Undergraduate Thesis
Title: Constructing a Plant Species Checklist for Castner Range, Texas and Identifying Important Species Through Species Distribution Models
Abstract: Castner Range National Monument is an area of land in El Paso, Texas that stretches from the northeast section of the Franklin Mountains to the peak of North Franklin Mountain. The vegetation of the area includes a variety of desert scrub and endemic plant species. In spite of the weapons firing practice that took place in the area from 1926 to 1966, the original flora is still intact. Additionally, Castner Range receives the heaviest amount of rainfall for the Franklin Mountains, which possibly gives rise to unique vegetation patterns. Since the native vegetation is still present, some plant species may serve as bioindicators in analyzing the health of the ecosystem. A current checklist of the plant species present in the region has not been constructed due to difficulties in present day surveying. To address this, we georeferenced historical plant specimens of the UTEP Biodiversity Collections recorded for El Paso County, Texas and compiled these records with those from SEINet and GBIF in a checklist and map of Castner Range. Using this compilation of records, we identified historical collecting trends and gaps. In total, 120 families, 343 genera, and 636 species were identified from 1784 specimen records. Using this data, we also used MaxEnt to construct species distribution models for important species, in order to assess the effects of climate change on this region.
Graduate Thesis
Title: Assessing Potential Smoke-Related Exposures to Persistent Organic Pollutants and Cancer Risk Among Structural Firefighters in Ohio
Abstract: Structural firefighting is an emergency response public service; however, structural firefighters are often exposed to chemical carcinogens in the form of smoke. These compounds include persistent organic pollutants such as brominated flame retardants, polychlorinated biphenyls, and organochlorine pesticides, all of which are present in household and consumer products. To characterize the relationship between the biological burden of property fire smoke constituents and cancer status among structural firefighters in Ohio, we used biomarker data from serum samples to create conditional logistic regression models controlling for sex, age, metro area, and race. Initial descriptive analysis indicated that structural firefighters had significantly higher average lipid adjusted serum concentrations of PCB74, PCB99, PCB105, PCB114, PCB118, PCB138-158, PCB146, PCB153, PCB156, PCB157, PCB167, PCB170, PCB180, PCB187, PCB189, PCB184, PCB199, and B-HCCH. However, our conditional logistic regression model provided no evidence of an association between persistent organic pollutant serum concentrations and cancer risk among structural firefighters. Important limitations that may have reduced our ability to detect an association include single serum sample collection and a small participant pool. These limitations must be considered when interpreting the results of this study.