Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Lake Samish Water Monitoring Project 2007 Final Report, Robin A. Matthews, Joan Vandersypen

Lake Samish

This report is a revised version of the 2006 Final Report by Matthews, et al., and contains most of the original text, updated figures, and additional discussion of the new data collected from July 2006 through June 2007.

Lake Samish is a valuable aquatic resource, providing public access for boating, fishing, swimming, picnicking, and other water and lakeshore activities. Residents around the lake enjoy outstanding views of both the lake and its surrounding watershed, and the lake serves as a water supply for many of the lakeshore residents. Lake Samish is located in the Washington State Department of Ecology’s water …

Mapping Russian Forest Biomass With Data From Satellites And Forest Inventories, Richard A. Houghton, David Butman, Andrew Godard Bunn, Olga N. Krankina, Peter Schlesinger, Thomas A. Stone

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

The forests of Russia cover a larger area and hold more carbon than the forests of any other nation and thus have the potential for a major role in global warming. Despite a systematic inventory of these forests, however, estimates of total carbon stocks vary, and spatial variations in the stocks within large aggregated units of land are unknown, thus hampering measurement of sources and sinks of carbon. We mapped the distribution of living forest biomass for the year 2000 by developing a relationship between ground measurements of wood volume at 12 sites throughout the Russian Federation and data from …

Responses Of The Circumpolar Boreal Forest To 20th Century Climate Variability, Andrea H. Lloyd, Andrew Godard Bunn

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

We examined relationships between tree ring-width and climate at 232 sites around the circumpolar boreal forest to explore variability in two types of response to temperature: a browning response characterized by inverse correlations between growth and temperature, and a greening response characterized by positive correlations between growth and temperature. We used moving-window correlation analysis for eight 30-year time windows, lagged by 10 years, to characterize the climate response at each site from 1902 to 2002. Inverse growth responses to temperature were widespread, occurring in all species, all time periods, and in nearly all geographic areas. The frequency of the browning …

Northern High-Latitude Ecosystems Respond To Climate Change, Andrew Godard Bunn, Scott J. Goetz, John S. Kimball, Ke Zhang

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

The northern high latitudes are an area of particular importance to global climate change. As a system dependent on freezing conditions, the top of the planet contains vast amounts of carbon in biomass, soils, and permafrost that have the potential to interact with the atmosphere through the biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and cryosphere. If released en masse, this carbon would greatly exacerbate the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Over the past 2 years, a growing body of research has provided evidence of substantial but idiosyncratic environmental changes, with some surprising aspects, across the region. This article reviews some recent …

Lake Whatcom Monitoring Project 2005/2006 Report, Robin A. Matthews, Michael Hilles, Joan Vandersypen, Robert J. Mitchell, Geoffrey B. Matthews

Lake Whatcom Annual Reports

This report is part of an on-going series of annual reports and special project reports that document the Lake Whatcom monitoring program. This work is conducted by the Institute for Watershed Studies and other departments at Western Washington University.

The major objective of this program is to provide long-term baseline water quality monitoring in Lake Whatcom and selected tributaries. Each section contains brief explanations about the water quality data, along with discussions of patterns observed in Lake Whatcom.

Restoration Of Rivers Used For Timber Floating: Effects On Riparian Plant Diversity, James M. Helfield, Samantha Capon, Christer Nilsson, Roland Jansson, Daniel Palm

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Fluvial processes such as flooding and sediment deposition play a crucial role in structuring riparian plant communities. In rivers throughout the world, these processes have been altered by channelization and other anthropogenic stresses. Yet despite increasing awareness of the need to restore natural flow regimes for the preservation of riparian biodiversity, few studies have examined the effects of river restoration on riparian ecosystems. In this study, we examined the effects of restoration in the Ume River system, northern Sweden, where tributaries were channelized to facilitate timber floating in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Restoration at these sites involved the …

The Effect Of Sculpin Presence On Benthic Macroinvertebrate Abundances In Chuckanut Creek, Washington, Sam Stoner

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Sculpins are one of the most abundant fishes in Pacific coastal streams and lakes, but they remain understudied despite potentially significant impacts to stream ecology. The poor swimming ability of sculpins limits their range by inhibiting passage of barriers passable to other fishes. Sculpins are voracious eaters and feed primarily on stream invertebrates. By sampling invertebrates in reaches of stream above and below a sculpin barrier, this study examined the impact sculpin presence had on the stream invertebrate community. Invertebrates were sampled in riffles using a Serber sampler (n = 4). The results showed that the presences of sculpins had …

Volcanic Eruptions At East Pacific Rise Near 9°50'N, James P. Cowen, Brooke Love, Brian Glazier, Daniel J. Fornari, Timothy M. (Timothy Mitchell) Shank, S. Adam Soule, Alexander Treusch, Kyle R. Pomranig, R. Chadwick Holmes, Maya Tolstoy, Edward T. Baker

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Evidence for recent volcanic eruptions along the fast spreading East Pacific Rise (EPR) crest near 9°50'N spanning about 4 to 5 months of activity was discovered in April and May 2006 as a result of studies related to the U.S. National Science Foundation's (NSF) Ridge2000 (R2K) program. In April, during routine recovery and redeployment of ocean-bottom seismometers (OBS) at the EPR R2K Integrated Study Site (ISS) near 9°50'N, eight of 12 OBS could not be recovered [Tolstoy et al, 2006]. Anomalous turbidity and temperature structure in the water column along the ridge axis confirmed scientists' suspicions that the OBS were …