Recent declines in anadromous river herring (Alewife Alosa pseudoharengus and Blueback Herring A. aestivalis) have been documented in much of their range using fishery-independent spawning run counts. A lack of rigorous long-term run counts and demographic data for Chesapeake Bay spawning stocks resulted in the declaration of unknown stock status in a 2012 stock assessment and made it difficult to evaluate responses to conservation and restoration efforts. The objectives of the present study were to (1) conduct the first spawning run counts of river herring in the Choptank River, Maryland, since the run counts performed over a 2-year period in 1972 and 1973, (2) evaluate population structure and dynamics, and (3) identify environmental variables associated with run timing. Spawning runs of Alewives and Blueback Herring were recorded from March 10 to June 4, 2014, using imaging sonar and processed manually to produce hourly run counts of fish with TLs ranging from 200 to 350 mm. A total of 1,659,090 ± 91,250 fish with TLs of 200-350 mm (errors estimated using a CV of 5.5%) were estimated to swim upstream past the sonar unit. Boat electrofishing was conducted at weekly intervals to estimate species composition and obtain samples for demographic analysis. Using these species composition data to apportion run counts resulted in an estimated count of 581,275 ± 31,970 Alewives and 726,450 ± 39,955 Blueback Herring. Fish age by otolith analysis varied from 2 to 7 years and total instantaneous mortality (Z) was estimated at 1.47 (SE, 1.8 × 10 −5 ) for Alewives and 1.91 (SE, 1.1 × 10 −5 ) for Blueback Herring. Upstream migration occurred primarily in the afternoon and evening associated with increasing water temperature, and downstream migration occurred at low and decreasing levels of discharge. The present study established a new fishery-independent population monitoring effort for river herring in Chesapeake Bay and identified associations between environmental drivers and upstream and downstream movements.

Existing scholarship on agroecology and food systems education within U.S. colleges and universities has focused primarily on preparing students to be professionals working in agrifood systems. Developing students' skills and competencies, though vitally important, may not suffice for supporting transformative learning. Transformative learning shifts students' perceptions and awareness and informs future actions, constituting a potential avenue for leveraging education to support transformations toward more socially just and ecologically viable agrifood systems. It is unclear, however, what pedagogies and educational practices enable transformative learning. This paper explores the integration of multiple pedagogical innovations within an advanced agroecology course taught at the University of Vermont. Over a decade, the teaching team has made iterative adjustments to course content and pedagogies with the goal of catalyzing action toward transforming agrifood systems. In this paper, we evaluate our pedagogical approach, asking: (1) How well do course content and pedagogy align with our definition of transformative agroecology as transdisciplinary, participatory, action-oriented, and political? (2) How well does our approach enable transformative agroecological learning, and how is that identified? We present our course evaluation as a case study comprising qualitative analyses of course syllabi, student comments on University-administered course evaluations, and most significant change (MSC) reflections. MSC reflections proved to be a valuable method for identifying and assessing transformative learning. Through a curricular review, we found that substantial changes to course content and evaluative assignments between 2010 and 2020 align with a transformative approach to agroecology. This is validated in students' MSC reflections, which provide evidence of transformative learning. In sharing evaluative results, processes, and insights, we aim to contribute to a broader movement of scholar educators committed to iteratively and collaboratively developing transformative pedagogies within agroecology and sustainable food system education. We contend that reflexive practice among educators is necessary to leverage education for transforming agrifood systems.

Combining qualitative and quantitative methods and data is crucial to understanding the complex dynamics and often interdisciplinary nature of conservation. Many conservation scientists use mixed methods, but there are a variety of mixed methods approaches, a lack of shared vocabulary, and few methodological frameworks. We reviewed articles from 2 conservation‐related fields that often incorporate qualitative and quantitative methods: land‐change science (n = 16) and environmental management (n = 16). We examined how authors of these studies approached mixed methods research by coding key methodological characteristics, including relationships between method objectives, extent of integration, iterative interactions between methods, and justification for use of mixed methods. Using these characteristics, we created a typology with the goal of improving understanding of how researchers studying land‐change science and environmental management approach interdisciplinary mixed methods research. We identified 5 types of mixed methods approaches, which we termed simple nested, informed nested, simple parallel, unidirectional synthesis, and bidirectional synthesis. Methods and data sources were often used to address different research questions within a project, and only around half of the reviewed papers methodologically integrated different forms of data. Most authors used one method to inform the other, rather than both informing one another. Very few articles used methodological iteration. Each methodological type has certain epistemological implications, such as the disciplinary reach of the research and the capacity for knowledge creation through the exchange of information between distinct methodologies. To exemplify a research design that can lead to multidimensional knowledge production, we provide a methodological framework that bidirectionally integrates and iterates qualitative and quantitative methods.

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Questions Can cattle grazing help maintain plant diversity in coastal grasslands? What is the relationship between soil extractable nitrogen and plant diversity in sandy and infertile soils? How does cattle grazing affect soil extractable nitrogen and how might this indirectly impact plant diversity via the N–plant diversity relationship? Location Grazed coastal grasslands on Naushon Island, off of Cape Cod, MA, USA. Methods We surveyed summer vegetation from 2014 to 2017 and analyzed soils for extractable nitrogen (N) in two grazed grasslands on Naushon Island. We also set up cattle enclosures and exclosures to manipulate grazing pressure and test how cattle grazing influenced plant diversity (species richness and Shannon's diversity) and extractable NH4+ and NO3−. In the enclosure experiment, cattle were enclosed for up to a week in the mid‐summer of 2014, 2015, and 2016. For the exclosure experiment, we excluded cattle from areas from 2014 to 2017. Results In both the enclosure and exclosure experiments, higher grazing pressure corresponded to less negative change of plant species richness and Shannon's diversity from 2014 to 2017. Total extractable N had a weak positive correlation with plant diversity, but increasing extractable NO3− correlated with decreasing species richness (p = 0.001) and Shannon's diversity (p = 0.009). Neither the cattle enclosures nor exclosures were related to soil extractable N. Conclusions Cattle grazing may help prevent or slow losses of plant diversity that are occurring in many coastal grasslands, including Naushon Island. This effect does not seem to be regulated by cattle deposition of N in the soil or the N–plant diversity relationship. Our results of the N–plant diversity relationship differ from the mainstream understanding, perhaps due to Naushon's sandy and infertile soils.