The Environmental Science and Design Symposium, formerly the Land and Water Symposium, is a multidisciplinary forum that promotes the exchange of ideas related to the resiliency of natural and built systems. This year’s theme, Complexity of Environmental Legacies, reflects the challenges of developing sustainable systems in landscapes transformed by decades of modification and contamination. Speakers from a wide range of disciplines (fashion, geology, geography, architecture, and ecology) will address topics related to urban, sustainability, restoration, and the integration of design with biological systems.
Browse the Environmental Science and Design Research Initiative 2019 Collections
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Food Web Structure in a Constructed Wetland
03/21/2019Wetlands are globally important ecosystems known for strong interactions among aquatic and terrestrial animals and plants. While natural wetlands are known for their complex food webs, constructed wetlands are often simpler, containing reduced levels of biodiversity. However, these systems generally reflect similar inter- and intra-specific interactions, with the advantage of having replicate sites. This project assessed food web interactions of macrofauna in ten wetland cells during an 8-week summer period in constructed wetlands at Kent State University. In each wetland cell, fish and amphibian (tadpoles/adults) assemblages were sampled twice/week using modified minnow traps to gain insight into population size and fish/amphibian size distributions. Next, to assess mammal and bird activity and their potential interactions in these wetlands, game cameras were strategically placed around each of the wetlands. Finally, odonates (i.e., dragonflies and damselflies) were also identified and counted in each wetland. Overall, species richness was relatively low, with only two fish species and two frog species captured from the minnow traps. In contrast, multiple mammal, bird, and odonate species were detected at the site in other sampling. Analyses of food web structure suggest a strong, negative relationship between sunfish abundance and frog/tadpole abundance and level of development, likely as a result of predation. The distribution of beavers, green herons, and great blue herons also appeared to be associated with food availability (woody vegetation for beavers, fish/frogs for herons). In summary, while simple, the food web in these constructed wetlands was structured similarly to what we see in natural wetlands.Fostering a people's forest: using Citizen Science-driven biodiversity monitoring to understand restoration processes
03/21/2019Ecosystem restoration takes place over a longer time scale than the typical ecological study, particularly when the ecosystem includes slow-growing taxa, such as trees. Yet, humans take strong interest in ecosystem restoration- both as a process to participate in (i.e. contributing to tree planting and Citizen Science), and as a process to measure (i.e. asking “is our restoration activity working?”). This project examines both of these facets through restoration activities within former surface mine sites at Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We use the lens of beetle communities observed through participatory models of data collection to examine how functional groups of organisms can give information on how an ecosystem is operating. With the help of community members, we will conduct “bio-blitzes” and systematic sampling to document Coleoptera communities within 5 sites undergoing restoration, and their surrounding forest at CVNP. We will then use these communities to describe the functional ‘health’ of their surrounding landscape. This project will also examine how effectively citizen scientists contribute to ecological research within a national park and what implications this may have on future ecological research. We will combine these data with observations from public databases (iNaturalist) and use these data to effectively map the ‘health’ of mature and restored forest within CVNP– with respect to beetle community composition - providing a means to assess the effectiveness of Citizen Science on supporting ecological research.Geodesic Filter
03/21/2019This geodesic Dome has vegetation built with the structure. It has microclimate greenhouses on the exterior. The vegetation on the exterior of the building and inside of the microclimates are plants specifically chosen because of their ability to clean the air and create more oxygen. The interior is a research center that focuses on creating more microclimates as well as filtering water pollution with Plants. The parts of the Center is open to the public to educate them like a botanical garden. I am researching what micro climates can survive in Cleveland green houses and what they need to function.Getting to the root of soil carbon sequestration: tracking fine root carbon losses and soil carbon gains
03/21/2019Fine roots of woody plants are the greatest terrestrial source of carbon (C) to soils, hence represent a major flux of C out of the atmosphere. While the decomposition rates of many tree species’ roots have been measured in other experiments, such information doesn’t address how much root C is ultimately incorporated into microbial biomass, respired, leached to dissolved organic C pools, or stabilized as soil particulate organic matter (POM). We explored two different pathways by which plant litter becomes stabilized in soil: a physical pathway, where root fragments are protected from decomposition by microorganisms in soil aggregates, and a biochemical pathway, where labile plant tissues are utilized by microorganisms that, in turn, bond with minerals to form stable soil C. In two two-year long decomposition experiments with four tree species’ roots that had contrasting chemical and morphological properties, we monitored losses of root C and gains of C in various soil C pools. Preliminary results suggest that root morphology strongly affects which decomposition pathway predominates. Roots with smaller diameter and specific root length lose more C to fragmentation, becoming occluded in POM, while thicker roots contribute more C to microbial and dissolved organic pools, which have faster C turnover rates. Overall, more root C was stabilized in soil from roots with thin, highly-branched roots. Understanding which plant traits affect a tree’s potential as a C sink is important for improving our accounting of carbon in forests in a changing climate.Holocene changes in algal abundance and dissolved oxygen discovered in Sluice Pond, MA through spectroscopy and analysis of a sediment core
03/21/2019Throughout the Holocene, Sluice Pond (Lynn, MA, USA), has experienced fluctuations in algal communities and dissolved oxygen (DO) content based on measurements from a sediment core raised from its anoxic central basin. The variability in the core’s composition can be mapped with Visible Derivative Spectroscopy based on varimax-rotated, principal component analysis (VPCA) through wavelet analysis and by plotting this information against an AMS 14C constrained age model. The temporal history yields a better understanding of the lake’s changing environment and provides insight into the extent of preserved natural and human events. Thirteen separate constituents were present in the core, as mixtures of six different orthogonal (or independent) VPCA components that account for 97.1% of the variance in the data set. Six components were extracted overall, but a detailed look at two is presented in this project. Through the data collected in 6VPCA1 and in 6VPCA6, algal blooms and lake turbidity can be mapped out and referenced against the age model to show changes in relative concentration. The data shows anoxic conditions through the increase or decrease of DO indicators. The first component oscillates on a period of 4 ka, and the second has a 6 ka oscillation. Major climate events such as the Younger Dryas and the 8.2-kiloyear event are represented in the data by a large drop in algal concentrations and an increase in DO during both extreme cold events. Within the last 200 years, fluctuations in algal blooms, turbidity, and DO have increased dramatically in both frequency and extent. Through the data and methods used in this project, we are given a representation of the natural variance over the Holocene and can start to understand how humans may have impacted Sluice Pond. This new information allows for a better understanding of the conditions Sluice Pond has experienced in the past and can inform us on steps that need to be taken for the overall health of the lake. How does elevation and/or substrate affect the composition of biocrusts?
03/21/2019Biological soil crusts (‘biocrusts’) are conglomerations of a variety of organisms including bacteria, lichens and mosses that dominate soil surfaces in arid environments. Biocrusts are important in drylands due to their ability to perform several ecological functions such as soil stabilization and increasing pools of available nitrogen. Higher elevations are typically associated with more precipitation and, consequently, higher vascular plant densities, either outcompeting biocrusts or providing optimal conditions for later successional biocrust communities (lichens and mosses). However, the relationship between the abundance of biocrust and elevation may be obscured by soil type and its effects on nutrient cycling. We tested whether there was a relationship between biocrusts and elevation, and whether differences among biocrust communities were affected by soil type and enzymatic activity (a proxy for nutrient cycling). Biocrust samples were collected from a variety of sites along an elevational gradient between Phoenix (300 m) and Flagstaff (2,100 m) in Arizona while targeting different soil types. We measured % cover of biocrusts and the activity of three enzymes associated with carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. We found a significant effect of elevation on biocrusts. Lichens and mosses were significantly affected by elevation, while cyanobacteria were not. No significant substrate results were observed, except for the avoidance of granitic soils by mosses and avoidance of basalt by lichens. These results indicate that elevation affects the community composition of biocrusts, but perhaps greater sampling efforts are needed to make more general conclusions about the effects of substrate on biocrust composition.