Environmental Monitoring Commons^™

Historical Floodplain Sedimentation Rates Using Mining Contaminant Profiles, Cesium-137, And Sediment Source Indicators Along The Lower Big River, Jefferson County, Missouri, Miranda M. Jordan

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Floodplain sedimentology and geochemistry can indicate the age of sediment layers to evaluate the history of human-caused sedimentation in a watershed. While the Ozark Highlands of Missouri has had a long history of settlement and land disturbance beginning in the early 1800s, there are few studies that have investigated the effects of these anthropogenic activities on river form and legacy sedimentation. The goal of this study is to characterize the sediment properties and geochemical trends in post-settlement floodplain deposits along lower Big River in Jefferson County, Missouri. This study evaluated trends of sediment properties at 3 cm intervals in a …

Stream Channel Morphology And Riparian Forest Response To A 500-Year Flood In The Missouri Ozarks, Joshua William Hess

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Climate change has increased the frequency of large floods in rivers draining the Ozark Highlands resulting in higher rates of channel sedimentation, bank erosion, and damage to infrastructure. This study assesses the effects of a large flood (>500-year RI) during April-May 2017 on riparian forests along six tributary streams in the North Fork of the White River watershed, Missouri. High-resolution (<8 >cm) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) imagery collected after the flood was used to identify riparian forest flood damage. Measurements of riparian forest flood damage calculated from the UAV imagery were verified through field surveys of damaged riparian trees. …

Federal Jurisdiction For Above-Ground Oil Storage Tanks: A Practical Analysis For Navigating Federal Regulations, Kathryn Hussong

St. Mary's Law Journal

Clear, consistent, and concise jurisdictional boundaries will aid pipeline operators to determine which regulations apply to their operations and associated facilities. This will help alleviate legal and financial risk to pipeline operators, who may be liable for noncompliance regardless of whether the pipeline operator or the associated refinery commits the violation. Overlapping state and federal regulations of pipelines and refineries has created confusion amongst operators regarding what regulations apply to their facilities. Three federal agencies—the Pipeline and Hazardous Safety Administration (PHMSA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) respectively—and a myriad of state agencies simultaneously …

How Characteristic Is The Species Characteristic Selection Scale?, Erica F. Stuber, Joseph J. Fontaine

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Aim: The importance of framing investigations of organism–environment relationships to interpret patterns at relevant spatial scales is increasingly recognized. However, most research related to environmental relationships is single‐scaled, implicitly or explicitly assuming that a “species characteristic selection scale” exists. We tested the premise that a single characteristic scale exists to understand species– environment relationships within species by asking (a) what are the characteristic scales of species’ relationships with environmental predictors, and (b) is within species, cross‐predictor consistency in characteristic scales a general phenomenon.

Location: Nebraska, USA.

Time period: 2016.

Major taxa studied: Birds.

Methods: We used data from 86 species …

Operationalizing Ecological Resilience Concepts For Managing Species And Ecosystems At Risk, Jeanne C. Chambers, Craig R. Allen, Samuel A. Cushman

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

This review provides an overview and integration of the use of resilience concepts to guide natural resources management actions. We emphasize ecosystems and landscapes and provide examples of the use of these concepts from empirical research in applied ecology. We begin with a discussion of definitions and concepts of ecological resilience and related terms that are applicable to management. We suggest that a resilience-based framework for management facilitates regional planning by providing the ability to locate management actions where they will have the greatest benefits and determine effective management strategies. We review the six key components of a resilience-based framework, …

Drought Analyses Of The Horn´E PoˇZitavie Region (Slovakia) In The Period 1966–2013, Jaroslav Vido, Paulina Nalevankova, Jan Valach, Zbysek Sustek, Tsegaye Tadesse

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

+is study focuses on the characterization of historical drought occurrences in the Horn´e Poˇzitavie region of Slovakia over the period 1966–2013 using Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI). Trend analyses were evaluated by the Mann–Kendall (MK) test as well as cumulative sum of rank difference (CRD) test. +e results showed that drought occurs in the region regularly (recurrent climate feature), while the trend analysis indicated the trend toward more arid climatic conditions. However, CRD trend analyses showed that the subtrend changed direction toward less drier conditions in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Analyses of SPEI trends in individual months showed a …

Breakdown Mechanisms In Iron Caves. An Example From Brazil, Marcelo R. Barbosa, Allan D.F. Da Silva, Rafael G. De Paula, Georgete M. Dutra, Airton Barata, Iuri V. Brandi, Chrystophe R.P. Da Silva, Robert A. Osborne

International Journal of Speleology

An iron cave in the vicinity of a mine in Carajás, Brazil, was selected to be mined within an assisted elimination project, planned to control all mine advancement operations towards the cave along with a strict speleological physical monitoring. It allowed, in a pioneering way, the recording of events in the cave from the first signs of damage until to the total collapse of the cave. The project lasted four years and it was possible to identify and describe four breakdown mechanisms in iron caves: Fragment downfall, Block downfall, Controlling structure reactivation, and Open discontinuity movement. The mechanisms occurred independently …

Estimating Live Fuel Moisture Using Smap L-Band Radiometer Soil Moisture For Southern California, Usa, Shenyue Jia, Seung Hee Kim, Son V. Nghiem, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Live fuel moisture (LFM) is a field-measured indicator of vegetation water content and a crucial observation of vegetation flammability. This study presents a new multi-variant regression model to estimate LFM in the Mediterranean ecosystem of Southern California, USA, using the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) L-band radiometer soil moisture (SMAP SM) from April 2015 to December 2018 over 12 chamise (Adenostoma fasciculatum) LFM sites. The two-month lag between SMAP SM and LFM was utilized either as steps to synchronize the SMAP SM to the LFM series or as the leading time window to calculate the accumulative SMAP SM. …

The Prairie Post Quarterly Newsletter Of The High Plains Regional Climate Center- July 2019, Natalie Umphlett, Rezaul Mamood, Paul Flanagan, Emily Brown, Gannon Rush, Crystal J. Stiles

Prairie Post: Quarterly Newsletter of the High Plains Regional Climate Center

Inside this issue:

Message from the director........................................1

Staff spotlight...........................1

Spirit Lake workshop..............2

Product highlight....................3

Outreach events......................3

Research highlight..................4

Update on regional climate conditions..................................4

Northern Plains drought assessment................................5

Recent and upcoming travel and activities.............................6

Droughtscape, Fall 2019, Cory Matteson

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

Contents

From the Director

Quarterly drought summary

Quarterly drought impacts

Ranchers delayed response to drought

Drought Monitor celebrates 20 years

Drought Monitor state impact tables

Directorcontributesto U.N.droughtproject

Updated Drought Risk Atlas

New fact sheet lists recovery resources

Droughtscape, Summer 2019, Cory Matteson

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

Contents

From the Director

Quarterly drought summary

Quarterly drought impacts

NDMC welcomes African visitors

Ready for Drought game debuts

U.S. Virgin Islands added to USDM

Australian programmer visits NDMC

Upcoming events

Partnerships with NDMC extended

Analysis Of Flood Patterns In Adams County, Pennsylvania Utilizing Drone Technology And Computer Simulations, Alyssa J. Kaewwilai

Student Publications

Drone imagery and photogrammetry models of the Gettysburg College campus and the terrain at Boyer Nurseries and Orchards were utilized to study flood patterns in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Gettysburg College has lower-sloped land and moderately built infrastructure while Boyer Orchards has drastically sloped land with many patches of abundant vegetation. The two locations were selected due to the fact that they have starkly different surface features, while the bedrock geology of the areas are very similar. The terrain of the models was isolated before a 3D carver and 3D printer were used to construct physical models to further analyze potential …

Investigation Of Grace-Derived Information On Forest Drought Stress Across The Contiguous Us, Beichen Zhang

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This research derives z-score monthly groundwater storage (GWS) anomalies and z-score monthly root zone soil moisture (RZSM) anomalies from products of Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Data Assimilation (GRACE-DA). Z-score monthly GWS and RZSM anomalies are compared to two drought indicators: Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) to investigate the usefulness of GRACE-DA information to detect drought conditions at tree-ring sites. This study also compares z-score monthly GWS and RZSM anomalies with the Tree Ring Standardized Growth Index (TRSGI) that is resampled by bootstrapping to investigate the capability of monitoring forest drought stress. Finally, this research uses …

A First Look At Sublimation Rates In Toss Island Region, Antarctica, Rebecca Baiman, Scott Landolt

STAR Program Research Presentations

70% of Earth’s fresh water is held in Antarctica ice sheet. If the sheet melts, it has the potential to raise global sea levels by 190 feet (Klekociuk and Wiennecke, 2016). As the climate changes, it is imperative that to understand precipitation systems of Antarctica in order to measure and predict weather around the world. One aspect of precipitation events that we do not understand fully in Antarctica is sublimation. Data was collected from four Ott Pluvio Precipitation Gauges with Belfort Double Alter Shields placed in and around the Ross Ice Shelf from November of 2017 to present. An R …

Data From: Microplastic Concentrations In Two Oregon Bivalve Species: Spatial, Temporal, And Species Variability, Britta Baechler, Elise F. Granek, Matthew V. Hunter, Kathleen E. Conn

Environmental Science and Management Datasets

Microplastics are an ecological stressor with implications for ecosystem and human health when present in seafood. We quantified microplastic types, concentrations, anatomical burdens, geographic distribution, and temporal differences in Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas) and Pacific razor clams (Siliqua patula) from 15 Oregon coast, U.S.A. sites. Organisms were chemically digested and visually analyzed for microplastics, and material type was determined using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. Microplastics were present in organisms from all sites. On average, whole oysters and razor clams contained 10.95 ± 0.77 and 8.84 ± 0.45 microplastic pieces per individual, or 0.35 ± 0.04 and …

Coral Reef Change Detection In Remote Pacific Islands Using Support Vector Machine Classifiers, Justin J. Gapper, Hesham El-Askary, Erik Linstead, Thomas Piechota

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Despite the abundance of research on coral reef change detection, few studies have been conducted to assess the spatial generalization principles of a live coral cover classifier trained using remote sensing data from multiple locations. The aim of this study is to develop a machine learning classifier for coral dominated benthic cover-type class (CDBCTC) based on ground truth observations and Landsat images, evaluate the performance of this classifier when tested against new data, then deploy the classifier to perform CDBCTC change analysis of multiple locations. The proposed framework includes image calibration, support vector machine (SVM) training and tuning, statistical assessment …

Landscape Edges Shape Dispersal And Population Structure Of A Migratory Fish, Mark A. Kaemingk, S. E. Swearer, S. J. Bury, J. S. Shima

Nebraska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit: Staff Publications

Many freshwater organisms have a life-history stage that can disperse through seawater. This has obvious benefits for colonization and connectivity of fragmented sub-populations, but requires a physiologically challenging migration across a salinity boundary. We consider the role of landscape boundaries between freshwater and seawater habitats, and evaluate their potential effects on traits and developmental histories of larvae and juveniles (i.e., dispersing life-history stages) of an amphidromous fish, Galaxias maculatus. We sampled juvenile fish on their return to 20 rivers in New Zealand: 10 rivers had abrupt transitions to the sea (i.e., emptying to an open coastline); these were paired …

A Crash In The Night, Mary Ann Steiner, Sam Taylor, Judy Diamond

Zea E-Books Collection

The illustrations in this book describe a wildlife encounter. Wild animals, like people, have challenges in life. They are adaptable and inventive, and they find new ways of solving problems to help them survive. As you turn the pages, describe what you see. How would you solve this wildlife challenge?

Mary Ann Steiner: Working on this story was exciting to me because I believe at any age, we can notice what is happening around us and make decisions to protect and enjoy nature! In this story, the kids see an exciting new character in the community. Once they figure out …

Quantifying Methane Emissions In The Uintah Basin During Wintertime Stagnation Episodes, C. S. Foster, Erik T. Crosman, J. D. Horel, Seth Lyman, B. Fasoli, R. Bares, J. C. Lin

Bingham Research Center

This study presents a meteorologically-based methodology for quantifying basin-scale methane (CH₄) emissions in Utah’s Uintah Basin, which is home to over 9,000 active and producing oil and natural gas wells. Previous studies in oil and gas producing regions have often relied on intensive aircraft campaigns to estimate methane emissions. However, the high cost of airborne campaigns prevents their frequent undertaking, thus providing only daytime snapshots of emissions rather than more temporally-representative estimates over multiple days. Providing estimates of CH₄ emissions from oil and natural gas production regions across the United States is important to inform leakage rates …

Shale Play: Poems And Photographs From The Fracking Fields By Julia Spicher Kasdorf And Steven Rubin, Kelly Shepherd

The Goose

Review of Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Steven Rubin's Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields