Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment Commons^™

Conducting A Drought-Specific Thira (Threat And Hazard Identification And Risk Assessment): A Powerful Tool For Integrating All-Hazard Mitigation And Drought Planning Efforts To Increase Drought Mitigation Quality, Elliot Wickham, Deborah J. Bathke, Tarik Abdel-Monem, Tonya K. Bernadt, Denise Bulling, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Crystal J. Stiles, Nicole Wall

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

In the United States, drought is the second costliest natural disaster, which leads to the need for increased drought mitigation efforts over time. However, drought planning has lagged behind other hazard mitigation efforts, which is likely due to the lack of a national drought planning policy. Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requires all jurisdictions have a hazard mitigation plan (HMP) to receive pre-disaster mitigation funds, drought has only recently been a requirement in HMPs. In 2012, Nebraska witnessed its worse drought in recent history, which exposed the gaps in drought planning effectiveness at all jurisdictional levels. To address …

Incorporating Climate Change Refugia Into Climate Adaptation In The Acadia National Park Region, Jennifer Smetzer, Toni Lyn Morelli

Second Century Stewardship Refugia Products

Climate change is predicted to have significant impacts on New England’s biodiversity. If emissions continue unabated, mean global temperature is predicted to rise by 3-5 ºC by the end of the century, and well beyond the range of natural variability. Changes are already evident in Acadia National Park (ACAD). Between 1895 and 2010, annual precipitation significantly increased in ACAD by 16% and temperatures by 0.8 ºC; the rate of temperature increase in the park is expected to be 3-6 times greater by 2100, particularly in inland portions. Identifying climate change refugia for representative species can provide valuable information for adapting …

Status Of The Western Australian Pastoral Rangelands 2019: Condition, Trend And Risk, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Natural resources published reports

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) reports annually on the condition, trend and risk of decline in vegetation condition of pastoral rangelands in Western Australia (WA). This report is based on the information available to the end of September 2019.

Vegetation condition reflects the effects of three main drivers: seasonal quality (the timeliness and amount of rainfall), grazing pressure and fire. Reported trend in vegetation condition was based on remotely sensed vegetation cover for the three or four most productive pasture types in each region and greenness (how much vegetation grew) data. Based on these trend data, …

Wetland Biogeochemical Responses To Predicted Climate Change Scenarios, Angela R. Shaffer

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Wetlands are one of the world's largest known carbon sinks while comprising only a small amount of the Earth's surface. However, the amount of carbon sequestered by wetlands is shrinking as droughts and human disturbance increases. Carbon in wetlands is stored through the contrast of decomposition and sedimentation of organic matter and absorption of CO₂ from the atmosphere by soil microbes. Understanding how changing hydrological regimes and increased wildfires will affect wetland soil and microbial processes is important in the face of predicted climate change for future wetland conservation practices. Specifically, I seek to understand the response of southeastern …

Cadmium Sulfide-Buffered Pv Systems: Assessing The Environmental, Health, And Economic Impacts, Maqsood Ali Mughal, Rajesh Sharma

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

As the world’s population continues to grow, global energy crises are expected to rise in the future, thus accelerating the demand for renewable energy technology, particularly solar photovoltaics. The energy sector will face an increasingly complex array of interlocking challenges - technological, environmental, health, economic, and regulatory. In this paper, we study CdS, a widely used buffer material in thin film photovoltaics, to assess and monetize environmental, health, and socio-economic externalities associated with the use of the material. Currently, CdS has a significant advantage over other alternate buffer materials in terms of efficiency and low-cost production of large-area processing of …

Environmental Site Assessment And Hydrogeologic Impacts To Groundwater At St. Ignatius, Montana And Hanford, Washington, Ryan M. Carter

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The following Environmental Studies Master’s Portfolio is a compilation of works completed individually and with peers in order to fulfill requirements for the Master of Science degree. These works demonstrate range, depth, and the interdisciplinary nature of the course of study. As an undergraduate student at Eastern Washington University, I studied Environmental Science with a concentration in hydrogeology. I was interested in learning about the natural world and wanted to develop a deeper connection to it. Inevitably, I was exposed to courses that examined the causes and effects of hazardous waste site remediation, and this topic became my passion. The …

Recommended Priorities For Research On Ecological Impacts Of Ocean And Coastal Acidification In The U.S. Mid-Atlantic, Grace K. Saba, Kaitlin A. Goldsmith, Sarah R. Cooley, Daniel Grosse, Shannon L. Meseck, A. Whitman Miller, Beth Phelan, Matthew Poach, Robert Rheault, Kari St. Laurent, Jeremy M. Testa, Judith S. Weis, Richard Zimmerman

OES Faculty Publications

The estuaries and continental shelf system of the United States Mid-Atlantic are subject to ocean acidification driven by atmospheric CO₂, and coastal acidification caused by nearshore and land-sea interactions that include biological, chemical, and physical processes. These processes include freshwater and nutrient input from rivers and groundwater; tidally-driven outwelling of nutrients, inorganic carbon, alkalinity; high productivity and respiration; and hypoxia. Hence, these complex dynamic systems exhibit substantial daily, seasonal, and interannual variability that is not well captured by current acidification research on Mid-Atlantic organisms and ecosystems. We present recommendations for research priorities that target better understanding of the …

Age-0 Walleye Sander Vitreus Display Length-Dependent Diet Shift To Piscivory, Christopher S. Uphoff, Casey W. Schoenebeck, Keith D. Koupal, Kevin L. Pope, W. Wyatt Hoback

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

The ontogenetic diet shift to piscivory can be energetically beneficial for fish growth and allows larger, more energetically profitable prey to be consumed. A shift to piscivory may be easier for longer individuals within a cohort due to larger gape size, and an early shift is likely advantageous, potentially leading to increased growth rates and survival. Such length-dependent ontogenetic diet shifts may explain the intracohort variability in length that is common for age-0 walleye (Sander vitreus). The objectives of this study were to describe seasonal intracohort variability in length, identify the timing of the shift to piscivory and …

Ecosystem Size Predicts Social-Ecological Dynamics, Mark A. Kaemingk, Christopher J. Chizinski, Craig R. Allen, Kevin L. Pope

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Recreational fisheries are complex adaptive systems that are inherently difficult to manage because of heterogeneous user groups (consumptive vs. nonconsumptive) that use patchily distributed resources on the landscape (lakes, rivers, coastlines). There is a need to identify which system components can effectively predict and be used to manage nonlinear and cross-scale dynamics within these systems. We examine how ecosystem size or water body size can be used to explain complicated and elusive angler-resource dynamics in recreational fisheries. Water body size determined angler behavior among 48 Nebraska, U.S.A. water bodies during an 11- year study. Angler behavior was often unique and …

Droughtscape, Winter 2019, National Drought Mitigation Center

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

Contents

From the Director

Drought intensified in California and Nevada, eased elsewhere

Year in Review: Drought spread and intensified in the West; record precipitation in the East

Drought impact summary for 4th quarter 2018

Drought impact summary 2018

Five states began drought plan updates in 2018

New web-based form makes submitting drought observations easier

FEMA risk assessment process tailored for drought

Upcoming events

Change Detection Using Landsat And Worldview Images, Chiman Kwan, Bryan Chou, Leif Hagen, Daniel Perez, Yuzhong Shen, Jiang Li, Krzysztof Koperski

Computational Modeling & Simulation Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents some preliminary results using Landsat and Worldview images for change detection. The studied area had some significant changes such as construction of buildings between May 2014 and October 2015. We investigated several simple, practical, and effective approaches to change detection. For Landsat images, we first performed pansharpening to enhance the resolution to 15 meters. We then performed a chronochrome covariance equalization between two images. The residual between the two equalized images was then analyzed using several simple algorithms such as direct subtraction and global Reed-Xiaoli (GRX) detector. Experimental results using actual Landsat images clearly demonstrated that the …

Island Invasion: The Silent Crisis In Hawaii, Sophia Janssen

Pomona Senior Theses

Keeping out invasive species may, upon first review, seem like a trivial environmental cry from ecologists and deep environmentalists; a belated wish to return to an undeveloped world where nature was pristine. However invasive species create problems that impact all of us and can have far more severe consequences than changing a stunning landscape. These problems are heightened in islands like Hawaii, where the fragile ecosystems have developed over centuries of evolution and adaptation. The introduction of a disease-carrying mosquito can put the people of Hawaii at risk to many vector-born illnesses and create an epidemic, taking human life. The …

Improving Access To Clean Water In Rural Ecuador: The Connection Between Willingness To Pay And Population Health, Micalea Leaska

Capstone Collection

Climate change is affecting social and environmental determinants of health through access to safe drinking water, safely managed sanitation systems, and access to health care services and the ability for individuals to break free from unsuitable circumstances. Ecological disturbances such as those caused by climate change can cause a shift in host vectors or a change in habitat that results in a greater likelihood of the pathogen coming in contact with humans. Water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services and their accessibility to populations can directly impact a community’s vulnerability to diseases and limiting factors to increase economic growth. If rural …

Utility Summary Fiscal Year 2019, Campus Sustainability Office

Campus Sustainability Office Publications, Reports and Presentations

Summary of energy usage listed by building.

Roots Mediate The Effects Of Snowpack Decline On Soil Bacteria, Fungi, And Nitrogen Cycling In A Northern Hardwood Forest, Patrick O. Sorensen, Jennifer M. Bhatnagar, Lynn M. Christenson, Jorge Duran, Timothy J. Fahey, Melany C. Fisk, Adrien C. Finzi, Peter M. Groffman, Jennifer L. Morse, Pamela H. Templer

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Rising winter air temperature will reduce snow depth and duration over the next century in northern hardwood forests. Reductions in snow depth may affect soil bacteria and fungi directly, but also affect soil microbes indirectly through effects of snowpack loss on plant roots. We incubated root exclusion and root ingrowth cores across a winter climate-elevation gradient in a northern hardwood forest for 29 months to identify direct (i.e., winter snow-mediated) and indirect (i.e., root-mediated) effects of winter snowpack decline on soil bacterial and fungal communities, as well as on potential nitrification and net N mineralization rates. Both winter snowpack decline …

University Of North Florida Environmental Center Annual Report 2019, James W. Taylor, Erin Largo-Wight, John Carlisle, Maria Mark, Jennifer Grissom, Justin M. Lemmons

Annual Reports

2019 Annual Report of the Environmental Center at the University of North Florida

Mink Frog (Lithobates Septentrionalis), Jennifer Smetzer, Toni Lyn Morelli

Second Century Stewardship Refugia Products

No abstract provided.

Evaluating The Impact Of Fine Particulate Matter Pollution Standards On Mortality Rates In The Southeastern United States, Lauren Wice

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continuously monitors six criteria pollutants that are known to have impacts on public health and welfare. One of these pollutants, fine particulate matter, or PM_2.5 (which includes particles that are smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter), is easily inhalable and can enter the lining of the lungs and the bloodstream, posing a great risk to human health. Standards for allowable concentrations of PM_2.5 were amended in 1997, 2006, and again in 2012, becoming increasingly stringent each time. According to the EPA, health organizations, and other research studies, these particles can specifically contribute to …

Status Of The Western Australian Pastoral Rangelands 2018: Condition, Trend And Risk, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Natural resources published reports

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) reports annually on the condition, trend and risk of pastoral rangelands in Western Australia. This report is based on the information available to the end of 2018.

Vegetation condition reflects the effects of three main drivers: seasonal quality (the timeliness and amount of rainfall), grazing pressure and fire. Trend in vegetation condition was based on remotely sensed vegetation cover (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS) and greenness (how much vegetation grew) data, the Western Australian Rangeland Monitoring System (WARMS) on-ground site data, and on-ground traverse data. Based on these trend data, in …

A Coupled Modeling Framework For Allocation Design In Land-Use And Land-Cover Changes To Optimize Biofuel Feedstock Production, Ana C. Cram

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Environmental awareness has increased the demand for renewable energy. Notably, the production of biofuels from feedstock is gaining interest as a viable measure to reduce fossil fuels consumption. Nevertheless, it is crucial to identify the trade-offs between bioenergy crop cultivation and the environmental impact on land, water, and atmosphere.

Intensifying biofuel cultivation trigger effects associated with Land Use and Land-use-change, which are complex to assess. While hydrological models had been used to investigate the environmental impacts of land-use changes on water and soil quality, their quantitative assessment is often incomplete. Changes in land use and agricultural activities also contribute to …