Environmental Monitoring Commons^™

U.S. Drought Monitor, September 9, 2014, Brian Fuchs

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for September 9, 2014 (9/9/14) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

U.S. Drought Monitor, September 2, 2014, David Simeral

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for September 2, 2014 (9/2/14) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

Umphlett Qci Sept 2014, Natalie Umphlett

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Highlights for the Basin

Temperature and Precipitation Anomalies

􏰞􏰥􏰬􏰨􏰤􏰵􏰶􏰫Streamflow

Long-term Impacts of Drought

Cool, Wet Summer Benefits

Heavy Precipitation Impacts the Missouri River and its Tributaries

3-Month Precipitation and Temperature Outlooks

Soil Moisture Conditions

How Will Climate Change And Bioenergy Harvest Affect Carbon Storage In The Oregon Coast Range, Megan K. Creutzburg, Robert M. Scheller, Melissa S. Lucash, Stephen D. Leduc, Louisa B. Evers, Mark G. Johnson

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

This poster shows how the researchers used a simulation model to explore the impacts of varying scenarios of climate change and forest management on the ecosystem carbon.

U.S. Drought Monitor, August 26, 2014, David Simeral

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for August 26, 2014 (8/26/14) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

U.S. Drought Monitor, August 19, 2014, Richard Tinker

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for August 19, 2014 (8/19/14) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

Crop Advisors As Climate Information Brokers: Building The Capacity Of Us Farmers To Adapt To Climate Change, Maria Carmen Lemos, Yun-Jia Lo, Christine Kirchhoff, Tonya Haigh

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

This paper examines the role of crop advisors as brokers of climate information to support US corn farmers to adapt to climatic change. It uses quantitative data collected from a broad survey of crop advisors in the US Corn Belt to examine the factors that shape advisors’ use of (and willingness to provide) climate information to their clients. Building upon a general model of climate information usability we argue that advisors’ willingness to provide climate advice to farmers is influenced by three main factors: their information seeking habits and behavior, their experience with innovation in the past, and how climate …

Pharmaceuticals In Wastewater Treatment Plant Effluent Waters, Nicole Deziel

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Pharmaceuticals in Wastewater Treatment Plant Effluent Waters.

U.S. Drought Monitor, August 12, 2014, Richard Tinker

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for August 12, 2014 (8/12/14) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

An Analysis Of Vegetation Recovery Following Dam Removal At Hemlock Recreation Site, Washington, Greer Stewart Ramsey

Dissertations and Theses

Dam removals are becoming increasingly common as dams reach their life expectancy and face costly upgrades associated with relicensing. Though removal is often viewed as a success in terms of ecological restoration, it also represents a major disturbance to an area. Previous research has shown that native species do not survive as well at these disturbed sites, and invasive species often dominate. This study examines the vegetation response in the drained reservoir area after the removal of Hemlock Dam on Trout Creek, a tributary to the Wind River in southern Washington. Transects were established and quadrats were sampled to determine …

U.S. Drought Monitor, August 5, 2014, Brad Rippey

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for August 5, 2014 (8/5/14) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

Laboratory Evaluation Of Black Carbon Deposition Onto Snow And Transport Via Snowmelt, Larry D. Hermanson, Joshua P. Schwarz

STAR Program Research Presentations

Black carbon (BC) is an aerosol material produced by incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass. BC has been shown to be the second most important anthropogenic climate warming agent after carbon dioxide due to its ability to absorb solar radiation, influence cloud behavior, and accelerate snow melt. BC in otherwise clean snow can significantly reduce its reflectivity. In order to learn about the significance of BC contamination in snow, we explored the deposition of BC onto snow and the transport of BC in snow during snowmelt. A Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2), was used to measure the concentration and …

Using Remote Sensing Data To Predict The Spread Of Mosquito Borne Disease, Mary Ellen O'Donnell, Erika Podest

STAR Program Research Presentations

There is interest in how environmental variables derived from satellite data such as temperature, vegetation cover, and precipitation correlate to vector borne disease occurrence such as malaria and dengue fever. This study will be carried out using a decision tree based open source software called Random Forests to find correlations between the remote sensing variables and mosquito abundance. Software will be written in C# to take large amounts of data from the NASA satellite database and automatically format it for the Random Forest Software input. Correlations found, using Random Forests, between disease incidence and the variables can be used as …

The Power Plant Mapping Student Project, Kelsey Tayne, Tom Oda

STAR Program Research Presentations

The Power Plant Mapping Student Project: Bringing Citizen Science to Schools

Kelsey Tayne¹, Tom Oda²

¹STEM Teacher and Researcher (STAR) Fellow, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132

²NOAA ESRL, Global Monitoring Division, Boulder, CO 80303

Emissions inventory (EI) is a conventional tool to monitor changes in anthropogenic emissions and can visually show geographical patterns of emission changes. The EI community is aware of significant errors in the geographical locations of point sources, including power plants. The Power Plant Mapping Student Project (PPMSP) is a platform designed for students in 4^th through 12 …

Time, Money, And Melting Ice: Proposal For A Coopertive Study Of The World’S Cave Ice In A Race Against Climate Change, George Veni, Lewis Land, Aurel Perşoiu

The International Workshop on Ice Caves

Climate change is a global phenomenon that is melting and threatening to melt ice deposits in many of the world’s ice caves. The National Cave and Karst Research Institute of the USA is concerned that major and important paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental records stored in cave ice will soon be lost, and is proposing an international collaborative effort to overcome funding and logistical challenges to sample and analyze at least a representative collection of ice from several regions before further melting occurs.

Climate Study In An Abandoned Auto Tunnel In Alaska, Usa, Andreas Pflitsch, David Holmgren

The International Workshop on Ice Caves

An abandoned auto tunnel in south central Alaska in an elevation of 118 m above sea level seemed to be a perfect laboratory for studying the evolution of ice speleothems in a yearly cycle. More than 1,500 ice forms like stalagmites, stalactites, columns in various shape and arrangements, developed in just 2 month to a high up to 6 meters and lasted for another 5 to 6 month. In October just the remains of the melted ice in rings and rectangular patterns of a white powder could be found. Unfortunately the mostly sealed tunnel was opened in January 2014 by …

Ice Cave Monitoring At Lava Beds National Monument, Katrina J. Smith

The International Workshop on Ice Caves

Lava Beds National Monument contains lava caves with a variety of significant ice resources. Caves with seasonal melting of some ice resources provide an important source of water for wildlife within the monument and have had many historic uses over the past several decades. In other caves, perennial melting of previously stable ice floors is increasing, with some caves experiencing total ice loss where deposits were greater than 2 meters (6 feet) thick. Simple ice level monitoring has occurred in sixteen of the thirty-five known ice caves since 1990, supplemented with varying amounts photo monitoring. Though this monitoring reveals changes …

The Monica (Monitoring Of Ice Within Caves) Project: A Multidisciplinary Approach For The Geophysical And Paleoclimatic Characterization Of Permanent Ice Deposits In The Southeastern Alps, Renato R. Colucci, Emanuele Forte, Barbara Stenni, Marco Basso Bondini, Mauro Colle Fontana, Costanza Del Gobbo, Daniele Fontana, Doriana Belligoi, Valter Maggi, Marco Filipazzi

The International Workshop on Ice Caves

On days 30 September and 1-2 October 2013, a 7.8 m long ice core has been extracted from a permanent ice cave deposit in the Southeastern Alps (Vasto’s cave, Mt.Canin - Julian Alps). Each 20 to 100 cm long section of the ice core have been immediately stored in plastic bags and preserved thanks to dry ice. The ice samples, thanks to the helicopter, has been subsequently brought on valley and promptly stored in a refrigerated van, made available by BoFrost. Thus the ice cores has been transported intact to the EUROCOLD laboratory in Milan. These operations have been carried …

Biological Condition Of Money Pont Benthic Communities, Southern Branch Of The Elizabeth River (2010 And 2013), Daniel M. Dauer

Elizabeth River Reports

Executive Summary

The subtidal macrobenthic communities off Money Point in the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River were quantitatively sampled in summer 2010 (Dauer 2011). The designated Money Point study area was part of a sediment contaminant remediation effort. The primary objectives of the present study were to: (1) characterize the biological health of the benthos of Money Point comparing pre-remediation (2010) and post-remediation (2013) conditions and (2) assess the effectiveness of the sediment contamination remediation efforts with respect to Money Point benthos. In this report the macrobenthic communities off Money Point were resampled in the summer of 2013 after …

A Comparative Study Of Underwater Robot Path Planning Algorithms For Adaptive Sampling In A Network Of Sensors, Sreeja Banerjee

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Monitoring lakes, rivers, and oceans is critical to improving our understanding of complex large-scale ecosystems. We introduce a method of underwater monitoring using semi-mobile underwater sensor networks and mobile underwater robots in this thesis. The underwater robots can move freely in all dimension while the sensor nodes are anchored to the bottom of the water column and can move only up and down along the depth of the water column. We develop three different algorithms to optimize the path of the underwater robot and the positions of the sensors to improve the overall quality of sensing of an area of …