The black-footed ferret is a meso-predator within the Great Plains region of North America. Before the 1900s, black-footed ferret populations were self-sustaining in large ecological patches throughout the geographical range of the Great Plains. During the 1900s, various factors such as the systematic extermination of prairie dogs (the primary food...
Pacific salmon are an integral part of ecosystems, industry, culture, and food source. Rapid declines and extirpation in many populations and species have caught the interest of environmentalists, scientists, recreational anglers, commercial fishers, general public, and economists. Billions of dollars have been spent to restore, return, improve, sustain dwindling populations...
Production of 89Zr serves as a crucial preliminary step for exploring Zr-chelates, determining their stability constants, and advancing radiolabeling methodologies for monoclonal antibody based theranostics. 89Zr is typically produced by the irradiation of natural yttrium targets, a process extensively documented in scientific literature. Two primary methods are employed: the 89Y(p,n)89Zr...
The purpose of this capstone is to provide a reassessment of the emergence of biophilia in interpretive programs conducted in California State Parks. More specifically, this project examines what effect natural resource interpretive programming has on the emergence of biophilia practices and if participants are more likely to be more...
This essay examines community narratives around Keep Virginia Beautiful's Green
Grants initiative. Green Grants is a signature annual program that awards grants to organizations
throughout Virginia in support of projects aligned with one of Keep Virginia Beautiful’s three
pillars: recycling, litter prevention, and community beautification. The primary research
questions are...
This paper examines the invasion of exotic wilding conifers on the native tussock grasslands of Aotearoa New Zealand. The investigation includes two studies and aims to better understand the structure of Pinus contorta seeds across tree crown positions and the viability rates of P. contorta seeds produced during a trees...
As urban populations increase, the presence of well-maintained trees provide a cost-effective solution to combat the effects of climate change, specifically the urban heat island effect. Unfortunately, the associated ecological, social and economic benefits of trees are not distributed equitably in the landscape due to lingering effects of redlining policies....
Variation in cheese quality due to geographic location is important to cheese producers, consumers, and retailers on a global level. Understanding the impacts of geographic location of cheese plants may be useful to businesses for marketing, cost reduction, and quality improvement. Many aspects of variation due to geography have been...
Nanoparticles are a hugely diverse category of material that have a wide variety of biomedical applications, and developing tools for biological research with high cellular uptake is critical to their effective application. However, rarely is attention paid to the exact mechanism by which this is occurring, with most studies focusing...
Through a desk-top analysis, this research shows that South African women have gained and utilize specialized skills, behaviors, and adaptations through their daily activities which are useful when applied to water resource management. Further, South African women are shown to build and draw on social capital as a way to...
Many industries in California are difficult to decarbonize, making carbon capture and storage (CCS) essential to reach net zero. California has committed to deliver an enormous 100 thousand tons per year of carbon storage by 2045. Despite much interest in carbon sequestration, there are currently no active geologic carbon capture...
The 24:1 Community is a growing community with ongoing concerns over historical residential segregation, minority-exposure to environmental hazards, and sparse tree canopy coverage. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the current state of the community’s urban forest through an assessment of the urban forest. It also highlights the need...
In some legislative bodies, the use of terms like climate change and global warming is frequently seen as taboo. In the United States, voters who identify as right-leaning have reported little concern about the environment or climate change. This lack of interest is mirrored by Republican legislators who often publicly...
This research explores the prospects of legislation in Michigan to authorize statewide use of Overdose Fatality Review Teams (OFRTs) to address the escalating opioid crisis. OFRTs consist of multidisciplinary teams that collaborate for overdose prevention. These teams operate on a local to statewide level and are comprised of individuals from...
Facial recognition has become increasingly important in recent years, due to the wide range of applications it has in fields such as security, surveillance, and human-computer interaction. Three popular methods for facial recognition are the Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Karhunen-Loeve Expansions, which is fundamentally a continuous form of PCA but...
Seven species of microorganisms indigenous to fish were inoculated into sterile fish muscle, obtained from Sebastodes alutus and Sebastalobus alascanus, and the production of total volatile acids (TVA) and total volatile bases (TVB) was determined during storage at 1 C. No production of TVA and TVB was noted in sterile...
Certain chlorinated insecticides can be identified by electron capture gas-liquid chromatographic (EC-GLC) analysis of the prepared sample before and after treatment with ultraviolet irradiation, Upon U.V. treatment, characteristic degradation products arise from the insecticides investigated. Comparison of the degradation pattern obtained by EC-GLC of unknown and authentic insecticides provides an...
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of the strongest pieces of legislation enacted for the protection of imperiled species in the United States but has often spurred controversy among resource users for its emphasis on species protection and recovery above all other resource uses. In recent years, the Section...