A WATER QUALITY STRATEGY FOR THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER BASIN AND THE GULF OF MEXICO

Nutrient pollution, now the leading cause of water quality impairment in the United States, has had significant impact on the nation's waterways. Excessive nutrient pollution has been linked to habitat loss, fish kills, blooms of toxic algae, and hypoxia (oxygen depleted water). The hypoxic 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico is one of the most striking illustrations of what can happen when too many nutrients from inland watersheds reach coastal areas. Despite the efforts of municipal building programs, industrial wastewater requirements and agricultural programs designed to reduce sediment loads in waterways, water quality and nutrient pollution continues to be a problem. We undertook a policy analysis to assess how the agricultural community could better reduce its contribution to the 'dead zone' and also evaluate the synergistic impacts of these policies on other environmental concerns like climate change. Using a sectoral model of U.S. agriculture, we compared policies including untargeted conservation subsidies, nutrient trading, Conservation Reserve Program extension, agricultural sales of carbon and greenhouse gas credits and fertilizer reduction. This economic and environmental analysis is watershed based, primarily focusing on nitrogen in the Mississippi River basin, allowing us to assess the distribution of nitrogen reduction in streams, environmental co-benefits and impact on agricultural cash flows within the Mississippi River basin from various options. The model incorporates natural resource accounts and alternative production practices, making it possible to get a more a complete picture of the costs and co-benefits of nutrient reduction. These elements also help to identify those policy options that minimize the costs to the farmers and maximize benefits to society.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Fertile Ground: Nutrient Trading's Potential to Cost-Effectively Improve Water Quality

After nearly three decades of effort, the United States can take considerable pride in answering the mandates of the 1972 Clean Water Act. At great expense, much of the municipal and industrial pollution emanating from pipes, or "point" sources, has been reduced. But the largely voluntary effort to reduce "nonpoint" pollution from farms and elsewhere has been less successful. As we enter a new millennium, progress in improving water quality seems to have leveled off and our hopes of meeting the goals of the Clean Water Act seem to be receding.Some 3,600 waterways across the nation are listed as either impaired by nutrients or by algal blooms, which are typically caused by excess nutrients. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is locked in a contentious legal battle with many states over additional requirements to improve water quality. Part of the problem is the complex nature of water pollution and the difficult challenge of controlling nonpoint pollution. Clearly another part of the problem is the question of costs. States are heavily constrained by cost considerations and reluctant to embark on another costly round of stricter point source controls.In Fertile Ground: Nutrient Trading's Potential to Cost-Effectively Improve Water Quality, the Director of WRI's Economics Program, Paul Faeth, proposes a way out of this dilemma. Using case studies in three states, he develops a framework to assess the cost-effectiveness of various policies and combinations of policies to reduce phosphorus loads in specific watersheds. In all three cases, policy approaches incorporating nutrient trading programs are dramatically less expensive than conventional approaches and can achieve comparable benefits

Ohio Wesleyan Bacillus Collection Student Research

This semester students in BIOL 328 Bacterial Physiology lab worked in teams on a laboratory project that they devised, developed, and conducted. Each group met weekly with Dr. Tuhela-Reuning and Maddy Russell during the first third of the semester to develop a research project that involved the Bacillus culture collection at OWU. The Bacillus collection contains over 3000 isolates of Bacillus obtained from wild songbirds in Ohio, Arizona, and Washington, and many of these isolates degrade feathers. Student projects involved quantification of bird feather degradation by several Bacillus isolates, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of biofilms and feather, possible correlation of biofilm production with speed of feather degradation, ability of Bacillus isolates to produce antibiotics effective against Gram positive and negative bacteria, and the ability to transform Bacillus isolates with pigment-producing plasmids. Students experienced the actual research process by troubleshooting problems, coordinating their lab work schedules, analyzing complex results, and working as a team. The final results of the projects will be presented by each team in oral and written formats

Adsorption and vacuum technique

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/4831/5/bac1646.0001.001.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/4831/4/bac1646.0001.001.tx

DETERMINANTS OF PERFORMANCE OF IRRIGATION PROJECTS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Irrigation development in developing countries is very expensive and most irrigation development projects experience large cost-overruns. In addition, many projects are not as productive as planned. This report provides some insight into the key factors which cause cost escalation and performance degradation, and describe policies which may help to remedy these problems

HYSTERESIS EFFECTS AND THE STOICHIOMETRY OP PRASEODYMIUM-OXIDE

Abstract not availabl

A WATER QUALITY STRATEGY FOR THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER BASIN AND THE GULF OF MEXICO

Nutrient pollution, now the leading cause of water quality impairment in the United States, has had significant impact on the nation's waterways. Excessive nutrient pollution has been linked to habitat loss, fish kills, blooms of toxic algae, and hypoxia (oxygen depleted water). The hypoxic 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico is one of the most striking illustrations of what can happen when too many nutrients from inland watersheds reach coastal areas. Despite the efforts of municipal building programs, industrial wastewater requirements and agricultural programs designed to reduce sediment loads in waterways, water quality and nutrient pollution continues to be a problem. We undertook a policy analysis to assess how the agricultural community could better reduce its contribution to the 'dead zone' and also evaluate the synergistic impacts of these policies on other environmental concerns like climate change. Using a sectoral model of U.S. agriculture, we compared policies including untargeted conservation subsidies, nutrient trading, Conservation Reserve Program extension, agricultural sales of carbon and greenhouse gas credits and fertilizer reduction. This economic and environmental analysis is watershed based, primarily focusing on nitrogen in the Mississippi River basin, allowing us to assess the distribution of nitrogen reduction in streams, environmental co-benefits and impact on agricultural cash flows within the Mississippi River basin from various options. The model incorporates natural resource accounts and alternative production practices, making it possible to get a more a complete picture of the costs and co-benefits of nutrient reduction. These elements also help to identify those policy options that minimize the costs to the farmers and maximize benefits to society