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open access

Acute Toxicity of Crude Oil Exposures to Early Life Stage Teleosts: Contribution of Impaired Renal Function and Select Environmental Factors

Description: Oil spills are well-known adverse anthropogenic events, as they can induce severe impacts on the environment and negative economic consequences. Still, much remains to be learned regarding the effects of crude oil exposure to aquatic organisms. The objectives of this dissertation were to fill some of those knowledge gaps by examining the effects of Deepwater Horizon (DWH) crude oil exposure on teleost kidney development and function. To this end, I analyzed how these effects translate into pote… more
Date: August 2022
Creator: Bonatesta, Fabrizio
open access

Avian Community Response to Riverby Ranch Restoration Reconstruction

Description: Anthropogenic activities have caused many wildlife spices to decline in populations worldwide. The grassland bird communities are especially being impacted by these land use changes. Breeding success is closely tied to functional habitats for most grassland bird species in North Texas. Restoring these degraded habitats is an important component to aid in conserving wildlife biodiversity. We surveyed the bird population at Riverby Ranch Mitigation site by conducting point count sampling. This si… more
Date: December 2023
Creator: Boucher, Tessa Katrish

Biomonitoring at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport: Relating Watershed Land Use with Aquatic Life Use

Description: The Dallas-Fort Worth International (DFW) Airport is located in a densely urbanized area with one of the fastest-growing populations in the U.S.A. The airport property includes a large tract of "protected" riparian forest that is unique to the urban surroundings. This dissertation explores variables that influence the benthic macroinvertebrate community structure found in urbanized prairie streams that were initially assessed by the University of North Texas (UNT) Benthic Ecology Lab during fou… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Harlow, Megann Mae Lewis

Conducting Tick-Borne Disease Research in Texas with a Focus on Rickettsia spp.

Description: The field of vector-borne disease research uses multidisciplinary approaches to help understand complicated interactions. This dissertation, covers three different aspects of tick-borne disease research which all focus on exploring tick-borne diseases in the non-endemic areas of Denton, County Texas and the state of Texas with a focus on Rickettsia spp. These aspects include tick sampling, testing ticks for the presence of Rickettsia spp., and creating species distribution maps of the Rickettsi… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Huddleston, Jody Sue
open access

Correlation of Watershed NDVI Values to Benthic Macroinvertebrate Biodiversity in Eight North American Wadeable Streams

Description: Water quality of a stream or river is influenced by the surrounding landscape and vegetation. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is commonly used to characterize landcover and vegetation density. Benthic macroinvertebrates are ubiquitous in freshwater streams and are excellent indicators of the quality of freshwater habitats. Data from one NDVI remote sensing flight and one macroinvertebrate sampling event for eight wadeable stream study sites in the National Ecological Observ… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Gallagher, Denice Lynne
open access

Ecological Responses to Severe Flooding in Coastal Ecosystems: Determining the Vegetation Response to Hurricane Harvey within a Texas Coast Salt Marsh

Description: Vegetative health was measured both before and after Hurricane Harvey using remotely sensed vegetation indices on the coastal marshland surrounding Galveston Island's West Bay. Data were recorded on a monthly basis following the hurricane from September of 2005 until September of 2019 in order to document the vegetation response to this significant disturbance event. Both initial impact and recovery were found to be dependent on a variety of factors, including elevation zone, spatial proximity … more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Hudman, Kenneth Russell

Ecosystem Services and Sustainability: A Framework for Improving Decision-Making in Urban Areas

Description: Ecosystem services are the varied goods and benefits provided by ecosystems that make human life possible. This concept has fostered scientific explorations of the services that nature provides to people with the goal of sustaining those services for future generations. As the world becomes increasingly urban, ecosystems are reshaped, and services are degraded. Provisioning and regulating ecosystem services, landscape planning, decision making, and agricultural systems and technologies play a d… more
This item is restricted from view until June 1, 2024.
Date: May 2022
Creator: Valencia Torres, Angélica
open access

The Effects of Leadership Development on Student Retention in STEM

Description: The Science Teaching and Research (STAR) Leadership Program at Austin College was designed to intentionally include leadership development into the science curriculum and provides an opportunity to determine the effects of student leadership development on the retention of students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This dissertation used a quasi-experimental design to determine: 1) if STEM retention can be explained though the inclusion of leadership development int… more
Date: May 2020
Creator: Smith, Caleb Michael

Investigating the Spatial Relationship between Suicide and Race/Ethnicity: The Case for Alternate Rate Adjustment Techniques in Medical Geography

Description: This work explores potential distortions created by race and ethnicity on the visualization, interpretation, and understanding of the spatial distribution of suicide in the United States. Due to radically different suicide rates among racial/ethnic groups, traditional crude or age-adjusted rates may introduce statistical confounding in both linear and spatial models. Using correlation, choropleth mapping, hot spot analysis, and location-allocation modeling, this work shows how traditional metho… more
Date: December 2022
Creator: Lester, Katherine Ann

Metacommunity Dynamics of Medium- and Large-Bodied Mammals in the LBJ National Grasslands

Description: Using metacommunity theory, I investigated the mechanisms of meta-assemblage structure and assembly among medium- to large-bodied mammals in North Texas. Mammals were surveyed with camera-traps in thirty property units of the LBJ National Grasslands (LBJNG). In Chapter II the dispersal and environmental-control based processes in community assembly were quantified within a metacommunity context and the best-fit metacommunity structure identified. A hypothesis-driven modelling approach was used … more
Date: May 2022
Creator: McCain, Wesley Craig Stade

Ozone Pollution Monitoring and Population Vulnerability in Dallas-Ft. Worth: A Decision Support Approach

Description: In urban environments, ozone air pollution, poses significant risks to respiratory health. Fixed site monitoring is the primary method of measuring ozone concentrations for health advisories and pollutant reduction, but the spatial scale may not reflect the current population distribution or its future growth. Moreover, formal methods for the placement of ozone monitoring sites within populations potentially omit important spatial criteria, producing monitoring locations that could unintention… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Northeim, Kari M.
open access

Space Use, Microhabitat and Macrohabitat Use of the Three-Toed Box Turtle (Terrapene carolina) in North Texas

Description: Box turtle (Terrapene carolina) populations are steadily declining due their unique natural history, effects of climate change, and anthropogenic land use change. There is a need for updated information on box turtle space and micro and macro-habitat use to inform conservation efforts. This study used VHF radiotelemetry and GPS data loggers to examine box turtle space and habitat use in North Texas. Box turtle home range sizes averaged 6.6ha (range = 0.79 - 18.08, n = 23), and males (n = 9) had… more
Date: December 2022
Creator: Joseph, Sara A.
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