Geologic map of Tennessee published in 1966 by the Tennessee Department of Conservation, Division of Geology. William D. Hardeman supervised and directed this geologic mapping and the compilation, preparation, and editing of this map. The source material for the map includes all recent (as of 1966) detailed published geologic maps and much recent unpublished geologic mapping that was begun and completed by the Division of Geology for the specific purpose of making this map of uniform accuracy through the state. The scale is 1:250,000 with the lower half including a detailed explanation including symbols/colors for rock types, mountain formations, and other geologic features. The sources of geologic information is also included. Physical copy resides in the Government Information, Law and Maps Department of East Tennessee State University’s Sherrod Library. / https://dc.etsu.edu/rare-maps/1017/thumbnail.jpg

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

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.

To account for the effects of climate change, management plans in the northeast need to incorporate climate adaptation. Conserving climate change refugia is one adaptation strategy. Climate change refugia are areas buffered by climate change that enable the persistence of valued physical, ecological, and cultural resources; preserving these areas could be a potential adaptation strategy. Using a translational ecology approach where researchers and managers from the National Park Service, US Geological Survey, the University of Massachusetts, and elsewhere worked together, we focused on identifying refugia for tree, herbaceous plant, mammal, and bird species in order to prioritize them for conservation action. Results predict shifts in distribution of habitats and species due to climate change, identifying areas to prioritize for invasive species treatment and other management actions. This study highlights priorities for future monitoring and data analysis, providing a model that can be replicated in other regions and motivate future research.

I utilized forest growth model (FVS-FFE) and fire simulation software (FlamMap, Randig), integrated through GIS software (ArcMap9.3), to quantify the impacts varied landscape-scale fuel treatments have on short-term onsite carbon loss, long-term onsite carbon storage, burn probability, conditional flame length, and mean fire size. Thirteen fuel treatment scenarios were simulated on a 42,000 hectare landscape in northern California: one untreated, three proposed by the US Forest Service, and nine that were spatially-optimized and developed with the Treatment Optimization Model in FlamMap. The nine scenarios developed in FlamMap varied by treatment intensity (10%, 20%, and 30% of the landscape treated) and treatment type (prescribed fire, mastication and thin + burn). Each scenario was subjected to 10,000 simulated wildfires with random ignition locations in order to develop burn probability and average flame length values for each scenario. I also recorded mean fire size for each scenario. I used the burn probability values to represent the likelihood of future wildfire occurrence, which I incorporated into our long-term onsite carbon storage projections. Our results suggest that the influence landscape-scale fuel treatments have on carbon dynamics and fire behavior metrics (mean burn probability, flame length and mean fire size) are highly dependent upon the treatment arrangement, type, and intensity. The results suggest that treating 20% of the landscape maximizes long-term carbon storage and that prescribed fire minimizes short-term carbon loss and maximizes onsite long-term carbon storage. Treating 20% of the landscape also appears to be the optimal treatment intensity for reducing fire behavior metrics, and treating beyond this level produces diminishing returns in reduction of fire behavior. When treating 20% of the landscape, site-specific treatments appear to perform well in comparison to spatially-optimized treatments.

The impact of forest fires on downstream meadow communities across California is of great ecological interest, as meadows are an important source of biodiversity in this region. Over a century of fire suppression has led to increased forest stand densities, which in turn has resulted in less water availability due to increased transpiration of densely growing trees. This potentially has left less available water for downstream plant communities in meadows. If true, then high mortality wildfires in surrounding forest are predicted to lead to an increase in available downstream moisture where obligate and facultative-wetland taxa increase and dry-adapted upland taxa decline. Here, we test this hypothesis using a dataset of 103 California montane meadows sampled before and after fire over the last 20 years. Using long term meadow monitoring data, compositional turnover is calculated for each plot from before and after fire and then evaluated against the area of 100% mortality, postfire relative-precipitation, meadow type, and proximity of the meadow to fire. We hypothesize that mortality, post-fire precipitation, and site type influence compositional turnover in meadows, regardless of proximity to the burn area. We find that compositional turnover is influenced by mortality but not by meadow type, relative precipitation, or the proximity to fire perimeter. Specifically, turnover was greater in meadows in higher mortality catchments. We then used a combination of linear models and NMDS to determine whether specific functional groups were driving higher turnover rates, expecting increases in obligate and facultative-wetland groups following high mortality fires. However we found no evidence for this. The high variation amongst meadows and their respective fire histories yielded no consistent shifts in community composition. Our findings highlight that landscape scale fire effects can interact strongly affect plant communities outside of fire perimeters, but that this does not lead to predictable shifts in wetland community composition. As fire behavior and drought are projected to become more extreme, we can expect that meadow composition will continue to change but not in predictable ways.

This study employs ethnographic research to investigate the extent to which local governance affects both poverty and natural resources management in the Delta region. The research develops a framework for governance of natural resources to understand the daily practices of different actors within the local context using informal observation and interviews. In applying the framework, the study places emphasis on resources for governance, actors¿ agency, arrangements of access to resources and governance outcomes in the Delta region. Evidence from the study shows that while the state and corporate actors only contextualise resources in terms of economic value, local actors interprete resources beyond economic value to incorporate symbolic and socio-culturally constructed values linked with historic values. The study also identified relational, routine practices and structural factors which differently shape actors¿ agency for resources management. The context which shapes different arrangements of access to local resources by actors varies. These arrangements are subject to negotiation, power differences and socio-cultural factors. The findings related to governance outcomes reveal both positive (favourable) and negative (unfavourable) outcomes for the livelihood of different actors. The study concludes by exploring implications for local governance in order to address poverty and enhance optimal resource management in the Delta region.

State and federal agencies spend considerable time and resources to enhance and create habitat for wildlife. Understanding how target and non-target species respond to these efforts can help direct the allocation of limited conservation resources. However, monitoring species response to habitat management comes with several logistical challenges that are exacerbated as the area of geographic focus increases. I used autonomous recording units (ARUs) to mitigate these challenges when assessing Eastern Whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus) response to forest management. I deployed 1,265 ARUs across managed and unmanaged public and private forests from western North Carolina to southern Maine. I then applied a machine learned classifier to all recordings to create whip-poor-will daily detection histories for each survey location. I used detection data and generalized linear models to examine regional, landscape, and site factors that influenced whip-poor-will occurrence. Whip-poor-wills were detected at 399 (35%) survey locations. At the regional scale, occupancy decreased with latitude and elevation. At the landscape scale, occupancy was negatively associated with the amount of impervious cover within 500m, and was positively associated with the amount of oak forest and evergreen forest cover within 1,750m. Additionally, whip-poor-will occupancy exhibited a quadratic relationship with the amount of shrub/scrub cover within 1,500m. At the site-level, occupancy was negatively associated with increased basal area and exhibited a quadratic relationship with woody stem density. Whip-poor-will populations can benefit from the implementation of forestry practices that create and sustain early successional forests within forested landscapes, especially those dominated by oak forest types. The use of ARUs helped overcome several challenges associated with intensive broad-scale monitoring efforts for a species with a limited survey window, but also presented new challenges associated with data management, storage, and analyses.

No description available.