Digital Commons Network^™

Cnh: Collaborative Research: Direct And Indirect Coupling Of Fisheries Through Economic, Regulatory, Environmental, And Ecological Linkages, Andrew J. Pershing, Yong Chen, Jeffrey Runge

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

The productivity and resilience of fisheries are subject to a multitude of dynamic and interrelated influences that arise from complex coupling of fish populations with the natural and human systems of which they are a part. With few exceptions, fisheries currently are managed independently, ignoring important natural and human linkages among them. The biological productivity, sustainability, and consequently human benefits of complex fishery systems may be substantially increased if these linkages are better understood and if this understanding is applied to management. The American lobster (Homarus americanus), Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) and Northeast multispecies groundfish fisheries in the Gulf of …

Collaborative Research: Subglacial Water Intrusion In Greenland, Gordon K. Oswald

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

The project's goals are:

• To analyse radio echo sounding data acquired over the Greenland Ice Sheet by the University of Kansas / CReSIS team with the objective of discriminating between frozen and thawed conditions at the bed of the ice sheet.
• To provide maps of the bed state, with the aim of making them available via the National Snow and Ice Data Centre.
• To support ice sheet modelling activities by providing information on the bed state, thus related to the temperature at the bed and the rheological conditions at the bed.
• To make available to educational establishments information on the …

Collaborative Research: Subglacial Water Intrusion In Greenland, Gordon K. Oswald

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

A full understanding of the flow and dynamics of an ice sheet will require knowledge of the state of its subglacial interface. While the topography of the Greenland Ice Sheet bed has been studied by radio echo sounding, its state in terms of melting and freezing, which itself affects its future evolution, has been inferred from numerical models, rather than from direct evidence.

This project is for analysis of existing radar echo data gathered under the PARCA and CReSIS programs, with the objective of generating direct evidence of the extent of subglacial water in Greenland and providing the glaciological community …

Collaborative Research: An Interdisciplinary Investigation Of Groundwater-Carbon Coupling In Large Peat Basins And Its Relation To Climate Change, Andrew S. Reeve

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

The growth of northern peatlands during the Holocene created a globally important source and sink for greenhouse gases. The response of these large carbon reservoirs to Global Warming, however, remains uncertain. Different mathematical models predict that future warming could alter the carbon balance of peatlands by either increasing the rate of carbon sequestration or accelerating the emissions of greenhouse gases. However, these steady-state analytical models make unrealistic assumptions about natural peatlands, which are spatially and temporally variable ecosystems that are still accumulating carbon. This investigation will therefore develop a transient 3D numerical model that couples multiphase groundwater flow to solute …

Collaborative Research: Centers For Ocean Sciences Education Excellence - National Network Partnerships, Annette V. Decharon

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This proposal will be awarded using funds made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).

This award provides funds to support the Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE) Central Coordinating Office (CCO) in a set of projects that will focus on identifying best practices in ocean science education and develop internal and external Network partnerships. Specifically, this award provides funds for the development of an online COSEE Community Center to network teachers, ocean researchers and the public.

The COSEE program, now in its seventh year, has a mission to bridge the gap between …

Quantifying Syntectonic Weakening In Deep Orogenic Crust, Christopher Gerbi

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

The primary intellectual impact of this project will be in improving our understanding of the mechanics that shape the Earth's crust. In recent years, earth scientists have used the increasing body of geodetic data towards that end, but the mechanical properties of the middle and lower crust remain only loosely constrained. This project focuses on the magnitude of strain weakening in shear zone networks. In detail, the research will explore the grain-scale and outcrop-scale deformation mechanisms in minerals that lead to this weakening, followed by modeling of the results to understand the weakening process on the larger scale. These conceptual …

Collaborative Research: Multiscale Analysis Of Geological Structures That Influence Crustal Seismic Anisotropy, Senthil Vel, Scott E. Johnson

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This project is a study of crustal material anisotropy with a focus on macroscale structural geometries and how they will modify the seismic response of rock fabrics. Seismic anisotropy is the cumulative interplay between propagating seismic waves and anisotropic earth material that manifests itself through the directional dependence of seismic wave speeds. Unraveling this effect in deformed crustal terranes is complex due to several factors, such as 3D geological geometry and heterogeneity, microscale fabric, bending of seismic raypaths due to velocity gradients, field experiments that may not offer full azimuthal coverage, and the observation of anisotropy as second-order waveform or …

Collaborative Research: Exploring A 2 Million + Year Ice Climate Archive-Allan Hills Blue Ice Area (2mbia), Andrei V. Kurbatov, Paul Andrew Mayewski

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This award supports a project to generate an absolute timescale for the Allan Hills Blue Ice Area (BIA), and then to reconstruct details of past climate changes and greenhouse gas concentrations for certain time periods back to 2.5 Ma. Ice ages will be determined by applying emerging methods for absolute and relative dating of trapped air bubbles (based on Argon-40/Argon-38, delta-18O of O2, and the O2/N2 ratio). To demonstrate the potential of the Allan Hills BIAs as a paleoclimate archive trenches and ice cores will be collected for age intervals corresponding to 110-140 ka, 1 Ma, and 2.5 Ma. During …

Collaborative Research: Constraints On The Last Ross Ice Sheet From Glacial Deposits In The Southern Transantarctic Mountains, Brenda Hall

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This award supports a project to study the former thickness and retreat history of Shackleton and Beardmore Glaciers which flow through the Transantarctic Mountains (TAMs) into the southern Ross Sea. Lateral moraine deposits along the lower reaches of these major outlet glaciers will be mapped and dated and the results will help to date the LGM and constrain the thickness of ice where it left the Transantarctic Mountains and flowed into the Ross Sea. The intellectual merit of the project is that the results will allow scientists to distinguish between models of ice retreat, which have important implications for former …

Collaborative Research: Sensitivity Of Local Glaciers In Central East Greenland To Holocene Climate Change, Brenda Hall

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This award will support an investigation of Holocene glacier fluctuations in the Scoresby Sund region of central East Greenland (~70-72¿N, 22-28¿W) along a transect from a coastal maritime setting to the continental conditions adjacent to the Greenland Ice Sheet. The 'Intellectual Merit' of the proposed study lies in the potential to affirm, or otherwise, the widely-held view that the scale of glacier and ice sheet change being observed today in Greenland is not unique in the Holocene. The current recession of glaciers in the Scoresby Sund region is exposing sub-fossil vegetation that grew at times when glaciers were smaller than …

Collaborative Research: Globec Pan-Regional Synthesis: End-To-End Energy Budgets In Us-Globec Regions, Andrew C. Thomas

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

The research addresses the overarching question: are marine food webs leading to fisheries controlled from the top-down, the bottom up, or a combination of the two? To address this question we will (1) compare end-to-end energy budgets of the 4 US-GLOBEC study regions in the context of top-down v. bottom-up forcing, (2) assess the skills of the regional models in capturing basic material fluxes, (3) extract diagnostics from the regional models that will be used to evaluate the effects of climate change and fishing pressure across GLOBEC regions and (4) develop quantitative methods to compare the diagnostics. The major successes …

Collaborative Research: Antarctic Climate Reconstruction Utilizing The Us Itase Ice Core Array (2009- 2012), Paul Mayewski, Kirk A. Maasch, Andrei V. Kurbatov

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This award supports a project to reconstruct the past physical and chemical climate of Antarctica, with an emphasis on the region surrounding the Ross Sea Embayment, using >60 ice cores collected in this region by US ITASE and by Australian, Brazilian, Chilean, and New Zealand ITASE teams. The ice core records are annually resolved and exceptionally well dated, and will provide, through the analyses of stable isotopes, major soluble ions and for some trace elements, instrumentally calibrated proxies for past temperature, precipitation, atmospheric circulation, chemistry of the atmosphere, sea ice extent, and volcanic activity. These records will be used to …

Us Ireland Partnership Program: Beacons: Biosafety For Environmental Contaminants Using Novel Sensors, Laurie B. Connell, Rosemary L. Smith, Gregory Doucette

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

BEACONS is a unique collaboration between the United States, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, that aims to develop a novel sample preparation device coupled to a portable sensor which will be capable of rapidly analyzing for the presence of major aquatic toxins and associated organisms in water samples. It harnesses the substantial complementary expertise of the international partners and their institutions to address a problem that has world-wide implications for human health and aquatic related industries. The results will be used for the generation of a commercially applicable prototype device that could have the potential to be applied …

The Anatomy Of Last Glacial Maximum (Lgm) Climate Change In The Southern Hemisphere Mid-Latitudes: Paleoecological Temperature Reconstructions From Terrestrial Archives, Marcus J. Vandergoes, Ann Dieffenbacher-Krall

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

The objective of this research is to test if leading hypotheses about drivers of global ice ages explain climate change in the Southern Hemisphere mid-latitudes. The research establishes the timing, magnitude, and structure of southern mid-latitude Last Glacial Maximum climate from two sites bordering the Southern Alps, New Zealand, by reconstructing temperature changes from continuous, isotopically dated, paleo-chironomid and pollen re-cords.

Hypotheses about what drives ice age climate change remain clouded with ambiguities because the timing and magnitude of maximum ice age cooling (Last Glacial Maximum, LGM) does not appear to match between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Northern solar …

Ltreb: Biogeochemical Mechanisms Of Response In The Third Decade Of Whole-Ecosystem Experimental Manipulations At The Bear Brook Watershed In Maine (Bbwm), Ivan J. Fernandez, Stephen A. Norton, Lindsey E. Rustad

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This grant will support the Bear Brook Watershed in Maine (BBWM) where research has been conducted for approximately 20 years on the effects of atmospheric sulfur and nitrogen deposition on forests. The research is conducted on two watersheds, each drained by a first order stream. One is treated bimonthly by helicopter to simulate atmospheric deposition of sulfur and nitrogen. Over the past 20 years, this research has identified and verified key factors governing forest response to air pollution, and also revealed major gaps in our understanding that are critical to determining the success of current and potential future regulations under …

Application Of Boron Isotopes To Constrain The Depositional Environment Of The Precursors To Proterozoic Granulite-Facies Borosilicate Paragneisses, Larsemann Hills, Antarctica, Edward Grew

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

Intellectual Merit. Major challenges in understanding high P-T granulite facies terranes are identifying the original protolith rocks and the tectonic environment in which they were originally deposited. This project focuses on granulitic gneisses exposed in the Larsemann Hills, Prydz Bay (East Antarctica). These rocks are considered to be metasediments (paragneisses), but, despite more than 20 years of intense study, the tectonic framework of deposition of the original rocks is still debated. However the origin of these rocks has important implications for determining the assembly of the ancient Gondwana continent. The unique B-rich character of the rocks offers potential insight into …

Eager: Collaborative Research: Developing Transformation Technologies For Porphyra, Susan H. Brawley

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

The genome of the marine red alga Porphyra umbilicalis is being sequenced by the Joint Genome Institute. The sequence information will help scientists address many fundamental questions, because Porphyra spp. belong to an ancient eukaryotic lineage, are important human foods ("nori"), have complex life histories, and---even compared to other intertidal organisms--- possess an unusually stress-tolerant metabolism. Computer-based analyses of the new genomic data will be sufficient to address some research questions, but most studies (e.g., the basis of Porphyra's tolerance to extreme drying or high light) will require experimental approaches based upon bioinformatics analyses. This project will develop the essential …