100039 research outputs found
Sort by
“That’s Not the Entire Story:” Youth and Indigenous Voices Call for Intersectional Environmental and Multispecies Justice Approaches at Great Salt Lake
No full textGreat Salt Lake is facing potential ecological collapse, which will have a cascade of consequences across communities, states, and continents. Despite many calls for healing human and more-than-human communities, Utah policy has still not met the challenges of a rapidly declining lake. Communities closest to the lake and with heightened health and structural vulnerabilities—including communities of color, youth, Tribes, ecologies, and other marginalized communities—are those who will receive the strongest punishment for the state’s failure to address this urgent issue. Yet, as lake levels recede in response to the pressures of settler colonial systems and values, youth and Indigenous voices rise to proclaim their knowledges, critical stories, and approaches to water conservation that center justice for all peoples and ecologies. Braiding marginalized knowledges creates strong weavings that transform our cultures and social structures. With these knowledge weavings connecting diverse peoples in this region, we believe we can collectively heal battered landscapes and communities. In this podcast, a panel of four youth and Indigenous leaders discuss the potential of bringing a thriving world into being for many species, lands, and waters
Role of Competition in Avoiding Social Collapse
No full textHistorical examples suggest that isolated, resource-scarce societies are prone to increased hostility and social disasters. The research in this report explores the role of intrasocietal competition in avoiding resource collapse. Two resource-consumer models are proposed with competition which depends on the level of available resources. One of these models is selected for in-depth analysis, and the region in the parameter space where saddle-node bifurcations emerge is computed numerically. The effects of environmental noise on resource growth are simulated, showing that the increased noise usually has negative long-term effects which might be mitigated via increased consumer competition
Changes to Utah State University\u27s Open Access Fund
No full textUtah State University (USU) Libraries established an open access (OA) fund in 2012 with the goal of helping USU authors offset the costs of publishing OA articles. The fund proved to be enormously popular, and funds were expended quickly each year—most recently being exhausted in less than 72 hours. In recognition of this unsustainability, as well as concerns about the rapidly changing role of OA and copyright in scholarly publishing, USU Libraries initiated significant changes to the fund. This lightning talk will share how we identified and assessed challenges with the existing OA fund, the modifications we implemented, our plans for impact assessment, and how these revisions fit within larger efforts to advance open publishing on our campus. One critical shift was the transition from a first-come, first-served application process to a need- and merit-based system guided by a comprehensive evaluation rubric, with priority given to students, pre-tenure faculty, and applicants who deposited post-prints of their work in USU’s institutional repository. Messaging about the fund emphasizes that it is just one of many ways the library supports OA publishing. These updates aim to make our funding process more efficient and equitable while strengthening the foundation for a more robust OA scholarly ecosystem on our campus
Quantifying Dust Nutrient Mobility Through an Alpine Watershed
No full textDust has the potential to play a significant role in the nutrient dynamics of alpine watersheds with important ecological implications. However, little is known about how dust nutrients circulate through the environment and which watershed characteristics facilitate dust impacts on water quality. This study explored the contribution of dust-deposited nutrients, focusing on a high-elevation Long Term Ecological Research site, where dust samples have been continuously collected since 2017. We incorporated observed dust nutrient compositions, including fractions of inorganic and organic nitrogen and phosphorus, into a popular hydrological model, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool, and ran simulations for 2019–2021. By comparing simulations with and without dust nutrient inputs, we estimated the impact of dust-deposited nutrients on individual watershed processes. Results revealed a significant contribution of dust-deposited nutrients, particularly soluble reactive phosphorus (SRP), to several nutrient cycling and transport pathways. Notably, dust contributed up to 19.3% of the SRP load in annual streamflow (increasing monthly streamflow concentration by up to 10.9 μg L-1). Spatial analysis of model estimates demonstrated a relationship between topography, soil type, and the cycling and transport of dust nutrients. The largest dust nutrient contributions were found in catchment areas with lower slope and less hydric soils, where other natural mobilization processes may be limited. This comparative modeling approach stresses the importance of including dust nutrients in watershed models, especially in oligotrophic systems, and has potential to validate these findings elsewhere and identify how watershed characteristics may either mollify or accentuate the impacts of dust deposition on mountain freshwater systems
Improving Profitability of Small and Medium Sized Farms Though Economic Optimization of Wheel-Line Irrigation
No full text
