Other Environmental Sciences Commons^™

Optimal Bait Density For Delivery Of Acute Toxicants To Vertebrate Pests, Kim M. Pepin, Nathan P. Snow, Kurt C. Vercauteren

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Oral baiting is a fundamental method for delivering toxicants to pest species. Planning baiting strategies is challenging because bait-consumption rates depend on dynamic processes including space use and demographics of the target species. To determine cost-effective strategies for optimizing baiting, we developed a spatially explicit model of population dynamics using field-based measures of wild-pig (Sus scrofa) space use, bait consumption, and mortality probabilities. The most cost-effective baiting strategy depended strongly on the population reduction objective and initial density. A wide range of baiting strategies were cost-effective when the objective was 80% population reduction. In contrast, only a narrow range of …

Brodifacoum Residues In Fish Three Years After An Island-Wide Rat Eradication Attempt In The Tropical Pacific, Shane R. Siers, Aaron B. Shiels, Steven F. Volker, Kristen Rex, William C. Pitt

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Invasive rats are known to threaten natural resources and human health and safety. Island-wide rat eradication attempts have been increasing in number and scale during the past several decades, as has the frequency of eradication success. The most common method to remove all rats from an island is to broadcast anticoagulant rodenticide bait into every rat’s home range on the island. Broadcast of toxicants can put humans and other nontarget species in marine and terrestrial environments at risk of exposure. The persistence of anticoagulant residues is somewhat unknown, particularly in marine environments. Three years after ~ 18,000 kg of 25 …

Statistical Analysis Of Nutrient Loads From The Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin (Marb) To The Gulf Of Mexico, Phyllis Okwan, Yi Zhen, Huan Feng, Shinjae Yoo, Murty S. Kambhampati, Abreione Walker, Shayne Boykin, Joe Omojola, Noel Blackburn

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This study investigated the annual and seasonal variations in nutrient loads (NO₂⁻ + NO₃⁻ and orthophosphate) delivered to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi-Atchafalaya River Basin (MARB) and examined the water quality variations. The results indicate that (1) annually, the mean NO₂⁻ + NO₃⁻ and orthophosphate loads showed a steady increase during 1996–1999, a persistent level during 2000–2007, and a moderate increase during 2008–2016; (2) seasonally, NO₂⁻ + NO₃⁻ and orthophosphate in MARB in spring and summer were higher than those in autumn and winter. Analysis of …

The American Association Of State Climatologists' Recommendations And Best Practices For Mesonets, Christopher Fiebrich, Kevin R. Benson, Nathan L. Edwards, Stuart A. Foster, Rezaul Mahmood, Christopher A. Redmond, Megan Schargorodski, Jeffrey A. Andresen, Xiaomao Lin

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Over recent decades, mesoscale networks of automated, in-situ stations for weather monitoring have been developed across diverse regional settings. These networks, commonly referred to as mesonets, have originated independently, are funded at various levels and through various mechanisms, and serve a variety of constituencies and needs. While sharing commonalities, each network has unique strategic, design, and operational elements. As sensor and communications technologies evolve and the demand for environmental data to support decision making grows, mesonets are expected to play an increasing role in support of weather and climate services. Currently, there exists inconsistent functional practices and metadata reporting among …

A Hydrometeorological Assessment Of The Historic 2019 Flood Of Nebraska And Iowa, Paul Flanagan, Rezaul Mahmood, Natalie Umphlett, Erin Hacker, Chittaranjan Hacker, William Sorensen, Crystal J. Stiles, David Pearson, Paul Fajman

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

During early 2019, a series of events set the stage for devastating floods in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. When the floodwaters hit, dams and levees failed, leaving towns cut off, while destroying roads, bridges, and rail lines, further exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. Lives were lost and cattle were stranded. Preliminary estimates indicate that the cost of the flooding has topped $3 billion, with this number expected to rise. After a warm and wet start to the winter, eastern Nebraska and western Iowa endured an extended pattern characterized by extremely low temperatures and record-breaking snowfall. By early March, rivers were …

Primary Atmospheric Drivers Of Dry And Wet Periods Over The U.S. Great Plains Within Cmip5 Models, Paul Flanagan, Jeffrey B. Basara, Elinor Martin, Rezaul Mahmood, Jason C. Furtado

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Precipitation variability is critical to the economic and ecosystem health of the United States Great Plains (GP). Whether from wet or dry extremes, changes in annual precipitation can lead to impacts on the health of the ecosystem and overall crop yield in a given year. To this end, wet and dry extremes have been investigated using the ERA-20C and CMIP5 dataset on an annual timescale to determine the ability of climate-scale simulations to resolve atmospheric drivers of precipitation variability. Results from the ERA-20C analysis show that specific atmospheric circulation anomalies can be detected which relate eddy geopotential height (EGH) anomalies …

Observational And Modeling Analysis Of Land–Atmopshere Coupling Over Adjacent Irrigated And Rainfed Cropland During The Grainex Field Campaign, Eric Rappin, Rezaul Mahmood, Udaysankar S. Nair, Roger A. Pielke Sr., William O.J. Brown, S. P. Oncley, Josh Wurman, Karen Kosiba, Aaron Kaulfus, Chris Phillips, Joseph A. Santanello, E. J. Kim, Patricia Lawston-Parker

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The Great Plains Irrigation Experiment (GRAINEX) was conducted in the spring and summer of 2018 to investigate Land-Atmosphere (L-A) coupling just prior to and through the growing season across adjacent, but distinctly unique, soil moisture regimes (contrasting irrigated and rainfed fields). GRAINEX was uniquely designed for the development and analysis of an extensive observational dataset for comprehensive process studies of L-A coupling, by focusing on irrigated and rainfed croplands in a ~100 x 100 km domain in southeastern Nebraska. Observation platforms included multiple NCAR EOL Integrated Surface Flux Systems and Integrated Sounding Systems, NCAR CSWR Doppler Radar on Wheels, 1200 …

Modeling Irrigation Impacts On Atmospheric Conditions During The 2012 Historic Drought, Kierstin Blomberg, Paul Flanagan, Rezaul Mahmood, Clinton Rowe, Michael Hayes

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Various human activities have been affecting and modifying our environment and atmosphere for thousands of years in a number of ways. One of the more recent forcings identified to have major impacts is land use land cover change (LULCC). A variety of past studies using both modeled and observed data have agreed that since LULCC has a significant impact on the climate, it is important to understand these effects accurately at appropriate scales. It is found that irrigation is one of the more common types of LULCC in the Great Plains and has impacted weather and climate in this region. …

The Impacts Of Irrigated And Rainfed Agriculture On Near-Surface Atmosphere: Preliminary Results From Grainex, Emilee Lachenmeier, Rezaul Mahmood, Trenton E. Franz, Eric Rappin, Udaysankar S. Nair, Roger A. Pielke Sr., Aaron Kaulfus, Chris Phillips, William O. Brown, Steven P. Oncley

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Land use/land cover change (LULCC) has long been viewed as a contributing source of climate change. Modification of natural prairie grasslands to irrigated and rainfed agriculture has proven to have significant impacts on regional weather and climate variables including temperature, precipitation and energy fluxes. These impacts can be visible in various parts of the Great Plains. In this presentation, we have analyzed energy flux and soil moisture data collected during the Great Plains Irrigation Experiment (GRAINEX) in the 2018 growing season. The GRAINEX field campaign includes 12 in-situ integrated surface flux systems; three mobile radar units that also conducted radiosonde …

Impacts Of Future Land-Use Land Cover On Boundary Layer Development In The North-Central United States, Paul Flanagan, Rezaul Mahmood, Terry Sohl, Mark Svoboda, Brian Wardlow, Michael Hayes

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Land-use Land-cover change (LULCC) has become a particularly important topic of study over the central United States, due to the extensive development of the natural prairie into agricultural land, especially in the northern sections of the Great Plains. Owing to this, shifts in the natural climate of the northern Great Plains have been seen, primarily a cooling of daytime temperatures, increases in nighttime minimum temperatures and increases in planetary boundary layer (PBL) moisture, all of which can be attributed to the increases of agricultural practices in the region. Thus, it is necessary to understand how further changes to the surface …

Local Adaptation Constrains Drought Tolerance In A Tropical Foundation Tree, Kasey E. Barton, Casey Jones, Kyle F. Edwards, Aaron B. Shiels, Tiffany Knight

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

1. Plant species with broad climatic ranges might be more vulnerable to climate change than previously appreciated due to intraspecific variation in climatic stress tolerance. In tropical forests, drought is increasingly frequent and severe, causing widespread declines and altering community dynamics. Yet, little is known about whether foundation tropical trees vary in drought tolerance throughout their distributions, and how intraspecific variation in drought tolerance might contribute to their vulnerability to climate changE.
2. We tested for local adaptation in seedling emergence and establishment with a full-factorial reciprocal transplant experiment including 27 populations and 109,350 seeds along a 3,500 mm precipitation gradient for …

Anthropogenic Hydrometeorological Changes At A Regional Scale: Observed Irrigation-Precipitation Feedback (1979-2015) In Nebraska, Usa, Jozsef Szilagyi, Trenton Franz

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Long-term tendencies in annual, seasonal, and monthly (March) precipitation, evapotranspiration, and air- and dew-point temperature values were correlated with county-level changes in irrigated area across Nebraska over the 1979–2015 period. A statistically significant linear relationship (slope of − 1.65 ± 0.33 mm/decade per % decadal change in irrigated area, with a correlation coefficient of − 0.47) was found between the trends in annual precipitation and irrigated land area. Precipitation dropped by 1 mm annually if the level in irrigation expansion reached about 8% per decade, while the rest of the state enjoyed about a half-millimeter overall increase in annual precipitation …

Niche Modeling Reveals Life History Shifts In Birds At La Brea Over The Last Twenty Millennia, Robert M. Zink, Sebastian Botero-Canola, Helen Martinez, Katelyn M. Herzberg

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

A species presence at a particular site can change over time, resulting in temporally dynamic species pools. Ecological niche models provide estimates of species presence at different time intervals. The avifauna of La Brea includes approximately 120 species dating to approximately 15,000 years ago. Niche models predicted presence at the Last Glacial Maximum for over 90% of 89 landbird species. This confirms that niche modeling produces sensible range estimates at the Last Glacial Maximum. For 97 currently local species that are as yet undocumented at La Brea over 90% were predicted to occur; absence is due to insufficient study, lack …

Sociohydrologic Systems Thinking: An Analysis Of Undergraduate Students’ Operationalization And Modeling Of Coupled Human-Water Systems, Diane Lally, Cory T. Forbes

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

One of the keys to science and environmental literacy is systems thinking. Learning how to think about the interactions between systems, the far-reaching effects of a system, and the dynamic nature of systems are all critical outcomes of science learning. However, students need support to develop systems thinking skills in undergraduate geoscience classrooms. While systems thinking-focused instruction has the potential to benefit student learning, gaps exist in our understanding of students’ use of systems thinking to operationalize and model SHS, as well as their metacognitive evaluation of systems thinking. To address this need, we have designed, implemented, refined, and studied …

An Unseen Synchrony Or Recurrent Resource Pulse Opportunity? Linking Fisheries With Aeroecology, Henry H. Hansen, Mark Pegg, Matthew Van Den Broeke, Doug Watkinson, Eva C. Enders

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Understanding insect and fish interactions from a spatial and temporal perspec-tive can have implications on large-scale phenology in freshwater systems, yet current information is limited. We employed a novel approach of combining information from acoustic telemetry for six freshwater fish species and weather radar to assess the phenology of mayfly emergence and foraging patterns of freshwater fish. We hypothesized that freshwater fish conduct synchronous movements with annual mayfly hatches as a pulse resource opportunity. Gener-alized additive models were developed to assess movement distance as a func-tion of species and time; before, during, and after annual mayfly hatch events. A cross-section …

Ready For Drought? A Community Resilience Role-Playing Game, Mary Noel, Michael Hayes, Deborah J. Bathke, Tonya Haigh, Michael J. Hayes

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Drought is an abstract and complex phenomenon that can be difficult for many people to comprehend. Proactive planning to improve response during drought events is necessary but complicated because it involves stakeholders and decision-makers with competing interests. A category of games, called serious games, have proven to be helpful when learning about abstract concepts, and for improving communication and conflict resolution with respect to water-related issues. In this study, we present a new in-person role-playing game that serves as a drought educational tool in both classroom and professional settings. The message of the game emphasizes the importance of communication and …

The Applicability Of The Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensor To Simultaneously Monitor Soil Water Content And Biomass In An Acacia Mearnsii Forest, Thigesh Vather, Colin S. Everson, Trenton E. Franz

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Soil water content is an important hydrological parameter, which is difficult to measure at a field scale due to its spatial and temporal heterogeneity. The Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensor (CRNS) is a novel and innovative approach to estimate area-averaged soil water content at an intermediate scale, which has been implemented across the globe. The CRNS is moderated by all hydrogen sources within its measurement footprint. In order to isolate the soil water content signal from the neutron intensity, the other sources of hydrogen need to be accounted for. The CRNS’s applications are not only limited to soil water content estimation, …

Drivers Of Long-Term Invertebrate Community Stability In Changing Swedish Lakes, Hannah B. Fried-Petersen, Yimen G. Araya-Ajoy, Martyn N. Futter, David G. Angeler

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Research on ecosystem stability has had a strong focus on local systems. However, environmental change often occurs slowly at broad spatial scales, which requires regional-level assessments of long-term stability. In this study, we assess the stability of macroinvertebrate communities across 105 lakes in the Swedish “lakescape.” Using a hierarchical mixed-model approach, we first evaluate the environmental pressures affecting invertebrate communities in two ecoregions (north, south) using a 23 year time series (1995–2017) and then examine how a set of environmental and physical variables affect the stability of these communities. Results show that lake latitude, size, total phosphorus and alkalinity affect …

Developing A Remote Sensing-Based Combined Drought Indicator Approach For Agricultural Drought Monitoring Over Marathwada, India, Sneha S. Kulkarni, Brian D. Wardlow, Yared Bayissa, Tsegaye Tadesse, Mark D. Svoboda, Shirishkumar S. Gedam

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The increasing drought severities and consequent devastating impacts on society over the Indian semi-arid regions demand better drought monitoring and early warning systems. Operational agricultural drought assessment methods in India mainly depend on a single input parameter such as precipitation and are based on a sparsely located in-situ measurements, which limits monitoring precision. The overarching objective of this study is to address this need through the development of an integrated agro-climatological drought monitoring approach, i.e., combined drought indicator for Marathwada (CDI_M), situated in the central part of Maharashtra, India. In this study, satellite and model-based input parameters (i.e., standardized precipitation …

Editorial: Operationalizing The Concepts Of Resilience And Resistance For Managing Ecosystems And Species At Risk, Jeanne C. Chambers, Craig R. Allen, Samuel A. Cushman

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Ecological resilience is essential for maintaining ecosystem services in an era of rapid global change, but successful attempts to operationalize it for managing ecosystems at risk have been limited. Clear formulation and application of ecological resilience concepts can guide ecosystem management so that it enhances the capacity of ecosystems to resist and recover from disturbances and provides adaptive space for periods of ecological reorganization. As originally defined, ecological resilience measures the amount of perturbation required to change an ecosystem from one set of processes and structures to a different set of processes and structures, or the amount of disturbance that …

Geographic Variation In The Prnp Gene And Its Promoter, And Their Relationship To Chronic Wasting Disease In North American Deer, Robert M. Zink, Nadje Najar, Hernan Vazquez-Miranda, Brittaney Buchanan, John Loy, Bruce W. Brodersen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

PRNP genotypes, number of octarepeats (PHGGGWGQ) and indels in the PRNP promoter can influence the progression of prion disease in mammals. We found no relationship between presence of promoter indels in white-tailed deer and mule deer from Nebraska and CWD presence. White-tailed deer with the 95 H allele and G20D mule deer were more likely to be CWD- free, but unlike other studies white-tailed deer with the 96S allele(s) were equally likely to be CWD-free. We provide the first information on PRNP genotypes and indels in the promoter for Key deer (all homozygous 96SS) and Coues deer (lacked 95 H …

Cultivating Water Literacy In Stem Education: Undergraduates’ Socio-Scientific Reasoning About Socio-Hydrologic Issues, David C. Owens, Destini N. Petitt, Diane Lally, Cory Forbes

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Water-literate individuals effectively reason about the hydrologic concepts that underlie socio-hydrological issues (SHI), but functional water literacy also requires concomitant reasoning about the societal, non-hydrological aspects of SHI. Therefore, this study explored the potential for the socio-scientific reasoning construct (SSR), which includes consideration of the complexity of issues, the perspectives of stakeholders involved, the need for ongoing inquiry, skepticism about information sources, and the affordances of science toward the resolution of the issue, to aid undergraduates in acquiring such reasoning skills. In this fixed, embedded mixed methods study (N = 91), we found SHI to hold great potential as meaningful …

Leaf Reflectance Spectra Capture The Evolutionary History Of Seed Plants, Jose Eduardo Meireles, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Philip A. Townsend, Susan Ustin, John A. Gamon, Anna K. Schweiger, Michael E. Schaepman, Gregory P. Asner, Roberta E. Martin, Aditya Singh, Franziska Schrodt, Adam Chlus, Brian C. O’Meara

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

• Leaf reflection spectra have been increasingly used to assess plant diversity. However, we do not yet understand how spectra vary across the tree of life or how the evolution of leaf traits affects the differentiation of spectra among species and lineages.
• Here we describe a framework that integrates spectra with phylogenies and apply it to aglobal dataset of over 16 000 leaf-level spectra (400–2400 nm) for 544 seed plant species. We test for phylogenetic signal in spectra, evaluate their ability to classify lineages, and characterize their evolutionary dynamics.
• We show that phylogenetic signal is present in leaf spectra but that …

Chronology Of Advance And Recession Dynamics Of The Southern Green Bay Lobe Of The Laurentide Ice Sheet, South-Central Wisconsin, Usa, Eric C. Carson, John W. Attig, J. Elmo Rawling Iii, Paul R. Hanson, Stefanie E. Dodge

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

We used a combination of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) age estimates, and stratigraphic data from cores collected along the southern margin of the Green Bay Lobe (GBL) of the Laurentide Ice Sheet to provide new information on the timing and dynamics of the end of advance of the GBL and the dynamics of the ice sheet while very near its maximum position. Coring at multiple sites along the margin of the GBL indicate that ice had reached a stable position near its maximum extent by 24.7 ka; that ice advanced several kilometers to the …

Modeling Gross Primary Production Of Midwestern Us Maize And Soybean Croplands With Satellite And Gridded Weather Data, Gunnar Malek-Madani, Elizabeth A. Walter-Shea, Anthony Nguy-Robertson, Andrew E. Suyker, Timothy J. Arkebauer

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Gross primary production (GPP) is a useful metric for determining trends in the terrestrial

carbon cycle. To estimate daily GPP, the cloud-adjusted light use efficiency model (LUEc) was developed by adapting a light use efficiency (LUE, ε) model to include in situ meteorological data and biophysical parameters. The LUEc uses four scalars to quantify the impacts of temperature, water stress, and phenology on ε. This study continues the original investigation in using the LUEc, originally limited to three AmeriFlux sites (US-Ne1, US-Ne2, and US-Ne3) by applying gridded meteorological data sets and remotely sensed green leaf area index (gLAI) to estimate …

Literature Review: Global Neonicotinoid Insecticide Occurrence In Aquatic Environments, Josephus F. Borsuah, Tiffany L. Messer, Daniel D. Snow, Steve D. Comfort, Aaron R. Mittelstet

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Neonicotinoids have been the most commonly used insecticides since the early 1990s. Despite their efficacy in improving crop protection and management, these agrochemicals have gained recent attention for their negative impacts on non-target species such as honeybees and aquatic invertebrates. In recent years, neonicotinoids have been detected in rivers and streams across the world. Determining and predicting the exposure potential of neonicotinoids in surface water requires a thorough understanding of their fate and transport mechanisms. Therefore, our objective was to provide a comprehensive review of neonicotinoids with a focus on their fate and transport mechanisms to and within surface waters …

Uncovering Unique Plasticity In Life History Of An Endangered Centenarian Fish, Martin J. Hamel, Jonathan J. Spurgeon, Kirk D. Steffensen, Mark A. Pegg

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

the ability to adapt to changing environments is fundamental for species persistence. Both plasticity and genetic selection are potential drivers that allow for traits to be advantageous, thus leading to increases in survival or fitness. Identifying phenotypic plasticity in life history traits of long-lived organisms can be difficult owing to high survival, long generation times, and few studies at sufficient spatial and temporal scales to elicit a plastic response within a population. to begin to understand phenotypic plasticity of a long-lived freshwater fish in response to environmental conditions, we used a long-term data set consisting of over 1,200 mark-recapture events …

Catfish Population Characteristics Among River Segments With Altered Fluvial Geomorphic Conditions In The Missouri River, Nebraska, Usa, Martin J. Hamel, Jonathan J. Spurgeon, Mark A. Pegg

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Alteration of river systems around the world has created novel environments that have been fragmented, homogenized, or transformed from their natural state, thus posing challenges for understanding how fish populations function. The Missouri River has undergone significant alteration through reservoir construction and channelization. Channel Catfish Ictalurus punctatus and Flathead Catfish Pylodictis olivaris both reside in various fragmented sections of the river, and there is a substantial gap in knowledge of how catfishes synchronously function in this modified system. From 2009 to 2018, we assessed catfishes with baited hoop nets and low-frequency electrofishing among four different areas: upper and lower unchannelized …

Panarchy: Opportunities And Challenges For Ecosystem Management, Ahjond Garmestani, Dirac Twidwell, David G. Angeler, Shana Sundstrom, Chris Barichievy, Brian C. Chaffin, Tarsha Eason, Nick Graham, Dean Granholm, Lance Gunderson, Melinda Knutson, Kirsty L. Nash, R John Nelson, Magnus Nystrom, Trisha L. Spanbauer, Craig A. Stow, Craig R. Allen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Addressing unexpected events and uncertainty represents one of the grand challenges of the Anthropocene, yet ecosystem management is constrained by existing policy and laws that were not formulated to deal with today’s accelerating rates of environmental change. In many cases, managing for simple regulatory standards has resulted in adverse outcomes, necessitating innovative approaches for dealing with complex social–ecological problems. We highlight a project in the US Great Plains where panarchy – a conceptual framework that emerged from resilience – was implemented at project onset to address the continued inability to halt large-scale transition from grass-to-tree dominance in central North America. …

Camera Traps Detect Prey Of Northern Carnivores, David A. Keiter, Brent R. Patterson, Carol Dersch, Bob Elliott, Arthur R. Rodgers, John F. Benson

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Use of camera traps for non-invasive data collection is increasingly common in wildlife studies. This technique presents a valuable, but generally unexploited, opportunity to learn about carnivore diet through direct observations of predators with prey. To highlight this potential, we present a collection of photographic observations from Michipicoten Island, ON, Canada, that improve our knowledge of the diets of northern carnivores. These include the first documentation of Vulpes vulpes (Red Fox) consumption of a Colaptes auratus (Northern Flicker) and the first photographic evidence of wintertime consumption of a Lithobates sp. (frog) by a Mustela erminea (Short-tailed Weasel). We discuss the …