Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Coastal And Marine Fish Ecology Lab Intern, Rhiannon Michelle Holmes

College of the Environment Internship Reports

gained first-hand experience with seeing undisturbed estuary at Heron Point in comparison to the emergent marsh at Qwuloolt, increasing my knowledge about the effect dikes have on estuarine ecology and teaching me about the restoration projects in the Snohomish estuary. I also learned how to use a YSI probe and record field measurements. I also was able to observe some isopods and other salmonoid food sources.

Administrative And Field Intern - Coastal Watershed Institute, Amelia Kalagher

College of the Environment Internship Reports

Due to CWI’s uniquely small and agile nature as an organization, interns represent a core part of the staff and are involved in a variety of projects. Long-term data collection for Salish Sea nearshore ecology is the overarching goal. Projects I have been involved in within that sphere include monthly seining to monitor fish use of the nearshore, forage fish spawn surveys along several Strait of Juan de Fuca beaches, and snorkel surveys of herring spawn events and salmon use of nearshore kelp forests.

Coastal And Marine Fish Ecology Lab, Sarah Granard

College of the Environment Internship Reports

This Spring I worked under Sean Grealish and Kathryn Sobocinski in the Coastal and Marine Fish Ecology Lab at Western Washington University collecting invertebrate samples in the Snohomish estuary. The goal of the study is to better understand how invertebrates vary throughout the estuary to aid future restoration projects providing food for salmon where it is scarce. Weekly invertebrate samples were collected from April to June using neuston nets at surface and benthic levels within the channel.

Mt St Helens Pond Phytoplankton Intern, Lillie Cole Tomlinson

College of the Environment Internship Reports

No abstract provided.

City Sprouts Farm Internship, Stella Marie Sterk

College of the Environment Internship Reports

Over the course of this internship, I gained not just a deep understanding of the practical skills of regenerative agriculture, the experience also completely transformed my relationship with the land. For the first time in my life, I fully saw and felt and appreciated what it means to honor and steward the land we inhabit, and the gifts that it continually provides us with. Feeling the healing, transformative, and community building power of participating in community farming for myself has made me even more certain of what I want in my future career. I want to study urban planning and …

Amsec Internship, Leo Curtis

College of the Environment Internship Reports

One of my goals was to learn how to operate instrumentation that I had never used before in the context of environmental research. I learned the basics of how to operate the ICP-MS, and more specifically, began to learn to operate the ICP in a single-cell setting. This included the development of several skills and trainings, which included the basic AMSEC lab safety training. In addition, I had multiple sessions with professor Montaño practicing serial dilutions in preparation for the ICP. I also attended a compressed gas training, through which I learned the proper usage and handling of Argon gas …

Kicking Up Dust On Utah's Off-Road Vehicle Trails: Pi-Swerl Assessment Of Anthropogenic Dust Emissions, Wyatt A. Wiebelhaus

Honors Thesis

Upward trends in the use of off-highway vehicles (OHV) and the creation of new OHV trails facilitate an increase in soil disturbance and dust emissions in Utah. Anthropogenic destruction of soil crusts and the removal of vegetation by OHVs exposes soil and destroys soil structure, making the soil easier to erode by the wind. We used the PI-SWERL (Portable In Situ Wind Erosion Laboratory) to measure dust concentrations of disturbed and undisturbed soil. We tested soils at several popular OHV areas with landforms composed of sand dunes, playas, and Lake Bonneville sediments. Soil crust strength, grain size, and salinity were …

Creating A Sustainabili-Tour, Lily Dubray, Caden Fisher, Allison Gross, Morgan Hrivnak, Emily Kilstrom, Sushant Mukhia, Hannah Nelin, Sam Parrish, Waverly Patterson, Bowen Rand, Caleb Swanson, Wyatt Wiebelhaus

Sustainability & Environment Projects

Executive Summary

The University of South Dakota has taken significant steps to become more sustainable in the last few years. Students, faculty, and administrators have worked together to raise awareness and advance sustainability on campus. Because of these efforts, the University of South Dakota was recently recognized by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education as a STARS Bronze Institution based on our accomplishments in campus sustainability.

Every year, Dr. Meghann Jarchow teaches the Sustainability Capstone course, leading a class of seniors on a semester-long project aimed at furthering community sustainability by synthesizing student expertise. Throughout …

Agricultural Groundcover Update February 2024, Justin Laycock

Natural resources published reports

• About 92% of the grainbelt had adequate (more than 50%) vegetative groundcover to prevent wind erosion in February 2024.

• Nearly 8% of the grainbelt (1,193,400 ha) had less than 50% groundcover, which is inadequate to prevent wind erosion.

• The northern grainbelt had the highest risk of wind erosion and 16.5% of this farmland had inadequate groundcover.

• Less than 0.7% of the grainbelt had a high to very high risk of wind erosion because groundcover was less than 30%.

Sustainable Lab Certification Project Report, Alyssa White, Megan Ellis

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This report describes the creation of the new Sustainable Lab Certification program at WWU. Scientific and research labs are known to produce a lot of carbon emissions, and Western's labs are no exception. The Sustainable Lab certification process is open to labs from any department on campus, and includes a self-reporting audit that covers four categories of sustainability. Once labs fill it out, they can receive their certification scoring of Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum. We applied for and won a grant to provide participating labs with more sustainable options of different instruments and lab supplies and were able to …

Assessing The Efficacy Of The Washington Ban On Phosphorus Fertilizer, Pilar Deniston

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Freshwater lakes are essential ecosystems, providing crucial services for humans, plants, and animals. However, eutrophication, a process driven by an excess of nutrients such as phosphorus, poses a significant threat to lake health and water quality. To mitigate excess phosphorus and eutrophication, many states, including Washington, have implemented bans on phosphorus-containing fertilizers. This study evaluates the efficacy of Washington State's 2013 phosphorus-containing fertilizer ban, focusing on 58 lakes in western Washington. This study organized, filtered, and analyzed data from multiple counties' monitoring programs to examine total phosphorus concentrations before and after the ban. Additionally, this study involved a land cover …

Demographic Consequences Of Off-River Nesting For Piping Plover (Charadrius Melodus) And Interior Least Tern (Sternula Antillarum Athalassos) In The Lower Platte River System, Nebraska, Elsa M. Forsberg

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

Piping plovers (Charadrius melodus; hereafter, plovers) and interior least terns (Sternula antillarum athalassos; hereafter, terns) are two avian species that nest along the Lower Platte River system (LPRS) in Nebraska. In the LPRS, river sandbars provide natural nesting habitat, but off-river sites provide substantial nesting habitat especially when sandbar habitat is scarce. Although presumed to be important for the persistence of plovers and terns, off-river habitat is not self-sustaining and predicted to decline. Understanding the vital rates of plovers and terns in the LPRS will inform the role of off- river sites in the future conservation …

Sustainable Living At Imsa, Vignesh Tiruvannamalai, Zuyu Liu

Goal 4: Intrapersonal Intelligence Narrative

Students will collect any recyclable materials they have discarded to create wing decorations in conjunction with everyone in the wing and learn about sustainability, including statistics and lifestyle guidance.

Beavers, Hydrology, And Wapato: A Baseline For Monitoring Franz Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Justine Casebolt

Environmental Science and Management Professional Master's Project Reports

Located in the lower Columbia River floodplain, Franz Lake National Wildlife Refuge is a unique landscape with a complex land use history. For thousands of years, Indigenous tribes lived on this land. In the early 1990s, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service acquired the land, after it was identified as a mitigation site following the construction of the Bonneville Lock and Dam. Franz Lake Refuge was once known for its prevalent Wapato (Sagittaria latifolia) population, an emergent plant with edible tubers and an important food source for Indigenous people. With specific growth requirements and hydrologic conditions for germination and …

A Green New England? Regional Implementation Of Grant-Based Provisions Of The Inflation Reduction Act In The Northeastern U.S., Samuel Cooper

Sustainability and Social Justice

The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has been described as “the most significant action Congress has taken on clean energy and climate change in the nation’s history,” totaling some $370 billion in tax credits and federal grants for everything from residential solar panels to urban forestry. As the first of its size in U.S. climate policy, the IRA has been a subject of study and debate since its introduction, but it is only in this past year that funding reporting data has become available. This thesis utilizes this federal data to produce a novel analysis of IRA implementation at the …

Natural Resource Policy Analysis: Controversy Over Forest Management At Sparta Mountain Wildlife Management Area, James Bates

Environmental Science & Sustainable Development Student Projects

New Jersey contains the densest human population in the United States. As New York City to the east has grown, urban sprawl has reached much of the Garden State. For the natural environment, the impact of this sprawl is significant. The eastern deciduous forest that once covered the northern half of the state has been reduced to select areas where development is restricted. The remaining areas of protected forest are valuable to the public as natural gems amidst a world of modern infrastructure. Most of these protected forests are owned and managed by the state of New Jersey, by the …

Regional Differences Of Climate Change In Maine: Flow Rates, Precipitation, And Snowpack, Caitlyn Rose Daigle, Alex James Debo, Jason Daniel Moore, Lucky Mourredes, Cara Wren Perry, Eme L. Saverese, Kennedy Grace Todd, Sophia Lydia Winters

Research Learning Experiences (RLEs)

● Maine winters are changing rapidly, associated with changes in climate.

● These climate-linked changes are implicated in flooding, changes in snowpack, and changes in flow regimes in Maine.

● In this study, four different regions in Maine were analyzed to evaluate changes over time in snowpack, river ice, fall-through-spring precipitation,February Snowpack water equivalent

“Making The Bed”: Challenging Ideologies Of Ownership, Nonlocality, And Romanticism In The Age Of The Anthropocene, Ainsley P. Foster

Belmont University Research Symposium (BURS)

The current Age of the Anthropocene marks a recent and rapid transition into a period in climate history that is notably defined by human impact. Modern Western sentiments of grief, frustration, and romanticism as a result of the interplay between domestic and corporate spaces seem to culminate in an overall attitude of apathy and acceptance of the Age of the Anthropocene. Various art forms collaborate to create the current conversation of the causatory and reactionary relationship that humans have with the Anthropocene, offering interpretations of how individuals and corporations view ownership of and responsibilities to the environment. There is a …

Climate Change And Voluntary Private Land Conservation: A Case Study Of Working Lands For Wildlife, Abigail Thompson

School of Professional Studies

This case study examines the role, impact, and future of voluntary private land conservation (VPLC) programs, with a particular focus on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW) initiative. Climate change and population growth pose a significant threat to public land conservation, making alternative methods like WLFW increasingly important. WLFW is a relatively successful and well-received program, but it is still young and comparatively smaller than other VPLC programs operated by the government. Publications by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, WLFW partner organizations, and relevant scholarly articles were utilized in order to assess WLFW’s success independently and …

Non-Native Rhizophora Mangle As Sinks For Coastal Contamination On Moloka’I, Hawai’I, Geoffrey Szafranski, Elise F. Granek, Michelle L. Hladik, Mia Hackett

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Coastal mangrove forests provide a suite of environmental services, including sequestration of anthropogenic contamination. Yet, research lags on the environmental fate and potential human health risks of mangrove-sequestered contaminants in the context of mangrove removal for development and range shifts due to climate change. To address this, we conducted a study on Moloka'i, Hawai'i, comparing microplastic and pesticide contamination in coastal compartments both at areas modified by non-native red mangroves (Rhizophora mangle) and unmodified, open coastline. Sediment, porewater, and mangrove plant tissues were collected to quantify microplastic and pesticide concentrations across ecosystem type. Average microplastics were similar between …

Water Current, Volume 56, No. 1, Spring 2024

Water Current Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Utah Lake Paleoecology Study Report To Deq, April 2024, J. Brahney, L. King, M. Devey, M. Carter, G. Carling, S. Brothers, A. Provard, B. Young, R. West

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Utah Lake is a large shallow eutrophic lake located in north central Utah. In recent years, the occurrence of frequent and sometimes toxic algal blooms has brought new urgency in understanding the cause and effects of eutrophication in Utah Lake. The drainage basin of Utah Lake is dominated by carbonate sedimentary materials and small pockets of phosphate rock occur. Given the bedrock geology and shallow nature of the lake, there has been uncertainty as to the natural trophic status and ecology of the lake prior to the settlement of Utah Valley. Thus, defining historical nutrient concentrations and sources in the …

Integrating Drone And Satellite Imaging With Machine Learning For Green Stormwater Infrastructure Condition Assessments, Matthew Dupasquier

Master's Theses (2009 -)

Green Stormwater Infrastructure (GSI) has been increasingly utilized to improve urban stormwater management strategies. However, the performance and utility of GSI decrease over time if the infrastructure is not properly maintained. In recent history, the intrinsic operations and maintenance costs associated with the complex networks of new infrastructure have placed a burden on municipalities, ultimately prohibiting many from reaching the full extent of their stormwater management goals. One way for cities to achieve cost savings is through automated monitoring that can quickly assess the condition of GSI assets; however, existing cost-effective technologies are limited. Drones and satellites may be able …

Seasonal Variability In Peak Flow Of Maine Rivers, Brianna L. Benson, Salfa Hendrix, Christopher Houdeshell, Emma Mae Hovencamp, Kaylee M. Perron, Wyeth Bird Purkiss

Research Learning Experiences (RLEs)

Questions and Hypotheses

• How has the timing of peak flow changed over time? ○ Hypothesis: Peak flow has moved earlier in the spring due to a warming climate melting snow earlier.

• How has the variation of flow changed over time?

○ Hypothesis: Flow has grown more

variable in more recent years due to an increase in more variable precipitation patterns, especially in the spring months.

Bibliography For "Earth Day Display: Planet Vs Plastics: A Book Display Increasing The Awareness Of The Harms Of Plastic In Our Ecosystem", Arianna Tillman, Isabella Piechota, Kalea Brown

Library Displays and Bibliographies

A bibliography created to accompany a display about Earth Day, sustainability, and the harms of plastic during April 2024 at the Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University.

The Effects Of Phenological Shifts On The Reproductive Success Of Common Terns (Sterna Hirundo) And Arctic Terns (Sterna Paradisaea) In The Gulf Of Maine, Jamie W. Dinella

Student Publications

Climate change is resulting in ecosystem-wide consequences, including shifts in the geographical distribution of species and the timing of biological events, or phenology. The rapidly warming Gulf of Maine hosts breeding populations of migratory common terns (Sterna hirundo) and Arctic terns (Sterna paradisaea). I used nest check data (2013-2022) and eggshell membrane stable isotope data (2022) from Petit Manan Island in the Gulf of Maine to examine the causes and consequences of variation in phenology in common and Arctic terns. I hypothesized that the timing of an individual’s breeding was impacted by their foraging behavior and that female terns that …

Final Blacktail Creek Remediation And Contaminated Groundwater Hydraulic Control Site Pumping Test Data Summary Report (Dsr), Pioneer Technical Services, Inc.

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

Technical Specifications - Silver Bow Creek Conservation Area - 60% Submittal April 2024, Atlantic Richfield Company

Silver Bow Creek/Butte Area Superfund Site

No abstract provided.

What Soil Is Worth: A Cost-Benefit Framework Analysis Of Syntropic Farming, Aubrey Kettley

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Syntropic farming, a type of regenerative agriculture, models its farming system after a forest. This type of farming prioritizes soil health while also providing a varied yield of crops. Because it is a fairly new system globally, little research has been done on the economic impacts of syntropic farming, and therefore the feasibility of scaling up regenerative systems like this. This study aims to analyze the economic feasibility of this system through a literature review and a cost-benefit analysis framework. The results highlight the applicability, environmental advantage and economic feasibility of the system. Based on the presented framework, the short …

Ecological Monitoring Program At Vims Esl: Annual Report 2023, Paige G. Ross, Richard A. Snyder

Reports

An Ecological Monitoring Program (EMP) has been established at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science Eastern Shore Laboratory (VIMS ESL) for the coastal environment near the Wachapreague lab. The goals of the initiative are to 1) provide status and trends information to scientists who study and regulators who manage Virginia’s marine resources, 2) provide a scientific context for short-term research and grant proposals 3) provide pedagogical enrichment for educators to use in their classes, and 4) build capacity in staff expertise and training of interns and students at VIMS ESL.

The program formalizes and standardizes data collection for a long-term …