Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Annual Report, 2003-2004

The Leopold Center was established by the Iowa Legislature as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987. Its mandated missions are to identify impacts of agricultural practices, contribute to the development of profitable farming systems that conserve natural resources, and cooperate with Iowa State University Extension to inform the public of new findings.Information for this report was compiled by Leopold Center staff with the help of its researchers and educators who are committed to improving Iowa agriculture and the lives of Iowans.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Annual Report, 2004-2005

The Leopold Center was established by the Iowa Legislature as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987. Its mandated missions are to identify impacts of agricultural practices, contribute to the development of profitable farming systems that conserve natural resources, and cooperate with Iowa State University Extension to inform the public of new findings.Information for this report was compiled by Leopold Center staff with the help of its researchers and educators who are committed to improving Iowa agriculture and the lives of Iowans.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Annual Report, 2005-2006

The Leopold Center was established by the Iowa Legislature as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987. Its mandated missions are to identify impacts of agricultural practices, contribute to the development of profitable farming systems that conserve natural resources, and cooperate with Iowa State University Extension to inform the public of new findings.Information for this report was compiled by Leopold Center staff with the help of its researchers and educators who are committed to improving Iowa agriculture and the lives of Iowans.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Annual Report, 2006-2007

The Leopold Center was established by the Iowa Legislature as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987. Its mandated missions are to identify impacts of agricultural practices, contribute to the development of profitable farming systems that conserve natural resources, and cooperate with Iowa State University Extension to inform the public of new findings.Information for this report was compiled by Leopold Center staff with the help of its researchers and educators who are committed to improving Iowa agriculture and the lives of Iowans.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Annual Report, 2007-2008

The Leopold Center was established by the Iowa Legislature as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987. Its mandated missions are to identify impacts of agricultural practices, contribute to the development of profitable farming systems that conserve natural resources, and cooperate with Iowa State University Extension to inform the public of new findings.Information for this report was compiled by Leopold Center staff with the help of its researchers and educators who are committed to improving Iowa agriculture and the lives of Iowans.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Annual Report, 2008-2009

The Leopold Center was established by the Iowa Legislature as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987. Its mandated missions are to identify impacts of agricultural practices, contribute to the development of profitable farming systems that conserve natural resources, and cooperate with Iowa State University Extension to inform the public of new findings.Information for this report was compiled by Leopold Center staff with the help of its researchers and educators who are committed to improving Iowa agriculture and the lives of Iowans.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Annual Report, 2009-2010

The Leopold Center was established by the Iowa Legislature as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987. Its mandated missions are to identify impacts of agricultural practices, contribute to the development of profitable farming systems that conserve natural resources, and cooperate with Iowa State University Extension to inform the public of new findings.Information for this report was compiled by Leopold Center staff with the help of its researchers and educators who are committed to improving Iowa agriculture and the lives of Iowans.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Annual Report, 2010-2011

The Leopold Center was established by the Iowa Legislature as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987. Its mandated missions are to identify impacts of agricultural practices, contribute to the development of profitable farming systems that conserve natural resources, and cooperate with Iowa State University Extension to inform the public of new findings.Information for this report was compiled by Leopold Center staff with the help of its researchers and educators who are committed to improving Iowa agriculture and the lives of Iowans.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Annual Report, 2011-2012

The Leopold Center was established by the Iowa Legislature as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987. Its mandated missions are to identify impacts of agricultural practices, contribute to the development of profitable farming systems that conserve natural resources, and cooperate with Iowa State University Extension to inform the public of new findings.Information for this report was compiled by Leopold Center staff with the help of its researchers and educators who are committed to improving Iowa agriculture and the lives of Iowans.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Annual Report, 2013-2014

The Leopold Center was established by the Iowa Legislature as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987. Its mandated missions are to identify impacts of agricultural practices, contribute to the development of profitable farming systems that conserve natural resources, and cooperate with Iowa State University Extension to inform the public of new findings.Information for this report was compiled by Leopold Center staff with the help of its researchers and educators who are committed to improving Iowa agriculture and the lives of Iowans.

Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture Annual Report, 2012-2013

The Leopold Center was established by the Iowa Legislature as part of the Iowa Groundwater Protection Act of 1987. Its mandated missions are to identify impacts of agricultural practices, contribute to the development of profitable farming systems that conserve natural resources, and cooperate with Iowa State University Extension to inform the public of new findings.Information for this report was compiled by Leopold Center staff with the help of its researchers and educators who are committed to improving Iowa agriculture and the lives of Iowans.

Dynamic Modelling of Material Flows and Sustainable Resource Use: Case Studies in Regional Metabolism and Space Life Support Systems

Sustainable resource use is one of the most important environmental issues of our times. It is closely related to discussions on the 'peaking' of various natural resources serving as energy sources, agricultural nutrients, or metals indispensable in high-technology applications. Although the peaking theory remains controversial, it is commonly recognized that a more sustainable use of resources would alleviate negative environmental impacts related to resource use. In this thesis, sustainable resource use is analysed from a practical standpoint, through several different case studies. Four of these case studies relate to resource metabolism in the Canton of Geneva in Switzerland: the aim was to model the evolution of chosen resource stocks and flows in the coming decades. The studied resources were copper (a bulk metal), phosphorus (a vital agricultural nutrient), and wood (a renewable resource). In addition, the case of lithium (a critical metal) was analysed briefly in a qualitative manner and in an electric mobility perspective. In addition to the Geneva case studies, this thesis includes a case study on the sustainability of space life support systems. Space life support systems are systems whose aim is to provide the crew of a spacecraft with the necessary metabolic consumables over the course of a mission. Sustainability was again analysed from a resource use perspective. In this case study, the functioning of two different types of life support systems, ARES and BIORAT, were evaluated and compared; these systems represent, respectively, physico-chemical and biological life support systems. Space life support systems could in fact be used as a kind of 'laboratory of sustainability' given that they represent closed and relatively simple systems compared to complex and open terrestrial systems such as the Canton of Geneva. The chosen analysis method used in the Geneva case studies was dynamic material flow analysis: dynamic material flow models were constructed for the resources copper, phosphorus, and wood. Besides a baseline scenario, various alternative scenarios (notably involving increased recycling) were also examined. In the case of space life support systems, the methodology of material flow analysis was also employed, but as the data available on the dynamic behaviour of the systems was insufficient, only static simulations could be performed. The results of the case studies in the Canton of Geneva show the following: were resource use to follow population growth, resource consumption would be multiplied by nearly 1.2 by 2030 and by 1.5 by 2080. A complete transition to electric mobility would be expected to only slightly (+5%) increase the copper consumption per capita while the lithium demand in cars would increase 350 fold. For example, phosphorus imports could be decreased by recycling sewage sludge or human urine; however, the health and environmental impacts of these options have yet to be studied. Increasing the wood production in the Canton would not significantly decrease the dependence on wood imports as the Canton's production represents only 5% of total consumption. In the comparison of space life support systems ARES and BIORAT, BIORAT outperforms ARES in resource use but not in energy use. However, as the systems are dimensioned very differently, it remains questionable whether they can be compared outright. In conclusion, the use of dynamic material flow analysis can provide useful information for policy makers and strategic decision-making; however, uncertainty in reference data greatly influences the precision of the results. Space life support systems constitute an extreme case of resource-using systems; nevertheless, it is not clear how their example could be of immediate use to terrestrial systems.

Management Strategy for Iowa’s Water Resources, December 2007

In Iowa, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR)is responsible for regulating water allocation and use through the issuance of water use permits, but improvements are necessary in this process to assure sustainable supplies into the future. In recent years, there have not been resources dedicated at the state level to properly track and assess water quantity issues. Resources for water use and water quantity monitoring (groundwater level and surface gauges) have continued to decline and have resulted in data becoming outdated and in a format that is difficult to analyze in order to make good decisions.

Relationships between users, resources and services in learning object repositories

In this paper we describe a proposal for defining the relationships between resources, users and services in a digital repository. Nowadays, virtual learning environments are widely used but digital repositories are not fully integrated yet into the learning process. Our final goal is to provide final users with recommendation systems and reputation schemes that help them to build a true learning community around the institutional repository, taking into account their educational context (i.e. the courses they are enrolled into) and their activity (i.e. system usage by their classmates and teachers). In order to do so, we extend the basic resource concept in a traditional digital repository by adding all the educational context and other elements from end-users' profiles, thus bridging users, resources and services, and shifting from a library-centered paradigm to a learning-centered one.

Potential Accessibility of Web-based mathematical information resources

This paper presents a research concerning the conversion of non-accessible web pages containing mathematical formulae into accessible versions through an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool. The objective of this research is twofold. First, to establish criteria for evaluating the potential accessibility of mathematical web sites, i.e. the feasibility of converting non-accessible (non-MathML) math sites into accessible ones (Math-ML). Second, to propose a data model and a mechanism to publish evaluation results, making them available to the educational community who may use them as a quality measurement for selecting learning material.Results show that the conversion using OCR tools is not viable for math web pages mainly due to two reasons: many of these pages are designed to be interactive, making difficult, if not almost impossible, a correct conversion; formula (either images or text) have been written without taking into account standards of math writing, as a consequence OCR tools do not properly recognize math symbols and expressions. In spite of these results, we think the proposed methodology to create and publish evaluation reports may be rather useful in other accessibility assessment scenarios.