Soil Health Indicators and Sustainable Practices on Indy Urban Farms: An Investigation of Ecosystem Functionality

Urban agriculture is capable of restoring ecosystem services like food production, recreation, and clean soil and water to cities. Urban farms in particular can help relieve pressure for areas with limited food access, also known as food desserts. This is especially important to the community of Indianapolis because the city is tied for the most food desert areas within a U.S. metropolitan area. To help a community, an urban farm must have healthy, nutrient rich soils. Nitrogen is the most limiting nutrient for plants when it comes to growth and development. Plants cannot produce nitrogen; they acquire the mineral by external inputs (mulch, manure, fertilizer etc.) or internal N-fixing bacteria. If biological nitrogen fixation increases, the immediate and long-term nitrogen supply would increase, leading to an increase in ecological sustainability. In addition to nitrogen, carbon is another mineral that can tell researchers a lot about the health of a soil system. Organic carbon is a major factor for plants, it promotes the structure, of soil, and it also acts as a pH buffer. The goal of this project is to test if common urban farming management processes are increasing the health of the ecosystem at the level of the soil. To analyze this, we looked at multiple different health indicators including: organic matter composition, percentage of carbon and nitrogen, carbon nitrogen ratio, soil pH, and bulk density of the soil samples collected. It is hypothesized that soil samples retrieved from actively farmed land will have increased health indicators. If this is true, farmed samples will be more similar to naturally established ecosystems than controlled, unfarmed samples with regard to the indicators tested. The soils used were collected from multiple sites around the city. Because of this, the data collected can be analyzed in a larger context with the goal of helping farms across Indianapolis restore fundamental ecosystem functions and improve overall sustainability

Assessing the use of artificial nests for predicting predation pressure in New Zealand forest fragments : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Science in Ecology at Massey University

Using artificial nests to predict the predation pressure on natural bird nests has been the subject of over 400 publications, the vast majority quantifying aspects that affect nest success. However, these studies have usually invoked the assumption that artificial nests accurately reflect the success of natural nests. The intention of this thesis was to evaluate the technique of using artificial nests to predict natural nest success, with the aim of establishing the main factors influencing its success as a monitoring technique. This was done by addressing three main questions a) Can artificial nests be used to predict natural nest success in forest fragments?, b) What aspects of the methodology influence the precision, practical application and interpretation of the results from artificial nests in New Zealand forest fragments?, c) What external factors, i.e. habitat structure, confound interpretation of artificial nests results in New Zealand forest fragments? Artificial nest experiments were conducted concurrently in nine reserves, with estimates of nest success calculated for each reserve using the known fate model in MARK. These estimates were then correlated with the success of North Island Robin nests (estimated using Stanley's (2000) method of stage specific nest success) in the corresponding reserves. General linear modelling was used to fit a log-log relationship between artificial and natural nest success estimates using parametric bootstrapping to account for error in the estimates. The Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC) model selection procedure was used to select the model for estimating both artificial and natural nest success and for selecting the best model for predicting natural nest success using artificial nests. The evidence from the results revealed that artificial nests could be used to predict natural nest success. However, imperative to achieving this result was having the ability to identify and conduct independent analysis for each predator group (all predators, 'rats and possum', birds and mice). AIC selection procedure selected nest success estimates derived from predation by rats and possum as the most parsimonious model, hence the best at predicting natural nest success. Investigation of methodology showed that: (1) data from artificial nests left out for one week gave better predictions than data collected over four consecutive weeks; (2) leaving nests out longer than one week before checking increases the chance of the marks becoming obscured, hampering predator identification: (3) adding a quail egg has little effect on predation rate, particularly on the rate of predation by mammals; and (4) it is necessary to include clay eggs in artificial nests as marks left on quail eggs and damage done to artificial nests were not reliable indicators of predator type. Investigation of external factors revealed: (1) no strong or consistent evidence that the fine-scale habitat at nest sites affected predation on artificial nests; (2) reserve size may affect the rate of rat and possum predation, but not bird predation; and (3) the proximity of artificial nests to a bait station may influence the rate of predation by mammals

LBWiki: A Location-Based Wiki

Wiki systems provide a simple interface paradigm that allow non-technical users to author collaborative on-line hypertexts. In this paper we propose to use the same simple paradigm to allow users to create content for ubiquitous information systems, and present LBWiki, a prototype location-based Wiki that allows users with a mobile device to create Wiki pages based on GPS co-ordinates. We describe the hierarchical location scheme used within LBWiki and the results of a small evaluation, in which users reacted positively to the concept, but asked for greater control over geographical regions, and highlighted the importance of accurate location technology

Research and Practice in Transition: Improving Support and Advocacy of Transgender Middle School Students

In this essay, our purposes are to inspire particular avenues of future research addressing Transgender students, in middle school in particular, and to inform the professional development of teachers in support of these Transgender youth. In relation to the ways in which research can more authentically represent Transgender identity, we argue for the use of Transgender theory as a guiding framework for research addressing Transgender students, issues, and needs. We also describe the particular affordances of qualitative, ethnographic, and phenomenological studies in capturing the unique and highly personal experiences and realities of Transgender individuals, and specifically, in middle school. We then discuss how schools are structured socially and politically along heteronormative and cisnormative lines, presenting a stumbling block for Transgender rights advocacy in educational contexts. Finally, we review the potential of teachers to be the necessary educational change agents to spur greater understanding of and advocacy for students’ gender inclusivity

Webinar: Assessing the Impacts of New Mobility on Cities

Autonomous vehicles (AVs), e-commerce and the sharing economy are rapidly changing land use and transportation in cities. City leaders and professional planners are wondering how these technologies will change how they plan and operate cities. For the past year, the University of Oregon’s Urbanism Next Center and Sustainable Year Program focused staff and students on helping the cities of Gresham and Eugene better understand the potential impacts of a wide-range of topics and study a variety of potential responses to address the challenges and take advantage of the opportunities. These topics include issues related to safety, social equity, active transportation, sustainability and environmental impacts, design and management of the right-of-way, and the metropolitan footprint. In addition, the cities thought about city operations and budgeting and how they can inform decision-making, manage innovation, and consider the fiscal impacts and new mobility revenue. During this webinar, the Urbanism Next researchers will discuss the research they conducted to help the cities navigate new mobility and emerging technologies. Researchers will discuss how cities are preparing for new mobility and autonomous vehicles in a way that supports goals around land use, active transportation, more equitable forms of travel, and greenhouse gas emissions. This webinar is based on a study funded by the National Institute for Transportation and Communities (NITC) and conducted at the University of Oregon. Read more about the NITC research: Emerging Technologies in Mid-Size Cities: Managing New Mobility. The research team has also created a comprehensive policy report on these findings: Navigating New Mobility: Policy Approaches for Cities.https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/trec_webinar/1046/thumbnail.jp

Associative Plurality and the DP/NP typology

This paper investigates the phenomenon of additive plural morphology being used to denote the associative plural in a variety of languages. A novel empirical generalization is proposed: Languages with identical additive and associative plural morphology lack free standing definite articles. This follows a line of generalizations made by Boskovic (2008, 2012), who argues that languages without free standing definite articles do not project the DP layer, though the proposed generalization groups affixal article languages with languages without articles (see also Talic (2017)). I propose a new analysis of associative plurals that yields the empirical generalization for free. I argue that Num, the position of additive plural morphology, moves to Associative, which heads a projection on top of the nominal domain. This movement operation is blocked by the presence of D/DP in free standing definite article languages