Report on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the year ended June 30, 2011

Report on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the year ended June 30, 2011

The Economics of Dead Zones: Linking Externalities from the Land to their Consequences in the Sea, October 2012,

The purpose of this review and analysis is to provide a basic understanding of the issues related to worldwide hypoxic zones and the range of economic questions sorely in need of answers. We begin by describing the causes and extent of hypoxic zones worldwide, followed by a review of the evidence concerning ecological effects of the condition and impacts on ecosystem services. We describe what is known about abatement options and cost effective policy design before turning to an analysis of the large, seasonally recurring hypoxic zone in the Gulf of Mexico. We advance the understanding of this major ecological issue by estimating the relationship between pollutants (nutrients) and the areal extent of the hypoxic zone. This “production function” relationship suggests that both instantaneous and legacy contributions of nutrients contribute to annual predictions of the size of the zone, highlighting concerns that ecologists have raised about lags in the recovery of the system and affirms the importance of multiple nutrients as target pollutants. We conclude with a discussion of critical research needs to provide input to policy formation.

Report on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the year ended June 30, 2012

Report on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the year ended June 30, 2012

Climatic and land use changes in the NW of Iberian Peninsula recorded in a 1,500-year record from Lake Sanabria

L'estudi de diversos descriptors paleoambientals com ara el pol·len, les diatomees i la sedimentologia, realitzat en sediments procedents del llac de Sanabria (NO de la península Ibèrica), ha aportat informació sobre les oscil·lacions climàtiques atribuïdes als períodes càlids tardoromà i medieval, així com a la petita edat del gel. Entre els anys 440 i 950 dC, el clima es caracteritzà per temperatures suaus i un règim de precipitacions mediterrani, malgrat l¿existència de pulsacions més fredes vers els anys 530 i 700 dC. Les evidències pol·líniques dels usos del sòl indiquen l'extensió d¿activitats ramaderes i agrícoles. Aquesta fase correspon al final del període càlid romà i al període càlid medieval. El canvi de condicions climàtiques es produeix entre els anys 950 i 1100 dC, moment en què els valors mínims de matèria orgànica, pol·len arbori, concentració de diatomees, nitrogen total (TN) i mida del gra indiquen temperatures més baixes i un règim de precipitacions més regular. Aquest període correspon a

Development of a New Process for Determining Design Year Traffic Demands, TR-528, 2007

Researchers should continuously ask how to improve the models we rely on to make financial decisions in terms of the planning, design, construction, and maintenance of roadways. This project presents an alternative tool that will supplement local decision making but maintain a full appreciation of the complexity and sophistication of today’s regional model and local traffic impact study methodologies. This alternative method is tailored to the desires of local agencies, which requested a better, faster, and easier way to evaluate land uses and their impact on future traffic demands at the sub-area or project corridor levels. A particular emphasis was placed on scenario planning for currently undeveloped areas. The scenario planning tool was developed using actual land use and roadway information for the communities of Johnston and West Des Moines, Iowa. Both communities used the output from this process to make regular decisions regarding infrastructure investment, design, and land use planning. The City of Johnston case study included forecasting future traffic for the western portion of the city within a 2,600-acre area, which included 42 intersections. The City of West Des Moines case study included forecasting future traffic for the city’s western growth area covering over 30,000 acres and 331 intersections. Both studies included forecasting a.m. and p.m. peak-hour traffic volumes based upon a variety of different land use scenarios. The tool developed took goegraphic information system (GIS)-based parcel and roadway information, converted the data into a graphical spreadsheet tool, allowed the user to conduct trip generation, distribution, and assignment, and then to automatically convert the data into a Synchro roadway network which allows for capacity analysis and visualization. The operational delay outputs were converted back into a GIS thematic format for contrast and further scenario planning. This project has laid the groundwork for improving both planning and civil transportation decision making at the sub-regional, super-project level.

Ground beetle (Coleoptera, Carabidae) diversity in Finnish arable land

Appendix: Species of Carabidae and their total catch using pitfall-traps

Monitoring of Finnish arable land : changes in soil quality between 1987 and 1998

Selostus: Suomalaisten viljelymaiden tilan seuranta : muutoksia peltojen ominaisuuksissa aikavälillä 1987-1998

U.S. landowner behavior, land use and land cover changes, and climate change mitigation

Abstract

Land use response to agricultural policy and market movements on Finnish dairy-farms

Selostus: Tuki- ja hintamuutosten vaikutus maitotilojen pellon käyttöön

Economic importance of parcel structure on Finnish farms

Selostus:Tilusrakenteen taloudelliset vaikutukset

09028-014 Tributary B to Fourmile Creek Final Report

The city of Ankeny is submitting this WIRB application for development of green urban stormwater practices on city and private property in the Fourmile Creek watershed. The stormwater project proposed includes stream restoration of the SE Tributary to Fourmile Creek (Tributary B), including weirs, bank shaping, toe protection, trees, and native plantings. The project also includes the creation of a native buffer along the stream channel in the city’s Summerbrook Park, installing four native planting beds, installing a pervious surface trail, installing a series of rain gardens/biorentention cells, and installing educational signage. Polk County Soil and Water Conservation District has committed $17,000 towards the native buffer and rain garden/biorentention cell. The city of Ankeny was also awarded a $100,000 I-JOBS grant from IDNR to complete the stormwater retrofit practices. The largest component of this project is public education. Our vision for this project is to take the entire 281 acre watershed and address it as a whole. We want to make a collaborative watershed that not only addresses the water entering the stream channel through adjacent properties, but takes each individual parcel within the watershed and strives to reduce contributions to the stormwater system. The stormwater issues of concern for Tributary B include stormwater volume, sediment, and nutrients. The stream restoration, best management practices (BMP) at Summerbrook Park, and BMPs on private property should help decrease the volume of stormwater and reduce the amount of sediment and nutrients that enter Tributary B and ultimately Fourmile Creek.

Climate Change or Land Use Dynamics: Do We Know What Climate Change Indicators Indicate?

Different components of global change can have interacting effects on biodiversity and this may influence our ability to detect the specific consequences of climate change through biodiversity indicators. Here, we analyze whether climate change indicators can be affected by land use dynamics that are not directly determined by climate change. To this aim, we analyzed three community-level indicators of climate change impacts that are based on the optimal thermal environment and averagelatitude of the distribution of bird species present at local communities. We used multiple regression models to relate the variation in climate change indicators to: i) environmental temperature; and ii) three landscape gradients reflecting important current land use change processes (land abandonment, fire impacts and urbanization), all of them having forest areas at their positive extremes. We found that, with few exceptions, landscape gradients determined the figures of climate change indicators as strongly as temperature. Bird communities in forest habitats had colder-dwelling bird species with more northerndistributions than farmland, burnt or urban areas. Our results show that land use changes can reverse, hide or exacerbate our perception of climate change impacts when measured through community-level climate change indicators. We stress the need of an explicit incorporation of the interactions between climate change and land use dynamics to understand what are current climate change indicators indicating and be able to isolate real climate change impacts

Report on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the year ended June 30, 2013

Report on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the year ended June 30, 2013