Other Environmental Sciences Commons^™

The Cleaning Of Burned And Contaminated Archaeological Maize Prior To 87sr/86sr Analysis, L.V. Benson, H. E. Taylor, T. I. Plowman, D. A. Roth, R. C. Antweiler

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Accurate trace-metal and strontium-isotope analyses of archaeological corn cobs require that metal contaminants be removed prior to chemical analysis. Archaeological cobs are often coated with construction debris, dust, or soilwhich contains mineral particles. In addition, most archaeological cobs are partially or completely burned and the burned parts incorporate mineral debris in their hardened residual structures. Unburned cobs are weak ion exchangers and most metals within a cob are not firmly bound to cob organic matter; therefore, immersing cobs in acids and rinsing them in deionized water to remove mineral contaminants may result in the undesirable loss of metals, including strontium, …

Barcoding Bushmeat: Molecular Identification Of Central African And South American Harvested Vertebrates, Mitchell J. Eaton, Greta J. Meyers, Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis, Matthew S. Leslie, Andrew P. Martin, George Amato

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The creation and use of a globally available database of DNA sequences from a standardized gene region has been proposed as a tool for species identification, assessing genetic diversity and monitoring the legal and illegal trade in wildlife species. Here, we contribute to the Barcode of Life Data System and test whether a short region of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COX1) gene would reliably distinguish among a suite of commonly hunted African and South American mammal and reptile species. We used universal primers to generate reference barcode sequences of 645 bp for 23 species from five vertebrate …

The Role Of African Dust In The Formation Of Quaternary Soils On Mallorca, Spain And Implications For The Genesis Of Red Mediterranean Soils, Daniel R. Muhs, James Budahn, Anna Avila, Gary Skipp, Joshua Freeman, Deanna Patterson

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

African dust additions explain the origin of terra rossa soils that are common on the carbonate-platform island of Mallorca, Spain. Mineralogical and geochemical analyses indicate that Quaternary carbonate eolianites on Mallorca have a very high purity, usually composed of more than 90% carbonate minerals (calcite, dolomite, and aragonite). In contrast, terra rossa soils developed on these eolianites have lower carbonate contents and contain higher concentrations of quartz and other silicates. Analyses of immobile trace elements indicate that the non-carbonate fractions of the eolianites have distinctive Zr/Hf, La/Yb, Cr/Sc and Th/Ta values that differ from the superjacent terra rossa soils. These …

Assessing The Potential For Luminescence Dating Of Basalts, S. Tsukamoto, G. A.T. Duller, A. G. Wintle, Daniel R. Muhs

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The possibility of dating basalt using luminescence was tested on four samples with independent age control from Cima volcanic !eld, California, with the ultimate aim of assessing whether the technique could be used to date sediments on the surface of Mars. Previous analysis of these samples had demonstrated that the infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) signal is most suitable for dating as it showed the lowest fading rate among various luminescence signals. In this study, changes in equivalent dose as a function of preheat are described. The ages for the two youngest Cima samples agree with the independent ages based on …

Citizen Professionals: The Effective Practices Of Experts Helping Community Organizations, Sarah Hippensteel Hall

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Although numerous local, state, and federal laws and policies address water pollution, many problems remain. To address these problems thousands of groups of citizens, who are concerned with their water resources - rivers, streams, lakes, ponds, and groundwater - organized around the U.S. over the past several decades. To succeed, these community organizations need the resources and capacity to reach their goals. To gain capacity, some community organizations turn to people outside the organization for assistance. Citizen professionals are helpers who work jointly with an organization to help develop an organization's adaptive capacity to deal with challenges and achieve goals. …

Impacts Of Land Use/Land Cover Change On Climate And Future Research Priorities, Rezaul Mahmood, Roger A. Pielke Sr., Kenneth G. Hubbard, Dev Niyogi, Gordon Bonan, Peter Lawrence, Richard Mcnider, Clive Mcalpine, Andres Etter, Samuel Gameda, Budong Qian, Andrew Carleton, Adriana Beltran-Przekurat, Thomas Chase, Arturo I. Quintanar, Jimmy O. Adegoke, Sajith Vezhapparambu, Glen Connor, Salvi Asefi, Elif Sertel, David R. Legates, Yuling Wu, Robert Hale, Oliver W. Frauenfeld, Anthony Watts, Marshall Shepherd, Chandana Mitra, Valentine G. Anantharaj, Souleymane Fall, Robert Lund, Anna Treviño, Peter D. Blanken, Jinyang Du, Hsin-I Chang, Ronnie Leeper, Udaysankar S. Nair, Scott Dobler, Ravinesh Deo, Jozef Syktus

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Human activities have modified the environment for thousands of years. Significant population increase, migration, and accelerated socioeconomic activities have intensified these environmental changes over the last several centuries. The climate impacts of these changes have been found in local, regional, and global trends in modern atmospheric temperature records and other relevant climatic indicators.

An important human influence on atmospheric temperature trends is extensive land use/land cover change (LULCC) and its climate forcing. Studies using both modeled and observed data have documented these impacts (e.g., Chase et al. 2000; Kalnay and Cai 2003; Cai and Kalnay 2004; Trenberth 2004; Vose et …

Improving Farmers’ Perception And Use Of Climate Predictions In Farming Decisions: A Transition Model, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Qi Hu, Kenneth G. Hubbard, Gary D. Lynne, Roger H. Bruning

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Despite tremendous efforts to improve weather and climate predictions and to inform farmers about the use of such weather products, farmers’ attitudes toward forecast use remain poor and farmer use of forecasts has not increased. This paper describes features of a new conceptual model for facilitating farmers’ use of weather products and offers preliminary evidence for its effectiveness based on a test-of-concept prototype. The prototype system provides farmers with contextualized information, the opportunity to use that information in relevant farming contexts, and collaborative interaction with other users. In addition, scaffolding and feedback are incorporated in the model to enhance learning …

Evidence For Recent Population Bottlenecks In Northern Spotted Owls (Strix Occidentalis Caurina), W. Chris Funk, Eric D. Forsman, Matthew Johnson, Thomas D. Mullins, Susan M. Haig

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) is one of the most controversial threatened subspecies ever listed under the US Endangered Species Act. Despite protection of its remaining forest habitat, recent field studies show continued declines of northern spotted owls. One potential threat to northern spotted owls which has not yet been shown is loss of genetic variation from population bottlenecks. Bottlenecks can increase the probability of mating among related individuals, potentially causing inbreeding depression, and can decrease adaptive potential. Here we report evidence for recent bottlenecks in northern spotted owls using a large genetic dataset (352 individuals …

Tree-Ring Dates And Demographic Change In The Southern Colorado Plateau And Rio Grande Regions, Michael S. Berry, Larry Benson

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

In this chapter, tree-ring dates from the southern Colorado Plateau, Mogollon Highlands, and Rio Grande areas (fig. 3-1) (hereafter referred to as the study area) are used to estimate regional-scale timber-harvesting and construction activities between AD 600 and 1600 (the Basketmaker III through Pueblo IV periods). Within that time span, we focus our attention particularly on the AD 1045-1300 period, a time when anomalously wet periods alternated with megadroughts (fig. 3.2). Treering- date distributions (histograms) for eight archaeological subregions within the study area have been created using a database of more than twenty-four thousand tree-ring dates from archaeological sites. These …

Barcoding Bushmeat: Molecular Identification Of Central African And South American Harvested Vertebrates, Mitchell J. Eaton, Greta L. Meyers, Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis, Matthew S. Leslie, Andrew P. Martin, George Amato

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The creation and use of a globally available database of DNA sequences from a standardized gene region has been proposed as a tool for species identification, assessing genetic diversity and monitoring the legal and illegal trade in wildlife species. Here, we contribute to the Barcode of Life Data System and test whether a short region of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COX1) gene would reliably distinguish among a suite of commonly hunted African and South American mammal and reptile species. We used universal primers to generate reference barcode sequences of 645 bp for 23 species from five vertebrate …

Methods In Environmental Biotechnology For Environmentalists, Florentin Smarandache, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, S.R. Kannan, S. Ramathilagam

Branch Mathematics and Statistics Faculty and Staff Publications

The study of environmental pollution by chemicals used in agriculture as pesticide or as fertilizers or pollution caused by industries and chemical plants which use chemicals have not been analysed systematically. This book has five chapters. First chapter is introductory in nature. Here we just study chemical pollution caused by garment industries in chapter two of this book using fuzzy associative memories. In chapter three we give ways to control pollution by improving the system performance using hierarchical genetic fuzzy control algorithm. This study is carried out using the past data reported by Shimada et al (1995). Health hazards suffered …