Rebecca L. Schneider

Cornell University | CU · Department of Natural Resources

Shrubs and herbs are two important types of vegetation that play a pivotal role in combating land desertification in arid sandy land. Yet, the effects of plant litter on sandy soil microbial activities and soil nutrients during the shrub and herb colonization process are still unclear. Here, contributions of plant litter to soil microbial activity...

Infiltration of precipitation is the main source of water for soil water replenishment in arid and semiarid regions and plays a critical role in influencing the restoration of degraded grassland. However, the effects of reseeded vegetation on soil infiltration in grasslands remains unclear. Here, we measured soil infiltration rate (IR), root charac...

Strategies are desperately needed for restoring the millions of hectares of degraded grasslands which have been simultaneously impacted by overgrazing and Caragana shrub encroachment in arid and semiarid areas of northern China. This study evaluated using different combinations of manure amendments and shrub branch shelters for their impacts on soi...

Losses in net primary production from soil degradation caused by agricultural land use is a serious and growing problem worldwide. Restoring degraded soils is crucial to stop the expanding footprint of land degradation and feed our growing human population. To return degraded and desertified landscapes to productivity, sandy soils must first be imp...

Wood chips, together with crop straw and manure, were demonstrated as feasible amendments for improving overall soil health and enhancing plant growth in severely desertified areas in Northern China in our previous studies. However, the effects of their mixtures are unclear. In this study, we evaluated the effect of three different amendment materi...

Study region Our study was conducted in the Owasco Lake watershed, which is part of the Finger Lakes, located in Central NY. Study focus In the Northeastern United States (NE US), nutrient pollution is receiving increasing attention, and particularly phosphorus (P), in response to the recent increasing frequency of toxic blue-green algal blooms. T...

Soil degradation and desertification from agricultural land use is a serious and growing problem worldwide. Bringing degraded soils back into production is crucial to stop the cycle of land degradation, followed by abandonment and a subsequent shift of agricultural pressure to previously uncultivated soils. To return degraded and desertified landsc...

Background. Addition of organic amendments has been commonly adopted as a means to restore degraded soils globally. More recently, the use of woody organic amendments has been recognized as a viable method of capturing and retaining water and restoring degraded and desertified soil, especially in semi-arid regions. However, the impacts of woody ame...

Networks of roadside ditches criss-cross the landscape, and have played a significant but previously unrecognized role in flooding and water pollution. This study surveyed town and county highway professionals across New York State (NYS) to determine their ditch management practices. There was a 41% response rate from the 999 highway staff surveyed...

Invasive zebra (ZM) and quagga (QM) mussels continue to spread within and across inland waters worldwide. Oneida Lake, NY, USA, is a large (207 km²), mesotrophic, polymictic lake surveyed annually for dreissenids across substrates since 1992. We estimated abundance and distribution of ZMs and QMs across substrates, calculated lakewide density and b...

Core Ideas Soil moisture and water table position vary across ecosystems and parent materials. Ecosystem classifications and topographic wetness indices represent moisture status. Topographic wetness indices perform best in till rather than outwash soils. Including soil properties with topographic information improves moisture estimates. In forest...

Headwater streams are critical components of drainage systems, directly connecting terrestrial and downstream aquatic ecosystems. The amount of water in a stream can alter hydrologic connectivity between the stream and surrounding landscape, and is ultimately an important driver of what constituents headwater streams transport. There is a shortage...

Extreme soil degradation is one of the most serious problems affecting dryland ecosystem health and agricultural production globally. This study was conducted to investigate the potential for using woody amendments to improve soil moisture availability, soil microbial activity, soil fertility, and plant growth in desertified soils in Ningxia, China...

As one of the most active components in soil, bacteria can affect soil physicochemical properties, its biological characteristics, and even its quality and health. We characterized dynamics of the soil bacterial diversity in planted (with Taxodium distichum) and unplanted soil in the riparian zone of the Three Gorges Dam Reservoir (TGDR), in southw...

A recent paper by Wang et al. (2017) showed that the release of Escherichia coli (E. coli) from soil into overland flow under raindrop impact and the release of clay follow identical temporal patterns. This raised the question: what is the role of clay, if any, in E. coli transfer from soil to overland flow, e.g., does clay facilitate E. coli trans...

Roadside ditches are ubiquitous in developed landscapes. They are designed to route water from roads for safety, with little consideration of water quality or biogeochemical implications in ditch design and minimal data on environmental impacts. We hypothesize that periodic saturation and nutrient influxes may make roadside ditches hotspots for nit...

Natural resource professionals, ranging from forest managers and educators to floodplain managers, play a critical role in implementing and conducting outreach with regards to climate mitigation and adaptation appropriate to local and regional scales. Natural resource professionals can also pave the way by adopting actions that serve as demonstrati...

Soil amendments have been proposed as a means to speed the development of plant and soil processes that contribute to water quality, habitat, and biodiversity functions in restored wetlands. However, because natural wetlands often act as significant methane sources, it remains unknown if amendments will also stimulate emissions of this greenhouse g...

Accurately predicting soil moisture patterns in the landscape is a persistent challenge. In humid regions, topographic wetness indices (TWIs) are widely used to approximate relative soil moisture patterns. However, there are many ways to calculate TWIs and very few field studies have evaluated the different approaches – especially in the US. We cal...

The environmental and health effects caused by nitrate contamination of aquatic systems are a serious problem throughout the world. A strategy proposed to address nitrate pollution is the restoration of wetlands. However, although natural wetlands often remove nitrate via high rates of denitrification, wetlands restored for water quality functions...

ABSTRACTA widespread lack of post-project appraisals (PPAs) not only hinders progress in the field of river restoration but also limits the application of adaptive management – a powerful heuristic tool particularly well suited to dynamic fluvial environments. In an effort to contribute to the limited body of scientific literature pertaining to PPA...

Accurately predicting soil moisture patterns in the landscape is a persistent challenge. In humid regions, topographic wetness indices (TWI) are widely used to approximate relative soil moisture patterns. However, there are many ways to calculate TWIs and very few field studies have evaluated the different approaches in the US. We calculated TWIs u...

Nonpoint source pollution and hydromodification are the leading causes of impairment to our nation's rivers and streams. Roadside ditch networks, ubiquitous in both rural and urban landscapes, intercept and shunt substantial quantities of overland runoff and shallow groundwater to stream systems. By altering natural flowpaths, road ditches contribu...

Roadside ditches are ubiquitous, yet their role in water pollution conveyance has largely been ignored, especially for bacteria and sediment. The goal of this study was to determine if roadside ditches are conduits for fecal indicator organisms and sediment, and if land use, specifically manure amendment, affects the concentrations and loadings. Se...

Pterocarya stenoptera is a native deciduous tree species and a candidate for reforestation in the riparian zones of the Three Gorges Reservoir Region of Yangtze River in China. Water treatments of continuous flooding (CF) and periodic flooding-drought (PF) were applied to examine the growth dynamics of 4-month-old P. stenoptera seedlings and its ef...

The creation and restoration of wetlands is widely seen as a critical tool for replacing ecosystem functions lost by historic wetland destruction. However, studies have shown that these wetlands often take hundreds of years to achieve the functions for which they are restored. We used controlled field-scale manipulations in four recently restored d...

Buchanan, Brian, Zachary M. Easton, Rebecca Schneider, and M. Todd Walter, 2011. Incorporating Variable Source Area Hydrology Into a Spatially Distributed Direct Runoff Model. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 48(1): 43-60. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752-1688.2011.00594.x Abstract: Few hydrologic models simulate both variable source...

As a consequence of global warming, 1-9°C water temperature increases are predicted for a range of water courses worldwide. This could have important effects on eutrophication, ecosystem processes, contaminant toxicity, and biodiversity. An array of adaptive water management strategies must be identified and implemented to better address the risks...

Climate change is already beginning to affect the people and resources of New York State, and these impacts are projected to grow. At the same time, the state has the potential capacity to address many climate-related risks, thereby reducing negative impacts and taking advantage of possible opportunities. ClimAID: the Integrated Assessment for Eff...

Chinese wingnut (Pterocarya stenoptera) is the dominant native tree species in the riparian zone of the Three Gorges Reservoir region of China. Water treatments of continuous wet soil (WS) and submergence of the soil (SS) were imposed on 4-month-old Chinese wingnut seedlings for 12 months. The effects of water treatment on photosynthesis and growth...

Water scarcity is a becoming a critical issue globally, driven largely by the demands of an exponentially growing human population and complicated by the impacts of climate change on the amounts and distribution of precipitation. It is also due to mismanagement as scarce water resources are being used simultaneously for irrigation, power generation...

Wetland restoration is increasingly used as a strategy both to address historical wetland losses and to mitigate new wetland impacts. Research has examined the success of restored wetlands for avifaunal habitat, plant biodiversity, and plant cover; however, less is known about soil development in these systems. Soil processes are particularly impor...

Responses of baldcypress (Taxodium distichum) and pondcypress (Taxodium ascendens) seedlings in leaf gas exchange and root metabolism to a wide range of hydrological regimes were studied. Four water treatments included control (C), mild drought (MD), wet soil (WS) and flooding (FL). Both species showed no significant change in net photosynthetic ra...

In the face of increasing urban development, global climate change and burgeoning population growth, proper conservation and protection of freshwater resources is paramount. Research has demonstrated that nonpoint source pollution (NPS) constitutes a critical threat to the water resources of the United States and, further, that agricultural operati...

Groundwater seepage is gaining recognition as a critical feature of lake shoreline environments, yet our understanding of this process is complicated by the considerable spatial heterogeneity observed in flow rates within and among lakes. This research investigated spatial patterns in groundwater seepage around the shoreline of Oneida Lake, a 207 k...

Riparian zones are landscape features adjacent to streams and are widely recognized as important in reducing erosion and filtering groundwater. Few studies directly investigate rooting dynamics of riparian areas, and little information exists concerning riparian root densities, biomass, depth profiles, changes through time, or vulnerability to dist...

The hydrological cycle was considered and annual evapotranspiration (ET) was estimated as the difference between direct measurements of annual precipitation and stream discharge across the United States. ET rates over the conterminus United States increased strongly over the past 50 years, with a linear trend of 1.04 mm yr2 for the period 1950-2000...

Recent research suggests that evapotranspiration (ET) rates have changed over the past 50 years; however, some studies conclude ET has increased, and others conclude that it has decreased. These studies were indirect, using long-term observations of air temperature, cloud cover, and pan evaporation as indices of potential and actual ET. This study...

This study documented linkages between lakeshore seepage fluxes, pore water chemistry, and aquatic plants in several lakes of the Adirondack Mountains region of New York, USA. Three replicate stations were set up along each of four different lake shorelines. From June through September 1998 and from snowmelt in April through August 1999, seepage fl...

In January 1998, an ice storm damaged forests in northeastern United States and eastern Canada, causing coarse woody debris (CWD) deposition in riparian areas and associated streams. During 1999 and 2000, tree canopy damage, stream physical habitat, and wood deposition were evaluated within 51 first-, second-, and third-order streams located within...

Using replicated, whole plant lysimeters, we quantified and compared the daily evapotranspiration (ET) rates and temporal ET patterns of three plant species common in wetlands of the northeastern US: weeping willow (Salix babylonica L.), red maple (Acer rubrum L.), and cattail (Typha latifolia L.). For comparison and control, we simultaneously meas...

Although seepage in lakes is known to vary as a function of precipitation and watershed characteristics, temporal patterns of seepage flux over daily and weekly time scales have not been extensively studied with a concentrated effort of direct measurement of seepage in nearshore areas. In this study, seepage was intensively measured with seepage me...

The influence of water level fluctuations on the regeneration of rare plant communities was examined for two pondshores in Long Island, New York. Regeneration from seeds and vegetative propagules in soil cores was the method used to quantify the species composition of the soil seed bank when subjected to different flooding regimes. Both ponds had s...

Between 1987 and 1990, we estimated seedfall and recorded age, growth, and survival of 10 933 tree and vine seedlings growing in the understories of four bottom-land hardwood forests in South Carolina. The forests differed in flood frequency, soils, and vegetation structure but had a number of woody plant species in common. Several demographic proc...

The importance of hydrochory, or seed dispersal by water, to the regeneration of Taxodium distichum (bald cypress) and Nyssa aquatica (water tupelo) as examined in a forested floodplain of the Savannah River in South Carolina. Seedfall and dispersal by water were quantified for 2 yr using floating seed traps. Water depth, surface velocity, and flow...

Seed banks were examined in a Taxodium distichum-Nyssa aquatica (cypress-tupelo) swamp forest and an adjacent bottomland hardwood forest on the floodplain of the Savannah River, South Carolina. Woody seed banks of the 2 communities were dissimilar in species composition with both underrepresenting the species composition of the standing vegetation....

Seed banks were examined in a Taxodium distichum L.-Nyssa aquatica L. (cypress-tupelo) swamp forest and an adjacent bottomland hardwood forest on the floodplain of the Savannah River in South Carolina. Thirty 0.01 m² soil cores were collected in each community at each of three sampling times: before seed fall, after seed fall, and after an early sp...

Biogeochemical transformations occur at key interface zones within the landscape and dramatically alter water chemistry along hydrologic flowpaths. Past research has demonstrated that transformations at sediment and water interfaces are particularly important to changes of surface water chemistry within watersheds. However, past studies have rarely...

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Virginia, 1984. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 67-71).