Coal Ash Deposit Sites In Kentucky, Brandon Rose

Scholars Week

No abstract provided.

Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (Ebfm) Risk Assessment Of The Western Australian Sea Cucumber Fishery, F J. Webster, Anthony M. Hart

WA Marine Stewardship Council report series

This report provides a comprehensive overview of the commercial Western Australian Sea Cucumber Fishery (SCF) and the outcomes from the 2016 ecological risk assessment for this fishery. Two key species, sandfish (Holothuria scabra) and redfish (Actinopyga echinites), are targeted by the commercial SCF through hand collection by diving and wading primarily in shallow waters of northern WA.

Spatial Analysis Of Borrow Pits Along The Platte River In South-Central Nebraska, Usa, In 1957 And 2016, Nicole M. Pauley, Mary J. Harner, Emma M. Brinley Buckley, Paul R. Burger, Keith Geluso

Transactions of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences and Affiliated Societies

The Central Platte River Valley (CPRV) of Nebraska provides critical habitat for wildlife, while serving agricultural, indus­trial, and other human uses. Mining of sand and gravel from the floodplain of the Platte River has supported construction of roads and other uses, and this extraction has created many borrow-pit ponds, lakes, and other small bodies of standing water (hereafter borrow-pits), further transforming riparian and prairie habitats. The objective of this study was to compare the abundance, size, and distribution of borrow pits before construction of Interstate 80 (1957) and at present (2016) from Lexington to Chapman, Nebraska, a length of river …

Detection, Occurrence And Fate Of Emerging Contaminants In Agricultural Environments, Daniel D. Snow, David A. Cassada, Saptashati Biswas, Mohammedreza Shafieifini, Xu Li, Matteo D'Alessio, Laura Carter, J. Brett Sallach

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

A total of 75 papers published in 2017 were reviewed ranging from detailed descriptions of analytical methods, to fate and occurrence studies, to ecological effects and sampling techniques for a wide variety of emerging contaminants likely to occur in agricultural environments. New methods and studies on veterinary pharmaceuticals, steroids, antibiotic resistance genes, and engineered nanoparticles agricultural environments continue to expand our knowledge base on the occurrence and potential impacts of these compounds. This review is divided into the following sections: Introduction, Analytical Methods, Fate and Occurrence, Pharmaceutical Metabolites, Anthelmintics, Antibiotic Resistance Genes, and Engineered Nanomaterials.

Indirect Greenhouse Gas Dynamics In Karst Groundwater Systems Under Agricultural Land Use, Stacy Wayne Antle

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are a major global environmental concern, because their concentrations have continuously increased over the past few centuries, due to global population growth, fossil fuel dependency, and the Industrial Revolution. Since these gases are naturally occurring phenomena, they will never be completely eliminated. Efforts to reduce them span numerous scientific attempts, with minimal improvements in reducing their atmospheric concentrations. In agricultural land practices, greenhouse gases are common byproducts that affect the atmosphere and, potentially, the groundwater where livestock and fertilizers are key contributors. Little is known about the fate of such greenhouse gases in dissolved form, known as …

Droughtscape, Fall 2018, National Drought Mitigation Center

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

Contents

From the director

Drought greatly improves in Southern Plains and South

Texas, Missouri, and Colorado logged late-summer impacts

Memory, remote sensing and a new research methodology

Navigating the U.S. Drought Monitor

Planners discuss the barriers to effective drought mitigation planning

Exploring climate issues from a county management perspective

Strategic Framework for Drought Risk Management and Enhancing Resilience in Africa

Mena global policy forum looks from data to mitigation

About us

State-by-state drought classification table developed by NDMC graduate student

Report Of Community Conversations About Gender Roles In Livestock, Mamusha Lemma, Wole Kinati, Annet Mulema, Zekarias Bassa, Abiro Tigabe, Hiwot Desta, Mesfin Mekonnen, Tadious Asfaw

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

The International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the International Center for Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) gender and animal health teams facilitated community conversations (CCs) about gender roles in livestock husbandry in three districts in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR) and Amhara region from 30 May–07 June 2018. These dictricts were: Doyogena (Hawora Arara and Ancha Sadicha kebeles) of SNNPR from 30 and 31 May; and Menz Gera district (Sine Amba kebele) and Menz Mama district (Key Afer kebele) of Amhara from June 6–7. In Doyogena, the team held the conversations in farmer training centres (FTCs) …

Growth Of Pelagic Age-0 Yellow Perch In Relation To Hatch Dates And Water Temperature In North-Central Minnesota Lakes, Ethan Karppinen

Biology Graduate Theses

Exposure to consistent water warming rates and access to abundant populations of edible sized zooplankton affects growth and increases the probability of survival for newly hatched Yellow Perch Perca flavescens. Seven lakes with varying physical characteristics were selected in north-central Minnesota to study abiotic (water temperature) and biotic (zooplankton community and fish growth) progressions during the spring and early summer (April-June). Mean water temperatures from ice-out to 28 June (11.98-14.62 °C) had significant relationships with mean depth (P < 0.01, R? = 0.85), max depth (P < 0.01, R? = 0.73), and total volume (P < 0.01, R2 = 0.54). Hatch periods ranged from 13 to 19 days in 2015 and 13 to 25 days in 2016. Cumulative degree-days (CDD) were used to predict Yellow Perch hatch periods and explain growth. CDD predicted 21-81% of hatch periods in 2015 and 11-50% in 2016. Mean predicted total lengths at 28 June were 19.65-30.41 mm in 2015 and 20.88-28.54 mm in 2016. There was a significant relationship between CDD and predicted total length (R? = 0.62, P < 0.01) to explain differences in Yellow Perch total length while inhabiting the pelagic zone. Observed gape measurements were highly correlated with predicted gapes from the Schael formula (R? = 0.89, P < 0.01) that was used to assess the availability of edible sized zooplankton for age-0 Yellow Perch in each lake. No predator-prey mismatches were found and earlier hatch dates produced age-0 Yellow Perch with greater predicted total lengths in late June on the majority of lakes. This suggests that earlier hatched Yellow perch have an advantage over later hatched Yellow Perch in attaining greater lengths by late June. Our study provides information on a variety of physical and biological progressions in lakes, which may be used for fisheries management practices in the future.

Quantifying The Environmental Performance Of A Stream Habitat Improvement Project, Cody Morse

Master's Theses

River restoration projects are being installed worldwide to rehabilitate degraded river habitat. Many of these projects focus on stream habitat improvement (SHI), and an estimated 60%of the 37,000 projects listed in the National River Restoration Science Synthesis Program focus on SHI for salmon and trout species. These projects frequently lack a sufficient monitoring program or account for the environmental costs associated with SHI. The present study used life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques and topographic effectiveness monitoring to quantify environmental costs on the basis of geomorphic change. This methodology was a novel approach to assessing the cost-benefit relationship of SHI. To …

Including Farmer Irrigation Behavior In A Sociohydrological Modeling Framework With Application In North India, Jimmy O’Keeffe, Simon Moulds, Emma Bergin, Nick Brozovic, Ana Mijic, Wouter Buytaert

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Understanding water user behavior and its potential outcomes is important for the development of suitable water resource management options. Computational models are commonly used to assist water resource management decision making; however, while natural processes are increasingly well modeled, the inclusion of human behavior has lagged behind. Improved representation of irrigation water user behavior within models can provide more accurate and relevant information for irrigation management in the agricultural sector. This paper outlines a model that conceptualizes and proceduralizes observed farmer irrigation practices, highlighting impacts and interactions between the environment and behavior. It is developed using a bottom-up approach, informed …

Droughtscape, Summer 2018, National Drought Mitigation Center

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

Contents

From the director

Drought expands and intensifies

Dry down fuels fires

Tweeting #drought18

MOISST and NSMN

Caribbean planning progress

Drought observer network study

MENA teams report progress

NDMC global outreach

Climate hub workshop

On the horizon

Functions Of Ecosystems: Stream Metabolism As An Efficient And Effective Means To Gage The Health And Understand The Interworking Of Urban Streams In A Watershed Of Rock Island, Il, Ryan Johnson, Dr. Kevin Geedey

Celebration of Learning

Stream metabolism is a critical functional measure of stream health that integrates physical parameters like slope and discharge, with ecosystem functions like photosynthesis and respiration. Stream metabolism is widely studied; however, urban stream metabolism remains poorly understood. Stream metabolism was measured for five streams ranging from 1^st to 5^th orders from October 11^th to October 18^th 2017 and four streams ranging from 1^st to 4^th order from October 22^nd to 25^th 2017 located within an approximately 9.3 square kilometer watershed of Rock Island, IL that has an urban to suburban type of …

A Quantitative Analysis Of The Effects Of Urbanization, Mesophication And Prescribed Burns On Oak Woodlands In The Chicago Metropolitan Area, Chad Populorum

Celebration of Learning

Urban expansion has had devastating impacts on forest ecosystems, especially within the past century. Human attempts to dominate nature have diminished natural disturbance regimes, which have maintained the biodiversity and historic composition of these ecosystems. Fires have been a prominent force in maintaining the structure of oak, hickory and other heliophytic (sun loving and fire-adapted) forest systems. Human induced fire suppression has led to mesophication across North America. Mesophication is the transition from drier conditions with open canopies to wetter conditions with closed canopies. These new conditions decrease the survival rates of these important species and begin to favor mesophytic …

Ecological Neighborhoods As A Framework For Umbrella Species Selection, Erica F. Stuber, Joseph J. Fontaine

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Umbrella species are typically chosen because they are expected to confer protection for other species assumed to have similar ecological requirements. Despite its popularity and substantial history, the value of the umbrella species concept has come into question because umbrella species chosen using heuristic methods, such as body or home range size, are not acting as adequate proxies for the metrics of interest: species richness or population abundance in a multi-species community for which protection is sought. How species associate with habitat across ecological scales has important implications for understanding population size and species richness, and therefore may be a …

Population Characteristics Of A Closed Northern Pike (Esox Lucius) Catch-And-Release Population In Minnesota, John Kempe

Biology Graduate Theses

Literature regarding catch-and-release populations of Northern Pike are rare and provide a unique perspective on their population dynamics. Shingobee Lake is a 64- ha mesotrophic lake with a maximum depth of 12.2 m located in northern Minnesota. Northern Pike fishing has been catch-and-release only since 2005, and there are no public accesses on the lake. Annual ice-out trap-netting occurred from 2009-2017, and a sizable amount of the Northern Pike recaptured via trapnet or angling had been previously tagged (37-59%). The lack of exploitation and high tagging percentage provided a unique opportunity to study the population dynamics of Northern Pike. Shinogbee’s …

Performance Assessment Of Solid State Anaerobic Digestion Of Poultry Litter, Mason Puckett

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The disposal of poultry litter can exert an economic and environmental burden to the agriculture community. As a result, it is desirable to reduce the amount of waste and recover resources from the waste. This study focuses on the construction and preliminary testing of a laboratory scale (20 L) solid state anaerobic digester (AD) fed with dry poultry litter. Glucose was added in addition to the poultry litter to achieve the appropriate C:N ratio to support the growth of anaerobic microorganisms. The AD was first fed every 4 days at 4 g VS/L/feeding for 24 days, rested (no feeding) for …

A Comparison Of Four Wetlands Assessment Procedures Relevant To The Alluvial Valleys Of East Texas, Amy Camp

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Currently several methods are used by public and private entities to assess wetland functional condition in support of the Section 404 Clean Water Act program. Four of these are: Forested Wetlands in Alluvial Valleys of the Coastal Plain of the Southeastern United States (SEHGM); A Regional Guidebook for Applying the Hydrogeomorphic Approach to the Functional Assessment of Forested Wetlands in Alluvial Valleys of East Texas (ETXHGM); Texas Rapid Assessment Method (TXRAM); and the Wildlife Habitat Appraisal Procedure (WHAP). Little previous research compares wetland functional assessment methods. Results of the SEHGM, ETXHGM, TXRAM, and WHAP methods were compared on five East …

Imidacloprid Sorption And Transport In Cropland, Grass Buffer, And Riparian Buffer Soils, Laura E. Satkowski, Keith W. Goyne, Stephen H. Anderson, Robert N. Lerch, Elisabeth B. Webb, Daniel D. Snow

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

An understanding of neonicotinoid sorption and transport in soil is critical for determining and mitigating environmental risk associated with the most widely used class of insecticides. The objective of this study was to evaluate mobility and transport of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid (ICD) in soils collected from cropland, grass vegetative buffer strip (VBS), and riparian VBS soils. Soils were collected at six randomly chosen sites within grids that encompassed all three land uses. Single-point equilibrium batch sorption experiments were conducted using radio-labeled (¹⁴C) ICD to determine solid–solution partition coefficients (K_d). Column experiments were conducted using soils collected …

Droughtscape, Spring 2018, National Drought Mitigation Center

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

Contents

Drought shifts to south in beginning of 2018

Ag records impacts; strong fire season forecast

Drought maps show regional and river forecast areas

Greenness indicator could save lives in Africa

NDMC on a global playing field

Visitors from Korea tap drought resources, experts

Svoboda named to United Nations advisory group

Responding to drought in the Southern Plains

Crops, cattle and climatology in the Upper Niobrara

Connecting locally for global change

High-Resolution Water Footprints Of Production Of The United States

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

The United States is the largest producer of goods and services in the world. Rainfall, surface water supplies, and groundwater aquifers represent a fundamental input to economic production. Despite the importance of water resources to economic activity, we do not have consistent information on water use for specific locations and economic sectors. A national, spatially detailed database of water use by sector would provide insight into U.S. utilization and dependence on water resources for economic production. To this end, we calculate the water footprint of over 500 food, energy, mining, services, and manufacturing industries and goods produced in the United …

Synchrony — An Emergent Property Of Recreational Fisheries, Mark A. Kaemingk, Christopher J. Chizinski, Keith Hurley, Kevin L. Pope

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

1. Recreational fisheries are traditionally managed at local scales, but more effective management could be achieved using a cross-scale approach. To do this, we must first understand how local processes scale up to influence landscape patterns between anglers and resources. We highlight how population-based synchrony methods, used in conjunction with a complex-adaptive-systems framework, can reveal emergent spatial properties within social-ecological systems such as recreational fisheries.

2. Herein, we quantified the level of spatial synchrony in angler behaviour, defined the relationship between angler synchrony and distance among waterbodies, and highlighted social-ecological attributes contributing to these patterns. We leveraged a 111 waterbody-year …

Summary Of The Stock Structure Information Used For Determining Spatial Management Of The Index Species For The Scalefish Resources Of Northern Western Australia, Daniel J. Gaughan, Stephen J. Newman, Corey B. Wakefield

WA Marine Stewardship Council report series

This paper was specifically developed in response to issues raised in an assessment of the Pilbara Trap Managed Fishery (PTMF) against the fishery sustainability standard of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).

Global Anthropogenic Phosphorus Loads To Freshwater And Associated Grey Water Footprints And Water Pollution Levels: A High-Resolution Global Study, Mesfin Mekonnen, Arjen Y. Hoekstra

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

We estimate the global anthropogenic phosphorus (P) loads to freshwater and the associated grey water footprints (GWFs) for the period 2002–2010, at a spatial resolution of 5 3 5 arc min, and com- pare the GWF per river basin to runoff to assess the P-related water pollution level (WPL). The global anthro- pogenic P load to freshwater systems from both diffuse and point sources is estimated at 1.5 Tg/yr. More than half of this total load was in Asia, followed by Europe (19%) and Latin America and the Caribbean (13%). The domestic sector contributed 54% to the total, agriculture 38%, …