Natural Resources Management and Policy Commons^™

An Assessment Of The Energy Generation Potential Of Photovoltaic Systems In Cameroon Using Satellite-Derived Solar Radiation Datasets, Lacour Ayompe, Aidan Duffy

Articles

Cameroon like most developing countries does not have a reliable network of surface observation stations for collecting weather data. This has been a major drawback for accurate assessment of the energy generation potential of photovoltaic systems in Cameroon. A viable alternative is to obtain site-specific solar irradiation from satellite-derived datasets. In this paper, the energy output, capacity factor and performance ratio of photovoltaic systems in 33 locations spread around ten regions in Cameroon have been evaluated using monthly average daily global horizontal solar irradiation from long-term satellitederived data available in Solar GIS software. An economic assessment revealed that a simple …

Light Pollution Research Through Citizen Science, John Kanemoto

STAR Program Research Presentations

Light pollution (LP) can disrupt and/or degrade the health of all living things, as well as, their environments. The goal of my research at the NOAO was to check the accuracy of the citizen science LP reporting systems entitled: Globe at Night (GaN), Dark Sky Meter (DSM), and Loss of the Night (LoN). On the GaN webpage, the darkness of the night sky (DotNS) is reported by selecting a magnitude chart. Each magnitude chart has a different density/number of stars around a specific constellation. The greater number of stars implies a darker night sky. Within the DSM iPhone application, a …

The Sandy Glacier Cave Project: The Study Of Glacial Recession From Within, Eduardo L. Cartaya

The International Workshop on Ice Caves

The Sandy Glacier Cave Project is a National Speleological Society (NSS) sponsored study on the unique system of glacier caves located on the Sandy Glacier on the western flank of Mt Hood, Oregon. While the study primarily targets the structure, layout and ice volume change of the ever moving cave system by conducting annual grade 5 surveys, numerous tangential observations and trends have been recorded that are of great interest to the study of glacial recession, watershed hydrology, micro-biology and astro-biology, as well as the study of organic specimens and remains being thawed out of the ice mass by the …

An Interpretive Plan Guide For Wilderness Park In Lincoln, Nebraska, Rachel J. Ward

Community and Regional Planning Program: Professional Projects

Wilderness Park, located in Lancaster County, Nebraska, is a public park of unique ecological and historical value to the city of Lincoln and to the surrounding region. The natural and historical features of the park present an opportunity to communicate environmental and historical topics that are relevant on local, national, and global levels, as well as inspire a lively sense of pride in the community. The problem is that many topics relevant to Wilderness Park are not currently being interpreted at the park, and that there are relatively few interpretive resources available to park visitors.

The purpose of this project …

Spatial And Temporal Analysis Of Land Cover Change, Sedimentation And Water Quality In The Lake Issaqueena Watershed, South Carolina, Cassie Pilgrim

All Theses

Soil erosion and increased sediment yields within a watershed lead to impaired water quality, decreased availability of wildlife habitat and reduced recreational opportunities. While some sedimentation occurs naturally within a water system, most erosion processes are the result of anthropogenic activities across a landscape, namely changes in land use and land cover (LULC). This study was conducted to determine temporal and spatial sedimentation trends in the Lake Issaquena watershed using sonar logging equipment, geographic information systems (GIS) and limited hydrologic data from the Soil Conservation Service (1941 and 1949). Sediment deposition was analyzed in relation to several key factors that …

Use Of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (Uav) For Urban Tree Inventories, Brian Ritter

All Theses

In contrast to standard aerial imagery, unmanned aerial systems (UAS) utilize recent technological advances to provide an affordable alternative for imagery acquisition. Increased value can be realized through clarity and detail providing higher resolution (2-5 cm) over traditional products. Many natural resource disciplines such as urban forestry will benefit from UAS. Tree inventories for risk assessment, biodiversity, planning, and design can be efficiently achieved with the UAS. Recent advances in photogrammetric processing have proved automated methods for three dimensional rendering of aerial imagery. Point clouds can be generated from images providing additional benefits. Association of spatial locational information within the …

A Case Study Of Changing Cropping Diversity And Agricultural Risk In The Doulthabad Mandal Of Telangana State In India, Srikanth Kondabolu

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

The Doulthabad^[1] Mandal is a hot semi-arid agro-ecological sub-region (Rao et al. 2006) located in Mahbubnagar District on the North Telangana Plateau in the state of Telangana. Agriculture is the main occupation in this region, which is populated mostly with small and marginal farmers. This study uses the time period from 1971 to 2004 to study the variation in cropping pattern diversity and distribution of rainfall during the monsoons and understand the implications on production risk in agriculture. Quantitative methods were used in determining the changes in rainfall while qualitative methods were used to study cropping system changes. The …

Survival, Growth, And Settlement Of Dreissena Rostriformis Bugensis Veligers In Low And High Calcium Waters, Emma Ruhmann

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Populations ofDreissena rostriformis bugensis(quagga mussels) have continued to spread throughout the western United States since their discovery in the Boulder Basin of Lake Mead, NV-AZ in early 2007. Today, quagga mussel specific research is still lacking and the physicochemical characteristics of aquatic systems required by quagga mussels to successfully establish is not fully understood. This includes an absence of research in aquatic environments in the western United States and on quagga mussel veligers (larval stage). Calcium is considered the defining factor for determining if a lake or river is suitable for quagga mussel establishment. The minimum calcium threshold for invasion …

Effects Of Large Scale Growing Season Prescribed Burns On Movement, Habitat Use, Productivity, And Survival Of Female Wild Turkey On The White Rock Ecosystem Restoration Project Of The Ozark-St. Francis National Forest, Henry Tyler Pittman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Restoration of woodland and savanna ecosystems has become a common management strategy in the Central Hardwoods region. Over the past two decades forest managers have implemented woodland and savanna restoration at the landscape level (≥10,000 ha), especially using early growing season prescribed fire. The implementation of the restoration strategy has coincided with declines of Eastern Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris) in many treated areas causing concern that early growing season prescribed fire was impacting wild turkey. We initiated our study to examine the effect of woodland and savanna restoration on the ecology and habitat of wild turkey in the Ozark …

Report To The Commissioner Of Soil And Land Conservation On The Trend Of The Western Australian Pastoral Resource Base 2014, Paul Novelly, Philip Thomas

Natural resources published reports

This report provides a regional overview of the trend in the pastoral rangelands of Western Australia, based on data from the Bureau of Meteorology, the Annual return of livestock and improvements (submitted annually by pastoral lessees) and the Western Australian Rangeland Monitoring System (WARMS), for which data are available for over 20 years. The report provides a context for assessment of the range condition and trend of individual pastoral leases within the various regions of the state, as well as providing a current assessment of the status of each of the regions' rangelands, and the drivers (both seasonal and managerial) …

Climate Change: Threats To Social Welfare And Social Justice Requiring Social Work Intervention, Lauren Caroline Achstatter

21st Century Social Justice

The article looks at climate change though a social development framework, with emphasis on social justice and social welfare. It evaluates how market-based capitalism continues to contribute to the problem while ignoring the warnings from the scientific community. The article goes on to report that despite the devastation of climate change, concerns – mainly financial in nature - continue to hinder progress towards reform. The article then argues that given the evidence, climate change qualifies as a topic of interest for social workers. The article goes on to advocate for social work involvement highlighting some suggested areas for action.

A Geospatial Approach For Prioritizing Wind Farm Development In Northeast Nebraska, Usa, Adam Miller, Ruopu Li

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Being cleaner and climate friendly, wind energy has been increasingly utilized to meet the ever-growing global energy demands. In the State of Nebraska, USA, a wide gap exists between wind resource and actual energy production, and it is imperative to expand the wind energy development. Because of the formidable costs associated with wind energy development, the locations for new wind turbines need to be carefully selected to provide the greatest benefit for a given investment. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been widely used to identify the suitable wind farm locations. In this study, a GIS-based multi-criteria approach was developed to …

A Conservation Status Index, As An Auxiliary Tool For The Management Of Cave Environments, Christiane Ramos Donato, Adauto De Souza Ribeiro, Leandro De Sousa Souto

International Journal of Speleology

The conservation of the Speleological Heritage involves bioecological, geomorphological and anthropogenic studies, both from inside the caves and from the external environments that surround them. This study presents a method to rank caves according to their priority for conservation and restoration. Nine caves were evaluated: indicators related to the environmental impacts and the vulnerability status presented by those caves (intrinsic features) and the values scored in a ‘Cave Conservation Index’ (CCI) were established. We also used a rapid assessment protocol to measure cave vulnerability for prioritization of conservation/restoration actions (RAP-cr) comparing natural cavities with the same lithology, due …

Juvenile Green Sturgeon (Acipenser Medirostris) And White Sturgeon (Acipenser Transmontanus) Behavior Near Water-Diversion Fish Screens: Experiments In A Laboratory Swimming Fume, Jamilynn B. Poletto, Dennis E. Cocherell, Natalie Ho, Joseph J. Cech Jr., A. Peter Klimley, Nann A. Fangue

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Water diversions that extract fresh water for urban, industrial, and agricultural uses, as well as export to southern California, are prevalent throughout the Sacramento–San Joaquin watershed. Many water diversions are fitted with fish-exclusion screens designed to prevent fish from entrainment (i.e., being drawn in). The impact of fish screens on the behavior of migrating juvenile fishes remains largely unknown, especially for threatened species such as sturgeon. We placed individual juvenile green (Acipenser medirostris) or white (Acipenser transmontanus) sturgeon in a laboratory swimming flume in the presence of standard fish screens (2 mm bar spacing) at two …

Droughtscape, Summer 2014, Kelly Smith

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

Contents

Director’s report

Outlook

Drought & climate summary

Drought impacts

International drought monitoring and planning

Visiting scholars

North American Drought Monitor Forum

New primary Dust Bowl source

New additions to online webinar archive

Community Capitals Framework Institute

Climate Justice Advocacy, Mary Finley-Brook

Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications

Creating international policy to combat climate change is one of the biggest public diplomacy challenges of our time. With slow progress in “state-led” forums such as the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), advocacy coalitions of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are pressuring decision-makers and working to build global awareness. The power of NGOs is soft since state actors set emissions targets; nonetheless, climate justice organizations persistently broadcast several important messages, including: 1) industrialized nations along with private sector polluters have an obligation to remedy ecological debt; 2) low-income and marginalized populations …

Evidence-Based Decision Making In Coastal Oregon: Increasing The Effectiveness Of Policy And Management Decisions, Kaitlin Goldsmith

Environmental Science and Management Professional Master's Project Reports

Changing climatic conditions, demographics, and land uses are projected to alter the provisioning of ecosystem services in estuarine, coastal and nearshore marine ecosystems, necessitating mitigation and adaptation policies and management. The current paradigm of siloed research efforts occurring in parallel to, rather than in collaboration with, decision-makers will be insufficient for the rapid responses required to adapt to and mitigate for projected changing conditions in coastal areas. Here, I suggest a different paradigm: one where research begins by engaging decision-makers in the identification of priority research needs (biophysical, economic, and social), and in which researchers analyze and present data in …

A Win-Win On Agricultural Lands: Creating Wildlife Habitat Through Agroforestry, Gary Bentrup

United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

With increasing demands from society for limited resources, agroforestry will likely be one source of solutions as people find it increasingly necessary to achieve multiple social, economic, and ecological objectives on the same plot of land. Indications are that this is a growing field, so wildlife biologists of the future may want to consider incorporating agroforestry into their career development.

Data-Based Perfect-Deficit Approach To Understanding Climate Extremes And Forest Carbon Assimilation Capacity, Suhua Wei, Chuixiang Yi, George Hendrey, Timothy Eaton, Gerald Rustic, Shaoqiang Wang, Heping Liu, Nir Y. Krakauer, Weiguo Wang, Ankur R. Desai, Leonardo Montagnani, Kyaw Tha Paw U, Matthias Falk, Andrew Black, Christian Bernhofer, Thomas Grünwald, Tuomas Laurila, Alessandro Cescatti, Eddy Moors, Rosvel Bracho, Riccardo Valentini

Publications and Research

Several lines of evidence suggest that the warming climate plays a vital role in driving certain types of extreme weather. The impact of warming and of extreme weather on forest carbon assimilation capacity is poorly known. Filling this knowledge gap is critical towards understanding the amount of carbon that forests can hold. Here, we used a perfect-deficit approach to identify forest canopy photosynthetic capacity (CPC) deficits and analyze how they correlate to climate extremes, based on observational data measured by the eddy covariance method at 27 forest sites over 146 site-years. We found that droughts severely affect the carbon assimilation …

A Combined Chemical And Biological Approach To Transforming And Mineralizing Pahs In Runoff Water, Chainarong Sakulthaew, Steve D. Comfort, Chanat Chokejaroenrat, Clifford Harris, Xu Li

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

The water quality of lakes, rivers and streams associated with metropolitan areas is declining from increased inputs of urban runoff that contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Our objective was to transform and mineralize PAHs in runoff using a combined chemical and biological approach. Using ¹⁴C-labeled phenanthrene, ¹⁴C-benzo(a)pyrene and a mixture of 16 PAHs, we found that ozone transformed all PAHs in a H₂O matrix within minutes but complete mineralization to CO₂ took several weeks. When urban runoff water (7.6 mg C L−1) replaced H₂O as the background matrix, some delays in degradation rates …