Browsing by Subject "Landscape"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Application of the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to the Willow River Watershed, St. Croix County, Wisconsin.
    (2010-12) Murphy, Marylee Smith
    Identifying critical source areas of sediment and phosphorus nonpoint pollutant loads under alternative land use scenarios is aided by the use of hydrologic models. We applied the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to the Willow River watershed in St. Croix County, Wisconsin, to examine the effects of possible future scenarios and best management practices. The model was calibrated and validated to water year (WY) 1999 and WY2006 datasets, respectively, with land use configured for each year. The model performed well in calibration, but could not simulate conditions outside of the calibration conditions in the validation dataset. Sediment and phosphorus trapping was influenced by trapping between the landscape source and the watershed outlet in closed-drainage lakes, flow-through wetlands, and on-stream reservoirs. The relative contributions of pollutants were related to the landscape position of the source area and the number and trapping efficiency of the intermediate traps in the flow path. We simulated best management practices including lowered soil-test phosphorus, increased conservation tillage, lowered cattle dietary phosphorus, and changed agricultural crop rotations. Simulations demonstrated that conversion to mulch tillage and no-till from conventional tillage could reduce sediment yield on the converted lands by 3% to 27% and phosphorus yield by 5% to 21%. For the current mix of agricultural land management in the Willow Watershed, converting all cropland to mulch tillage would reduce watershed export of phosphorus by 1% and sediment export by 1%. Converting all of the agricultural land to no-till produced a modeled decrease in watershed export of sediment of 2% and a decrease in phosphorus of 7%. Simulations also demonstrated a 22% reduction watershed phosphorus export by reducing average agricultural soil-test phosphorus to 20 ppm. Converting all farm land from a mixture of cash grain rotations to a dairy rotation that included two years of corn and three years of alfalfa caused a modeled reduction in watershed phosphorus export of 15% and a modeled reduction in sediment export of iii 5%. Continued conversion of agricultural land to rural residential land uses produced lower modeled loads of watershed sediment export up to 13% and phosphorus export up to 27% depending on the area developed and the average lot size. Changes in point source phosphorus because of better wastewater treatment caused a decrease in modeled phosphorus delivery of 13% between the calibration and validation time periods. Alternative climate scenarios were also simulated, showing that evapotranspiration was the driver of the altered hydrologic cycle, and thus the driver of reduced sediment and phosphorus export.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Consumers' willingness-to-pay for perennial grass conversion to renewable energy in South-Central Minnesota.
    (2010-08) Pham, Matthew Van
    There has been an interest in growing perennial grass on marginal croplands to provide electricity and recreational services in the Madelia, Minnesota region. Policymakers and landowners want to know if it is economically feasible for farmers to convert row crops, such as corn and soybean, to perennial crops since the conversion will only take place only under the right economic conditions. A questionnaire was completed by 725 Carver, Dakota, and Scott county residents, which gave a response rate of 29 percent, to determine how much they would be willing-to-pay (WTP) to utilize the recreational services at a converted site. Using the contingent valuation and hypothetical trip cost models, some support exists for the perennial grass conversion. However, 52 percent would not be willing-to-pay for the conversion, and 64 percent would not visit the converted land. Using the estimated WTP amount from the contingent valuation model, calculations were performed to determine the total benefits a farmer would receive from converting to a perennial grass crop. In most cases, a farmer growing corn and soybean crops would not convert due to the higher revenue earned from growing corn and soybean, with rotation. However, the farmer will convert to perennial crops if unlimited credit stacking, or payments for multiple ecological benefits, are allowed.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Creating local landscape: tidal bores and seawalls at haining (1720s-1830s)
    (2008-12) Fang, Qin
    My dissertation explores landscape as a social and cultural instrument in the high Qing (1760s-1820s), a multi-ethnic empire with the largest territory and the most diverse ethnic groups in the history of China. In particular, I ask how a multiethnic empire rules and how the small county of Haining in east central China fit into the ruling house’s vision of its empire as a “great union.” Instead of answering these questions by examining the center of state politics (administration and state policies), I look at local politics. In this case I examine how seawalls, tidal phenomena, and scenes of daily life represented as Haining landscapes were collected and organized in local histories and imperially commissioned works. This dissertation thus seeks both to elucidate the historical relations between the imperial center and the locale and to address issues of wider concern to scholars of empire formation in the early modern world. Haining in the late imperial period was a small city located where the Qiantang River flows into China East Sea in Zhejiang province. Before the second half of the eighteenth century, Haining most commonly appeared in reports of local coastal floods caused by tidal bores and requests for famine relief. Following the construction of protective seawalls and the Qianlong emperor’s inspection tours to Haining in 1762, the image of tidal bores shifted. Once depicted as wild and uncontrolled natural disasters they now appeared as tamed and even aesthetically pleasing phenomena. Haining itself thereafter was celebrated in poems as a place holding a unique position as the destination for sightseeing related to the tidal bores and a booming cultural center noted for poets, bibliophiles, and scholars. The central thematic concern of my dissertation is the local response of Haining’s literati to the Qianlong emperor’s representations of Haning’s local landscapes. I analyze this response in terms of discursive representations functioning as political technology in service of power. While Qianlong used local landscapes to imagine Haining as a jigsaw puzzle piece in his multiethnic empire, local literati appropriated that imagination and manipulated the meaning of local landscapes in an effort to reinforce their own status. Despite their differences in terms of political agendas and interests, however, both the imperial and local representations of local landscapes facilitated to map out previously little known Haining as a highly cultivated place with beautiful sceneries on the imperial cultural map. My dissertation works on three types of textual representations of local landscape, natural sights (tidal bores), man-made structures (seawalls), and human performance (scenes of local daily life). Most were landscape poems anthologized and re-anthologized into Haining local histories since the sixteenth century. The rate of their incorporation into the histories rapidly increased in the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century, especially after textually constructed landscapes of Haining had been included in imperially sponsored works after the Qianlong emperor’s inspection tours to Haining. These poems constitute a unique kind of historical source material, one that invites an interdisciplinary approach. First, this body of material allows for a detailed study of the development of the largely unexamined local histories in the form of poems. Second, the landscape poems incorporated in imperially sponsored works can serve as a vehicle for examining one aspect of the Qing rule. As an example, the Qianlong emperor’s poems on his tours to seawalls and tidal bores function more as edicts to local officials than simply praises to local scenery beauty. Third, an exploration of the milieu from which they sprang poses questions about the relationship between the imperial center and its locale. Finally, this abundance of documentation also sheds light on the related matters of how recording and documenting of landscape poetry can forge a national identify for a multi-ethnic empire.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The effect of urbanization on the stopover ecology of neotropical migrant songbirds
    (2015-04) Condon, Elisabeth Lee
    I conducted spring migration point counts and vegetation surveys at 29 forest patches in the Chicago, IL metropolitan area in 2012 and 2013. The forest patch selection was designed to test the effects of patch size, distance from the Lake Michigan shoreline and degree of urbanization. I conducted exploratory analysis to search for potential relationships. Vegetation structure variables, especially understory and subcanopy composition, were important factors for many models. Bird species determined to be area sensitive in previous studies were associated with large patches during migration. While path size, distance from the shoreline and urbanization were not frequently selected for models of the entire avian community, they were important in most models of individual species. No single combination benefitted all species, indicating that maintaining a variety of conditions in the region will support a diverse avifauna.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Forest and Social change in Early Modern English literature, 1590–1700.
    (2009-05) Weixel, Elizabeth Marie
    The Forest and Social Change in Early Modern English Literature, 1590-1700 , recasts the green world of the early modern forest in a historical framework and in a literature of landscape that shaped conceptions of social power in England. I argue that Renaissance poets employ forest imagery and settings in ways that register a slow decline of land-based aristocratic influence and accompanying social markers. At a time of struggle between the Crown and the nobility, growing influence of the middle ranks, and evolving economic and political ideas, literary depictions of forests build upon the unrest associated with historical forests to suggest new social arrangements. The dissertation traces this convergence of landscape, literature, and social rank in forest law and forestry manuals, stage comedy, romance epic, brief biblical epic, and country house poetry. Chapter 1 examines forest law and an arboricultural treatise and demonstrates that their silent omission of aristocratic interests reveals a shift in thought about social power and influence tied to the English landscape. Chapter 2 examines dukes in the woods of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It and argues that forests harbor authority that transcends the social structure and is accessible to characters outside circles of power and privilege. Chapter 3 shows how the intertextual depiction of two failed forest squires in Book VI of Spenser's The Faerie Queene reflects doubt about the long-term efficacy of aristocratic social dominance and the promise it offers for personal and social advancement. Chapter 4 places the banquet temptation of Milton's Paradise Regained in the context of country house poetry by Lanyer, Jonson, and Marvell, and it traces how the poem subjugates the social hierarchy to an ideal of spiritual humility by blending religious dissent with the rumblings of social discontent latent in historical and literary forests.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Habitat and landscape characteristics that influence Sedge Wren (Cistothorus platensis) and Marsh Wren (C. palustris) distribution and abundance in Great Lakes coastal wetlands
    (2013-08) Panci, Hannah
    I analyzed habitat and landscape characteristics important to the Sedge Wren (Cistothorus platensis) and Marsh Wren (C. palustris) in Great Lakes coastal wetlands using breeding bird census data from two large projects in 2002-2003 and 2011-2012. Little is known about the population or distribution of these species in the Great Lakes region. For each of 840 survey points in coastal wetlands along the U.S. and Canadian shorelines, I used National Land Cover Data and Ontario Land Cover Data to calculate the percent cover of seven different land use classes within 500, 1000, and 2000 m buffers of each point. I combined these with climatic and landscape configuration variables as well as field-collected vegetation data to develop classification trees that predicted both Sedge and Marsh Wren presence and relative high abundance (≥3 wrens/site). After eliminating geographic variables, the best classification trees predicted Sedge Wrens to be present in wetlands with greater than 9% woody wetlands at the 2000 m buffer, and in high abundance in sites with less than 3% cattails and greater than 4% meadow vegetation. Marsh Wren presence was positively associated with emergent vegetation and cropland, and negatively associated with woody wetland at the 500 m buffer. Marsh Wrens were predicted to be in high abundance at sites with greater than 14% cattails. This classification tree analysis is a powerful predictive tool which significantly increases our ability to correctly predict the presence of these secretive wetland species. These results provide a basic understanding of characteristics of Great Lakes coastal wetlands important to two wetland-obligate bird species and can be useful in conservation decisions and management plans.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Human Influences on Water Quality in Great Lakes Coastal Wetlands
    (2008) Morrice, John A; Danz, Nick; Regal, Ronald R; Kelly, John R; Niemi, Gerald J; Reavie, Euan; Hollenhorst, Thomas; Axler, Richard P; Trebitz, Annet; Cotter, Anne C; Peterson, Gregory S
    This peer-reviewed article discusses water quality and chemistry issues with anthropogenic causes. Geographically, it covers the US coastal region of the Great Lakes. A map in the article suggests that only one sampling point was within Minnesota’s coastal region. The article focuses on water chemistry in coastal wetlands across the Great Lakes, but not specifically for Minnesota. Key points in the abstract are extracted and reproduced below. A better understanding of relationships between human activities and water chemistry is needed to identify and manage sources of anthropogenic stress in Great Lakes coastal wetlands. The objective of the study described in this article was to characterize relationships between water chemistry and multiple classes of human activity (agriculture, population and development, point source pollution, and atmospheric deposition). We also evaluated the influence of geomorphology and biogeographic factors on stressor-water quality relationships. We collected water chemistry data from 98 coastal wetlands distributed along the United States shoreline of the Laurentian Great Lakes and GIS-based stressor data from the associated drainage basin to examine stressor-water quality relationships. The sampling captured broad ranges (1.5–2 orders of magnitude) in total phosphorus (TP), total nitrogen (TN), dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN), total suspended solids (TSS), chlorophyll a (Chl a), and chloride; concentrations were strongly correlated with stressor metrics. Hierarchical partitioning and all-subsets regression analyses were used to evaluate the independent influence of different stressor classes on water quality and to identify best predictive models. Results showed that all categories of stress influenced water quality and that the relative influence of different classes of disturbance varied among water quality parameters. Chloride exhibited the strongest relationships with stressors followed in order by TN, Chl a, TP, TSS, and DIN. In general, coarse scale classification of wetlands by morphology (three wetland classes: riverine, protected, open coastal) and biogeography (two eco-provinces: Eastern Broadleaf Forest [EBF] and Laurentian Mixed Forest [LMF]) did not improve predictive models. This study provides strong evidence of the link between water chemistry and human stress in Great Lakes coastal wetlands and can be used to inform management efforts to improve water quality in Great Lakes coastal ecosystems.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Identifying critical portions of the landscape for water quality protection using GIS terrain analysis.
    (2009-11) Galzki, Jacob Craig
    Terrain attributes can be calculated using readily available digital elevation models (DEMs) and Geographic Information System (GIS) software. This study investigates the effectiveness of using terrain attributes to identify different critical source areas of contaminants on the landscape. A full suite of terrain attributes were calculated using 3 and 30-meter resolution DEMs for areas within the Le Sueur River Watershed in south central Minnesota, a watershed known to contribute disproportionate amounts of sediments and nutrients to the Minnesota River. Terrain attributes employed throughout this study included slope (S), flow accumulation (FA), compound topographic index (CTI), and stream power index (SPI). Thresholds applied to these attributes combined with ancillary GIS data, such as SSURGO soil data, resulted in spatial data layers identifying critical areas on the landscape. These critical areas accumulate flow along with associated contaminants and are hydrologically connected to nearby surface waters. Field visits aided in determining attribute thresholds and data layer combinations. Low resolution DEMs were useful for delineating critical portions of the landscape that were controlled by broad landscape patterns, such as artificially drained upland depressions. High resolution DEMs were useful for delineating critical areas at the sub-field scale, such as ephemeral gullies. Terrain analysis using a combination of low and high resolution DEMs can rapidly identify critical landscape areas at various spatial scales for water resource protection, and best management practices (BMPs) can be applied to these critical areas to mitigate their detrimental effects on surface water quality.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Land use/land cover and hydrologic effects on North Shore tributary water quality
    (2013-08) Crouse, Andrea Bernice
    Although they are inextricably linked, the impact of meteorological events and climate variations on water quality have not yet been fully explored. Streams considered for this study are facing increased developmental pressures and have, thus far, remained relatively pristine, although some are already listed as "Impaired". Through use of accumulated water quality data for Duluth and North Shore (Minnesota, USA) streams and GIS analysis of watershed characteristics, empirical models which explain the variability of water quality data, stratified by hydrologic regime, and mediated by landscape characteristics were analyzed. Multivariate statistical found correlations between measures of particulate-related and soluble water quality: sorted by hydrologic regime (i.e. snowmelt, storm events and baseflow); and mediated by landscape metrics. Measures of development at the local scale, including % impervious, were shown to be significantly correlated with increased particulate-related water quality metrics during high flow periods. Wetland cover at the whole watershed scale was negatively correlated with particulate-related water quality metrics, though at the local scale wetlands were positively correlated with soluble water quality metrics. Relationships between water quality metrics and measures of forest cover and stand type were shown to be strongly influenced by the scale at which analyses were performed. Regression analyses indicated that local land use/land cover (LULC) metrics best predicted particulate-related and soluble water quality metrics during high flow periods. During baseflow periods, whole watershed LULC metrics were the best predictors of particulate-related water quality metrics. Results suggested that road salt applied during the winter months may be stored in the soils or groundwater and released into urban trout streams during rain periods. The soluble water quality parameters were less clearly linked to just a few LULC characteristics and a there was no clear pattern for differences between whole vs. local watershed analysis. Soluble nutrients also exhibited seasonal variability. These analyses are an important step towards improving watershed planning and management policies by providing a tool for forecasting the impacts of land use decisions on water quality with known accuracy.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Landscape effects on stream temperature in Minnesota Streams of the Lake Superior Basin
    (2014-05) Black, Brian Jim
    Changes in land use and land cover are known to be important factors causing thermal alterations in small streams. The heating of coldwater and coolwater streams influences aquatic communities that inhabit such environments. We recorded continuous stream temperature data at 50 sites during July - September of 2008 to better understand thermal controls on small streams (1st - 3rd order) within Minnesota's Lake Superior watershed, with specific interest in determining the role of water storage capacity and impervious surface cover. Local and landscape variables were used to predict in-stream temperature using multiple regression analyses. These analyses identify those variables most correlated with stream temperature, and therefore, most likely to influence thermal characteristics. Sites were selected to represent natural gradients of water storage capacity (0-86%) and impervious surface cover (0-26%) within each catchment. Stream habitat data were collected to explain natural temperature variation among sites due to local conditions. Results indicate that geomorphic (stream width and depth), atmospheric (air temperature), and local landscape (riparian shading) variables are all strongly correlated with stream temperature. Thermal characteristics are also influenced by regional landscape variables such as hydraulic conductivity and percent land cover classified as open water or emergent herbaceous wetlands. In contrast, neither impervious surface cover nor water storage capacity were good predictors of the stream temperature metrics summarized in this study. Land cover variables were selected more frequently in best-fit models when they were weighted by distance from the sampling location, indicating that position in the watershed may be an important factor. These trends suggest that changes in land use and land cover have great potential to either mitigate or exacerbate the impacts on stream temperature from climate change, and stress the importance of effective land management.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Mining displacement: embracing change on the Iron Range.
    (2009-12) Jarvi, Adam Thomas
    Abstract summary not available.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Trickster skins: narratives of landscape, representation, and the Miami Nation.
    (2011-07) Shoemaker, Scott Michael
    This dissertation, Trickster Skins: Narratives of Landscape, Representation, and the Miami Nation, reinterprets sites of Miami history through the lenses of narrative and landscape. It combines Miami and Western forms of knowledge to reinterpret the complex relationships of landscape and representation within the Miami struggle against colonization and the narratives that have arisen from this struggle. It tells several stories of a small tribe that remained east of the Mississippi River after the era of Indian removal who have been neglected by the Federal Government and often misunderstood by academia and the general public. The Miami Nation of Indians of Indiana (MNI) has about 5,500 enrolled citizens. Remaining in their homeland after removal of nearly half of the Miami Nation in 1846, the Miami of Indiana struggled to retain their reserve lands and identity in the face of Federal, State, and local governmental efforts to systematically dissolve their land base and their inherent and reserved rights. These efforts hinged upon representations of the Miami people and landscape that worked to ignore and erase their continued presence in Indiana through various cultural and legal narratives ultimately denying their identity as American Indians and their recognition as a sovereign nation. Despite these efforts, this dissertation demonstrates the creative and continued resistance of the Miami in various ways. Drawing upon a myriad of sources, this dissertation focuses upon Miami narratives, pictorial and textual representations, efforts to retain their land base, public performance, museum collections and display, and legal battles. This focus examines how the relationships of the Miami people to land takes many forms and are integral to discussions of tribal sovereignty. The findings in this investigation provide alternative interpretations of these sites of Miami history and are informed by Miami narrative traditions.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Walking Corporate Suburbia: A Photographic and Sonic Record
    (2021-04-19) Bauch, Nicholas; nbbauch@protonmail.ch; Bauch, Nicholas
    [Written by Nicholas Bauch, 2021] This is a collection of digital photographs, audio recordings, maps, and creative writing. They were all made by artist Nicholas Bauch during multi-day walks that he did in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area between 2018 and 2020. The nodes of the walks are Fortune-500 corporate headquarters based in the Twin Cities (as listed in 2019). Bauch navigated from one headquarter to the next using only a compass while walking. His main camera was a GoPro 4, which he wore for most of the walks attached to either his head or chest. This camera was programmed to take one JPG picture every two seconds for the duration of the walks, which ranged between 4 and 7 miles each. Without the use of other wayfinding technologies, the resultant routes are not always the most direct, creating documentation of an embodied trek among some of the world’s most influential repositories and wranglers of capital, and—more importantly—the urban and suburban space in which these centers are situated. Any large scale economic system—capitalism, in this case—has a built form that emerges to accommodate the (dys)functions of that economy. The photographs produced on these walks seek to expose that built form, implicitly positing that the organization of suburban spaces is intimately tied to the needs, as it were, of the global corporations. These include things like high-speed roads, protected residential areas, and recreational opportunities like water bodies and parks. One can also read in this built form spaces of oppression and poverty, such as unmaintained housing and sidewalks, shuttered storefronts, and many instances of economic liminality, that is, places for people who are involved in the economic system without much choice, but are not its beneficiaries. One of the great consequences of capitalism is its tendency to direct wealth and resources into smaller and smaller numbers of people as time progresses. This can be read in the urban form, and this collection provides visual evidence for this movement towards unequal wealth distribution as it existed in these years. The photos, therefore, record the urban form of a mid-sized, Midwestern, United States metropolis in the late 20-teens. Urbanists, geographers, and planners, among others in the future may benefit in particular from seeing how the myriad details of suburban and urban spaces were conceived, constructed, and inhabited. Bauch’s 70,000-plus scenes document the everyday spaces of life and work, spanning the four seasons of Minnesota’s extremely variable continental climate. The headquarters between which Bauch walks are the main decision, management, finance, and research centers for large-revenue companies that impact the lives of millions of people across the local region, the nation, and the world. While many lives—bodies, even, as in the case of health insurance and food manufacturing—are materially shaped by these entities, most people could not say where they are located within the city and its surrounds. Examples of these companies, along with their annual revenues in 2019, are UnitedHealth Group ($242 billion), 3M ($32 billion), Ecolab ($15 billion), CHS ($32 billion), C.H. Robinson ($15 billion), Cargill (privately held, $115 billion), Best Buy ($43 billion), United Natural Foods Inc ($21 billion), Target ($75 billion), and General Mills ($18 billion). This is not a celebration of corporate life or of the normalization of wealth accumulation, nor does it condone the historically (and currently) racist social systems that make continuously accelerating commercial growth possible at a global scale. On the contrary, it is an attempt to point attention--much as Pop Art might have--toward the realities of economic geography, in an attempt to know them and sow the seeds of rebuilding them in ways that benefit all people. From the artist: My identity as a middle-aged, white, English-speaking, employed, housed, U.S.-passport-holding male positions me to blend-in, as it were, when I walk through areas that do not experience high volumes of foot traffic from “outsiders.” That is, even with a strapped-on camera, I look enough like a local to not arouse visits from the police, or suspicion from other entities that enforce social and economic boundaries. Being ignored is a privilege that only proves the existence of the racist structure in the first place; I suspect that someone pushing a grocery cart, or someone with a camera strapped to a turban, would not move as unencumbered as I have. When I walk, I often find myself trying to imagine the landscape as it might have looked before European contact with the Americas. Without assuming details about the Dakota experience, I think about lives that might have been lived in these places. With each picture, I see what now appear to be banal landscapes as deep containers that have amassed generational layers of meaning. That is, stories about real people who held all the complexities, fears, joys, and wonders of a life fully lived have happened in the places where my feet hit the ground, where motorists fling out cigarette butts and where plows heap oil- and salt-soaked snow.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Windows, Mirrors, and the Unrepresentable Earth
    (University of Minnesota, Department of Art, 2017) Johnson, Michael T
    "Windows, Mirrors, and the Unrepresentable Earth" is Michael Johnson's written thesis submitted to the faculty of the Department of Art in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Fine Arts Degree in Art 2017.