Changing temperature and precipitation patterns are causing degraded soil, water, and air quality which is negatively affecting the safety and health of people, and the productivity of urban and rural communities. However, research shows that implementing urban forests and cover crops into urban and rural landscapes, respectively, can mitigate these effects by providing ecosystem services. As extreme precipitation and heat events continue to intensify, there is a need for comprehensively assessing these ecosystem services under changing climates and for this information to be easily accessible by communities for rapid land-use decision making. Therefore, I investigated the role of urban forests and cover crops in enhancing resilience to climate change through 1. a comprehensive review of the urban forest and cover crop ecosystem services in relation to climate change impacts, 2. modeling ecosystem services in Massachusetts using spatially-explicit techniques for an online decision support tool and 3. a comprehensive review of climate change health impacts in urban communities and the restorative and protective properties of urban forests in relation to these impacts. The outputs of this thesis inform community members, agencies, city planners, the medical community, and urban forestry project leaders of the benefits and challenges of planting urban trees and cover crops in Massachusetts as a way to improve the productivity of lands and the well-being of people. In addition, the review articles and the decision support tool can be used by communities to guide preparation for and adaptation to the impacts of climate change including medical provider and patient education, optimizing occupational, residential, and educational settings, and resource distribution.

Map of Watauga Reservoir Properties published in October 1959 by the Tennessee Valley Authority, Division of Reservoir Properties. The Watauga Reservoir Property Map series is divided into 3 sheets, this is sheet 3 of 3. The legend denotes retained, surplus, or transferred land. Boxes on the top right quadrant include information such as approximate acreage of tracts and forecasted usage of retained lands. Property owners (as of 1959) are listed in the bottom left corner and are also included on the map itself. The inset includes a zoomed in view of the Wilbur Reservoir that accompanies sheet 1 of the series. Physical copy resides in the Government Information, Law and Maps Department of East Tennessee State University’s Sherrod Library. Scale: 1" = 2000' / https://dc.etsu.edu/rare-maps/1026/thumbnail.jpg

Large topographical map of the northeast Tennessee region around Johnson City published in 1955. Prepared by the Army Map Service, Corps of Engineers, U.S. Army, Washington D.C. Compiled in 1951 from United States Quadrangles, U.S. Geological Survey, and county highway maps. Planimetric detail partially revised by photo-planimetric methods. Control by USC & GS, TVA, and CE. Roads, railroad and aeronautical data verified by state authorities, 1954. Legend denotes populated places, types of roads, and railroads. Topography, names of roads, communities, and waterways can be found on the map itself. Physical copy resides in the Government Information, Law and Maps Department of East Tennessee State University’s Sherrod Library. Scale - 1: 250,000 / https://dc.etsu.edu/rare-maps/1043/thumbnail.jpg

Published in 1983 by the U.S. Geological Survey, this map denotes land use and land cover in the northeast Tennesee/Johnson City area for the years 1975-83. Base map from U.S. Geologic Survey, 1966. The legend along the right edge denotes different types of land use and coverage using a numeric code. Additional details on how the map was compiled can by found on the lower right corner. The North Carolina portion of this map was prepared in cooperation with the North Carolina Department of Natural Resources and Community Development. Physical copy resides in the Government Information, Law and Maps Department of East Tennessee State University’s Sherrod Library. Scale - 1: 250,000. / https://dc.etsu.edu/rare-maps/1044/thumbnail.jpg

During 2008 – 2009, we quantified foraging behavior of adult Atlantic puffins (Fratercula arctica) by deploying time-depth recorders (TDRs) on 18 adults and collected morphological measurements from 40 adults nesting on Petit Manan Island, Maine. Dive data were successfully retrieved from 5 birds foraging for 14 days in 2008, and 8 birds foraging for 18 days in 2009. Pooling across all birds, a total of 8,097 dives were recorded, with peaks in activity during 0400-0800 and 1600-2000, and no diving between 2100 and 0400. Mean (± SD) dives/bird/day was 276.4 (± 84.7), with dives grouped into bouts lasting 17.8 (± 31.5) minutes, consisting of 8.9 (± 3.4) dives. Dive depth was less than 15 m for 86% of the dives. Mean maximum dive depth across birds was 9.7 (± 1.7) m, with the deepest dive being 40.7 m. Females made fewer deep dives (27-41 m), had more midday dives (1000 - 1559), and their dives were spread across a greater number of bouts per day than males. Given a mean foraging trip length of 60.1 (± 38.3) minutes for 26 birds observed in 2009, we estimate that adult puffins foraged, on average, within 31 km of the colony. Morphological measures were recorded by a single observer and included body mass, wing chord, bill depth, bill length, culmen, and head-bill length, and represented 19 males and 21 females, based on blood sample analysis. Data were analyzed using classification trees, and our final tree used culmen length and bill depth to correctly classify 34 of 40 (85%) birds (kappa = 0.695, P < 0.01). Use of our model can greatly improve the ability of biologists to identify sex of puffins in the field at this colony site, but variability in morphological data we collected at addition colonies indicates that future work is needed to determine its applicability throughout the Gulf of Maine. During 2009, we measured burrow characteristics of alcids and empty burrows. Breeding success and burrow characteristics were measured for nests of 104 puffins, 58 guillemots and 4 razorbills, with burrow characteristics measured for an additional 12 guillemot and 56 empty burrows. Mean diameter of burrow openings of puffins, guillemots, razorbills and empty burrows were significantly different, and artificial puffin burrows had significantly smaller openings than natural while artificial and natural guillemot burrows had similar opening diameters. Hatch, chick, and nest success of puffins was similar among burrow types, but guillemots had higher hatch and nest success in artificial burrows. The variables we used to create models for predicting hatch and nest success for puffins and guillemots had inadequate discriminatory power to predict success.

Increasing wetland restoration in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley has been identified as a method to reduce nutrient loading in the Gulf of Mexico. Wetlands have historically been used to treat water through processes facilitated by wetland plants, and relatively few species and plant traits have been identified as important in carrying out these processes. This study focuses on some of those species and traits and aims to identify species differences and plant traits that may be important for wetland nutrient mitigation. Chapter I provides background information on nutrient pollution, wetland biogeochemical mechanisms for nutrient sequestration, and the focal species of the study. Chapters II and III cover the design and methods for this mesocosm study and the experimental results, while Chapter IV provides a discussion of these findings and identifies other questions that need to be addressed to better understand wetland nutrient removal dynamics.

This study investigates the impact on water quality of combined agricultural best management practices cover crop and minimum tillage, alongside an examination of techniques used to collect those samples. Edge-of-field (EOF) water quality samples were collected from 11 working farms during a two-year paired field experiment. Results showed significant reductions in nutrient concentrations, increased discharge, and mixed findings regarding nutrient mass transport post-treatment. A suite of EOF collection techniques were compared using in-situ automated water sampling systems sampling the same runoff events. Sampling protocols influenced nutrient concentrations in composite samples, but unexpected variance in velocity sensors affected measured discharge, making it challenging to confidently attribute differences in nutrient loading estimates to sampling protocol. The findings provide regionally specific evidence for mitigating on-farm nutrient enrichment in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley and enhancing monitoring techniques.

The health of the northern hardwood forest in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia has recently gained attention from the media and environmental stakeholders. This project was designed to examine concentrations of metals, including lead, aluminum, and calcium in growth rings of an important northern hardwood species, American beech (Fagus grandifolia Ehrh.) at Mount Rogers and Whitetop Mountain, Virginia. Dominant and codominant trees were sampled from sixteen research plots located at two different elevations. Samples were crossdated, divided into sections of ten-year periods, and analyzed using atomic absorption spectroscopy. Concentrations of metals were negatively correlated with ring width. Elevation and aspect were significantly associated with the concentration of the cations analyzed. Both lead and calcium concentrations increased during the 1860s and again during the mid-1900s. This increase in lead and calcium may suggest the mobilization of these elements in soil.

As the human population increases, the way we use and manage our supply of drinking water becomes even more important. The purpose of this study was to determine residents’ satisfaction level of and performance rating of new water savings devices installed in their apartments. Specifically the investigation focused on ratings of shower heads, kitchen faucet aerators, bath faucet aerators, and fill valve and flapper systems. This quantitative survey included residents at 4 apartment complexes in Tennessee using a paper questionnaire (N = 626). The participants were grouped by age, ethnicity, gender, and whether or not they had experienced both nonrestrictive devices or restrictive low flow devices within their apartment. An independent samples t test was conducted from the research questions for each of these 4 groups. The testing variables for each group consisted of the overall performances of the low flow devices, and the satisfaction of the time to get hot water to shower heads and faucets. There was no significant difference between the 4 grouping variables; residents aged 62 and over compared to 61 and younger, males compared to females, whites compared to nonwhites, and those who had experienced both nonrestrictive and restrictive devices while living in the same apartment when compared to these variables; performance rating of low flow shower heads, kitchen faucet aerators, bath faucet aerators, and low flow toilet devices. The variables also included the satisfaction rating of the time needed to get hot water to the new low flow shower heads and kitchen and bath faucet aerators. These findings support the effort to save clean water and reduce water and sewer costs by installing low flow shower heads, bath and faucet aerators, and water saving toilets. Mean score suggest satisfactory ratings were encountered in every testing category and within every group. In particular, the satisfactory mean score of residents who experienced both nonrestrictive and low flow devices while in the same apartment led to the conclusion that the reduction of water can be achieved satisfactorily in all types of residences.

Marshes and seagrass beds have been widely recognized as important habitat for estuarine species, but less has been done on how these habitats interact and function together, thereby limiting understanding of the variability of juvenile recruitment to coastal systems. Therefore, the objective of this study was to assess the interaction between fringing marsh and adjacent seagrass for the provision of habitat for juvenile nekton. Weekly seine net and benthic seagrass core sampling from June to November 2020 determine the relationship between nekton and marsh-edge and seagrass habitat. This study shows disparate results, in terms of the effects of proximity to marsh edge and seagrass biomass on nekton abundance and size, pointing to different selectivity of marsh edge versus seagrass by different species. In addition, there are no effects of proximity to marsh edge and seagrass biomass on community composition, but an interactive effect on community dispersion.