It is known that soil biota affects water dynamics through various complex mechanisms. The impact on retention by soil biota are due to a combination of changes to pore geometry, pore clogging by biofilms, biofilms that serve to connect thin water films across many pores as the soil dries, and...
It is uncertain how predicted changes in climate will impact vegetation responses and plant species’ distributions because the physiological mechanisms underlying thresholds for damage are not well understood, and responses to stress vary by functional type and developmental stage. Thus, it is crucial to investigate physiological responses to heat and...
Dwarf mistletoes, obligate, parasitic plants with diminutive aerial shoots, have long-term effects on host tree water relations, hydraulic architecture, and photosynthetic gas exchange and can eventually lead to tree death. To investigate the long-term impacts of dwarf mistletoe on gas exchange of host western hemlock trees, I compared growth, gas...
Engineered capillary barriers typically consist of two layers of granular materials designed so that the contrast in sediment hydrologic properties and sloping interface retains infiltrating water in the upper layer. We report here on the results of two bench-top capillary barrier experiments, and associated modeling. These experiments were conducted to...
Within The Lamplighter, a novel written in 1854, Maria
Susanna Cummins defines a version of the sentimental novel
that significantly differs from the prescriptive analysis
male critics have offered for the genre. This thesis
argues that feminist theory and recent rhetorical theory
have caused a critical paradigm shift that has...
Irrigated agricultural production in sandy soils presents several unique challenges to growers, including naturally high permeability, low native water retention, as well as high rates of water drainage losses and leaching of chemicals to the shallow aquifers. This study is an initial investigation into water motion in the sandy agricultural...
The extent of agricultural drainage has created concern for its potential undesirable effects on surface water quality. Land applications of liquid manure on tile drain fields have the potential to transport solutes and bacteria to the drains following precipitation or irrigation events and many times are directly sent to a...
Although surface water constitutes less than 1.5% of freshwater supply, historical development of surface water sources continues to mark the landscape. However, over- exploitation of groundwater is now at its highest, and 25% of the world’s 1.7 billion population live in water scare regions. As glaciers and snowpack disappear due...
Evaporation synergy is a phenomenon that occurs between different classes of soil and allows for a greater amount/quantity of soil water evaporation. 20 of the 66 soil texture class combinations have been shown to exhibit evaporation synergy (Fisher, 2012), however the impact of column width on the functionality of this...
Pseudo-Nitzschia (P/N) is a species of naturally occurring phytoplankton that contributes to harmful algal blooms (HABs) in the California Current System (CCS). P/N can produce domoic acid (DA), a toxin which accumulates in organisms that consume phytoplankton, leading to amnesiac shellfish poisoning in higher trophic levels. Thus DA can negatively...