Digital Commons Network^™

Climate & Conflict: View Into A Warming World, Faelynn Carroll

Master's Theses

Unlike weather patterns, the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a large-scale, cyclical climate system that is now predictable for up to a year and a half in advance. ENSO cycles occur every two to seven years for approximately two years at a time, affecting large swaths of the globe with plausibly random variation in the exact location and strength of local effects. However, its systemic nature allows for aggregate effects to be accounted for by its outcomes. This research uses novel 0.5 x 0.5 degree ENSO teleconnection analysis for precipitation and temperature to uncover environmental mechanisms that underly the …

Impacts Of Rising Temperatures On Human Behavior With A Focus On Gender Differences, Stephanie Marie Emilia J. Hermoso

Master's Theses

Climate change is one of the biggest and most pressing issues the world is facing today. While its economic implications are substantial, it is also important to investigate the effects of climate change on human behavior. This paper examines the relationship of rising temperatures and its effect on an individual’s cooperative behavior – specifically egalitarianism, generosity, selfishness, and spite. This study will focus on the differences between how males and females react to the temperature. Research indicates that there are substantial behavioral differences between men and women. How do the economic decisions of men and women differ when interacted with …

Sweden's Great Escape: Industrialization And The Changing Productivity Cost Of Winter, Charlotte Taylor, Jesse Anttila-Hughes

Master's Theses

We combine a paleoclimate reconstruction of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO)- a key determinant of Scandinavian winter intensity- with four centuries of historical production data from Sweden, to examine the changing influence of climate variability on production over time. We find the colder, drier winters associated with the negative phase of the NAO led to reduced economic production for much of Swedish history, and that this relationship changed with development: during industrialization, Sweden underwent a transition from ‘level’ effects, where harsh winters lowered average incomes, to ‘growth’ effects, where it reduced growth in improving living standards. Post-industrialization, neither ‘level’ nor …

Spatial Patterns Of Precipitation Trends In The Continental United States, 1950-2016, Shayne O'Brien

Master's Theses

Identifying trends in aspects of meteorology is becoming increasingly important to understanding how climate can be expected to change, and how those affected may plan contingencies. Analyzing spatial patterns of precipitation trends allows for associations to be discovered to better understand regional climatology. For this study, daily precipitation data were collected from The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) at stations across the continental United States, with selection based on distance from each other within a state, as well as percent completeness of observation data. Two stations per state were selected, with some exceptions for …

1300 Years Of Snowpack Change For The Sangre De Cristo Mountian Range, Michael Thornton

Master's Theses

New Mexico is heavily dependent on hydrologic inputs along high elevation sites where much of the cool-season precipitation accumulates as snowpack in the lower Southern Rocky Mountains. Snowpack runoff from the Sangre de Cristo (SDC) range provides critical headwater resources for the two major rivers that run through New Mexico and by extension the greater population. Yet, over the past four decades snowpack data from high and mid-elevation sites exhibit a linear trend of declining snowpack in conjunction with earlier seasonal melting. Due to the importance of these cool-season inputs for the region, a decline in montane runoff availability is …

The Effects Of Latency On 3d Interactive Data Visualizations, Allen Korenevsky

Master's Theses

Interactive data visualizations must respond fluidly to user input to be effective, or so we assume. In fact it is unknown exactly how fast a visualization must run to present every facet within a dataset. An engineering team with limited resources is left with intuition and estimates to determine if their application performs sufficiently well.

This thesis studies how latency affects users' comprehension of data visualizations, specifically 3D geospatial visualizations with large data sets. Subjects used a climate visualization showing temperatures spanning from the 19th to the 21st century to answer multiple choice questions. Metrics like their eye movements, time …

Organismal Composition And Photosynthetic Traits Of Biological Soil Crusts In Prairie Ecosystems Ofthe Great Plains, Brendon C. Mccampbell

Master's Theses

Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are soil-surface microecosystems composed of a close association of algae, cyanobacteria, fungi, lichens, and non-vascular plants with soil particles. BSCs have several ecological functions including carbon fixation, nitrogen fixation, nutrient relations, soil stabilization, water relations, and floral community development, which make them extremely important in many of the ecosystems where they occur. While BSCs have been studied throughout the American West, little work has been done in the Great Plains region where they are less prominent among the dominant vascular plant communities. This study examined organismal composition and photosynthetic traits of BSCs in four ecosystems within …

An Integrated Drought Index (Idi) Incorporating Physical And Social Aspects, Rebecca L. Lanier

Master's Theses

The purpose of this research was to determine significant bio-physical (physical and environmental) and social variables that can be integrated into a drought index to predict areas susceptible to drought. Severe drought events are capable of causing millions of dollars in damage. The 1988 drought caused the United States approximately $40 billion in damage. Drought forecasting, modeling, and detection have, therefore, become imperative to understand the social, economic and environmental impacts of droughts, and also to explore how these impacts play a role in the occurrence of a drought. A number of drought indices widely used in the U.S. rely …

Human Impacts On Fire In De Soto National Forest, Mississippi, U.S.A., Charles Raymond White

Master's Theses

Fire is a common occurrence in the longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) forests of the Southeast United States. Prescribed fire is used to manage these threatened ecosystems, but information regarding historical fire activity is unknown. My goals were to determine the historical fire regimes in De Soto National Forest (DSNF), southern Mississippi, and determine the influence of climate and land use history on fire activity at two study sites: Fern Gulley Ridge (FGR) and Death Scar Valley (DSV). The composite mean fire interval during the prescribed burning period (1980–2013) was 3.4 years. During settlements periods, fire intervals at FGR …

Application Of A New Tree-Ring Based Drought Reconstruction Method At Multiple Forest Sites Across Indiana, U.S.A., Kayla Mechelle Pendergrass

Master's Theses

This thesis research used techniques of dendrochronology to investigate the efficacy of using multiple co-occurring species (MCOS) in a climate reconstruction model compared to a single species (SS) in four old-growth forests in Indiana: Pioneer Mothers Memorial Forest (PM), Donaldson Woods (DW), Hoot Woods (HW), and Lilly Dickey Woods (LD). The objectives of this study were to [1] evaluate the climate response of all chronologies (n = 19; 7 species) to determine the most appropriate climate variable for reconstruction and [2] determine if the MCOS model outperforms the SS model at each individual study site. Model comparison was conducted …

A Practical Scale For Multi-Faceted Organizational Health Climate Assessment, Zandra M. Zweber

Master's Theses

The current study sought to develop a practical scale to measure workplace health climate in a way that has not previously been conceptualized – as a three-faceted approach from the employee perspective serving as an indicator of a healthy organization. The goal was to create a short, useable yet comprehensive scale that could translate into practical use by organizations and occupational health professionals planning workplace interventions. To accomplish this, the proposed multi-faceted organizational health climate scale (MOHCA) assesses three-facets which match up with three organizational levels: 1) organization 2) supervisor and 3) workgroup. Ten items were developed and tested on …

Climate-Related Floral And Vegetative Size Variation In Leptosiphon Androsaceus (Polemoniaceae), Aggie Morrow

Master's Theses

Phenotypic plasticity in plants is a vital adaptive response to changing environmental conditions. Floral and vegetative morphology often varies as biotic and abiotic factors vary. Variation is the basis of evolution, and natural selection, acting on trait variation, can lead to speciation. For this study, floral and vegetative character traits of false babystars (Leptosiphon androsaceus, Polemoniaceae) were analyzed within four populations at Henry W. Coe State Park in 2011. Traits were measured to assess changes in size along a moisture availability gradient. Stable carbon isotope ratio samples were collected to measure integrated water-use efficiency (WUE) as it related to precipitation …

Assessment Of Water Storage Trends And Distributions In The Mississippi River Basin As Simulated By Ipcc Models And Compared To Grace Satellite Data, Katherine Pitts

Master's Theses

Published work has shown that GRACE water storage estimates are consistent with water storage observations for many river basins. GRACE data can therefore serve as a proxy for water storage data. In this analysis, we compare estimates of total water storage (TWS) anomalies from the GRACE mission to soil moisture (SM) data from IPCC AR4 simulations for the Mississippi River Basin (MSRB). IPCC models do not carry a TWS variable for direct comparison. Therefore, we use the IPCC models' soil moisture content parameter to compare to the GRACE data, because TWS variability in the mid−latitudes is mostly due to SM …