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DigitalCommons@USU
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Recent studies of Lake Superior, the Earth's largest freshwater lake by surface area, describe it as net heterotrophic (primary production < community respiration), making it a net source of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere. This conclusion...
2018-04-20
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Climate change, land clearing, and artificial drainage have increased the Minnesota River Basin’s (MRB) stream flows, enhancing erosion of channel banks and bluffs. Accelerated erosion has increased sediment loads and sedimentation rates...
2018-08-08
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Restoration of riparian and wet meadow ecosystems in semiarid rangelands of the western United States is a high priority given their ecological and hydrological importance in the region. However, traditional restoration approaches are often...
2018-08-05
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Trophic cascade theory predicts that predator effects should extend to influence carbon cycling in ecosystems. Yet, there has been little empirical evidence in natural ecosystems to support this hypothesis. Here, we use a naturally-occurring...
2018-08-03
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Temporal and spatial nonuniformity in supplies of water and sand in a river network leads to sand transport that is in local disequilibrium with the upstream sand supply. In such river networks, sand is transported downstream as elongating waves...
2018-08-20
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Utahns are expressing a rapidly growing interest in protecting and enhancing instream flows for outdoor recreation and environmental benefits (Endter-Wada et al. 2015). However, many Utah rivers are already over-allocated for agricultural,...
2018-10-01
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Unforeseen interactions of dams and declining water availability have formed new obstacles to recovering endemic and endangered big-river fishes. During a recent trend of drying climate and declining reservoir water levels in the southwestern...
2018-09-07
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In the United States, the Clean Water Act (CWA) establishes water quality standards important for maintaining healthy freshwater ecosystems. Within the CWA framework, states define their own water quality criteria, leading to a potential...
2018-09-20
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Changes in the amount of water and sediment that enter a river can change its shape and size. The way that rivers change is affected by a variety of factors, including the size of the sediment in the river, and past changes to the river. The...
2018-12-01
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Much of the stormwater protection in Cache Valley is done with respect to prevention of TSS contamination during construction activities. Preventing contamination of stormwater from construction activities is critical, but stormwater can still be...
2012-06-28
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Food web theory predicts that current global declines in marine predators could generate unwanted consequences for many marine ecosystems. In coastal plant communities (kelp, seagrass, mangroves, and salt marsh), several studies have documented...
2018-09-03
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Predator–prey interactions including prey switching, predator swamping, and size-selectivity are important in maintaining multi-species systems. In fishes, early life stages are often recruitment bottlenecks due to high mortality partially caused...
2017-09-13
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Hurricanes, flooding, droughts. Weather‐related disasters are dominating news cycles and causing widespread destruction, most recently with Typhoon Mangkhut and Hurricane Florence. The US had the most catastrophic hurricane season on record in...
2018-10-01
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS) manages 193 million acres of public lands across 43 states and Puerto Rico. The original intent behind reserving lands managed by the USFS was to improve and protect forests, secure...
2018-09-08
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Bull trout are a fish species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Historically, they ranged from Northern California at the southernmost extent, into Canada at the northern most extent, and east into Nevada and Montana. Bull...
2018-12-01
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Consensus has emerged in the literature that increased biodiversity enhances the capacity of ecosystems to perform multiple functions. However, most biodiversity/ecosystem function studies focus on a single ecosystem, or on landscapes of...
2018-10-05
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The North Slope of Alaska contains arctic fish populations that are important for subsistence of local human populations, and are under threat from natural resource extraction and climate change. We designed and evaluated four quantitative PCR...
2017-10-19
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The overarching goal of this project was to compile and analyze a variety of existing datasets, and generate several new datasets, to advance our understanding of how the Bear River Mud Lake-Bear Lake system functions, how it has, or is expected...
2018-11-05
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Climatic elasticity is a crucial metric to assess the hydrological influence of climate change. Based on the Budyko equation, this study performed an analytical derivation of the climatic elasticity of evapotranspiration (ET). With this derived...
2018-12-04
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Understanding hydrological responses to climate change and land use and land cover change (LULCC) is important for water resource planning and management, especially for water-limited areas. The annual streamflow of the Wuding River Watershed...
2018-12-04
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Accurate spatial and temporal precipitation estimates are important for hydrological studies of irrigation depletion, net irrigation requirement, natural recharge, and hydrological water balances in defined areas. This analysis supports the...
2018-12-18
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The western United States remains well below historical wildfire activity, yet misconceptions abound in the public and news media that the area burning by wildfire each year in the American West is unprecedented. We submit that short‐term records...
2018-10-23
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Electromagnetic flow meters (known as magnetic flow meters) are a widely used type of flow meter. This study examines the performance of magnetic flow meters when the electrodes in the meter are positioned at two different orientations: electrodes...
2018-11-21
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