Other Environmental Sciences Commons^™

A Model‐Data Intercomparison Of Co2 Exchange Across North America: Results From The North American Carbon Program Site Synthesis, Christopher R. Schwalm, Christopher A. Williams, Kevin Schaefer, Ryan S. Anderson, M. Altaf Arain, Ian Baker, Alan Barr, T. Andrew Black, Guangsheng Chen, Jing Ming Chen, Philippe Ciais, Kenneth J. Davis, Ankur R. Desai, Michael Dietze, Danilo Dragoni, Marc L. Fischer, Lawrence B. Flanagan, Robert Grant, Lianhong Gu, David Hollinger, R. Cesar Izaurralde, Chris Kucharik, Peter Lafleur, Beverly E. Law, Longhui Li, Zhengpeng Li, Shuguang Liu, Erandathie Lokupitiya, Yiqi Luo, Siyan Ma, Hank Margolis, Roser Matamala, Harry Mccaughey, Russell K. Monson, Walter C. Oechel, Changhui Peng, Benjamin Poulter, David T. Price, Dan M. Riciutto, William Riley, Alok Kumar Sahoo, Michael Sprintsin, Jianfeng Sun, Hanqin Tian, Christian Tonitto, Hans Verbeeck, Shashi B. Verma

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Our current understanding of terrestrial carbon processes is represented in various models used to integrate and scale measurements of CO₂ exchange from remote sensing and other spatiotemporal data. Yet assessments are rarely conducted to determine how well models simulate carbon processes across vegetation types and environmental conditions. Using standardized data from the North American Carbon Program we compare observed and simulated monthly CO₂ exchange from 44 eddy covariance flux towers in North America and 22 terrestrial biosphere models. The analysis period spans ~220 site‐years, 10 biomes, and includes two large‐scale drought events, providing a natural experiment to evaluate …

Translocation To A Fragmented Landscape: Survival, Movement, And Site Fidelity Of Northern Bobwhites, Theron M. Terhune, D. Clay Sisson, William E. Palmer, Brant C. Faircloth, H. Lee Stribling, John P. Carroll

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Habitat fragmentation, degradation, and loss have taxed early-successional species including the Northern Bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) and numerous grassland obligate birds. Translocation is often applied to counteract the consequences of habitat fragmentation through the creation, reestablishment, or augmentation of wild populations for the purposes of conservation, biodiversity maintenance. However, the implementation of these techniques is often conducted without valid experimental designs and therefore lacks robust, empirical data needed to evaluate and advance the knowledge and application of translocation. Despite the increasing amount of habitat management applied to patches among fragmented landscapes, a paucity of source populations often limits natural …

Upwelling Couples Chemical And Biological Dynamics Across The Littoral And Pelagic Zones Of Lake Tanganyika, East Africa, Jessica R. Corman, P. B. Mcintyre, B. Kuboja, W. Mbemba, D. Fink, C. W. Wheeler, C. Gans, E. Michel, A. S. Flecker

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

We studied the effects of upwelling on nutrient and phytoplankton dynamics in the pelagic and littoral zones of Lake Tanganyika near Kigoma, Tanzania. During the dry season of 2004, a rise in the thermocline and sudden drop in surface water temperatures indicated a substantial upwelling event. Increases in concentrations of nitrate, soluble reactive phosphorus, and silica in the surface waters occurred simultaneously after the temperature drop. Within days, chlorophyll a concentrations increased and remained elevated, while inorganic nutrient concentrations returned to preupwelling levels and organic nutrient concentrations peaked. We observed parallel temporal patterns of water temperature, nutrient concentrations, and phytoplankton …

Recursive Streamflow Forecasting: A State-Space Approach, Jozsef Szilagyi, Andras Szollosi-Nagy

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Testing The Intergenerational Differences In Mental Boundaries, John E. Barbuto Jr., Stephanie Bryant, Lisa Pennisi

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Locus Of Control, Sources Of Motivation, And Mental Boundaries As Antecedents Of Leader-Member Exchange Quality, John E. Barbuto Jr., Dayna Finch Weltmer, Lisa A. Pennisi

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Diurnal Fluctuations In Shallow Groundwater Levels And In Streamflow Rates And Their Interpretation: A Review, Zoltan Gribovszki, Jozsef Szilagyi, Peter Kalicz

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Complementary-Relationship-Based Evapotranspiration Mapping (Cremap) Technique For Hungary, Jozsef Szilagyi, Akos Kovacs

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Basic Drivers Of Climate, Alison P. Stevens

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Climates on Earth vary from the warm, wet tropics to the cold, dry Arctic and Antarctic. What drives this variation?

Every day, we note the weather: temperature, rain, cloud cover, wind and humidity. Climate is the long-term prevailing weather in an area and is largely determined by temperature and precipitation. The climate in a desert is hot and dry. The climate in the tropics is warm and wet. The climate of a particular area is the largest determinant to the life found there. Climate is a key focus in ecology. Variations in climate include daily and seasonal cycles. Climatic variation …

Toward Regional Climate Services The Role Of Noaa’S Regional Climate Centers, Arthur T. Degaetano, Timothy J. Brown, Steven D. Hilberg, Kelly Redmond, Kevin Robbins, Peter Robinson, Martha Shulski, Marjorie Mcguirk

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

A comprehensive national climate services strategy requires the infrastructure, operational services, and applied research activities that have characterized the Regional Climate Center Program since its inception.

Finding The Smoothest Path To Success: Model Complexity And The Consideration Of Nonlinear Patterns In Nest-Survival Data Encontrando El Camino Mas Facil Hacia El Exito: Complejidad De Los Modelos Y Consideraci6n De Patrones No Lineales En Datos De Supervivencia De Nidos, Max Post Van Der Burg, Larkin A. Powell, Andrew J. Tyre

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Quantifying patterns of nest survival is a first step toward understanding why birds decide when and where to breed. Most studies of nest survival have relied on generalized linear models (GLM) to explore these patterns. However, GLMs require assumptions about the models' structure that might preclude finding nonlinear patterns in survival data. Generalized additive models (GAM) provide a flexible alternative to GLMs for estimating linear and nonlinear patterns in data. Here we present a comparison of GLMs and GAMs for explaining variation in nest-survival data. We used two different model-selection criteria, the Bayes (BIC) and Akaike (AIC) information criteria, to …

2010 Interior Least Tern And Piping Plover Monitoring, Research, Management, And Outreach Report For The Lower Platte River, Nebraska, Mary Bomberger Brown, Joel G. Jorgensen

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

This document reports on our monitoring, research, management, and outreach activities during the past 12 months (2010). We prepared it to inform our partners, cooperating agencies, funding sources, and other interested parties of our activities and to provide a preliminary summary of our results.

The Tern and Plover Conservation Partnership (TPCP), based at the University of Nebraska–School of Natural Resources, and the Nongame Bird Program (NBP), based at the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission (NGPC) work cooperatively on Interior Least Tern and Piping Plover monitoring, research, management, and outreach activities. While the focus of our work is the Lower Platte, …

Coupling Of Carbon Dioxide And Water Vapor Exchanges Of Irrigated And Rainfed Maize–Soybean Cropping Systems And Water Productivity, Andrew E. Suyker, Shashi B. Verma

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Continuous measurements of CO₂ and water vapor exchanges made in three cropping systems (irrigated continuous maize, irrigated maize–soybean rotation, and rainfed maize–soybean rotation) in eastern Nebraska, USA during 6 years are discussed. Close coupling between seasonal distributions of gross primary production (GPP) and evapotranspiration (ET) were observed in each growing season. Mean growing season totals of GPP in irrigated maize and soybean were 1738 ± 114 and 996 ± 69 g C m⁻², respectively (±standard deviation). Corresponding mean values of growing season ET totals were 545 ± 27 and 454 ± 23 mm, respectively. Irrigation affected GPP …

Rehabilitate Failing Park Sewage System Environmental Assessment, United States Department Of The Interior, National Park Service

Environmental Assessments (UT)

The National Park Service (NPS) proposes to rehabilitate the failing sewage system within Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. The rehabilitation would provide a safe, healthy, and functional environment, and maintain public health and future service for park visitors and staff. Portions of the sanitary sewage collection system were originally constructed in 1958 of clay pipe and currently service the lodge, staff housing, and visitor center before feeding into sewage treatment lagoons. Sections of the sewage system have deteriorated significantly with age. These sections of the system and appurtenant manholes are deteriorating into pieces that regularly clog the system and cause …

Geochemical And Mineralogical Evidence For Sahara And Sahel Dust Additions To Quaternary Soils On Lanzarote, Eastern Canary Islands, Spain, Daniel R. Muhs, James Budahn, Gary Skipp, Joseph M. Prospero, Deanna Patterson, E. Arthur Bettis Iii

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Africa is the most important source of dust in the world today, and dust storms are frequent on the nearby Canary Islands. Previous workers have inferred that the Sahara is the most important source of dust to Canary Islands soils, with little contribution from the Sahel region. Soils overlying a late Quaternary basalt flow on Lanzarote, Canary Islands, contain, in addition to volcanic minerals, quartz and mica, exotic to the island!s bedrock. Kaolinite in the soils also likely has an exotic origin. Trace-element geochemistry shows that the soils are derived from varying proportions of locally derived basalt and African dust. …

Development And Application Of A Pollen-Based Paleohydrologic Reconstruction From The Lower Roanoke River Basin, North Carolina, Usa, Debra Willard, Christopher Bernhardt, Roger Brown, Bryan Landacre, Philip A. Townsend

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

We used pollen assemblages to reconstruct late-Holocene paleohydrologic patterns in floodplain deposits from the lower Roanoke River basin (North Carolina, southeastern USA). Using 120 surface samples from 38 transects, we documented statistical relationships between pollen assemblages, vegetation, and landforms. Backswamp pollen assemblages (long hydroperiods) are dominated by Nyssa (tupelo) and Taxodium (cypress) and have high pollen concentrations. Sediments from elevated levees and seasonally flooded forests (shorter hydroperiods) are characterized by dominant Pinus (pine) pollen, variable abundance of hardwood taxa, and low pollen concentrations. We apply the calibration data set to interpret past vegetation and paleohydrology. Pollen from a radiocarbon-dated sediment …

The Communicative Construction Of Safety In Wildland Firefighting, Jody Jahn, Linda Putnam, Anne Black

Joint Fire Science Program Research Project Reports

This document is a summary of a mixed methods dissertation that examined the communicative construction of safety in wildland firefighting. For the dissertation, I used a twostudy mixed methods approach, examining the communicative accomplishment of safety from two perspectives: high reliability organizing (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 1999), and safety climate (Zohar, 1980). In Study One, 27 firefighters from two functionally similar wildland firefighting crews were interviewed about their crew-level interactions involved in implementing safety rules and firefighting tasks. These critical incident narratives (Flanagan, 1954; Gremler, 2004) were compared to extract workgroup level similarities and differences in interaction patterns relating to …

The Role Of Adaptive Capacity In Creating Fire-Adapted Human Communities, Pamela J. Jakes, Matthew S. Carroll, Travis B. Paveglio, Soren Newman

Joint Fire Science Program Research Project Reports

In this research we sought answers to the question: What are the social characteristics and conditions of human communities that promote adaptive capacity for wildfire? The Quadrennial Fire Review (USDA and USDI 2009) promotes a goal of “achieving fire-adapted communities” in the wildland urban interface (WUI), and identifies metrics for determining whether a community is fire-adapted. While these metrics address some of the biophysical conditions necessary for fire-adapted human communities, they offer little insight into the social elements that promote or sustain adaptive capacity. Adaptive capacity refers to the individual and collective resources, capabilities, and actions that alleviate the risk …

2010 Western Mensurationists’ Conference, David Affleck, John Goodburn, Christopher Keyes, Renate Bush

Joint Fire Science Program Research Project Reports

The 2010 Western Mensurationists’ Conference in Missoula, MT, drew together forest scientists and land managers with primary expertise in the measurement and modeling of forest resources. The meeting provided an opportunity to focus the collective technical expertise of this group on crossdisciplinary conifer crown modeling issues that are of increasing importance to existing and emerging forest management strategies in western North America. Thus, a special invited session on conifer crown modeling results and opportunities was added to the conference agenda together with a participatory workshop on crown modeling needs and challenges. Funding was provided by the Joint Fire Science Program …

A Proposal To Improve Performance Of The Forest Vegetation Simulator - Fire And Fuels Extension, Dave C. Cawrse, Michael G. Van Dyke, Nicolas Nicholas L. Crookston, Donald Robinson, Sarah Beukema

Joint Fire Science Program Research Project Reports

The Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) and its associated Fire and Fuels Extension (FFE) have been used to provide information required by larger software systems like the Interagency Fuels Treatment - Decision Support System (IFT-DSS). Interacting with FVS in an automated fashion has been difficult, and simulations with very large numbers of stands, such as those necessary for landscape analyses for fire planning, could take a significant amount of time to process. This project was designed to: (A) develop a requirements document considering Service Oriented Architecture and how that may apply to FVS, and how FVS will be used interactively; (B) …