Environmental Education Commons^™

Environmental Activism, Ellen Dexter, Lydia Dexter

Honors Program: Expanded Learning Clubs

An after school book club that follows Greta Thunberg's book of speeches No One is Too Small to Make a Difference , as well as uses hands-on activities to teach the importance of environmental activism.

The Enhancement Of Climate Change Science Communication And Understanding Through Glacier Tourism, Natalie Jean Kincheloe

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The natural environment provides the opportunity for educators to teach the general public about scientific topics that are misunderstood. Arctic tourism has increased as accessibility to these regions has improved. Informal learning is a valuable yet extremely understudied phenomenon within the tourism industry. Iceland is a country that lies in the North Atlantic and has experienced a significant increase in foreign visitors over the past decade. Of the natural features in Iceland, glaciers have become a top attraction for visitors. Since thousands of visitors participate in guided glacier tours annually in Iceland, an opportunity to couple glacier tourism with informal …

The Belknap Campus And Metro Louisville Urban Heat Island Effect: Air And Ground Surface Temperature Analysis, Kenyetta Johnson

Undergraduate Arts and Research Showcase

Numerous studies show that urban morphologies and land covers generate excess heat emissions and retain heat relative to surrounding rural areas, known as the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Urban fabrics paved by concretes and asphalts absorbs solar radiation during solar peak then radiates heat after sundown. This study investigates temperature distribution data related to the UHI effect on the Belknap campus at the University of Louisville, which represents a small aerial sample of the Louisville metropolitan UHI effect. The objective of this study is to measure the reflectivity of ground surfaces and air temperatures on the Belknap campus during …

The Responsibility Of Scientists In Public Policy, Samuel S. Otálvaro

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Earthkam: Learning About Earth From A Unique Perspective, Emily Wisinski, Christine Evans, Joshua Huggins, Isabel Skelton, Greta Paris

Research Horizons Day Posters

No abstract provided.

Friendship At The Feeding Station, Anisha Pokharel

Zea E-Books Collection

A young steppe eagle and his mother fly to Nepal from Mongolia, where Griffy, a Himalayan griffon, chases the hungry Steppe from the feeding station, but Garuda, a white-rumped vulture, intervenes and becomes Steppe's friend. Steppe's mother is angered at first, but learns the lesson that each species has its role to play.

Designed by Breanna Epp with Maeve Lausch

Acoustically Advertising Male Harbour Seals In Southeast Alaska Do Not Make Biologically Relevant Acoustic Adjustments In The Presence Of Vessel Noise, Leanna P. Matthews, Michelle E.H. Fournet, Christine Gabriele, Holger Klinck, Susan E. Parks

United States National Park Service: Publications

Aquatically breeding harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) males use underwater vocalizations during the breeding season to establish underwater territories, defend territories against intruder males, and possibly to attract females. Vessel noise overlaps in frequency with these vocalizations and could negatively impact breeding success by limiting communication space. In this study, we investigated whether harbour seals employed anti-masking strategies to maintain communication in the presence of vessel noise in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Harbour seals in this location did not sufficiently adjust source levels or acoustic parameters of vocalizations to compensate for acoustic masking. Instead, for every 1 dB …

Carnivore Population Structure Across An Urbanization Gradient: A Regional Genetic Analysis Of Bobcats In Southern California, Julia G. Smith, Megan K. Jennings, Erin E. Boydston, Kevin R. Crooks, Holly B. Ernest, Seth Riley, Laurel E. K. Serleys, Shaelynn Sleater-Squires, Rebecca L. Lewison

United States National Park Service: Publications

Context In human-dominated landscapes, habitat fragmentation and barriers to movement can interrupt gene flow. While often considered at a local extent, regional analyses are also needed to reveal broader landscape-mediated population processes.

Objectives To explore the relationship between patterns of gene flow and fragmentation resulting from urbanization across southern California, we used the bobcat as an indicator species. We assembled data for a landscape level genetic analysis across southern California from both archived and new samples, including two northern Californian populations for comparison, to identify local and regional areas affected by isolation.

Methods Our regional analyses focused on a dataset …

Asynchronous Carbon Sink Saturation In African And Amazonian Tropical Forests, Wannes Hubau, Simon L. Lewis, Et. Al. Authors

United States National Park Service: Publications

Structurally intact tropical forests sequestered about half of the global terrestrial carbon uptake over the 1990s and early 2000s, removing about 15 percent of 1–3 anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. Climate-driven vegetation models 4,5 typically predict that this tropical forest ‘carbon sink’ will continue for decades . Here we assess trends in the carbon sink using 244 structurally intact African tropical forests spanning 11 countries, compare them with 321 published plots from Amazonia and investigate the underlying drivers of the trends. The carbon sink in live aboveground biomass in intact African tropical forests has been stable for the three decades to …

Problematic Plant Monitoring In Homestead National Monument Of America, 2006–2017, Craig C. Young

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

Managers are challenged with the impact of problematic plants, including exotic, invasive, and pest plant species. Information on the abundance, distribution, and location of these plants is essential for developing risk-based approaches to managing these species. Based on surveys conducted in 2006, 2009, 2013, and 2017, Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network staff and contractors identified a cumulative total of 20 potentially problematic plant species in Homestead National Monument of America (NMA). Of the 13 species found in 2017, we characterized 4 as very low frequency, 4 as low frequency, 2 as medium frequency, and 3 as high frequency. Only …

Problematic Plant Monitoring In Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, 2006–2018, Craig C. Young

United States National Park Service: Publications

Abstract

Managers are challenged with the impact of problematic plants, including exotic, invasive, and pest plant species. Information on the abundance, distribution, and location of these plants is essential for developing risk-based approaches to managing these species. Based on surveys conducted in 2006, 2010, 2014, and 2018, Heartland Inventory and Monitoring Network staff and contractors identified a cumulative total of 33 problematic plant species in Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve. Of the 27 species found in 2018, we characterized 14 as very low frequency, 9 as low frequency, 4 as medium frequency, and 0 as high frequency. Only 4 (14.8%) of …

Estimation Of Available Epinephrine Dose In Expired And Discolored Autoinjectors Via Quantitative Smartphone Imaging, Amirus Saleheen, Bill M. Campbell, Rebecca A. Prosser, Christopher A. Baker

United States National Park Service: Publications

Epinephrine autoinjectors (EAIs) are important first aid medications for treating anaphylaxis. A 10-fold price increase over the past 12 years and evidence that expired EAIs may still contain significant doses of available epinephrine have motivated interest in the efficacy of expired EAIs as treatments of last resort. Degradation of expired EAIs, which can be caused by improper storage conditions, results in various degrees of discoloration of the epinephrine solution. Previous studies have determined that significant epinephrine remains available in expired EAIs, but these have only considered EAIs that show no discoloration. Here, we investigate the potential for colorimetric estimation of …

Effects Of Culling White-Tailed Deer On Tree Regeneration And Microstegium Vimineum, An Invasive Grass, John Paul Schmit, Elizabeth R. Matthews, Andrejs Brolis

United States National Park Service: Publications

Reduction of forest regeneration due to overbrowsing by white-tailed deer is a growing concern for land managers. Abundant deer can impede forest regeneration through direct predation on tree seedlings. Additionally high deer density can facilitate the establishment of a dense understory of browse tolerant plant species that shades seedlings and persists even in the absence of deer. In response to these challenges, land managers have sought to reduce deer herds to restore tree regeneration, but few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of this management. Our study took place in Catoctin Mountain Park, a US National Park Service unit with a …

Nurse Rock Microclimates Significantly Buffer Exposure To Freezing T Temperature And Moderate Summer Temperature, Joshua L. Conver, Elliott Yarwood, Lucas D. Hetherington, Don E. Swann

United States National Park Service: Publications

Nurse tree canopies mitigate exposure to freezing temperatures that could result in injury or mortality to the saguaro cactus (Carnegiea gigantea). Abiotic objects have been hypothesized to provide similar beneficial microclimates. We used data loggers at 11 nurse rock sites to record daily daytime summer maximum and winter nighttime minimum temperatures at Saguaro National Park, Arizona, to examine the effectiveness of rocks to moderate seasonal temperature extremes in the microclimate. Temperatures at rock sites averaged 2 °C warmer than exposed open control sites in winter. We found that the efficiency of rocks to act as insulators significantly increased as temperature …

Beryllium-7 Elucidate Sediment Dynamics Of The Branford River Estuary, Connecticut, Usa, Gaboury Benoit, Matthew Hirschbeck, Beth Bisson

United States National Park Service: Publications

Berrylium-7 elucidates sediment dynamics (i.e., sources, sinks, deposition, and resuspension) in a Connecticut estuary. Average 7 −2−1 annual atmospheric deposition of Be is 290 mBq cm year. Sediment samples from 43 locations within the estuary show that 7Be deposition is spatially complex, but were statistically indistinguishable a year apart. Weekly time series of sediments indicate 7 that levels are nearly constant on this shorter time scale on ceradio active decay is taken into account. Be levels in sediments area balance between steady losses through radioactive decay and periodic pulse inputs following rainstorms. The water column was measured intensively during three …

Implications Of Organic Mass To Carbon Ratios Increasing Over Time In The Rural United States, W.C. Malm, B.A. Schichtel, J.L. Hand, A.J. Prenni

United States National Park Service: Publications

The thermal evolution procedure used by most monitoring programs in the United States to determine carbonaceous aerosol concentrations is referred to as the thermal‐optical reflectance method, where an aerosol sample that has been collected on a quartz filter is heated and evolved carbon is characterized as either organic (OC) or light absorbing carbon (LAC). Evolved carbon assigned to OC is multiplied by a factor, Roc, to achieve an estimate of organic mass. Over the last 10–15 years, Roc, estimated through multiple linear regression analysis of data collected in the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE) program, has increased at …

Climate Change Perceptions, Data, And Adaptation In The Garhwal Himalayas Of India, Rutherford V. Platt, Monica V. Ogra, Natalie A. Kisak, Upma Manral, Ruchi Badola

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Himalayan communities that depend on rain-fed agriculture are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change. In this study, we compare local perceptions of climate change from a household survey (n = 251) to climate data obtained from the Global Land Data Assimilation System (GLDAS 2.1) and MODIS Terra Snow Cover data product datasets. The study is situated in and around the Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, which is located within the Garhwal Himalayas in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. We found that a large majority of respondents perceive that rainfall is increasing and that snowfall is decreasing, while a smaller majority perceives an …

Berry Important? Wolf Provisions Pups With Berries In Northern Minnesota, Austin T. Homkes, Thomas D. Gable, Steve K. Windles, Joseph K. Bump

United States National Park Service: Publications

Wolves (Canis lupus) primarily provision pups by catching mammalian prey and bringing remains of the carcass to the pups at a den or rendezvous site via their mouths or stomach. In August 2017, we observed an adult wolf regurgitating wild blueberries (Vaccinium spp.) to pups at a rendezvous site in the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem, Minnesota, USA, which is the only known observation of wolves provisioning pups with wild berries. This observation, in combination with other evidence from the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem, suggests wild berries might be a more valuable food source for wolves in southern boreal ecosystems than previously appreciated.

Modelling Pinniped Abundance And Distribution By Combining Counts At T Terrestrial Sites And In-Water Sightings, Steven L. Whitlock, Jamie N. Womble, James T. Peterson

United States National Park Service: Publications

Pinnipeds are commonly monitored using aerial photographic surveys at land- or ice-based sites, where animals come ashore for resting, pupping, molting, and to avoid predators. Although these counts form the basis for monitoring population change over time, they do not provide information regarding where animals occur in the water, which is often of management and conservation interest. In this study, we developed a hierarchical model that links counts of pinnipeds at terrestrial sites to sightings-at-sea and estimates abundance, spatial distribution, and the proportion of time spent on land (attendance probability). The structure of the model also allows for the inclusion …

Dental Microwear As A Behavioral Proxy For Distinguishing Between Canids At The Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian) Site Of Predmostí, Czech Republic, Kari A. Prassack, Josephine Dubois, Martina Laznickova-Galetova, Mietje Germonpre, Peter S. Ungar

United States National Park Service: Publications

Morphological and genetic evidence put dog domestication during the Paleolithic, sometime between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago, with identification of the earliest dogs debated. We predict that these earliest dogs (referred to herein as protodogs), while potentially difficult to distinguish morphologically from wolves, experienced behavioral shifts, including changes in diet. Specifically, protodogs may have consumed more bone and other less desirable scraps within human settlement areas. Here we apply Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (DMTA) to canids from the Gravettian site of P�redmostí (approx. 28,500 BP), which were previously assigned to the Paleolithic dog or Pleistocene wolf morphotypes. We test whether …