Dunn County and Watford City, North Dakota: A case study of the fiscal effects of Bakken shale development

The Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana has experienced perhaps the greatest effects of increased oil and gas development in the United States, with major implications for local governments. Though development of the Bakken began in the early 2000s, large-scale drilling and population growth dramatically affected the region from roughly 2008 through today. This case study examines the local government fiscal benefits and challenges experienced by Dunn County and Watford City, which lie near the heart of the producing region. For both local governments, the initial growth phase presented major fiscal challenges due to rapidly expanding service demands and insufficient revenue. In the following years, these challenges eased as demand for services slowed due to declining industry activity and state tax policies redirected more funds to localities. Looking forward, both local governments describe their fiscal health as stronger because of the Bakken boom, though higher debt loads and an economy heavily dependent on the volatile oil and gas industry each pose challenges for future fiscal stability.

The Abundance and Behavioral Ecology of Cape Cod Gray Seals Under Predation Risk From White Sharks

The ultimate goal of wildlife recovery is abundance growth of a species, though it must also involve the reestablishment of the species’ ecological role within ecosystems frequently modified by humans. Reestablishment and subsequent recovery may depend on the species’ degree of adaptive behavior as well as the duration of their functional absence and the extent of ecosystem alteration. In cases of long extirpations or extensive alteration, successful reestablishment may entail adjusting foraging behavior, targeting new prey species, and encountering unfamiliar predatory or competitive regimes. Recovering species must also increasingly tolerate heightened anthropogenic presence, particularly within densely inhabited coastal zones. In recent decades, gray seals (Halichoerus grypus) recovered from exploitation, depletion, and partial extirpation in the Northwest Atlantic. On Cape Cod, MA, USA, gray seals have reestablished growing breeding colonies and seasonally interact with migratory white sharks (Carcarodon carcharias). Though well-studied in portions of their range due to concerns over piscivorous impacts on valuable groundfish, there are broad knowledge gaps regarding their ecological role to US marine ecosystems. Furthermore, there are few studies that explicitly analyze gray seal behavior under direct risk of documented shark predation.

In this dissertation, I apply a behavioral and movement ecology approach to telemetry data to understand gray seal abundance and activity patterns along the coast of Cape Cod. This coastal focus complements extensive research documenting and describing offshore movement and foraging behavior and allows me to address questions about movement decisions and risk allocation. Using beach counts of seals visible in satellite imagery, I estimate the total regional abundance of gray seals using correction factors from haul out behavior and demonstrate a sizeable prey base of gray seals locally. Analyzing intra-annual space use patterns, I document small, concentrated home ranges utilizing nearshore habitats that rapidly expand with shifting activity budgets to target disperse offshore habitats following seasonal declines in white sharks. During the season of dense shark presence, seals conducted abbreviated nocturnal foraging trips structured temporally around divergent use of crepuscular periods. The timing of coastal behavior with different levels of twilight indicate risk allocation patterns with diel cycles of empirical white shark activity. The emergence of risk allocation to explain unique behavioral and spatial patterns observed in these gray seals points to the importance of the restored predator-prey dynamic in gray seal behavior along Cape Cod.

The Use of Agricultural Chemicals and Mosquito Response to Pyrethroids in Bungoma Sub-county,Western Kenya

Insecticide treated bed nets and indoor residual spraying are the most widely used vector control methods in Africa. The World Health Organization now recommends four classes of insecticides for use against adult mosquitoes in public health programs. Of these four classes of insecticides, pyrethroids have become the insecticides of choice in treating mosquito bed nets and in the use of indoor spraying to prevent malaria transmission. Pyrethroids are not only used in malaria control but also in agriculture to protect against pest insects. This concurrent use of pyrethroids in vector control and protection of crops from pests in agriculture may exert selection pressure on mosquito larval population and induce resistance to this class of insecticides. The main objective of our study was to explore the role of agricultural chemicals and the response of mosquitoes to pyrethroids in an area of high malaria transmission.

We used a cross-sectional study design. This was a two-step study involving both mosquitoes and human subjects. In this study, we collected larvae growing in breeding sites affected by different agricultural practices. We used purposive sampling to identify active mosquito breeding sites and then interviewed households adjacent to those breeding sites to learn about their agricultural practices that might influence the response of mosquitoes to pyrethroids. We also performed secondary analysis of larval data from a previous case-control study by Obala et al.