Natural Resources Management and Policy Commons^™

Cruising The Canal: A Methodological Approach To Assessing Trail Conditions Along The Hennepin Canal Parkway, Alyssa Clarida

Geography: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

Trail conditions in the United States are degrading and trail systems do not receive enough funding to repair them in a timely manner. Park managers often conduct trail assessments to collect trail condition data. They use this data to make timely and judicious decisions regarding trail repairs. However, many trail assessments are time consuming, costly, and require high levels of expertise. This project creates a trail assessment methodology that can be applied to a trail with limited funds. The final methodology was efficient, succinct, accurate, and simple to conduct. It uses a problem based methodology where every instance of degradation …

Brief 12: Energy Transitions To Modern Renewables: Context, Barriers, And Promises, Stanislav Vavilov

Governance and Sustainability Issue Brief Series

The world is not running out of fossil fuels, as is often claimed. With technological progress and favorable economic conditions, a process of resource-base expansion occurs through the production of resources that were previously considered economically unviable. Resource-base expansion requires increasing capital investments per unit of energy extracted and an accompanying rise in production costs per unit. The world is running out of cheap fossil fuels, and in the long term, dependence on fossil fuels leads to energy services that are much more expensive and inaccessible. Given other important incentives for transitioning from fossil fuels, such as the need to …

Review Of Land Capability Assessment For The Swan Valley, Peter Tille, Angela Stuart-Street

Resource management technical reports

Land capability review for the Swan Valley.

The land capability review of the Swan Valley examined and updated previous soil and capability studies done in the area, which are still considered highly relevant for the planning requirements of the Swan Valley. As a result we have updated information on the potential for irrigated agriculture in the Swan Valley which will guide decision-making in the future.

This review uses a modified version of a new approach to presenting information for land use planning, developed by DAFWA in the Mid West region.

The main findings of the review include:

• The alluvial terraces …

Closing The Water Balance With Cosmic-Ray Soil Moisture Measurements And Assessing Their Relation To Evapotranspiration In Two Semiarid Watersheds, A. P. Schreiner-Mcgraw, E. R. Vivoni, G. Mascaro, Trenton E. Franz

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Soil moisture dynamics reflect the complex interactions of meteorological conditions with soil, vegetation and terrain properties. In this study, intermediate-scale soil moisture estimates from the cosmic-ray neutron sensing (CRNS) method are evaluated for two semiarid ecosystems in the southwestern United States: a mesquite savanna at the Santa Rita Experimental Range (SRER) and a mixed shrubland at the Jornada Experimental Range (JER). Evaluations of the CRNS method are performed for small watersheds instrumented with a distributed sensor network consisting of soil moisture sensor profiles, an eddy covariance tower, and runoff flumes used to close the water balance. We found a very …

Spatial Analysis Of Forest Crimes In Mark Twain National Forest, Missouri, Karun Pandit, Eddie Bevilacqua, Giorgos Mountrakis, Robert W. Malmsheimer

Journal of Geospatial Applications in Natural Resources

Forest crime mitigation has been identified as a challenging issue in forest management in the United States. Knowledge of the spatial pattern of forest crimes would help in wisely allocating limited enforcement resources to curb forest crimes. This study explores the spatial pattern of three different types of forest crimes: fire crime, illegal timber logging crime, and occupancy use crime in the Salem-Patosi Ranger District of Mark Twain National Forest. Univariate and bivariate Ripley’s K-functions were applied to explore the spatial patterns in crime events, like clustering and attraction among forest crime types. Results reveal significant clustering for each forest …

Comparison Of Terrain Indices And Landform Classification Procedures In Low-Relief Agricultural Fields, Derek A. Evans, Karl W. J. Williard, Jon E. Schoonover

Journal of Geospatial Applications in Natural Resources

Landforms control the spatial distribution of numerous factors associated with agronomy and water quality. Although curvature and slope are the fundamental surface derivatives used in landform classification procedures, methodologies for landform classifications have been performed with other terrain indices including the topographic position index (TPI) and the convergence index (CI). The objectives of this study are to compare plan curvature, the convergence index, profile curvature, and the topographic position index at various scales to determine which better identifies the spatial variability of soil phosphorus (P) within three low relief agricultural fields in central Illinois and to compare how two methods …

Discordant Data And Interpretation Of Results From Wildlife Habitat Models, Anita T. Morzillo, Michael G. Wing, Justin Long

Journal of Geospatial Applications in Natural Resources

Wildlife habitat management is an important part of natural resource management. As a result, there are a large number of models and tools for wildlife habitat assessment. A consequence of the many assessment tools is inconsistency when comparing results between tools, which may lead to potential confusion management decisions. Our objective was to compare results from two wildlife habitat models – one being relatively coarse (HUC5) scale and not spatially dynamic and the other being finer scale spatial data based on a 30 m spatial resolution –for habitat assessment of three species across the West Cascades of Oregon: Northern spotted …

Malheur Occupation In Oregon: Whose Land Is It Really?, Char Miller

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

The Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a 187,757-acre haven for greater sandhill cranes and other native birds in eastern Oregon, is usually a pretty peaceful place. But its calm was shattered on Saturday, January 2 when Ammon Bundy and a group of armed men broke into and occupied a number of federal buildings on the refuge, vowing to fight should the government try to arrest them. Their insurrectionary goal appears to be, simply put, to destroy the national system of public lands – our forests, parks and refuges – that was developed in the late 19th century to conserve these …

Methane Emissions As Energy Reservoir: Context, Scope, Causes And Mitigation Strategies, Xiaoli Chai, David J. Tonjes, Devinder Mahajan

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Methane (CH4) is now considered a bridge fuel between present fossil (carbon) economy and desired renewables and this energy molecule is projected to play an important role in the global energy mix well beyond 2035. The atmospheric warming potential of CH4 is 28-36 times, when averaged over a 100-year period, that of carbon dioxide (CO2) and this necessitates a close scrutiny of global CH4 emissions inventory. As the second most abundant greenhouse gas (GHG), the annual global CH4 emissions were 645 million metric tons (MMT), accounting for 14.3% of the global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Of this, five key anthropogenic sources: …

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: Source Of Cooperation Or Contention?, Meron Teferi Taye, Tsegaye Tadesse, Gabriel B. Senay, Paul Block

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

This paper discusses the challenges and benefits of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which is under construction and expected to be operational on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia in a few years. Like many large-scale projects on transboundary rivers, the GERD has been criticized for potentially jeopardizing downstream water security and livelihoods through upstream unilateral decision making. In spite of the contentious nature of the project, the authors argue that this project can provide substantial benefits for regional development. The GERD, like any major river infrastructure project, will undeniably bring about social, environmental, and economic change, and in …

Temporal Variability In Large Grazer Space Use In An Experimental Landscape, Edward J. Raynor, Anthony Joren, Adam Skibbe, Mark Sowers, John M. Briggs, Angela N. Laws, Douglas Goodin

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Land use, climate change, and their interaction each have great potential to affect grazing systems. With anticipated more frequent and extensive future drought, a more complete understanding of the mechanisms that determine large grazer landscape-level distribution under varying climatic conditions is integral to ecosystem management. Using an experimental setting with contrasting fire treatments, we describe the inter-annual variability of the effect of landscape topography and disturbance from prescribed spring fire on large grazer space use in years of variable resource availability. Using GPS telemetry, we investigated space use of plains bison (Bison bison bison) as they moved among watersheds managed …

Narrowing The Agronomic Yield Gaps Of Maize By Improved Soil, Cultivar, And Agricultural Management Practices In Different Climate Zones Of Northeast China, Zhijuan Liu, Xiaoguang Yang, Xiaomao Lin, Kenneth Hubbard, Shuo Lv, Jing Wang

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Northeast China (NEC) is one of the major agricultural production areas in China, producing about 30% of China’s total maize output. In the past five decades, maize yields in NEC increased rapidly. However, farmer yields still have potential to be increased. Therefore, it is important to quantify the impacts of agronomic factors, including soil physical properties, cultivar selections, and management practices on yield gaps of maize under the changing climate in NEC in order to provide reliable recommendations to narrow down the yield gaps. In this study, the Agricultural Production Systems Simulator (APSIM)-Maize model was used to separate the contributions …

To Exclose Nests Or Not: Structured Decision Making For The Conservation Of A Threatened Species, Jonathan B. Cohen, Anne Hecht, Kelly F. Robinson, Erik E. Osnas, Andrew Tyre, Christina Davis, Alison Kocek, Brooke Maslo, Scott M. Melvin

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Decisions regarding endangered species recovery often face sparse data and multiple sources of uncertainty about the effects of management. Structured decision making (SDM) provides a framework for assembling knowledge and expert opinion and evaluating the tradeoffs between different objectives while formally incorporating uncertainty. The Atlantic Coast piping plover provides an illustrative case for the utility of SDM in endangered species management because its population growth is simple to model, most populations are monitored, decision alternatives are well defined, and many managers are open to recovery recommendations. We built a model to evaluate the decision to use nest exclosures to protect …

Convergent Evolution In Social Swallows (Aves: Hirundinidae), Allison E. Johnson, Jonathan S. Mitchell, Mary B. Brown

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Behavioral shifts can initiate morphological evolution by pushing lineages into new adaptive zones. This has primarily been examined in ecological behaviors, such as foraging, but social behaviors may also alter morphology. Swallows and martins (Hirundinidae) are aerial insectivores that exhibit a range of social behaviors, from solitary to colonial breeding and foraging. Using a well-resolved phylogenetic tree, a database of social behaviors, and morphological measurements, we ask how shifts from solitary to social breeding and foraging have affected morphological evolution in the Hirundinidae. Using a threshold model of discrete state evolution, we find that shifts in both breeding and foraging …

Current Topics In Avian Conservation Genetics With Special Reference To The Southwestern Willow Flycatcher, R.M. Zink

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Quantification And Mapping Of Surface Residue Cover For Maize And Soybean Fields In South Central Nebraska, Vivek Sharma, Suat Irmak, Ayse Kilic, Vasudha Sharma, John E. Gilley, George Meyer, Stevan Z. Knezevic, D. B. Marx

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The area cultivated under conservation tillage practices such as no-till and minimal tillage has recently increased in Midwestern states, including Nebraska. This increase, consequently, resulted in changes in some of the impacts of cropping systems on soil, such as enhancing soil and water quality, improving soil structure and infiltration, increasing water use efficiency, and promoting carbon sequestration. However, there are no methods currently available to quantify the percent crop residue cover (CRC) and the area under conservation tillage for maize and soybean at large scales on a continuous basis. This research used Landsat-7 (ETM+) and Landsat-8 (OLI) satellite data to …

Sensitivity Of Evapotranspiration Retrievals From The Metric Processing Algorithm To Improved Radiometric Resolution Of Landsat 8 Thermal Data And To Calibration Bias In Landsat 7 And 8 Surface Temperature, Ayse Kilic, Richard G. Allen, Ricardo Trezza, Ian Ratcliffe, Baburao Kamble, Clarence W. Robison, Doruk Ozturk

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

We made an assessment on the use of 12-bit resolution of Landsat 8 (L8) on evapotranspiration (ET) retrievals via the METRIC process as compared to using 8-bit resolution imagery of previous Landsat missions. METRIC (Mapping Evapotranspiration at high Resolution using Internalized Calibration) is an ET retrieval system commonly used in water and water rights management where the surface energy balance process is coupled with an extreme- end point calibration process to remove most impacts of systematic bias in remotely sensed inputs. We degraded L8 thermal images by grouping sequential digital numbers to reduce the apparent numerical resolution and then recomputed …

Data Descriptor: Remotely Sensed High Resolution Irrigated Area Mapping In India For 2000 To 2015, Anukesh Krishnankutty Ambika, Brian D. Wardlow, Vimal Mishra

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

India is among the countries that uses a significant fraction of available water for irrigation. Irrigated area in India has increased substantially after the Green revolution and both surface and groundwater have been extensively used. Under warming climate projections, irrigation frequency may increase leading to increased irrigation water demands. Water resources planning and management in agriculture need spatially-explicit irrigated area information for different crops and different crop growing seasons. However, annual, high-resolution irrigated area maps for India for an extended historical record that can be used for water resources planning and management are unavailable. Using 250m normalized difference vegetation index …

A Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Midwest Us Temperature And Precipitation Trends During The Growing Season From 1980 To 2013, Shuwei Dai, Martha Shulski, Kenneth Hubbard, Eugene S. Takle

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Since late 1970s, climate warming has been widely recognized. In the Midwest, farmers cannot rely on the normal calendar anymore, and it has become critically necessary to evaluate the most recent climate trends relative to growing season in order to conduct adaptation efforts for agriculture. Based on the homogenized historical monthly temperature and precipitation records during the period of 1980–2013 from 302 observing stations in the 12 Midwestern US states, we investigate the climate trends on four timescales: monthly, early growing season, late growing season, and the entire growing season. The climate metrics include maximum temperature, minimum temperature, average temperature, …

Impact Perceptions And Acceptance Capacity Toward Piping Plovers Charadrius Melodus Among Visitors On A Public Beach In Nebraska, Usa, Joel G. Jorgensen, Mary Bomberger Brown

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

On an increasingly crowded planet, shorebirds and humans are frequently found sharing the same ecosystems. This development requires that the managers of these human-wildlife ecosystems address human dimensions challenges in addition to those associated with species biology. To better understand such challenges, we evaluated impact perceptions and overall acceptance capacity in visitors on public beaches of Lake McConaughy, Nebraska, USA towards a federally- protected shorebird, the Piping Plover Charadrius melodus. Overall acceptance capacity for these birds was relatively high and perceptions of inconvenience caused by the presence of the birds were low. However, acceptance capacity and impact perceptions varied …