The John H. Crawford Papers: Letters from the Civil War.

The purpose of my thesis research was to transcribe a collection of letters to John H. Crawford about the formation and actions of the Sixtieth Tennessee Infantry (Confederate) in Jonesboro during the Civil War, annotate them, and provide an introduction that details the events and people described in the letters. These letters are important because they describe first-hand the process of formation of this Confederate infantry unit in an area of East Tennessee that predominately supported the Union. The letters themselves can be found in the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University’s Charles C. Sherrod Library

Quantifying Carbon Dioxide Fluxes in the Air and Water in Blowing Springs Cave, Arkansas

Prior work has shown that the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) within cave atmospheres is a function of cave airflow patterns. The dynamics of CO2 within karst systems are of increasing interest as they can control periods of precipitation or dissolution in speleothems and influence potential interpretations of paleoclimate records. Similarly, CO2 is an important driver of speleogenesis, and air-water CO2 dynamics can control patterns of cave passage evolution. Karst also plays an uncertain role in the global carbon cycle and understanding CO2 dynamics within karst systems will aid the development of carbon budgets. Here, a monitoring station was deployed to study the temporal variations of dissolved and gaseous CO2 concentrations in Blowing Springs Cave in Bella Vista, Arkansas. Results show fluctuations in CO2 concentrations are controlled by density driven chimney effect airflow. The chimney effect is driven by outside temperature changes, which influence the relative density of cave air and outside air. During the winter months, air is pulled into the lower, main entrance resulting in low CO2 concentrations within the cave. During the summer months, cool CO2 rich cave air from the cave flows out the entrance and CO2 levels in the cave rise. The CO2 concentration in the air is immediately affected by the reversals in airflow. However, in the water delayed responses were observed to changes in airflow direction. Airflow velocity and discharge are also being measured, so that CO2 fluxes within both the air and water can be quantified. Longitudinal profiles of gaseous and dissolved CO2 within the cave were constructed from spot measurements of CO2 during different seasons and airflow regimes. Ultimately, the observations are used to quantify CO2 fluxes, to examine the diurnal and seasonal changes in gaseous and dissolved CO2 and to quantify interactions between the air and water

THE ROLE OF ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN PREDICTING ADOPTION OF WIND EROSION CONTROL PRACTICES

Logit and ordered probit analyses were used to identify factors associated with reduced tillage adoption, continuous spring cropping, and the number of changes made in response to wind erosion. Contrary to previous results for water erosion control, simple perception of a wind erosion problem or membership in a particular socioeconomic category did not significantly explain adoption of wind erosion control practices, but participating in a targeted educational program did. This educational program: (a) highlighted the threats of wind erosion to human health and to soil productivity, and (b) described specific potentially profitable farming practices for solving the wind erosion problem.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Weather-Based Crop Insurance Contracts for African Countries

Weather constitutes the major source for production risk in agriculture. Weather index can be used construct crop insurance that demand less information and can avoid moral hazard and adverse selection problems. Based on mean-variance model, theoretical results on the optimal insurance coverage and its impact from risk preference, basis risk, and premium loading are derived, which are quite consistent to the empirical results from the expected utility model. Using South Africa corn data, we investigate growers' demand and efficiency of alternative hypothetical weather index crop insurance programs. In contrast to previous work that suggests that a single-variable weather index suffices to develop an insurance contract, this study shows that the insured grower achieves a higher utility from multivariate weather indices. The most important single weather index we found in the study area was GDD, and the combination of rainfall and either temperature or GDD outperformed the single variable indices by a large margin. Depending on the growers risk preference, s/he may choose to buy o r offer such insurance for sale if the price is not actuarially fair. The risk protection value of weather-indexed-insurance follows the predictive power of the index on yield in general, though not exactly.Risk and Uncertainty, C51, C61, G22, Q14,

Homonomy in the Developing Mental Lexicon

This is the published version

Temporal variability of phytoplankton communities in Padilla Bay, Washington

Phytoplankton are a critical component of estuarine food webs and changes in their community composition may indicate shifts in ecosystem-scale processes, such as grazing pressure or nutrient availability. However, seasonal variability of phytoplankton communities and potential links to ecosystem processes are not well understood in Padilla Bay. To meet this research need, we have established a monitoring program to investigate how phytoplankton communities change over time. These monitoring efforts are part of a reserve wide program that investigates water quality, zooplankton, and phytoplankton across four sites in Padilla Bay. The present study focuses on phytoplankton collected at an open water site, where phytoplankton abundance and composition (to genus) were determined using light microscopy for samples collected monthly since late 2016. Analyses indicate that Padilla Bay surface waters are composed of multiple genera of varying abundances and that these communities change throughout the year. Results from this investigation will allow us to explore temporal relationships between phytoplankton community composition and water quality parameters, which will improve our understanding of phytoplankton communities as indicators of ecosystem change in Padilla Bay and the greater Salish Sea