Natural Resources Management and Policy Commons^™

The Social Networks Of Manureshed Management, Gwendwr Rhiannon Meredith, Sheri Spiegal, Peter J. A. Kleinman, Daren Harmel

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Manureshed management—the strategic use of manure nutrients that prioritizes recycling between livestock systems and cropping systems—provides a comprehensive framework for sustainable nutrient management that necessitates the collaboration of many actors. Understanding the social dimensions of collaboration is critical to implement the strategic and technological requirements of functional manuresheds. To improve this understanding, we identified aspirational networks of actors involved in manureshed management across local, regional, and national scales, principally in the United States, elucidating key relationships and highlighting the breadth of interactions essential to successful manureshed management. We concluded that, although the social networks vary with scale, the involvement of …

Uranium 233: The Nuclear Superfuel No One Is Using, Maris Hanson

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

Nuclear power offers more energy in less physical space than solar and wind and yields more energy per pound than fossil fuels. However different nuclear fuels yield different waste profiles and create different beneficial products. Uranium 233 (U233) resists use in nuclear weapons, yields beneficial daughter products, and produces dramatically less of the most problematic waste products than Uranium 235 (U235). U233 results from reactions with Thorium, a plentiful, ubiquitous element currently considered waste from rare earth mines. Additionally, U233 functions well in a liquid fuel reactor resulting in safer, more efficient reactors than current solid fuel U235 or Plutonium …

Tibetan Dust Accumulation Linked To Ecological And Landscape Response To Global Climate Change, Xianmei Huang, Xiaodong Miao, Qiufang Chang, Jiemei Zhong, Joseph A. Mason, Paul R. Hanson, Xianjiao Ou, Liubing Xu, Zhongping Lai

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is a hotspot of earth system research, and understanding its landscape and ecosystem evolution has been hampered by the lack of time-constrained geological records. Geochronological data from 14 loess sites covering a large region in the Tibetan interior show that the TP loess, rather than accumulating during glacial periods, began aggrading at either 13.4 ± 0.4 or 9.9 ± 0.2 ka. An ecological threshold was crossed, when warmer and wetter conditions resulted in increased vegetation cover enabling dust trapping. This dust accumulation model is out of phase with that of the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) where …

Exploring Old Data With New Tricks: Long-Term Monitoring Indicates Spatial And Temporal Changes In Populations Of Sympatric Prairie Grouse In The Nebraska Sandhills, Danielle J. Berger, Jeffrey J. Lusk, Larkin A. Powell, John P. Carroll

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The contiguous grasslands of the Sandhills region in Nebraska, USA, provide habitat for two sympatric, grassland-obligate species of grouse, the greater prairie-chicken (Tympanuchus cupido pinnatus) and the plains sharp-tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus jamesi). Collectively referred to as prairie grouse, these birds are monitored and managed jointly by wildlife practitioners who face the novel challenge of conserving historically allopatric species in shared range. We reconstructed region-wide and route-specific prairie grouse population trends in the Sandhills, using a 63-year timeseries of breeding ground counts aggregated from old reports and paper archives. Our objective was to repurpose historical data …

A Call For The Library Community To Deploy Best Practices Toward A Database For Biocultural Knowledge Relating To Climate Change, Martha B. Lerski

Publications and Research

Abstract

Purpose – In this paper, a call to the library and information science community to support documentation and conservation of cultural and biocultural heritage has been presented.

Design/methodology/approach – Based in existing Literature, this proposal is generative and descriptive— rather than prescriptive—regarding precisely how libraries should collaborate to employ technical and ethical best practices to provide access to vital data, research and cultural narratives relating to climate.

Findings – COVID-19 and climate destruction signal urgent global challenges. Library best practices are positioned to respond to climate change. Literature indicates how libraries preserve, share and cross-link cultural and scientific knowledge. …

Validity And Reliability Of Drought Reporters In Estimating Soil Water Content And Drought Impacts In Central Europe, Lenka Bartošová, Milan Fischer, Jan Balek, Monika Bláhová, Lucie Kudláčková, Filip Chuchma, Petr Hlavinka, Martin Možný, Pavel Zahradníček, Nicole Wall, Michael Hayes, Christopher Hain, Martha Anderson, Wolfgang Wagner, Zdeněk Žalud, Miroslav Trnka

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Increasing drought is considered one of the major threats associated with climate change in central Europe. To provide an objective, quantitative tool that represents current drought conditions, the Czech Drought Monitor System (CzechDM) was established in 2012. Like other drought monitoring systems worldwide, the CzechDM uses several approaches to provide drought data. However, the CzechDM is unique internationally due to its utilization of a network of voluntary reporters (farmers) who complete a weekly online questionnaire to provide information about soil water content and the impacts of drought on crop yield. In this study, the results from the questionnaires from individual …

Arkansas Bulletin Of Water Research - Issue 2021-2022, Erin Grantz, Lillie Haddock, Brian E. Haggard

Arkansas Bulletin of Water Research

The Arkansas Bulletin of Water Research (Bulletin) is a publication of the Arkansas Water Resources Center (AWRC). We publish the Bulletin to communicate the major findings of research funded by the Water Resources Research Act Section 104(b) in Arkansas. This research is relevant to Arkansas water stakeholders, and the Bulletin provides an easily searchable and aesthetically engaging access option.

This is the fourth publication of the Bulletin. This issue contains final reports from research projects that were funded by the 104(b) program in fiscal years 2019 and 2020. The articles in this issue can be cited as an AWRC publication. …

Phylogenetic Tests Of Models Of Viral Transmission, Robert M. Zink, Kenedi Holck, Grant L. Morgan

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The hunt for the immediate non-human host of SARS-CoV-2 has centered on bats of the genus Rhinolophus. We explored the phylogenetic predictions of two models of viral transmission, the SpilloverModel and the CirculationModel and suggest that the Spillover Model can be eliminated. The Circulation Model suggests that viral transmission occurs among susceptible hosts irrespective of their phylogenetic relationships. Susceptibility could be mediated by the ACE2 gene (important for viral docking) and we constructed a phylogeny of this gene for 159 mammal species, finding a phylogenetic pattern consistent with established mammalian relationships. The tree indicates that viral transfer occurs over …

Hurricanes Substantially Reduce The Nutrients In Tropical Forested Watersheds In Puerto Rico, Jiamei Sun, Xinyuan Wei, Yu Zhou, Catherine Chan, Jiaojiao Diao

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Because nutrients including nitrogen and phosphorus are generally limited in tropical forest ecosystems in Puerto Rico, a quantitative understanding of the nutrient budget at a watershed scale is required to assess vegetation growth and predict forest carbon dynamics. Hurricanes are the most frequent disturbance in Puerto Rico and play an important role in regulating lateral nitrogen and phosphorus exports from the forested watershed. In this study, we selected seven watersheds in Puerto Rico to examine the immediate and lagged effects of hurricanes on nitrogen and phosphorous exports. Our results suggest that immediate surges of heavy precipitation associated with hurricanes accelerate …

Monitoring Climate Impacts On Annual Forage Production Across U.S. Semi-Arid Grasslands, Markéta PodˇEbradská, Bruce K. Wylie, Deborah J. Bathke, Yared A. Bayissa, Devendra Dahal, Justin D. Derner, Philip A. Fay, Michael J. Hayes, Walter H. Schacht, Jerry D. Volesky, Pradeep Wagle, Brian D. Wardlow

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The ecosystem performance approach, used in a previously published case study focusing on the Nebraska Sandhills, proved to minimize impacts of non-climatic factors (e.g., overgrazing, fire, pests) on the remotely-sensed signal of seasonal vegetation greenness resulting in a better attribution of its changes to climate variability. The current study validates the applicability of this approach for assessment of seasonal and interannual climate impacts on forage production in the western United States semi-arid grasslands. Using a piecewise regression tree model, we developed the Expected Ecosystem Performance (EEP), a proxy for annual forage production that reflects climatic influences while minimizing impacts of …

A Unified Dataset Of Colocated Sewage Pollution, Periphyton, And Benthic Macroinvertebrate Community And Food Web Structure From Lake Baikal (Siberia), Michael F. Meyer, Ted Ozersky, Kara H. Woo, Kirill Shchapov, Aaron W. E. Galloway, Julie B. Schram, Daniel D. Snow, Maxim A. Timofeyev, Dmitry Yu. Karnaukhov, Matthew R. Brousil, Stephanie E. Hampton

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Sewage released from lakeside development can introduce nutrients and micropollutants that can restructure aquatic ecosystems. Lake Baikal, the world’s most ancient, biodiverse, and voluminous freshwater lake, has been experiencing localized sewage pollution from lakeside settlements. Nearby increasing filamentous algal abundance suggests benthic communities are responding to localized pollution. We surveyed 40-km of Lake Baikal’s southwestern shoreline from 19 to 23 August 2015 for sewage indicators, including pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and microplastics, with colocated periphyton, macroinvertebrate, stable isotope, and fatty acid samplings. The data are structured in a tidy format (a tabular arrangement familiar to limnologists) to encourage reuse. Unique …

Selection Of Landcover Types By Translocated Female Eastern Wild Turkeys In East Texas, Daniel J. Sullivan, Andrew R. Little, Micah L. Poteet, Michael J. Chamberlain

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Restoration of eastern wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) is among the greatest conservation achievements in North America. However, restoration efforts in east Texas have had limited success, resulting in a fragmented distribution of turkeys across the landscape. Restoration success is largely dependent on the ability of translocated individuals to quickly select habitat patches on the landscape. Information on habitat selection of translocated wild turkeys is important to identify high quality release locations that should reduce the probability of translocation failure. Our objective was to describe selection of landcover types by translocated female wild turkeys in east Texas. During …

Tracking Spatial Regimes In Animal Communities: Implications For Resilience-Based Management, C. P. Roberts, D. Uden, C. Allen, D. G. Angler, L. A. Powell, B. Allred, J. D. Maestas, R. Twidwell Jr.

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Fourteen Propositions For Resilience, Fourteen Years Later, Morgan Mathisonslee, Steven J. Lade, Conor Barnes, Karina Benessaiah, Erin T.H. Crockett, Andrea S. Downing, Julie A. Fowler, Rachel Belisle-Toler, Shubhechchha Sharma, Klara J. Winkler

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

In 2006, Walker et al. published an article titled, “A Handful of Heuristics and Some Propositions for Understanding Resilience in Social-ecological Systems.” The article was incorporated into the Ecology and Society special feature, Exploring Resilience in Social-Ecological Systems. Walker et al. identified five heuristics and posed 14 propositions for understanding resilience in social-ecological systems. At the time, the authors hoped the paper would promote experimentation, critique, and application of these ideas in resilience and social-ecological systems research. To determine the extent to which these propositions have achieved the authors’ hopes, we reviewed the scientific literature on socialecological systems since the …

Comparative Geospatial Approach For Agricultural Crops Identification In Interfluvial Plain - A Case Study Of Sahiwal District, Pakistan, Danish Raza, Hong Shu, Sami Ullah Khan, Muhsan Ehsan, Urooj Saeed, Hasnat Aslam, Rana Waqar Aslam, Muhammed Arshad

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Agricultural crop cover identification is a major issue and time-consuming effort to verify the crop type through surveys of the individual field or using prehistoric methods. To establish the scenario of crop identification, the stage of crop provides diverse spatial information about the variety of crops due to its spectral changes. The main aim of this study was to the identify the crop types and their behavior using remote sensing and geographical information system-based approach. Moreover, two main methods were applied to the Sentinel-2 satellite data in which one is random forest based supervised classification and another was Normalize Difference …

Rangelands In A Fragmented Grass‑Dominated Landscape Are Vulnerable To Tree Invasion From Roadsides, Katharine F. E. Hogan, Dillon T. Fogarty, Hugh Ellerman, Christopher Fill, Dina Morales, Baxter Seguin, Daniel R. Uden, Craig R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Roadsides can be vectors for tree invasion within rangelands by bisecting landscapes and facilitating propagule spread to interior habitat. Current invasive tree management in North America’s Great Plains focuses on reducing on-site (i.e., interior habitat) vulnerability through on-site prevention and eradication, but invasive tree management of surrounding areas known to serve as invasion vectors, such as roadsides and public rights-of-ways, is sporadic. We surveyed roadsides for invasive tree propagule sources in a central Great Plains grassland landscape to determine how much of the surrounding landscape is potentially vulnerable to roadside invasion, and by which species, and thereby provide insights into …

Feasibility Assessment On Use Of Proximal Geophysical Sensors To Support Precision Management, Sophia M. Becker, Trenton E. Franz, Olufemi P. Abimbola, Dean D. Steele, J. Paulo Flores, Xinhua Jia, Thomas F. Scherer, Daran Rudnick, Christopher M.U. Neale

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

A study was conducted at three sites in North Dakota to strengthen understanding

of the usefulness of different proximal geophysical data types in agricultural contexts of varying pedology. This study hypothesizes that electromagnetic induction (EMI), gamma-ray sensor (GRS), cosmic-ray neutron sensor (CRNS), and elevation data layers are all useful in multiple linear regression (MLR) predictions of soil properties that meet expert criteria at three agricultural sites. In addition to geophysical data collection with vehicle-mounted sensors, 15 soil samples were collected at each site and analyzed for nine soil properties of interest. A set of model training data was compiled by …

Remotely Detected Aboveground Plant Function Predicts Belowground Processes In Two Prairie Diversity Experiments, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Anna K. Schweiger, John Gamon, Hamed Gholizadeh, Kimberly Helzer, Cathleen Lapadat, Michael D. Madritch, Philip A. Townsend, Zhihui Wang, Sarah E. Hobbie

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Imaging spectroscopy provides the opportunity to incorporate leaf and canopy optical data into ecological studies, but the extent to which remote sensing of vegetation can enhance the study of belowground processes is not well understood. In terrestrial systems, aboveground and belowground vegetation quantity and quality are coupled, and both influence belowground microbial processes and nutrient cycling. We hypothesized that ecosystem productivity, and the chemical, structural and phylogenetic-functional composition of plant communities would be detectable with remote sensing and could be used to predict belowground plant and soil processes in two grassland biodiversity experiments: the BioDIV experiment at Cedar Creek Ecosystem …

Joint Effects Of Climate, Tree Size, And Year On Annual Tree Growth Derived From Tree-Ring Records Of Ten Globally Distributed Forests, Kristina J. Anderson-Teixeira, Valentine Herrmann, Christine R. Rollinson, Bianca Gonzalez, Erika B. Gonzalez-Akre, Neil Pederson, M. Ross Alexander, Craig D. Allen, Raquel Alfaro-Sánchez, Tala Awada, Jennifer L. Baltzer, Patrick J. Baker, Joseph D. Birch, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, Paolo Cherubini, Stuart J. Davies, Cameron Dow, Ryan Helcoski, Jakub Kašpar, James A. Lutz, Ellis Q. Margolis, Justin T. Maxwell, Sean M. Mcmahon, Camille Piponiot, Sabrina E. Russo, Pavel Šamonil, Anastasia E. Sniderhan, Alan J. Tepley, Ivana Vašíčková, Mart Vlam, Pieter A. Zuidema

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Tree rings provide an invaluable long-term record for understanding how climate and other drivers shape tree growth and forest productivity. However, conventional tree-ring analysis methods were not designed to simultaneously test effects of climate, tree size, and other drivers on individual growth. This has limited the potential to test ecologically relevant hypotheses on tree growth sensitivity to environmental drivers and their interactions with tree size. Here, we develop and apply a new method to simultaneously model nonlinear effects of primary climate drivers, reconstructed tree diameter at breast height (DBH), and calendar year in generalized least squares models that account for …

Cubesat Constellations Provide Enhanced Crop Phenology And Digital Agricultural Insights Using Daily Leaf Area Index Retrievals, Kasper Johansen, Matteo G. Ziliani, Rasmus Houborg, Trenton E. Franz, Matthew F. Mccabe

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Satellite remote sensing has great potential to deliver on the promise of a data-driven agricultural revolution, with emerging space-based platforms providing spatiotemporal insights into precisionlevel attributes such as crop water use, vegetation health and condition and crop response to management practices. Using a harmonized collection of high-resolution Planet CubeSat, Sentinel-2, Landsat-8 and additional coarser resolution imagery from MODIS and VIIRS, we exploit a multisatellite data fusion and machine learning approach to deliver a radiometrically calibrated and gap-filled time-series of daily leaf area index (LAI) at an unprecedented spatial resolution of 3 m. The insights available from such high-resolution CubeSat-based LAI …

Factors Affecting The Catch And Harvest Rates Of Paddlefish Downstream Of Gavins Point Dam, South Dakota, 2000–2020, William J. Radigan, Seth Fopma, Jason Sorensen, Christopher M. Longhenry

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Paddlefish, Polyodon spathula (Walbaum), provide an important snagging and bowfishing fishery below Gavins Point Dam in South Dakota. During 2009–2020, snagging catch rates of paddlefish decreased below Gavins Point Dam to presumed “normal” lower pre-2004 levels, while bowfishing catch (harvest) rates significantly increased during 2000–2020. Because Paddlefish are highly migratory, both local (i.e., monthly gauge height, precipitation, and air temperature near Gavins Point Dam) and remote (difference in Mississippi and Missouri River discharge near their confluence) environmental conditions were used to explain variation in snagging catch rates and bowfishing harvest rates. Snagging catch rates were related to October gauge height, …

A New Adaptive Cycle For Ecology And Society, Craig Allen, Patricia Balvanera, Katrina Brown

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Rare Avian Species For Spatial Resilience Of Shifting Biomes In The Great Plains Of North America, D. Angeler, C. Roberts, D. Twidwell Jr., C. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Adaptive Capacity Beyond The Household: A Systematic Review Of Empirical Social-Ecological Research, S. Vallury, S. Banerjee, D. Twidwell Jr., D. Uden, C. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Phylogenetic Risk Assessment Is Robust For Forecasting The Impact Of Non-Native Insects On North American Trees, D. Uden, A. Mech, N. Havill, A. Schulz, M. Ayres, D. Herms, A. Hoover, K. Gandhi, R. Hufbauer, A. Liebhold, T. Marsico, K. Raffa, K. Thomas, P. Tobin, C. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Incipient Woody Plant Encroachment Near Native Tree Plantings Signals Heightened Vulnerability For An Intact Grassland Region, D. Fogarty, C. Allen, D. Twidwell Jr.

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Social Vulnerability, Social-Ecological Resilience And Coastal Governance, J. Jozaei, W. Chuang, C. Allen, A. Garmestani

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Resilience Of Working Agricultural Landscapes, S. Sundstrom, C. Allen, J. Hodbod

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Scales Of Coercion: Resilience, Regimes, And Panarchy, D. Angeler, C. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Accuracies Of Field Co2-H2o Data From Open-Path Eddy-Covariance Flux Systems: Assessment Based On Atmospheric Physics And Biological Environment, X. Zhou, T. Gao, N. Zheng, B. Yang, Y. Li, F. Yu, T. Awada, J. Zhu

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.