The objective of the present proposal is to assess and provide remedy to the urgent problem of microscopic plastic particles polluting water bodies in Minnesota.
We will assess the environmental quality of prairies across Minnesota. On-the-ground surveys and contaminant risk assessments will help inform partner management actions, endangered species recovery plans, and pollinator reintroduction efforts.
A comprehensive assessment of membrane bioreactor efficacy will provide the best options and information to the wastewater treatment plant and natural resource managers to update or replace aging wastewater infrastructure.
Using two prairie restorations, we will investigate how common restoration variables affect bumblebee habitat suitability by conducting bumblebee surveys and assessing nesting and foraging habitat in restored and remnant prairies.
Common Tern populations across inland North America are significantly declining. Information on the status of breeding colonies in Minnesota is necessary to prioritize conservation and restoration actions.
Large deposits of copper, nickel, cobalt, and other minerals in northeastern Minnesota could provide huge economic and employment benefits to the state while becoming an important source of important metals for the country. However, the mining required to extract them could have significant water quality impacts in a region that includes the Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness and other environmentally sensitive watersheds.
Carry out multi-resource monitoring at flood damage reduction and natural resource enhancement projects across the Red River Basin to evaluate outcomes and improve design of future projects at regional scale.
We propose to use existing data sets to link beaver population data to water storage in beaver ponds, to determine if they buffer against droughts and floods.
Climate change, beaver herbivory and Emerald Ash Borer are significant threats to upper Mississippi floodplain forests. Our extensive partnership is identifying solutions to save floodplain wildlife habitat before it disappears.
Bees play a key role in ecosystem function and in agriculture, including more than one hundred U.S. crops either need or benefit from pollinators. However, bee pollinators are in dramatic decline in Minnesota and throughout the country. One of the potential causes appears to be a scarcity of bee-friendly flowers, particularly in urban areas, which is leading to nutritional deficiencies, chronic exposure to pesticides, and debilitating diseases and parasites.
Our goal is to protect native pollinators by screening and neutralizing bee pathogens, and promoting best honey bee management practices to prevent pathogen spillover into native bees.
The goal of the work is to design and implement an acoustic deterrence protocol that will discourage bald eagles from entering hazardous air space near wind energy installations.
We will identify wastewater treatment and natural processes that prevent the formation of highly toxic byproducts from fluoro-pharmaceuticals. This will lead to improved treatment and rules for better pharmaceutical design.
Overall Project Outcomes and Results
The 2004 LCMR Parks Study and the 2003-2008 State Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP) recommended better coordination among Minnesota's outdoor recreation providers. This project addressed these recommendations by engaging public and private outdoor recreation leaders to transform better coordination into shared knowledge and practices.
Silver carp are migrating north up the Mississippi River and pose threats to the native fish and aquatic ecosystems of Minnesota rivers and lakes where they can become established. Additionally, the unique jumping ability of silver carp also places recreational boaters in danger of being injured during collisions with airborne fish. However, it is believed that this jumping ability could potentially be exploited as a weakness to help detect, manage, and control silver carp populations. Researchers at the University of Minnesota – Duluth, in cooperation with the U.S.
This study will leverage our current bioacoustics monitoring framework to assess avian diversity at the statewide scale through a citizen science acoustic monitoring program, with a focus on private lands.
