Forestry Graduate Student Association (FGSA)

The Forestry Graduate Student Association (FSGA) currently consists of 28 members. Fifteen members are Masters students while the rest are Ph.D. candidates

Streambank erosion adjacent to different riparian land-use practices and stream patterns along Bear Creek, in north central Iowa

Sediment load in streams is the major non-point source pollutant originating from agriculture landscapes. Bank erosion can contribute 45-60% of the sediment load in streams. Land-use practices such as row cropping and grazing, combined with channelization of meandering reaches of streams have accelerated bank erosion rates and increased the sediment load in streams. An 11 km reach of Bear Creek was selected to compare bank erosion and soil loss of riparian buffers, corn or soybean row-cropped fields and cow or horse pastures along meandering and channelized reaches. The pin method was used to measure bank erosion because it is very good for short time-scale studies with high resolution that capture small differences in bank erosion at relatively low cost. Thirty three erosion pin plots were randomly assigned to the land-use practice sites that contained approximately 1100 pins. The pins were measured approximately every month from June 1998 to May 1999. Bulk densities were estimated with the core method, while the length and average height of all the eroding sites were also measured. Bank erosion rates and soil losses were affected by land-use practices although bulk densities were not very different.;The highest bank erosion rates where on the outside bends of cattle grazed pastures and crop fields with losses of 33 and 34 cm yr−1. Buffered banks had the lowest erosion rates, with only 12 cm yr−1 lost. Cattle grazed pastures and crop fields lost 341 kg m−1and 288 kg m−1 while riparian buffers lost only 55 kg m−1. If the entire 11 km reach of Bear Creek had riparian multi-species buffers the bank soil loss would be reduced by 62 percent. Riparian buffers provide an alternative land-use practice that will reduce soil bank loss and sediment load in the streams while also being financially attractive to farmers because the Conservation Reserve Program subsidizes the agricultural land lost

Riparian land-use impacts on stream and gully bank soil and phosphorus losses with an emphasis on grazing practices

The tall-grass prairies, wetlands and forests that dominated the Iowa landscape have been replaced by annual row-crops and grass pastures that occupy more than 90% of the landscape today. Because of these changes, water reaches streams and gullies much faster and has led to incised streams and an extensive growth of gully networks. Stream and gully banks are major contributors of non-point source sediment and phosphorus. Reducing these pollutants is a priority to maintaining healthy streams. The objective of this study was to compare stream and gully bank soil and phosphorus losses under different land-use practices in three Iowa regions. The hypothesis was that stream and gully bank erosion would decrease in the following order: annual row-cropped fields, continuous pastures, rotational pastures, intensive rotational pastures, pastures with cattle excluded from the stream, grass filters and riparian forest buffers. In rotational and intensive rotational grazing the pastures are divided into paddocks. One paddock is grazed at a time while the others are rested. To estimate soil losses for each treatment, erosion pins were used for stream and gully bank rates and all the severe eroding site areas were measured. Estimating soil total phosphorus concentrations from the stream and gully bank faces allowed us to estimate phosphorus losses. In addition phosphorus concentrations in riparian areas, stream and gully beds and loafing areas were measured. Riparian forest buffers, grass filters and pastures with the cattle excluded from the stream had the lowest soil and phosphorus losses from stream and gully bank erosion. Row-cropped fields had high soil and phosphorus losses, similar to the continuous pastures. There are some indications that moving to rotational and intensive rotational pastures soil and phosphorus losses could decrease bank soil and phosphorous losses compared to continuous pastures. The effectiveness of rotational and intensive rotational pastures will depend on the number of paddocks along the stream, stocking rates, grazing in the stream paddocks during wet periods and how well landowners follow the pasture system guidelines. Finally cow entry points and loafing areas should require special attention because they can be major sources of soil and phosphorus to streams

A New Approach to Riparian Area Education in Arizona

Riparian areas are called “ribbons of life” since they are considered the most productive habitats in North America (Johnson et al. 1977; Chaney et al. 1990). In the arid western United States, riparian areas comprise less than 2% of the total land (Ffolliott et al. 2004). Despite their small area, Patten (1998) says that the role of riparian areas is disproportionate to their size, particularly in the semi-arid regions of North America. This is mainly due to the many functions and values of riparian areas. These functions and values are due to greater water availability relative to the adjacent terrestrial uplands, that adds greater vegetative and wildlife diversity. Riparian areas contribute to the improvement of water quality, particularly by reducing nonpoint source pollutants, and to increasing water quantity. Seventy percent of the threatened and endangered vertebrates in Arizona depend on riparian habitat (Johnson 1989). Domestic livestock are also attracted to riparian areas (Roath and Krueger 1982) for the same reasons that wildlife prefer riparian areas, high forage availability and abundance (Pinchak et al. 1991) and water availability (Ames 1977). Finally, riparian areas also have significant aesthetic values and are considered prime areas for recreational activities. The objective of this outreach program is to increase the awareness and knowledge of the public in Arizona about the importance of riparian areas, the processes that take place in riparian areas, and the human alteration these areas have endured. Three main activities were part of this project to meet the objective: 1) conduct educational workshops across the state, 2) develop an Arizona specific publication, and 3) develop a web-based educational module. The intended audience for this outreach program is the general public that includes farmers, ranchers, public and private land managers, watershed partnerships, recreationists, other riparian area users and interested public citizens

Development of a Prototype System of Torrent Management for the Suppression of Forest Fires

Source: ICHE Conference Archive - https://mdi-de.baw.de/icheArchiv

Involving Citizens in Watershed Management: the Arizona Master Steward Watershed Program

Arizona faces many complicated water resource issues including: groundwater overdraft; nonpoint source pollution; population growth; and water use conflicts. The Arizona Master Watershed Steward (MWS) Program is designed to prepare, educate and train volunteers who can provide knowledge, leadership, and service in the protection and monitoring of local watersheds. The first MWS training course was presented in Prescott, Arizona in fall of 2001, and expanded in 2002 and 2003. The training course has 10 four-hour sessions and two daylong field trips. Topics covered are: hydrology; climate; geologic processes; ecology; human impacts; water quality; land uses; geospatial tools; water law, and water resources management. Principles are taught using lecture/discussion format with hands-on activities that reinforce subject matter. Instructors typically include: Extension specialists, agents, and staff; agency professionals, and other authorities. MWS trainees become certified after contributing 40 hours of volunteer service. In 2003, Arizona MWS received $350,000 from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality to develop a statewide curriculum guide and establish a statewide Arizona MWS program. A statewide MWS Coordinator was hired and the curriculum guide was published in August 2005. As of 2005-06, MWS courses have been offered in Benson, Cottonwood, Phoenix, Prescott, Safford, Flagstaff, Tucson, Bullhead City, and Sierra Vista. A total of 202 volunteers have completed the course and contributed 2,500 hours of volunteer service. Volunteer projects have included: organization of local water conferences and watershed groups, water quality monitoring, noxious weed management, rangeland monitoring, well water testing, and restoration projects

Integrated Life Cycle Framework for Evaluating the Sustainability of Emerging Drop-In Replacement Biofuels

Mounting concerns over energy independence and security, oil supply volatility and price, and anthropogenic-derived climate destabilization are driving the strategic development of low-carbon biofuels. Recently, second generation biofuels—fuels derived from non-food biofeedstocks including: perennial grasses, short rotation woody crops (SRWCs), and microalgae have gained significant interest from scientific and political actors due to their potential for reduced life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to baseline petroleum fuels, and fungibility with existing transportation infrastructure and vehicles fleets. However, the environmental sustainability of these second generation biofuels and their capacity to meet U.S. regulatory biofuel mandates remains uncertain, and a point of scientific inquiry. This work investigates the sustainability of emerging second-generation drop-in replacement hydrocarbon biofuels, utilizing sustainability metrics and methodologies derived from multiple disciplines including life cycle assessment, industrial ecology, statistics, thermodynamics, and process modeling. This novel interdisciplinary life cycle framework is applied to study the environmental sustainability of several distinct emerging drop-in replacement biofuel platforms including: (1) cultivation of microalgae in open raceways ponds and hydro-processing of algal-oil to renewable diesel, (2) fast pyrolysis of perennial grasses and hydro-upgrading of bio-oil to green gasoline, and (3) multistage torrefaction of SRWCs and catalytic upgrading to hydrocarbon biofuels. Traditional process-based Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and hybrid Ecologically-based Life Cycle Assessment (EcoLCA) models are developed to assess the degradation of ecological good and services, environmental impacts, and resource intensity of producing drop-in replacement biofuels. Rigorous process modeling and statistical analysis is performed to quantify key sustainability metrics including energy return on investment and life cycle GHG emissions for producing hydrocarbon biofuels under different combinations of biofeedstocks, fuel upgrading pathways, and coproduct scenarios, and to determine if renewable fuel(s) meet compliance with life cycle GHG emissions reductions thresholds set by U.S. federal regulatory programs. This interdisciplinary approach captures broader environmental externalities and unintended consequences of biofuel production that are outside the purview of traditional process design, and allows for holistic understanding of the potential tradeoffs, challenges, and broad-based impacts of emerging biofuels prior to their widespread commercialization—information that is pivotal for guiding the sustainable development of the nascent biofuels industry

Assessing the impact of dams on riparian and deltaic vegetation using remotely-sensed vegetation indices and Random Forests modelling

Riparian and deltaic areas exhibit a high biodiversity and offer a number of ecosystem services but are often degraded by human activities. Dams, for example, alter the hydrologic and sediment regimes of rivers and can negatively affect riparian areas and deltas. In order to sustainably manage these ecosystems, it is, therefore, essential to assess and monitor the impacts of dams. To this end, site-assessments and in-situ measurements have commonly been used in the past, but these can be laborious, resource demanding and time consuming. Here, we investigated the impact of three dams on the riparian forest of the Nestos River Delta in Greece by employing multi-temporal satellite data. We assessed the evolution in the values of eight vegetation indices over 27 years, derived from 14 dates of Landsat data. We also employed a modelling approach, using a machine learning Random Forests model, to investigate potential linkages between the observed changes in the indices and a host of climatic and terrestrial predictor variables. Our results show that low density vegetation (0–25%) is more affected by the construction of the dams due to its proximity to anthropogenic influences and the effects of hydrologic regime alteration. In contrast, higher density vegetation cover (50–75%) appears to be largely unaffected, or even improving, due to its proximity to the river, while vegetation with intermediate coverage (25–49%) exhibits no clear trend in the Landsat-derived indices. The Random Forests model found that the most important parameters for the riparian vegetation (based on the Mean Decrease Gini and the Mean Decrease Accuracy) were the distance to the dams, the sea and the river. Our results suggest that management plans of riparian and deltaic areas need to incorporate and take into consideration new innovative management practices and monitoring studies that employ multi-temporal satellite data archives

Riparian land-use ımpacts on stream bank and gully erosion in agricultural watersheds: what we have learned

Stream bank and gully erosion are major sources of nonpoint source pollutants, especially in landscapes dominated by agriculture. Implementation of upland conservation practices in landscapes dominated by agriculture reduces upland sediment transport more than water runoff, leading to excessive stream bank and gully erosion. This review focus on ten different studies conducted in streams in Iowa that investigated riparian land-use impacts on stream banks, gullies, and other riparian sediment sources (cattle loafing areas and cattle stream access points). The riparian land-uses investigated were riparian forest buffers; grass filters; continuous, rotational, and intensive rotational pastures; pastures with cattle fenced out of the stream; and row-cropped fields. Results of these studies indicate that maintaining perennial deep-rooted vegetation in riparian areas and excluding cattle from the stream channel stabilizes stream banks and gullies. Cattle loafing areas and cattle stream access points appear to also be important sediment sources. Re-establishing perennial riparian vegetation is a sustainable and cost-effective conservation practice because it reduces sediment in streams while maintaining the majority of the watershed in agricultural production. The limited available funds for the implementation of holistic watershed conservation practices suggest using targeted approaches, at the watershed scale, to improve conservation practice effectiveness