Stacy Nelson

Project Summary: Effective riparian vegetative buffers and wetlands are carbon sinks, minimize nutrient input, soil erosion and related runoff into adjacent surface waters. They are an essential component of livestock environmental resource management and mitigate the movement of nitrogenous and fecal waste from livestock operations and manure management fields into waterways. Watersheds in the coastal plain of North Carolina include a mixture of homes, businesses, livestock operations and other forms of agriculture. Each is a potential source of nutrient and fecal waste in surface waters. Watershed contamination with nutrients or fecal waste are traditionally considered to be non-point sources of contamination. However, all fecal waste has a vertebrate animal origin, and the species of origin varies with adjacent land-use practices. All vertebrates release cells from their gastrointestinal tract in their feces. These cells contain mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), a routine aspect of forensic investigation that can be applied to identify the animal hosts associated with fecal waste. An mtDNA-based assay we have developed can now specifically attribute the source of fecal waste to humans, livestock (cattle, pigs, poultry, goats), companion animals (dog, cat) and wildlife (white-tailed deer and Canada goose). We propose a comprehensive cross-sectional study to identify locations contaminated by nitrate and fecal waste in mixed use livestock intensive areas of the lower Neuse and Cape Fear watersheds. The study will be conducted with the aim of identifying the presence of fecal contamination and attributing the source of fecal contamination to their species of origin. Water grab samples will be screened for Enterococcus spp. as an indicator of fecal contamination. Samples from positive locations will then be tested for vertebrate mtDNA to attribute the contamination to specific species. Additional sampling at positive sites will assess fecal waste input during storm events. Riparian areas adjacent to waterways testing positive will be visualized using satellite imagery to identify proximity to potential sources of contamination with the identified species. Samples will be assessed for the potential correlation of fecal sources with ammonium, nitrate, chloride, silicate, phosphate, dissolved organic nitrogen and dissolved organic nitrogen. We will conduct community design charettes with cooperating town environmental management personnel and residents, in cooperation with local extension agents and resource managers to identify opportunities for riparian vegetative buffer or wetlands enhancement. Specific objectives include: 1) Identifying locations in agricultural livestock intensive areas where water quality is being degraded by nitrogenous and fecal waste; 2) Identifying riparian locations that will benefit from buffer or wetlands development or refinement; and 3) Working with community stakeholders to develop a plan for buffer and wetland development or refinement. The studies reflect the ecosystem health-oriented objectives of the Environmental Enhancement Grant (EEG) program by facilitating efforts to identify locations that would benefit from either the introduction of vegetative buffers or wetlands or the potential refinement or restoration of existing buffers or wetlands.

The US South has 245 million acres of forestland covering 46% of total land use. This region is the largest wood basket in the world where 60% of US timber derives largely from managed softwood plantations and hardwood forests. These forest systems are major economic engines to rural economies. However, nationwide, forest resources has the lowest minority representation within Food, Agricultural, Natural Resources, and Human Sciences and even lower representation in the US South. Diversity enrollment and matriculation have failed due to poor intersections of academic support, peer community support, mentoring, leadership development, and “readiness” work skills. This NNF program builds on a pilot program to pipeline minority undergraduates from HBCUs to successful graduate training in forest resources at NC State University (NCSU). The proposed program recruits HBCU undergraduates and offers pre-admission mentoring and professional development for a Master’s of Forestry at NCSU. Our NNF program will recruit and retain four, high-caliber minority forestry graduate students and prepare them for matriculation and professional success through NNF-specific programmatic, curricular, and industry experiences in forest resources. Key NNF program elements are a minority Mentoring/Leadership Community (MLC), certified forest curriculum, and industry internships in the automation, economics, biotechnology, and science communication of forest resources. The NNF cohort will mentor minority undergraduates, disseminate their experiences, network with professionals, and participate in annual NNF program performance assessment to support pipeline sustainability. This project supports USDA’s goal to develop a diverse and highly-skilled workforce for employment shortages in forest resources.

This program aims to attract, recruit, retain, and successfully graduate highly-skilled, career-ready candidates to fill USDA Forest Service critical job series within the Southern Research Station (SRS), the Forest Service nation-wide, and/or complementary supporting agencies and industries. Researchers and the SRS will help ensure the development of these skills and their utmost importance to the agency by serving on each of the student’s graduate research committees. This role is important as it helps to set research direction, provides mentorship and relationship-building with the students and faculty involved. Where possible, faculty from the students’ former HBCU/MSI institution will also be included as a part of the research guidance committee. Students will also meet with SRS leadership for further relationship development and exposure to the USDA Forest Service as an employer of choice.

Forests and water are inextricably linked, and people are dependent on forested lands to provide clean, reliable water supplies for drinking and to support local economies. As more than 90% of the forested land in the South is privately owned, water supplies in the region are at risk of degradation from continued fragmentation and conversion of forests to other land uses to support a growing population. Given the variety of threats to surface water, it will be increasingly important for forest managers to highlight the value of forests for maintaining clean and abundant supplies of drinking water in the region. A key component of maintaining this “green forest infrastructure” is ensuring that healthy forests are maintained on the landscape and managed using science-based sustainable forest management practices. Our objectives are to: 1) Develop a multi-scale modeling approach that is capable of quantifying forest water quantity and quality indicators, 2) Develop and provide and economic valuation of forest water related ecosystem services, and 3) Develop a public-facing web application that links water resource values to forests and forest management options.

This project builds upon and expands the Forest Service’s Partnership Outreach and Capacity Building, and the Multicultural Workforce Strategic Initiative Programs, and is an initiative that represents an opportunity for substantial collaboration between Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI), the 1862 land grant institutions, the Puerto Rico Commonwealth environmental and educational agencies, and the public served by the consortium/partnership.

Forests and water are inextricably linked, and people are dependent on forested lands to provide clean, reliable water supplies for drinking and to support local economies. As more than 90% of the forested land in the South is privately owned, water supplies in the region are at risk of degradation from continued conversion of forests to other land uses to support a growing population. Given the variety of threats to surface water, it will be increasingly advantageous for forest managers to highlight the importance of sound forest management practices in the interest of maintaining clean and abundant water supplies to drinking water intakes in the region. The USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station has worked to quantify the dependence of communities and populations on water originating on forested lands in 13 southern states. The goal of this proposed work is to generate public information materials, databases and map products that will quantify water supply originating from State and Private Forests lands and the populations served in the South.

Solar radiation is the main source of heat to headwater streams, but has remained challenging to estimate because headwater streams are small, numerous, spatially and temporally variable, often concealed by riparian vegetation, and traverse long distances through variable topography, landcover, and atmospheric conditions. Recent advances in remote sensing techniques and computational power provide an opportunity to include atmospheric and vegetative shading effects in spatially explicit and extensive high resolution models of solar radiation which could improve estimation of the amount solar radiation reaching headwater streams. This study will include both atmospheric and forest canopy conditions by parameterizing real-sky atmospheric conditions in a recently developed high resolution subcanopy solar radiation modeling method and evaluate the accuracy of the estimates with direct measurements of subcanopy solar radiation in a montane, forested, headwater basin. This will be done by computing atmospheric attenuation parameters from satellite remote sensing data for inclusion in the implemention the Subcanopy Solar Radiation Model, a recently developed method that incorporates solar radiation attenuation through forest canopies by adding a light penetration index derived from airborne LiDAR data to an established GIS solar radiation model. Two components of atmospheric attenuation of solar radiation will be characterized, using existing methods and publicly available data for the study area, to parameterize the model; the Linke Turbidity value, a measure of atmospheric absorption, reflection, and scattering by aerosols and water vapor (not including clouds), and the clear-sky index, a measure of cloudiness, needed to parameterize the effects of real sky conditions of the total amount and relative proportions of direct and diffuse solar radiation passing reaching the canopy surface. Estimates will be evaluated with an existing dataset of high-accuracy pyranometer measurements of solar radiation collected during summer in a forested headwater basin in the Southern Appalachian Mountains at sites representing a range of canopy types and sky conditions. It is expected that using real-sky atmospheric conditions in the model will improve the accuracy of the estimates in comparison to parameterization with climatological monthly mean values and assumptions of completely clear sky conditions.

Forests and water are inextricably linked, and people are dependent on forested lands to provide clean, reliable water supplies for drinking and to support local economies. As more than 90% of the forested land in the South is privately owned, water supplies in the region are at risk of degradation from continued conversion of forests to other land uses to support a growing population. Given the variety of threats to surface water, it will be increasingly advantageous for forest managers to highlight the importance of sound forest management practices in the interest of maintaining clean and abundant water supplies to drinking water intakes in the region. The goal of this proposed work is to generate public information materials, databases and map products that will quantify water supply originating from State and Private Forests lands and the populations served in the South.

This project builds upon and expands the Forest Service’s Partnership Outreach and Capacity Building, and the Multicultural Workforce Strategic Initiative Programs, and is an initiative that represents an opportunity for substantial collaboration between Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSI), the 1862 land grant institutions, the Puerto Rico Commonwealth environmental and educational agencies, and the public served by the consortium/partnership.

This agreement establishes a summer research and mentoring program for undergraduate students to study at NC State University. The project focuses on recruiting students from underserved and underrepresented student-serving institutions. This program directly exposes student participants to cutting edge research surrounding the deployment and monitoring of nine forest ecosystem stress stations (Remote Assessment of Forest Ecosystem Stress (RAFES) project) within the eastern U.S., and in collaboration with USDA Forest Service Research Stations, universities, and other partner research organizations. Under the mentorship of faculty and institutional partners, students will participate in modeling the sensor network of measurements; including: air and soil temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, solar radiation, fuel temperature and moisture, volumetric soil water content and matric potential, and sap flux density. Students will conduct the majority of the analyses in the Tree Physiology and Ecosystem Science Lab, within Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, and the Center for Geospatial Analytics at North Carolina State University. Further collaboration will occur with cooperators at the USDA Forest Service Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center (EFETAC), as well as possible collaborations with researchers at Duke University.