| Global ecological challenges such as climate change, anoxic dead zones, and harmful algal blooms threaten human and ecosystem health and result from human disruption of biogeochemical cycling. These cycles are notoriously difficult for students to understand due to factors of scale, invisible pathways, and confusing nomenclature. I attempt to improve understanding of biogeochemical cycling through exploring local contexts, urban environments,and water quality. First, I developed and administered an assessment at Idaho State University tobetter understand how individuals reason about Nitrogen cycling. I identified student-held trendsand misconceptions that can inform best practices in teaching. Next, I explore urban forest communities and how they contribute to fluxes and leaching potential of Carbon, Nitrogen, and phosphorus through their litterfall—including nonleaf types such as blossoms and fruit. I found on leaf litter contributes in important ways to both totals and the timing of seasonal nutrient fluxes. Finally, we created a coarse estimate of nutrient contributions from Pocatello’s urban forest litterfall through surveying 38,000 street-side trees. This data, combined with urban canopy, tissue N, P, and C content, laboratory leaching potential, and litterfall rates, allowed us to estimate litterfall nutrient fluxes. We found strong spatial and seasonal trends in estimated nutrient fluxes across the city driven largely by patterns of tree species composition. As citizens,scientists, and students improve their understanding of the ways humans alter their localenvironment—contributing to large-scale changes in biogeochemical cycling—we are better able to inform sustainable development planning and policies in local urban forests and beyond with aims at improving water quality and many other things on which we depend.
keywords: Urban Trees, Nutrient Pollution, Eutrophication, Litterfall, Nonleaf Litterfal |