Environmental Studies Commons^™

Contents, Discovery Editors

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Instructions For Authors, Discovery Editors

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Peer Irrigators On The Choice And Intensity Of Use Of Irrigation Techniques, Noah Hayward, Kent Kovacs

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

The use and the proportion of farmland that uses prominent irrigation practices in Arkansas were evaluated. A bivariate sample selection model evaluated the determinants of the share of irrigated land in a farm that uses each practice. In addition, the relationship between the irrigation practices a peer uses and the use and intensity of five common irrigation practices was evaluated. If a peer of an Arkansas farmer used center pivot irrigation, this increased the probability that the farmer used center pivot irrigation by 66 percentage points. A peer that used pivot irrigation decreased the proportion of irrigated land that used …

Exploring How Maternal Phosphorus Status Affects Calf Growth And Performance, Elizabeth Lafferty, Beth Kegley, Brittni Littlejohn, Jeremy Powell

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Phosphorus is an important component of bodily functions and is critical for adequate growth and development. This experiment evaluated the effect of maternal phosphorus intake on the growth and health of the calves. Treatments were 1) a free-choice mineral containing no supplemental P or 2) a free-choice mineral with 4% supplemental phosphorus. Primiparous, or pregnant for the first time, crossbred Angus beef cows (n = 36) were stratified by body weight and pregnancy status (bred by artificial insemination or natural service) then assigned to pasture groups (4 groups, 2/treatment, 9 heifers/group). These bred heifers had been receiving these same dietary …

Letter From The Dean, Deacue Fields

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Discovery: The Student Journal Of Dale Bumpers College Of Agricultural, Food And Life Sciences - Volume 22 2021, Several Authors

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Featured Faculty Mentor And Student Explore The Dynamics Of This Research Relationship, Alejandro Rojas, Evan Buckner

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Faculty Editor, Beth Kegley

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

No abstract provided.

Long-Term Changes In Soil Surface Properties As Affected By Management Practices In A Wheat-Soybean, Double-Crop System, Machaela L. Morrison, Kristofor R. Brye

Discovery, The Student Journal of Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences

Long-term agricultural sustainability and productivity are controlled by the integrative effects of different management practices on the soil. Many Arkansas producers use the double-crop system to grow soybeans [Glycine max (L.) Merr] and wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of agricultural management practices, including residue level, tillage, irrigation, burning, and soil depth on the change in various soil properties from 2010 to 2020 in a long-term, wheat-soybean, double-crop system on a silt-loam soil (Glossaquic Fraglossudalfs) in eastern Arkansas. Soil nutrients tended to accumulate over time, the most in the top 10 cm, …

Resilience: Insights From The U.S. Longterm Ecological Research Network, Jane Cowles, Laura Templeton, John J. Battles, Peter J. Edmunds, Robert C. Carpenter, Stephen R. Carpenter, Michael Paul Nelson, Natalie L. Cleavitt, Timothy J. Fahey, Peter M. Groffman, Joe H. Sullivan, Maile C. Neel, Gretchen J. A. Hansen, Sarah Hobbie, Sally J. Holbrook, Clare E. Kazanski, Eric W. Seabloom, Russell J. Schmitt, Emily H. Stanley, Alan J. Tepley, Natalie S. Van Doorn, Jake M. Vander Zanden

Advanced Science Research Center

Ecosystems are changing in complex and unpredictable ways, and analysis of these changes is facilitated by coordinated, long-term research. Meeting diverse societal needs requires an understanding of what populations and communities will be dominant in 20, 50, and 100 yr. This paper is a product of a synthesis effort of the U.S. National Science Foundation funded Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network addressing the LTER core research area of populations and communities. This analysis revealed that each LTER site had at least one compelling story about what their site would look like in 50 or 100 yr. As the stories were …

Soil Response Of Helicopter Liming In The Monongahela National Forest, Jarrett Douglas Fowler

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Soils in the Monongahela National Forest (MNF) are acidic due to sandstone parent material, acid deposition, uptake of base cations by vegetation, and release of organic acids by organic matter (OM) decomposition. Increases in soil acidity have caused declines in forest health and changed species composition and nutrient status. Liming can neutralize soil acidity, but no large-scale liming projects have been done on acid forest soils in the USA. In anticipation of acquiring funding for a proposed liming project in the MNF, in 2007 and 2009 10 sites were selected to sample and analyze soils before lime was applied. In …

A Global Ecological Classification Of Coastal Segment Units To Complement Marine Biodiversity Observation Network Assessments, Roger Sayre, Kevin Butler, Keith Van Graafeiland, Sean Breyer, Dawn Wright, Charlie Frye, Deniz Karagulle, Madeline Martin, Jill Cress, Tom Allen, Rebecca J. Allee, Rost Parsons, Bjorn Nyberg, Mark J. Costello, Peter Harris, Frank E. Muller-Karger

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

A new data layer provides Coastal and Marine Ecological Classification Standard (CMECS) labels for global coastal segments at 1 km or shorter resolution. These characteristics are summarized for six US Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) sites and one MBON Pole to Pole of the Americas site in Argentina. The global coastlines CMECS classifications were produced from a partitioning of a 30 m Landsat-derived shoreline vector that was segmented into 4 million 1 km or shorter segments. Each segment was attributed with values from 10 variables that represent the ecological settings in which the coastline occurs, including properties of the adjacent …

Response Of Coastal Ichthyoplankton Assemblages Off Northern California To Seasonal Oceanographic And Climate Variability, Blair M. Winnacott

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This study analyzed samples collected along the Trinidad Head Line (41°N) to characterize variability in the ichthyoplankton assemblage in coastal waters off northern California from late 2007 through 2019, a period during which a major marine heatwave (MHW; late 2014-16) strongly perturbed the ecosystem. I augmented visual identification with genetic techniques to resolve the species composition of visually cryptic larval rockfishes (Sebastes spp.). While taxonomic composition off northern California was largely similar to studies off Oregon and Washington, and cross-shelf structure and seasonal patterns in species’ abundance were generally consistent with the distribution and phenology of parental stocks, interannual …

Decolonizing Food Systems Research – The Case Of Household Agricultural Food Access In Bikotiba, Togo, Katryna Maria Kibler

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Indigenous West African farmers are among the most climate change threatened globally. Food insecurity is prevalent in West Africa because ecological, social, political, and economic instabilities, and globalization worsen climate pressures. In this study, I collaborated with the community of Bikotiba (bih-CO-ti-buh), Togo, to understand their household agricultural food access, one aspect of resilience to food insecurity. I adopted a feminist approach of reflexivity, radical vulnerability, and radical empathy, combined with decolonizing principles, to argue that there could be an ethical way for well-trained Western researchers to engage Indigenous communities, if negotiated carefully. Together, Indigenous Research Assistants and I developed …

Collaborative Conservation And Backcountry Weed Control: A Case Study Of The Great Burn Proposed Wilderness, Christopher James Prange

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Noxious weeds have become a management priority on public lands in the United States. Managing invasive weed populations in natural areas with complex ecosystems presents issues that need a systems-wide approach over long temporal and spatial scales. This broad-scale problem increasingly demands collaborative efforts. While collaborative conservation has become a tool in natural resource management during the 21^st century, it is less commonly applied in weed control in backcountry wilderness areas. Programs that have been initiated are understudied. Accordingly, this research was conducted through semi-structured interviews to gather perspectives of weed professionals involved in a collaborative backcountry weed program …

Using Principles Of Seascape Ecology To Consider Relationships Between Spatial Patterning And Mobile Marine Vertebrates In A Seagrass-Mangrove Ecotone In Bimini, Bahamas, Sarah Rebecca Taylor Driscoll

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Seagrass meadows and mangrove forests are ecologically and economically important systems that are increasingly threatened by anthropogenic activity. This study used a non-invasive method, baited remote underwater video systems (BRUVS), to observe mobile marine vertebrates in the seagrass-mangrove ecotone in North and South Bimini, the only area where mangroves remain in the northwestern Bahamas. An extensive area of mangroves and seagrass was removed for coastal development in North Bimini, where a marine protected area, the North Bimini Marine Reserve (NBMR), has been under consideration for decades. This research applied principles of seascape ecology to assess species abundance, diversity, and richness …

A Crisis Of Kelp, Rachel L. Sherman

Capstones

Along with insects and lab-grown meat, for years seaweed has been lauded as a sustainable “food of the future” by the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization. As the world increasingly turns to alternative foods in pursuit of a healthier Earth, seaweed has all the makings of an ecological savior. It’s plentiful — seaweeds and ocean algae make up roughly nine tenths of all the plant life on Earth — it’s cheap to harvest and get to market, packed with nutrition, and keeps oceans clean, absorbing more carbon dioxide and releasing more oxygen than the world’s rainforests.

But outside of Japanese …

Species Distribution Modeling For Arid Adapted Habitat Specialists In Zion National Park, Sam Driver, Chris M. Schalk, Daniel Unger, David Kulhavy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Arizona toad (Anaxyrus microscaphus) and Jones’ waxy dogbane (Cycladenia humilis var. jonesii) are habitat specialists with historical ranges in the desert southwest and specifically, Zion National Park (ZION). The machine learning method, MaxEnt, constructed species distribution models (SDMs) in ZION for the two study species at 30 m and 900 m spatial resolutions using climate, topographic, and remotely sensed data. Additionally, 900 m forecasting models were constructed to observe the shifts in suitable habitat for the years 2050 and 2070, based off two representative concentration pathway scenarios. Results indicate promising predictive power for both high …

The Clean Air Act: How It Can Be Localized To Promote Both Environmental And Social Justice, Tate Kirk

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

Legislators attempt to achieve intended goals by enacting laws that provide for regulatory enforcement. However, many times laws are unable to achieve their stated goals and in some ways may create new or exacerbate existing issues. Luckily, upon review, many of these issues can be fixed with quick modifications to either their implementation or enforcement mechanisms. In its current form, the Clean Air Act does not effectively account for differences in regional climate patterns, and, moreover, it perpetuates environmental injustice. If local governments were given more autonomy to enforce the Clean Air Act, they could shape its enforcement to more …

Disadvantaged Vs. Non-Disadvantaged Drinking Water: San Joaquin County Groundwater Variable By Contaminant, Megan Brooks

Master's Projects and Capstones

This research explored drinking water wells that have detectable levels of arsenic and nitrate in disadvantaged vs. non-disadvantaged communities in San Joaquin County. The CalEnviroScreen 3.0 program and Groundwater Ambient Monitoring Program (GAMA) are used to measure disadvantaged communities and water quality data respectively. The CalEnviroScreen 3.0 scoring formula is used to calculate which census tracts are disadvantaged based on indices that measure pollution burden and population characteristics. The scoring is then combined with a census tract layer using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. The disadvantaged community data are overlaid with GAMA groundwater well data to locate which communities are …

Training Future Agriculture Professionals In Landowner–Tenant Conservation Decision-Making, Andrea Basche, Angela Carter

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

The landowner–tenant relationship is important to the implementation of conservation on agricultural lands. Women own or co-own a significant portion of U.S. farmland yet are underrepresented in conservation research. The next generation of agriculture professionals can benefit from first-hand experience in assisting women landowners and their tenants in navigating the complexities of conservation decision-making. This article analyzes undergraduate student perceptions of landowner–tenant relationships in conservation management through their engagement in case studies with women landowner–tenant pairs in the Western Corn Belt. Student groups were asked to complete a management improvement plan that both incorporated the agronomic and conservation goals discussed …

Impact Of Endangered Animal Protection Rights, Policies, And Practices On Zoonotic Disease Spread, Daniella Fedak-Lengel

Honors Projects

Building on field research in Costa Rica and Belize, this honors project analyzes environmental and endangered animal protection policies, rights, and practices in Central America and the Caribbean, and assesses the impact of veterinary science and biological research and practice, particularly conservation biology, on animal welfare concerns. Informed by the recent surge in awareness regarding zoonoses and zoonotic disease transmission, prevention and control, resulting from the current global pandemic of SARS-CoV-2, the project assesses the need for new and innovative types of collaboration, particularly involving conservation biologists, environmental scientists, public health experts, law and policy makers, and global trade and …

Understanding Of Aerosol Transmission Of Covid 19 In Indoor Environments, Adama Barro, Cathal O'Toole, Jacob S. Lopez, Matthew Quinones, Sherene Moore

Publications and Research

Our reason for discussing severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or 2019 novel corona virus (Covid-19), is to understand its aerosol transmission characteristics in indoor spaces and to mitigate further spread of this disease by designing a new HVAC system. The problem that we are tackling is the spread of covid-19 droplets through aerosol transmission by looking at potential engineering solutions to the existing HVAC systems. The purpose is to eradicate the spread of the COVID-19 by testing indoor spaces in an effort to understand the effectiveness of ventilation controls. We believe that scientists and engineers have not …

Synergies Among Environmental Science Research And Monitoring Networks: A Research Agenda, J. A. Jones, Peter M. Groffman, J. Blair, F. W. Davis, H. Dugan, E. E. Euskirchen, S. D. Frey, T. K. Harms, E. Hinckley, M. Kosmala, S. Loberg, S. Malone, K. Novick, S. Record, A. V. Rocha, B. L. Ruddell, E. H. Stanley, C. Sturtevant, A. Thorpe, T. White, W. R. Wieder, L. Zhai, K. Zhu

Advanced Science Research Center

Many research and monitoring networks in recent decades have provided publicly available data documenting environmental and ecological change, but little is known about the status of efforts to synthesize this information across networks. We convened a working group to assess ongoing and potential cross-network synthesis research and outline opportunities and challenges for the future, focusing on the US-based research network (the US Long-Term Ecological Research network, LTER) and monitoring network (the National Ecological Observatory Network, NEON). LTER-NEON cross-network research synergies arise from the potentials for LTER measurements, experiments, models, and observational studies to provide context and mechanisms for interpreting NEON …

Environmental Hygiene For Covid-19: It's All About The Mask, Daniel B. Oerther, Mona Shattell

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Multiple Stressors On Stream Communities: The Convergence Of Drought, Nutrient Pollution, And Invasive Species, Robert Joseph Fournier Iii

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Freshwater systems experience multi-faceted degradation from a variety of ecological and environmental stressors. Three common stressors in these systems, drought, nutrient pollution, and invasive species, have wide-ranging effects on stream population- community- and ecosystem dynamics. We have a broad understanding of how each of these stressors works to influence stream systems independently. However, we still know relatively little about if, and how, these stressors might interact when they co-occur. Though drought is a natural part of many stream systems, all three of these stressors can be exacerbated or facilitated by anthropogenic actions. Accordingly, as human population and resource use continue …

An Analysis Of Wildlife Strikes To Aircraft In Brazil: 2011-2018, Flavio A. C. Mendonca, Julius Keller, Chenyu Huang Ph.D.

Publications

Purpose: Aircraft accidents due to wildlife hazards have become a growing safety and economic problem to the Brazilian and international aviation industries. These safety occurrences have resulted in significant direct and indirect economic losses as well injuries and fatalities worldwide. The purpose of this study was to develop empirical information obtained from the analysis of wildlife strike and aircraft operations data in Brazil that could be used for accident prevention efforts.

Design/methodology: The research team collected and analyzed aircraft operations as well as wildlife strike data from the 32 busiest commercial airports in Brazil, from 2011 through 2018. …

Lab Notes

Scientia

Paleo Showcase; Expert Opinions; School of Nursing Director Appointed; EPISTEM Porject; CSH Honors Award Recipients; Diversity Fellowship

Evaluating The Impact Of Common Fertilizers On Soil Properties After Planting Tomatoes And Marigolds, Rachel Stuckey, Iin Handayani

Scholars Week

There are many name brand fertilizers that are used today in gardening in the state of Kentucky. Due to the standardization of name brand fertilizer production in factories, this can cause the fertilizers to compromise the nutrients of soil, while all-natural fertilizers are seen as better quality for the consumers, plants and soils. Alaska, Miracle Grow, Monty’s, Pure Gold, Tiger Bloom are the top five fertilizers sold in the state of Kentucky. This study aims to determine the impact of five top commercial fertilizers on soil quality indicators including organic matter, acidity level and moisture content. These fertilizers were applied …

Using Stable Isotope ( 13c) And C/N Ratio To Study The Effects Of Climate Change On Olive Trees, Rezq Basheer-Salimia

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

In this research, the impact of some climate change effects on the olive tree was studied. Specifically, the research investigated the impact of the lack of water and drought on the physiology of olive trees using stable carbon isotopic (Delta13C) and C/N ratios. Four olive cultivars including Souri, Roomi, Improved-Nabali, and Nasouhi, planted in three geographical areas with different rainfall patterns were used. These locations are Yatta/Hebron area (dry and low rainfall area with less than 300 mm/year), Jab’a/Jerusalem area (semi-dry and medium rainfall zone), in addition to the Kufer Ra’e/Jenin area (area of high rainfall, higher than 550 mm/year). …