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Nest Site Preference And Nesting Success Of Upland Sandpiper On Grazing Systems In East Central North Dakota-, Blane A. Klemek

The Prairie Naturalist

require ranchers to move their cattle throughout the range from one paddock to another, thereby allowing formerly grazed paddocks to regenerate. This is beneficial in a number of ways: overgrazing is reduced, cattle weight-gains are improved, suitable nesting cover for ground nesting birds is produced, and the overall health of the grassland is enhanced (Sedivec and Barker 1991). The objectives of my study were to investigate nesting success of the upland sandpiper as a function of grazing regime. Specifically, I was interested in comparing nesting success between RGS and non-rotational grazing systems (NRGS) and to examine relationships between nest site …

Semi-Melanistic White-Tailed Deer In Northern Wisconsin, Christopher N. Jacques, Keith R. Mccaffery, Jonathan Jenks, John T. Baccus

The Prairie Naturalist

Melanistic color morphs of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) are differentiated from other recognized color morphs by having uniform black hairs on the dorsal surface with subdued black hairs on the ventral surface, dark face and ears, a distinctive mid-dorsal stripe extending from the head to the apex of the tail, and a tail with black dorsally and white ventrally (Baccus and Posey 1999). Melanism results from the overproduction of the skin pigment melanin and is considered rare in white-tailed deer populations (Severinghaus and Cheatum 1956, Sauer 1984, Smith et al. 1984). Semi-melanistic deer have the same dark pelage …

The Prairie Naturalist 2008, Volume 40: Reviewers, Author Index, & Subject Index

The Prairie Naturalist

No abstract provided.

A Spatial Analysis Of Anthropogenically Derived And Naturally Occurring Environmental Controls On Corn-Based Ethanol Production In Nebraska, Nathan Charles Healey

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Transportation fuels are an integral part of political, economic, social, and environmental arenas. Traditionally, fossil fuels have been utilized most heavily due to their abundance and economic value. Currently, social and political concerns about harmful emissions (greenhouse gases) from fossil fuel combustion have enhanced interest in alternative fuels that do not have the same environmental consequence. Numerous alternative fuels are produced globally including methanol, biodiesel, hydrogen cells, and ethanol (ethyl alcohol). In America, ethanol is produced from com due to the existence of the "Com Belt" and abundant corn production. Understanding the capacity for America to sustain expansion of alternative …

Paddlefish Egg Deposition In The Lower Yellowstone River, Montana And North Dakota, Shannon E. Miller, Dennis L. Scarnecchia, Steven R. Fain

The Prairie Naturalist

We used passive egg collectors during May, June, and July of2003 and 2004 in the lower 50 river kiiometers (rkm) of the Yellowstone River, eastern Montana and western North Dakota, to detect egg deposition by spawning paddle fish (Polyodon spathula). Sampling yielded 292 eggs (46 in 2003 and 246 in 2004). All egg collections in 2003 occurred on the descending limb of the spring hydrograph but 99% of egg collections in 2004 occurred before the spring hydrograph began to descend. Catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) in 2004 was about four times that of 2003. A combination of river conditions, in addition …

Droughtscape, Summer 2008, Kelly Smith

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

VegDRI Expands West

Spring Rains Ease Drought But CA Still Dry

Scholar Donates Books

NDMC Welcomes Employees Bathke, Nothwehr

Latest Workshop Info Up

State Lawmakers to Focus on Drought Planning

Decadal Variation -- Clues to Droughts and Floods?

A Simple Morphological Predictor Of Bite Force In Rodents, Patricia W. Freeman, Cliff A. Lemen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Bite force was quantified for 13 species of North American rodents using a piezo-resistive sensor. Most of the species measured (11) formed a tight relationship between body mass and bite force (log 10(bite force) = 0.43(log 10(body mass)) + 0.416; R² > 0.98). This high correlation exists despite the ecological (omnivores, grazers and more carnivorous) and taxonomic (Cricetidae, Heteromyidae, Sciuridae and Zapodidae) diversity of species. Two additional species, Geomys bursarius (Geomyidae) and a Sciurus niger (Sciuridae), bit much harder for their size. We found a simple index of strength based on two measurements of the incisor at the level of …

Methods And Tools For Drought Analysis And Management, Cody L. Knutson

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Drought is an ambiguous concept. It is often difficult to tell when you are in a drought because of its slow, protracted nature and lack of news-grabbing impacts— such as water inundating communities or buildings burning—associated with other natural disasters. It is equally difficult to track the effect of drought on people, their livelihoods, and the environment because of the ubiquitous role that water plays in our world. As a result, we often wait until we are in the midst of a water crisis to seek ad hoc solutions, which can be costly, inefficient, and highly politicized.

To overcome the …

Impacts Of Human Physical Disturbance Of Benthic Communities In Tributaries Of The Niobrara National Scenic River, Kimberly D. Laing

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

No abstract provided.

Getting Started With Psleuth, Qingfeng (Gene) Guan

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

SLEUTH1 is a Cellular Automata (CA) model of urban growth and land use change simulation and forecasting, developed in the Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara (Clarke, Hoppen, and Gaydos 1997; Clarke and Gaydos 1998; Silva and Clarke 2002).

A classical Cellular Automata model is a set of identical elements, called cells, each one of which is located in a regular, discrete space, called cellspace. Each cell is associated with a state from a finite set. The model evolves in discrete time steps, changing the states of all its cells according to a transition rule, homogeneously and synchronously …

Getting Started With Prpl, Qingfeng Guan

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

pRPL is an open-source1 general-purpose parallel Raster Processing programming Library developed by Qingfeng Guan, in the Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara. pRPL encapsulates complex parallel computing utilities and routines specifically for raster processing (e.g., raster data decomposition, distribution and gathering among multiple processors, inter-processor communication and data exchange), and provides an easy-to-use interface for users to parallelize almost any raster processing algorithm with any arbitrary neighborhood (or moving window) configuration. pRPL enables the implementation of parallel raster-processing algorithms without requiring a deep understanding of parallel computing and programming, thus it greatly reduces the development complexity. Moreover, even …

Synoptic Monitoring Of Gross Primary Productivity Of Maize Using Landsat Data, Anatoly A. Gitelson, Andrés Viña, Jeffrey G. Masek, Shashi Verma, Andrew E. Suyker

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

There is a growing interest in monitoring the gross primary productivity (GPP) of crops due mostly to their carbon sequestration potential. Both within- and between-field variability are important components of crop GPP monitoring, particularly for the estimation of carbon budgets. In this letter, we present a new technique for daytime GPP estimation in maize based on the close and consistent relationship between GPP and crop chlorophyll content, and entirely on remotely sensed data. A recently proposed chlorophyll index (CI), which involves green and near-infrared spectral bands, was used to retrieve daytime GPP from Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) data. …

Droughtscape, Spring 2008, Kelly Smith

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

San Angelo, April 24

Winter Sees Little Change in U.S. Drought

News Stories Reveal Array of Mitigation Strategies

NIDIS Wants You!

Sea Surface Temperatures Can Help Predict Drought

About DroughtScape

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Preferences For Rural Amenities In Lancaster County, K. Koehler-Cole

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

No abstract provided.

A Bioenergetic Model For Zebrafish Danio Rerio (Hamilton), Christopher J. Chizinski, B. Sharma, K. L. Pope, Kevin L. Pope, R. Patinos

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

A bioenergetics model was developed from observed consumption, respiration and growth rates for zebrafish Danio rerio across a range (18–32° C) of water temperatures, and evaluated with a 50 day laboratory trial at 28° C. No significant bias in variable estimates was found during the validation trial; namely, predicted zebrafish mass generally agreed with observed mass.

West Nile Virus Antibodies In Breeding North Dakota Icterids, Jennifer L. Newbrey, Wendy L. Reed

The Prairie Naturalist

Exotic infectious diseases can have devastating effects on the distribution and abundance ofnaYve wildlife species (Friend et al. 2001). West Nile Virus (WNV) is an exotic disease that was introduced into North America in 1999 and has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of birds (Marra et al. 2004). The natural cycle of WNV involves Culex spp. mosquitoes as principle vectors and birds as principle hosts, although humans, horses, and other mammals can become incidental hosts (Lanciotti et al. 2000). Because the virus can be fatal, outbreaks have become a national health concern for the human population, an …

Review Of Basic Texas Birds: A Field Guide By Mark W. Lockwood, Thomas M. Langschied

The Prairie Naturalist

Texas has an incredible diversity of birds. This diversity is a result of its geographic location, size, and diversity of habitats. Given this wealth of birds, there is a wonderful opportunity in Texas for both residents and visitors alike to learn and appreciate the birdlife found there. Basic Texas Birds has been written to provide a foundation for anyone who is either new to bird-watching or has been bird-watching casually for several years. The book covers 161 commonly occurring birds in Texas and includes an additional 23 species that are considered Texas specialty birds, those that occur regularly in Texas …

The Prairie Naturalist. Volume 40, No. 112 March/June 2008, The Great Plains Natural Science Society

The Prairie Naturalist

LOW REPRODUCTIVE SUCCESS OF MALLARDS IN A GRASSLAND-DOMINATED LANDSCAPE IN THE SANDHILLS OF NEBRASKA. J. A. Walker, Z. J. Cunningham, M. P. Vrtiska, S. E. Stephens, and L. A. Powell

USE OF PASSIVE INTEGRATED TRANSPONDERS IN HATCHLING TEXAS HORNED LIZARDS. S. E. Henke

INFLUENCE OF TEMPERATURE AND DISCHARGE ON REPRODUCTIVE TIMING OF COMMON CARP IN A NORTHERN GREAT PLAINS RIVER. T. Resseguie and S. Kelsch

RAPTOR USE OF ARTIFICIAL PERCHES AT NATURAL AREAS, CITY OF FORT COLLINS, COLORADO. G. Witmer, M. Pipas, P. Burke, D. Rouse, D. Dees, and K. Manci

WEST NILE VIRUS ANTIBODIES IN BREEDING NORTH DAKOTA ICTERIDS. …

Review Of Oology And Ralph's Talking Eggs By Carrol L. Henderson, Kristin R. Johnson

The Prairie Naturalist

Ralph Handsaker was an Iowan farmer whose "ravenous curiosity" (page 4) about the natural world inspired him to become an oologist, or egg collector. This book tells the story of Handsaker's eggs, contained in two large cabinets that remained hidden in the living room of his boarded-up house after his death in 1969, until they were rediscovered in 2003 and shown to the author, wildlife conservationist, and photographer, Carrol Henderson. Ralph's eggs can "talk" by virtue of Henderson's chronicle-using the eggs as guides-of not only Ralph's own passion for natural history and egg collecting, but also the history of conservation …

Influence Of Temperature And Discharge On Reproductive Timing Of Common Carp In A Northern Great Plains River, Tim Resseguie, Steve Kelsch

The Prairie Naturalist

Reproductive timing of common carp (Cyprinus carpio) was examined in the Red River of the North and compared with environmental factors that might have triggered spawning during 1999 and 2000. We estimated spawn dates for individual common carp larvae collected in the drift by back-calculating from datc of capture and by accounting for developmental stage at capture and water temperature during the period of egg incubation. Reproductive timing was compared with discharge and water temperature to determine which of these likely might be a synchronizing cue for spawning of common carp in the Red River basin. In both years of …

Review Of Roger Tory Peterson: A Biography By Douglas Carlson, Laura Erickson

The Prairie Naturalist

August 28, 2008, marks the centennial of Roger Tory Peterson's birth, and books related to the most prominent naturalist of the twentieth century have been sprouting up everywhere. I was disappointed that Douglas Carlson shied away from examining Peterson's personal life to provide insights into the forces and relationships that shaped, and were shaped by, this man so consumed with birds. Instead, Carlson focuses almost entirely on Peterson's work, writing, "Because his death is so recent, there are many who have a personal investment in his story; beyond a request for an interview, no attempts have been made to invade …

Breeding By The Snowy Plover In North Dakota And South Dakota, Carol Aron, Paul Van Ningten, Michael Rabenberg, Cheryl Jacobs, Greg Pavelka, Ricky D. Olson

The Prairie Naturalist

The snowy plover (Charadrius alexandrinus) is a small shorebird that breeds on unvegetated beaches along coastlines, rivers, and alkaline lakes. In North America, its breeding distribution extends along the coasts of California, Oregon, and southern Washington, where the population is listed as federally threatened (USFWS 1993), and an interior population occurs on wetlands in western and central states and central Mexico (Page et al. 1995). There have been rare breeding reports in Montana, Wyoming, and Saskatchewan (Page et al. 1995), but no documented breeding records in North Dakota or South Dakota. However, the United States Army Corps of Engineers reported …

Raptor Use Of Artificial Perches At Natural Areas, City Of Fort Collins, Colorado, G. W. Witmer, Michael Pipas, Patrick Burke, David Rouse, Donna Dees, Karen Manci

The Prairie Naturalist

The black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) remains a critical element of the prairie ecosystem even though its numbers and occupied range have declined dramatically since the arrival of Europeans in North America (Antol in et al. 2002). Prairie dog colonies are used by many species of wildlife and help maintain high levels of biodiversity (Kotliar et al. 1999). In the urban-suburban setting, the occurrence of prairie dog colonies also provides opportunities for wildlife viewing and environmental education. Unfortunately, prairie dogs also can come into conflict with humans, especially in the urban-suburban setting, where they cause vegetation and property …

Low Reproductive Success Of Mallards In A Grassland-Dominated Landscape In The Sandhills Of Nebraska, Johann A. Walker, Zach J. Cunningham, Mark P. Vrtiska, Scott E. Stephens, Larkin Powell

The Prairie Naturalist

The Sandhills of Nebraska comprise approximately 5,000,000 ha of native grassland interspersed with numerous groundwater-fed wetlands. A substantial population of the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) nests in this region. Previous investigations of nest survival probability of ducks in the Sandhills have estimated surprisingly low rates of nest survival for a grassland-dominated landscape. These investigations were conducted on public lands and most nest searching took place near wetlands where activity of nest predators might be highest. We predicted that mallards would nest at varying distances from wetlands and that survival probability of a representative sample of duck nests would increase …

Parasite Pathoecology Of Chacoan Great Houses: The Healthiest And Wormiest Ancestral Puebloans, Karl J. Reinhard

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Two fields of paleopathological investigation originated in the Southwest. Archaeoparasitology is the study ancient parasite infection (Reinhard 1990). It includes comparisons between time periods of single societies as well as the comparison of parasitism between different, contemporaneous cultures. For example, Fry (1980) compared Fremont and Anasazi parasitism. Fry (1984) compared Archaic hunter-gatherer parasitism and Ancestral Pueblo parasitism. All of these studies fall into the definition of Archaeoparasitology. Pathoecology is the reconstruction of the relationships between behavior, environment, and disease organisms in the development of ill-health (Martinson et al. 2003; Reinhard and Buikstra 2003, Reinhard et al. 2003, Santoro et al. …

Pathoecology And The Future Of Coprolite Studies In Bioarchaeology, Karl J. Reinhard, Vaughn M. Bryant Jr.

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Human coprolites currently provide an expanding array of information about the diet, health, and ecology of prehistoric people in the Southwest, but for many years coprolites were not recognized or preserved, or they were not considered important and thus were not saved (Bryant and Dean 2006). With the expansion of archaeological field work during the last half of the twentieth century archaeologists have increasingly explored the “complete” potentials of sites, including the collection and analysis of geomorphologic, botanical, and faunal data. In some ideal habitats (e.g., very dry or frozen) this includes exploring the scientific potential of human coprolite studies. …

A Test Of The Cross-Scale Resilience Model: Functional Richness In Mediterranean-Climate Ecosystems, Donald A. Wardwell, Craig R. Allen, Garry D. Peterson, Andrew J. Tyre

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Ecological resilience has been proposed to be generated, in part, in the discontinuous structure of complex systems. Environmental discontinuities are reflected in discontinuous, aggregated animal body mass distributions. Diversity of functional groups within body mass aggregations (scales) and redundancy of functional groups across body mass aggregations (scales) has been proposed to increase resilience. We evaluate that proposition by analyzing mammalian and avian communities of Mediterranean-climate ecosystems. We first determined that body mass distributions for each animal community were discontinuous. We then calculated the variance in richness of function across aggregations in each community, and compared observed values with distributions created …

A Tick From A Prehistoric Arizona Coprolite (Galley Proofs), Keith L. Johnson, Karl J. Reinhard, Luciana Sianto, Adauto Araújo, Scott Lyell Gardner, John J. Janovy Jr.

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Ticks have never been reported in archaeological analyses. Here, we present the discovery of a tick from a coprolite excavated from Antelope Cave in extreme northwest Arizona. Dietary analysis indicates that the coprolite has a human origin. This archaeological occupation is associated with the Ancestral Pueblo culture (Anasazi). This discovery supports previous hypotheses that ticks were a potential source of disease and that ectoparasites were eaten by ancient people.

Parasites As Probes For Prehistoric Human Migrations? (Galley Proofs), Adauto Araújo, Karl J. Reinhard, Luiz F. Ferreira, Scott Lyell Gardner

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Host-specific parasites of humans are used to track ancient migrations. The archaeoparasitology of some intestinal parasites in the New World points to migration routes other than the Bering Land Bridge. Helminths have been found in mummies and coprolites in North and South America. Hookworms (Necator and Ancylostoma), whipworms (Trichuris trichiura) and other helminths require specific conditions for life-cycle completion. They could not survive in the cold climate of the northern region of the Americas. Therefore, humans would have lost some intestinal parasites while crossing Beringia. Evidence is provided here from published data of pre-Columbian sites for the peopling of the …

Multi-Ideal-Adic Completions Of Noetherian Rings, William J. Heinzer, Christel Rotthaus, Sylvia Wiegand

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Let R be a commutative ring with identity. A filtration on R is a decreasing sequence {In}∞ n=0 of ideals of R. Associated to a filtration is a well-defined completion R ∗ = l←i−mn R/In and a canonical homomorphism ψ : R → R ∗ [13, Chap. 9]. If ∞ n=0 In = (0), then ψ is injective and R may be regarded as a subring of R ∗ [13, p. 401]. In the terminology of Northcott, a filtration {In}∞ n=0 is multiplicative if I0 = R and InIm ⊆ In+m for all m ≥ 0 and n ≥ 0 …