Master of Science / Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering / Stacy Hutchinson / Military land management is vital to the future health and usability of maneuver training areas. As land disturbance increases, runoff from the area also increases and may create significant erosion potential. Determining the relationship between what is safe training versus what is harmful to the environment can be done by determining runoff potential at different disturbance percentages given different training intensities. Various studies have shown that soil density, soil structure, plant biodiversity, animal biodiversity, and many other essential ecosystem factors are greatly damaged by continuous training. These ecosystem factors influence runoff amounts and likewise erosion potential in that area. The primary factor examined in this study was the Curve Number (CN). Since military procedures do not have predefined CNs, representative CNs were created based off of CNs for agricultural use and supplemental research about training impacts on the land. Training intensity was broken into four classes: undisturbed, light use, moderate use, and heavy use. Five sample watersheds on Fort Riley were used as replications for the study. Disturbance intensity indexes were broken into 10% increments, and changes in runoff amount and peak rate modeled with TR-55. Statistical analysis was done comparing watersheds, training intensities and disturbance percentages for different storm magnitudes to assess statistically significance of changes in runoff amount and peak rate. This analysis showed that runoff amount and rate were both significantly impacted at every 10% increase on disturbance percentage. Results also showed that at the lower disturbance percentage (less than 30%), runoff amount and rate were not significantly impacted by training use classes. From this it can be seen that even with very little training done to the land increased erosion can be expected.

No description available.

Master of Arts / Department of Geography / J. M. Shawn Hutchinson / Time series of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data from satellite spectral measurements can be used to characterize and quantify changes in vegetation phenology and explore the role of natural and anthropogenic activities in causing those changes. Several programs and methods exist to process phenometric data from remotely-sensed imagery, including TIMESAT, which extracts seasonality parameters from time-series image data by fitting a smooth function to the series. This smoothing function, however, is dependent upon user-defined input parameter settings which have an unknown amount of influence in shaping the final phenometric estimates. To test this, a sensitivity analysis was conducted using MODIS maximum value composite NDVI time-series data acquired for Fort Riley, Kansas during the period 2001-2012. The phenometric data generated from the different input setting files were compared against that from a base scenario using Pearson and Lin’s Concordance Correlation Analyses. Findings show that small changes to parameter settings results in insignificant differences in phenometric estimates, with the exception of end of season data and growing season length. Next, a time-series analysis of the same MODIS NDVI data for Fort Riley and nearby Konza Prairie Biological Station (KPBS) was conducted to determine if significant differences existed in selected vegetation phenometrics. Phenometrics of interest were estimated using TIMESAT and based on a Savitzky-Golay filter with parameter settings found optimal in the previous study. The phenometrics start of season, end of season, length of season, maximum value, and small seasonal integral were compared using Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) and showed significant differences existed for all phenometrics in the comparison of Fort Riley training areas and KPBS, as well as low- versus high-training intensity areas within Fort Riley. Fort Riley and high-intensity training areas have earlier dates for the start and end of the growing season, shorter growing season lengths, lower maximum NDVI values, and lower small seasonal integrals compared to KPBS and low-intensity training areas, respectively. Evidence was found that establishes a link between military land uses and/or land management practices and observed phenometric differences.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-200).

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Environmental Design and Planning Program / Tim Keane / Gullies often form as a result of land use changes and associated factors such as soil compaction, vegetation removal and changes in rainwater infiltration. Gully erosion creates human safety hazards, soil loss, and sediment and nutrient pollution downstream. Across the globe, researchers have found a wide variety of gully growth rates and drivers (Poesen, Nachtergaele, Verstraeten, & Valentin, 2003), but after the late 1900s, very few published gully studies have been done in the United States, and fewer studies have been done in the Midwest and Great Plains regions. This gully study was conducted in two heavily-used Kansas landscapes: Fort Riley military training areas and agricultural fields in McPherson County. The purpose of the study was to quantitatively measure rates and patterns of gully erosion, as well as identify main drivers of gully initiation and growth. Results and conclusions add Kansas gully characteristics to the growing knowledge of gully erosion in other areas of the world. Gullies in both landscapes were surveyed in the field multiple times per year over three consecutive years (2012-2014) to capture patterns and rates of change. Rainfall data and land characteristics such as soils, vegetative cover, slope, and drainage area were compiled into a database to be compared to gully erosion rates in an attempt to correlate gully erosion not only to rainfall but to other land-based factors. Results show that for most Fort Riley gullies, beds are filling and banks are widening, and consistent drivers of erosion could not be determined from the data. In McPherson, gully channels are storing large amounts of sediment, though gully networks in the upper areas of the gully channels are actively widening and advancing headward. Drivers of channel change in McPherson County seem to be related to vegetative cover, slope, and early spring freeze/thaw processes. At both study locations, land use changes related to linear disturbance and reduced vegetative cover are suspected to have more of an influence on gully growth than rainfall events during the study timeframe. Objectives for best management practices are proposed for both Fort Riley and McPherson County.