FUTURE, CURRENT, AND PAST RESEARCH
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Assessment of wetlands within the National Trails Management Corridor, Sweetwater River Basin, WYGrazing exclosures and lightly grazed riparian pastures provide the best available reference sites for rating current wetland conditions against their potential for providing habitat, forage, water conservation, and native vegetation diversity and productivity. We will use the detailed plant and soil assessments to identify key, field-based parameters that can be rapidly assessed at larger scales in a research-based approach.
mkasten1@uwyo.edu |
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Alpine permafrost - are we too late?BLOGHigh alpine areas provide a unique environment within which to examine complex biological, chemical, and physical processes on the fringe of extreme climatic conditions. These fragile environments exist in cold, harsh climates and in some cases, provide conditions for the formation and/or occurrence of permanently frozen ground, or permafrost. Although not well documented, it is predicted that permafrost exists above 3,300 m in the Snowy Range Mountains of the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest in Wyoming. The ideal environmental conditions exist to maintain permafrost, including mean annual air temperature less than 0 C and sheltered, north-facing aspects. zashkrop@uwyo.edu |
Click on the title slide to the left to view a presentation delivered at Colorado State University on March 3, 2017 at their Crop and Soil Science seminar series.
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Geomorphic reclamation and landscape heterogeneity
An efficacy assessment of vegetation heterogeneity, geomorphic stability, wildlife habitat, and economic. Gas Hills geomorphic reclamation site in February 2016 shown here.
apennino@uwyo.edu |
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Problematic calcareous hydric soilsThese problematic soils are extensive in MLRA 34A (cool central desertic basins and plateaus) of Wyoming and classified along river valleys as fine-loamy over sandy or sandy-skeletal, mixed, superactive, calcareous, frigid Fluvaquentic Endoaquepts and stream terraces as fine-loamy over sandy or sandy-skeletal, mixed, superactive, calcareous Typic Cryaquepts. In addition to field analyses, we will perform a mesocosm experiment to improve our understanding of high pH soils and the resultant lack of redoximorphic features in these presumably very wet problematic soils in Wyoming.
mking27@uwyo.edu |
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S reduction
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Soil evolution along a chronosequence of basaltic cinder conesCoupled with traditional soil field and laboratory analyses, a mass balance approach provides a means of relating secondary mineral formation, weathering, and elemental dynamics.
Episodic soil succession link Organic soils on basaltic lava link XAFS study of Fe mineralogy link |
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Geomorphologic classification to improve DSMDevelopment of methods to create improved soil property maps.
2015 SSSA poster presentation shown here. |
Sandbox concept and technology developed by Oliver Kreylos at UC Davis. Our AR Sandbox is housed in the Introductory Soil Science Lab in STEM 235 but is semi-mobile if you'd like to use it elsewhere on campus. The top left photo shows UW-ESM graduate students Zoe Ash-Kropf, Erin Rooney, Mike Kasten, and Amanda Pennino with the sandbox at the 2016 SSSA conference in Phoenix.
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Augmented reality sandboxThanks to a mini-grant from the UWYO ECTL, we are building our very own ARS. An augmented reality sandbox is an outstanding tool that will enable students to interpret and understand 3-dimensional concepts in 3 dimensions rather than in the typical 2 dimensions observed on paper and computer simulations. A 3-D camera records the movement of sand that allows the user to build landscapes (mountains, valleys, rivers, etc.). Users create topography models by shaping sand, which is then modified in real time by an elevation color map, topographic contour lines, and simulated water.
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Soil climateInfluence of edaphic factors on soil climate and vegetation communities.
Relationship between soil and climate at SCAN and SNOTEL sites link |
