Research@Lincoln
Research@Lincoln is an open access institutional repository collecting the research produced by Lincoln University staff and students. You may also be interested in Data@Lincoln or Lincoln University Living Heritage.
Students wishing to submit a thesis or dissertation should see the Depositing theses and dissertations guide.
Recent Submissions
Item Restricted An evaluation of bachelor of nursing students’ perceptions of clinical placement experiences.(Nursing Praxis in New Zealand, 2024-12-20)Background: The COVID-19 global pandemic had positive and negative impacts on health care workers, including student nurses. Different clinical areas provide unique learning opportunities, with students reporting varying levels of satisfaction across their different clinical placements in the years prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Longitudinal data evaluating clinical experiences was collected from 2017 until 2022. Aim: This evaluation sought to determine the pandemic’s impact on student nurses’ perceptions of their clinical experience and identify which clinical learning environments provided optimal learning experiences. Methods: The study analysed 2,012 datasets using quantitative statistical analysis with a descriptive cross-sectional design. Bachelor of Nursing students at Ara Institute of Canterbury Limited (ARA) completed the Clinical Learning Environment, Supervision and Nurse Teacher Scale (CLES+T) survey after completion of their clinical placements. Findings: Students rated their clinical learning experiences highly (mean 4.5 ±0.5), with no impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the transition to practice (transition) placement was viewed more positively than other clinical areas, and while statistically significant, in this particular context, this difference was deemed to be trivial. This might be attributed to students’ increased readiness to practice in their final semester and having some choice in placement location. Implications for practice: Nursing management from both clinical providers and tertiary institutions should address lower-scored areas through enhanced preparatory education. Feedback from students can guide nursing management in performance reviews of tertiary and clinical staff, and support nurses and educators to provide quality clinical experiences. Consideration of an alternative questionnaire may improve amount and quality of information gathered to better guide the tertiary institutions and clinical providers. Collaboration between clinical providers and academic institutions as well as building resilience and willingness to change when major events occur are opportunities for consideration, as well as more robust orientation periods within the clinical setting to allow for a better settling in period for students. Early identification and workload support for preceptors, along with robust post-placement debriefings, can help students better connect theory with practice.Item Restricted Dynamics and drivers of mycorrhizal fungi after glacier retreat(Wiley-Blackwell, 2024-05)• The development of terrestrial ecosystems depends greatly on plant mutualists such as mycorrhizal fungi. The global retreat of glaciers exposes nutrient-poor substrates in extreme environments and provides a unique opportunity to study early successions of mycorrhizal fungi by assessing their dynamics and drivers. • We combined environmental DNA metabarcoding and measurements of local conditions to assess the succession of mycorrhizal communities during soil development in 46 glacier forelands around the globe, testing whether dynamics and drivers differ between mycorrhizal types. • Mycorrhizal fungi colonized deglaciated areas very quickly (< 10 yr), with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi tending to become more diverse through time compared to ectomycorrhizal fungi. Both alpha- and beta-diversity of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi were significantly related to time since glacier retreat and plant communities, while microclimate and primary productivity were more important for ectomycorrhizal fungi. The richness and composition of mycorrhizal communities were also significantly explained by soil chemistry, highlighting the importance of microhabitat for community dynamics. • The acceleration of ice melt and the modifications of microclimate forecasted by climate change scenarios are expected to impact the diversity of mycorrhizal partners. These changes could alter the interactions underlying biotic colonization and belowground–aboveground linkages, with multifaceted impacts on soil development and associated ecological processes.Item Restricted Blue waters, green bottoms: benthic filamentous algal blooms are an emerging threat to clear lakes worldwide(Oxford University Press, 2021-10)Nearshore (littoral) habitats of clear lakes with high water quality are increasingly experiencing unexplained proliferations of filamentous algae that grow on submerged surfaces. These filamentous algal blooms (FABs) are sometimes associated with nutrient pollution in groundwater, but complex changes in climate, nutrient transport, lake hydrodynamics, and food web structure may also facilitate this emerging threat to clear lakes. A coordinated effort among members of the public, managers, and scientists is needed to document the occurrence of FABs, to standardize methods for measuring their severity, to adapt existing data collection networks to include nearshore habitats, and to mitigate and reverse this profound structural change in lake ecosystems. Current models of lake eutrophication do not explain this littoral greening. However, a cohesive response to it is essential for protecting some of the world’s most valued lakes and the flora, fauna, and ecosystem services they sustain.Item Restricted Variability in microcystin quotas during a Microcystis bloom in a eutrophic lake(Public Library of Science (PLOS), 2021-07-21)Microcystis is a bloom-forming genus of cyanobacteria with some genotypes that produce highly toxic microcystin hepatotoxins. In waterbodies where biological and physical factors are relatively homogenous, toxin quotas (the average amount of toxin per cell), at a single point in time, are expected to be relatively constant. In this study we challenged this assumption by investigating the spatial distribution of microcystin quotas at a single point in time on two separate occasions in a lake with a major Microcystis bloom. Microcystis cell concentrations varied widely across the lake on both sampling occasions (730- and 137-fold) together with microcystin quotas (148- and 362-fold). Cell concentrations and microcystin quotas were strongly positively correlated (R² = 0.89, P < 0.001, n = 28; R² = 0.67, P < 0.001, n = 25). Analysis of Microcystis strains using high-throughput sequencing of the 16S-23S rRNA intergenic spacer region showed no relationship between microcystin quota and the relative abundance of specific sequences. Collectively, the results of this study indicate an association between microcystin production and cell density that magnifies the potential for bloom toxicity at elevated cell concentrations.Item Restricted It's all in the mud - The use of sediment geochemistry to estimate contemporary water quality in lakes(Elsevier, 2023-06)Lake ecosystems around the world are subject to multiple anthropogenic pressures leading to increased eutrophication and degraded ecosystems. The understanding of lake health at national scales is constrained by limited data, however, the increased long-term monitoring required to address such data deficiencies would be impractical, expensive and subject to significant time lags. More efficient methods of assessing contemporary water quality are needed. Lake sediments and the flux of constituents across the sediment-water interface in response to various biogeochemical cycles can result in the surficial sediments providing a time-integrated record of environmental conditions in the lake. As such, sediment geochemistry may offer a valuable and efficient indicator of contemporary lake water quality. To assess the potential of sediment indicators of water quality, geochemistry was analysed in surficial sediment samples (0–2 cm) collected from 101 lakes across New Zealand for which long-term water quality monitoring data was available. The selected lakes spanned various gradients, including lake type, trophic state, depth, latitude, altitude, catchment land use and sediment geochemistry. Linear modelling was undertaken to predict trophic state from sediment geochemistry and lake physiographic data separately and then from the two datasets combined. The combined model proved to be the strongest predictor of contemporary water quality (R² = 0.80) and is referred to here as the Sediment Geochemistry Trophic Model (SGTM). This model was then used to predict the trophic level in 76 unmonitored lakes. The sediment geochemistry analyses conducted for the development of the SGTM are routinely conducted for lake management projects and, aside from their predictive power for trophic levels, provide useful insights into nutrient cycling and lake restoration planning. The relationship between lake water quality and sediment geochemistry is complex, however, the SGTM offers a highly efficient method for assessing the state and drivers of contemporary water quality in unmonitored lakes.
Communities in Research@Lincoln
Select a community to browse its collections.