Assessing the return on investment for various types of break-in training

This thesis presents a Return on Investment, or ROI, model for various types of break-in training by utilizing employee learning curves as a factor of the cost. The model captures the additional profit earned when a company makes an investment in break-in training, training employees receive at the beginning of their employment. Research involves developing employee learning curves for break-in training vs. traditional training through experimentation. The thesis utilizes the improvement in the learning curve as the driving factor behind the profits. The ROI model is a comparison between the profits, or benefits minus cost, of a traditional and break-in training. The ROI model can be used to capture the exact profit that can be attributed to better training

Undergraduate Students’ Conceptions of Natural and Anthropogenic Climate Change: A Case Study Approach

This dissertation shows the evolution of five undergraduate students\u27 ideas of natural and anthropogenic climate change throughout a lecture hall course on climate change. This research was informed by conceptual change theory and students\u27 inaccurate ideas of climate change. Subjects represented different levels of climate change understanding at the beginning of the course and were selected based on their scores on a climate change questionnaire. The study was designed to research how students\u27 ideas changed throughout the course and compare trajectories of lower and higher achieving students. At the beginning, students had different levels of understanding, but as the semester continued, the lower-performing students progressed more than the higher-performing students. At the end of the course, all students described more ideas than they did at the beginning; however some of these ideas were inconsistent with the professors\u27 instruction. Lower-performing students struggled more than the higher-performing students. Struggles included differentiating climate change and its causes, effects, and consequences from other environmental problems. Students also struggled with the idea that climate change is anthropogenic despite it being natural in the past. In order to understand that climate change is impacted by human forcings in addition to natural forcings, students developed the relationship that climate change is natural and humans are \u22speeding it up.\u22 They took time to integrate this relationship into their prior ideas. Three of the students constructed a definition of climate change that was different than the professor\u27s. Two students defined \u22climate change\u22 as only the natural aspects of climate change and reserved the anthropogenic changes for the term \u22global warming\u22. For a third student, \u22climate change\u22 included damming rivers, eutrophication, frog mutations, ozone depletion, and overfishing, which are environmental ailments but not climate change

Yield gaps, nutrient use efficiencies and response to fertilisers by maize across heterogeneous smallholder farms of western Kenya

The need to promote fertiliser use by African smallholder farmers to counteract the current decline in per capita food production is widely recognised. But soil heterogeneity results in variable responses of crops to fertilisers within single farms. We used existing databases on maize production under farmer (F-M) and researcher management (R-M) to analyse the effect of soil heterogeneity on the different components of nutrient use efficiency by maize growing on smallholder farms in western Kenya: nutrient availability, capture and conversion efficiencies and crop biomass partitioning. Subsequently, we used the simple model QUEFTS to calculate nutrient recovery efficiencies from the R-M plots and to calculate attainable yields with and without fertilisers based on measured soil properties across heterogeneous farms. The yield gap of maize between F-M and R-M varied from 0.5 to 3 t grain ha-1 season-1 across field types and localities. Poor fields under R-M yielded better than F-M, even without fertilisers. Such differences, of up to 1.1 t ha-1 greater yields under R-M conditions are attributable to improved agronomic management and germplasm. The relative response of maize to N-P-K fertilisers tended to decrease with increasing soil quality (soil C and extractable P), from a maximum of 4.4-fold to -0.5- fold relative to the control. Soil heterogeneity affected resource use efficiencies mainly through effects on the efficiency of resource capture. Apparent recovery efficiencies varied between 0 and 70% for N, 0 and 15% for P, and 0 to 52% for K. Resource conversion efficiencies were less variable across fields and localities, with average values of 97 kg DM kg-1 N, 558 kg DM kg-1 P and 111 kg DM kg-1 K taken up. Using measured soil chemical properties QUEFTS over-estimated observed yields under F-M, indicating that variable crop performance within and across farms cannot be ascribed solely to soil nutrient availability. For the R-M plots QUEFTS predicted positive crop responses to application of 30 kg P ha-1 and 30 kg P ha-1 + 90 kg N ha-1 for a wide range of soil qualities, indicating that there is room to improve current crop productivity through fertiliser use. To ensure their efficient use in sub-Saharan Africa mineral fertilisers should be: (1) targeted to specific niches of soil fertility within heterogeneous farms; and (2) go hand-in-hand with the implementation of agronomic measures to improve their capture and utilisation

Nitrogen yield advantage from grass-legume mixtures is robust over a wide range of legume proportions and environmental conditions

Coordination of this project was supported by the EU Commission through COST Action 852 ‘Quality legume-based forage systems for contrasting environments‘. A636 contribution to the research leading to these results has been conducted as part of the Animal Change project which received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-20 13) under the grant agreement no. 266018.peer-reviewedCurrent challenges to global food security require sustainable intensification of agriculture through initiatives that include more efficient use of nitrogen (N), increased protein self-sufficiency through home-grown crops, and reduced N losses to the environment. Such challenges were addressed in a continental-scale field experiment conducted over three years, in which the amount of total nitrogen yield (Ntot) and the gain of N yield in mixtures as compared to grass monocultures (Ngainmix) was quantified from four-species grass-legume stands with greatly varying legume proportions. Stands consisted of monocultures and mixtures of two N2 fixing legumes and two non-fixing grasses.The amount of Ntot of mixtures was significantly greater (P ≤ 0.05) than that of grass monocultures at the majority of evaluated sites in all three years. Ntot and thus Ngainmix increased with increasing legume proportion up to one third of legumes. With higher legume percentages, Ntot and Ngainmix did not continue to increase. Thus, across sites and years, mixtures with one third proportion of legumes attained ~95% of the maximum Ntot acquired by any stand and had 57% higher Ntot than grass monocultures.Realized legume proportion in stands and the relative N gain in mixture (Ngainmix/Ntot in mixture) were most severely impaired by minimum site temperature (R = 0.70, P = 0.003 for legume proportion; R = 0.64, P = 0.010 for Ngainmix/Ntot in mixture). Nevertheless, the relative N gain in mixture was not correlated to site productivity (P = 0.500), suggesting that, within climatic restrictions, balanced grass-legume mixtures can benefit from comparable relative gains in N yield across largely differing productivity levels.We conclude that the use of grass-legume mixtures can substantially contribute to resource-efficient agricultural grassland systems over a wide range of productivity levels, implying important savings in N fertilizers and thus greenhouse gas emissions and a considerable potential for climate change mitigation.European Unio

Individual fitness versus whole-crop photosynthesis:solar tracking tradeoffs in alfalfa

Despite the optimism of some molecular biologists, natural selection among the wild ancestors of crops is unlikely to have missed simple genetic improvements that would consistently have enhanced individual fitness. Tradeoff-free opportunities for further improvement of crop traits like photosynthetic efficiency or drought tolerance may therefore be elusive. Opportunities linked to acceptable tradeoffs may be abundant, however. Tradeoffs between individual competitiveness and the collective productivity of plant communities (e.g. those linked to height) have been key to past increases in yield potential. Solar tracking by leaves could involve such tradeoffs, if photosynthetic benefits to tracking leaves are outweighed by increased shading of leaves lower in the canopy. This hypothesis was tested using rotation in the horizontal plane to disrupt solar tracking in alfalfa. In sparse canopies, solar tracking increased net canopy photosynthesis, but rarely by more than 3%. As leaf area increased, solar tracking tended to decrease net canopy photosynthesis, despite edge effects in our 1-m2 artificial communities, which probably exaggerated net photosynthetic benefits of tracking. Computer modeling suggested that the season-long effects of solar tracking on community productivity can be negative. Solar tracking may have persisted, nonetheless, because individuals whose leaves track the sun increase shading of competitors

Do polycultures promote win‐wins or trade‐offs in agricultural ecosystem services? A meta‐analysis

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109639/1/jpe12334-sup-0004-FigS3.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109639/2/jpe12334-sup-0003-FigS2.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109639/3/jpe12334-sup-0002-FigS1.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109639/4/jpe12334.pd

Effects of Total Resources, Resource Ratios, and Species Richness on Algal Productivity and Evenness at Both Metacommunity and Local Scales

The study of the interrelationship between productivity and biodiversity is a major research field in ecology. Theory predicts that if essential resources are heterogeneously distributed across a metacommunity, single species may dominate productivity in individual metacommunity patches, but a mixture of species will maximize productivity across the whole metacommunity. It also predicts that a balanced supply of resources within local patches should favor species coexistence, whereas resource imbalance would favor the dominance of one species. We performed an experiment with five freshwater algal species to study the effects of total supply of resources, their ratios, and species richness on biovolume production and evenness at the scale of both local patches and metacommunities. Generally, algal biovolume increased, whereas algal resource use efficiency (RUE) and evenness decreased with increasing total supply of resources in mixed communities containing all five species. In contrast to predictions for biovolume production, the species mixtures did not outperform all monocultures at the scale of metacommunities. In other words, we observed no general transgressive overyielding. However, RUE was always higher in mixtures than predicted from monocultures, and analyses indicate that resource partitioning or facilitation in mixtures resulted in higher-than-expected productivity at high resource supply. Contrasting our predictions for the local scale, balanced supply of resources did not generally favor higher local evenness, however lowest evenness was confined to patches with the most imbalanced supply. Thus, our study provides mixed support for recent theoretical advancements to understand biodiversity-productivity relationships

Intraspecific Diversity Regulates Fungal Productivity and Respiration

Individuals and not just species are key components of biodiversity, yet the relationship between intraspecific diversity and ecosystem functioning in microbial systems remains largely untested. This limits our ability to understand and predict the effects of altered genetic diversity in regulating key ecosystem processes and functions. Here, we use a model fungal system to test the hypothesis that intraspecific genotypic richness of Paxillus obscurosporus stimulates biomass and CO2 efflux, but that this is dependent on nitrogen supply. Using controlled experimental microcosms, we show that populations containing several genotypes (maximum 8) of the fungus had greater productivity and produced significantly more CO2 than those with fewer genotypes. Moreover, intraspecific diversity had a much stronger effect than a four-fold manipulation of the carbon:nitrogen ratio of the growth medium. The effects of intraspecific diversity were underpinned by strong roles of individuals, but overall intraspecific diversity increased the propensity of populations to over-yield, indicating that both complementarity and selection effects can operate within species. Our data demonstrate the importance of intraspecific diversity over a range of nitrogen concentrations, and the need to consider fine scale phylogenetic information of microbial communities in understanding their contribution to ecosystem processes

Biodiversity in a complex world: consolidation and progress in functional biodiversity research

The global decline of biodiversity caused by human domination of ecosystems worldwide is supposed to alter important process rates and state variables in these ecosystems. However, there is considerable debate on the prevalence and importance of biodiversity effects on ecosystem function (BDEF). Here, we argue that much of the debate stems from two major shortcomings. First, most studies do not directly link the traits leading to increased or decreased function to the traits needed for species coexistence and dominance. We argue that implementing a trait-based approach and broadening the perception of diversity to include trait dissimilarity or trait divergence will result in more realistic predictions on the consequences of altered biodiversity. Second, the empirical and theoretical studies do not reflect the complexity of natural ecosystems, which makes it difficult to transfer the results to natural situations of species loss. We review how different aspects of complexity (trophic structure, multifunctionality, spatial or temporal heterogeneity, and spatial population dynamics) alter our perception of BDEF. We propose future research avenues concisely testing whether acknowledging this complexity will strengthen the observed biodiversity effects. Finally, we propose that a major future task is to disentangle biodiversity effects on ecosystem function from direct changes in function due to human alterations of abiotic constraints