Book Chapters

The goals of boundary-spanning organizations include communicating among researchers, stakeholders, and resource managers to improve decision-making. These efforts span public agencies, environmental non-governmental organizations, and private stakeholders and occur throughout Canada, the USA, and Mexico. We describe how the core philosophy of boundary-spanning organizations may help...

No abstract available.

Vitrinite is a maceral group (a set of organic matter types with similar properties and appearance) derived from the remains of woody material from vascular plants and is composed of the thermally evolved products of lignin and cellulose. Vitrinite is the dominant component of humic coal and is found as a minor component dispersed into sedimentary rocks, especially mudrocks, the primary...

No abstract available.

The removal of dams from rivers has become a common and widespread practice in the United States and Europe. Although often initiated by factors like economics and safety, ecosystem restoration is often a desired benefit and outcome of dam removal. We describe the physical and ecological effects that the placement and removal of dams have on rivers. We then focus on the drivers of dam...

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Sahel experienced recurrent drought and famine. Farmers and their development partners reacted to this crisis by developing climate-smart agricultural practices and changes in land use, including water-harvesting techniques to restore degraded land to productivity. In several densely populated parts of the Sahel, farmers began to protect and manage woody...

The total alkali-silica (TAS) diagram is a scatterplot of the chemical concentrations of silica oxide (SiO2) versus total alkali-sodium oxide (Na2O) plus potassium oxide (K2O) – in volcanic rocks.

No abstract available.

This entry defines and discusses the random forest machine learning algorithm. The algorithm is used to predict class or quantities for target variables using values of a set of predictor variables. It uses decision trees that are generated from bootstrap sampling of the training data set to create a "forest". The entry discusses the algorithm steps, the interpretative tools of the...

Research presented in the preceding chapters emphasizes recent advancements in the research, management, and aquaculture of Walleye, Sauger, and Yellow Perch in North America. These percid fishes, along with the European Perch and Pikeperch, are economically and ecologically important fishes in their native geographic range. Advances in techniques to evaluate current habitat and predict...

The Arctic Alaska Composite Tectono-Sedimentary Element (AA CTSE) as defined for this volume comprises Mississippian to Lower Cretaceous strata beneath the Alaska North Slope and the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of the Arctic Ocean. The AA CTSE rests on Devonian and older sedimentary and metasedimentary rocks, considered economic basement for petroleum, and is overlain by Cretaceous to...

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are adaptable systems that can solve problems that are difficult to describe with a mathematical relationship. They seek relationships between different types of datasets with their abilities to learn either with supervision or without. ANNs recognize patterns between input and output space and generalize solutions, in a way simulating the human brain’s...