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Series

Climate

2023

Articles 1 - 10 of 10

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The Last Drought Frontier: Building A Drought Index For The State Of Alaska, Olivia Campbell May 2023

The Last Drought Frontier: Building A Drought Index For The State Of Alaska, Olivia Campbell

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Drought is characterized by periods of below average precipitation. There are five major types of drought recognized in the literature: meteorological, hydrological, agricultural, socioeconomic, and ecological. A relatively new concept in the drought literature is “snow drought.” A key part of the definition of drought is that it is not always accompanied by extreme heat. This means drought can occur even in cold climates, cold seasons, and higher latitudes and altitudes, like Alaska. Drought is a natural part of climate variability, but Alaska’s climate is changing faster than any other state in the United States. Alaska is no stranger to …

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Carbon Sequestration Capacities Of Different Land Cover Types And Climate Change, Nicole L. Melnick, Annabel Gorman, Adam F. Warren Apr 2023

Carbon Sequestration Capacities Of Different Land Cover Types And Climate Change, Nicole L. Melnick, Annabel Gorman, Adam F. Warren

Student Publications

Human-caused climate change creates a positive feedback loop that emits more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere instead of being sequestered in the Earth or its oceans. A major contributor to this feedback loop is deforestation in order to use land for agriculture and livestock. This study aims to investigate differences in carbon sequestration capabilities of forests, pastures, and cropland through soil and tree sampling in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The main hypothesis of this study is that forested land will be the most effective at carbon sequestration. The loss on ignition method (LOI) was used to determine the percent organic material in …

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The Influence Of Complex Coastlines On The Sea Breeze And Convection Initiation In Coastal North Carolina, Logan Howard, Adam L. Houston Mar 2023

The Influence Of Complex Coastlines On The Sea Breeze And Convection Initiation In Coastal North Carolina, Logan Howard, Adam L. Houston

Honors Theses

The sea breeze is a common phenomenon in coastal regions around the world. Their development and propagation can be treated as a density current. It is well known that many factors influence density current propagation, including wind. Depending on the orientation, the wind speed and shear can enhance or inhibit the development of the sea breeze. In places like eastern North Carolina, complex coastal geography can create river and sound breezes that, upon collision, have the potential to initiate thunderstorms. Using Cloud Model 1, simulations were conducted to model the behavior of the sea breezes in eastern North Carolina and …

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Drought Affects Sex Ratio And Growth Of Painted Turtles In A Long-Term Study In Nebraska, Larkin A. Powell, Ellen P. Dolph, Charrissa R. Neil Mar 2023

Drought Affects Sex Ratio And Growth Of Painted Turtles In A Long-Term Study In Nebraska, Larkin A. Powell, Ellen P. Dolph, Charrissa R. Neil

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Climate forecasts suggest the Great Plains of North America have increased risk of droughts during global warming. Environmental factors have potential to influence turtle populations in aquatic habitats through temperature-dependent sex determination and influences on food availability. Long-term studies are critical to evaluate the influence of climatic variation on turtles. We used a 12-year set of mark-recapture data collected from painted turtles (Chrysemys picta, n = 162) in a pond in Keith County, Nebraska during 2005–2016 to assess variation in sex ratio and growth dynamics. Southwest Nebraska experienced two periods of drought during our study (Palmer Hydrologic Drought …

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Communicating About Extreme Heat: Results From Card Sorting And Think Aloud Interviews With Experts From Differing Domains, Jeannette Sutton, Nicholas Waugh, Savannah Olivas Mar 2023

Communicating About Extreme Heat: Results From Card Sorting And Think Aloud Interviews With Experts From Differing Domains, Jeannette Sutton, Nicholas Waugh, Savannah Olivas

Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity Faculty Scholarship

Climate trends indicate that extreme heat events are becoming more common and more severe over time, requiring improved strategies to communicate heat risk and protective actions. However, there exists a disconnect in heat-related communication from experts, who commonly include heat related jargon (i.e., technical language), to decision makers and the general public. The use of jargon has been shown to reduce meaningful engagement with and understanding of messages written by experts. Translating technical language into comprehensible messages that encourage decision makers to take action has been identified as a priority to enable impact-based decision support. Knowing what concepts and terms …

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Soil Organic Matter Diagenetic State Informs Boreal Forest Ecosystem Feedbacks To Climate Change, Allison N. Myers-Pigg, Karl Kaiser, Ronald Benner, Susan E. Ziegler Feb 2023

Soil Organic Matter Diagenetic State Informs Boreal Forest Ecosystem Feedbacks To Climate Change, Allison N. Myers-Pigg, Karl Kaiser, Ronald Benner, Susan E. Ziegler

Faculty Publications

The fate of soil organic carbon (SOC) in boreal forests is dependent on the integrative ecosystem response to climate change. For example, boreal forest productivity is often nitrogen (N) limited, and climate warming can enhance N cycling and primary productivity. However, the net effect of this feedback on the SOC reservoir and its longevity with climate change remain unclear due to difficulty in detecting small differences between large and variable carbon (C) fluxes needed to determine net changes in soil reservoirs. The diagenetic state of SOC – resulting from the physicochemical and biological transformations that alter the original biomolecular composition …

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The Evolution Of Life History Traits And Their Thermal Plasticity In Daphnia, Larry L. Bowman Jr., David M. Post Jan 2023

The Evolution Of Life History Traits And Their Thermal Plasticity In Daphnia, Larry L. Bowman Jr., David M. Post

ETSU Faculty Works

Few studies have explored the relative strength of ecogeographic versus lineage-specific effects on a global scale, particularly for poikilotherms, those organisms whose internal temperature varies with their environment. Here, we compile a global dataset of life history traits in Daphnia, at the species-and population-level, and use those data to parse the relative influences of lineage-specific effects and climate. We also compare the thermal response (plasticity) of life history traits and their dependence on climate, temperature, precipitation, and latitude. We found that the mode of evolution for life history traits varies but that the thermal response of life history traits most …

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The Response Of Sea Ice And High-Salinity Shelf Water In The Ross Ice Shelf Polynya To Cyclonic Atmosphere Circulations, Xiaoqiao Wang, Zhaoru Zhang, Michael S. Dinniman, Petteri Uotila, Xichen Li, Meng Zhou Jan 2023

The Response Of Sea Ice And High-Salinity Shelf Water In The Ross Ice Shelf Polynya To Cyclonic Atmosphere Circulations, Xiaoqiao Wang, Zhaoru Zhang, Michael S. Dinniman, Petteri Uotila, Xichen Li, Meng Zhou

CCPO Publications

Coastal polynyas in the Ross Sea are important source regions of high-salinity shelf water (HSSW) – the precursor of Antarctic Bottom Water that supplies the lower limb of the thermohaline circulation. Here, the response of sea ice production and HSSW formation to synoptic-scale and mesoscale cyclones was investigated for the Ross Ice Shelf Polynya (RISP) using a coupled ocean–sea ice–ice shelf model targeted on the Ross Sea. When synoptic-scale cyclones prevailed over RISP, sea ice production (SIP) increased rapidly by 20 %–30 % over the entire RISP. During the passage of mesoscale cyclones, SIP increased by about 2 times over …

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Drought Affects Sex Ratio And Growth Of Painted Turtles In A Long-Term Study In Nebraska, Larkin Powell, Ellen Dolph, Charrissa R. Neil Jan 2023

Drought Affects Sex Ratio And Growth Of Painted Turtles In A Long-Term Study In Nebraska, Larkin Powell, Ellen Dolph, Charrissa R. Neil

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Climate forecasts suggest the Great Plains of North America have increased risk of droughts during global warming. Environmental factors have potential to influence turtle populations in aquatic habitats through temperature-dependent sex determination and influences on food availability. Long-term studies are critical to evaluate the influence of climatic variation on turtles. We used a 12-year set of mark-recapture data collected from painted turtles (Chrysemys picta, n = 162) in a pond in Keith County, Nebraska during 2005–2016 to assess variation in sex ratio and growth dynamics. Southwest Nebraska experienced two periods of drought during our study (Palmer Hydrologic Drought Index [PHDI] …

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An Integrative Salt Marsh Conceptual Framework For Global Comparisons, Erik S. Yando, Scott F. Jones, W. Ryan James, Denise D. Colombano, Diana I. Montemayor, Stefanie Nolte, Jacqueline L. Raw, Shelby L. Ziegler, Luzhen Chen, Daniele Daffonchio, Marco Fusi, Kerrylee Rogers, Liudmila Sergienko Jan 2023

An Integrative Salt Marsh Conceptual Framework For Global Comparisons, Erik S. Yando, Scott F. Jones, W. Ryan James, Denise D. Colombano, Diana I. Montemayor, Stefanie Nolte, Jacqueline L. Raw, Shelby L. Ziegler, Luzhen Chen, Daniele Daffonchio, Marco Fusi, Kerrylee Rogers, Liudmila Sergienko

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Salt marshes occur globally across climatic and coastal settings, providing key linkages between terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, salt marsh science lacks a unifying conceptual framework; consequently, historically well-studied locations have been used as normative benchmarks. To allow for more effective comparisons across the diversity of salt marshes, we developed an integrative salt marsh conceptual framework. We review ecosystem-relevant drivers from global to local spatial scales, integrate these multi-scale settings into a framework, and provide guidance on applying the framework using specific variables on 11 global examples. Overall, this framework allows for appropriate comparison of study sites by accounting for …

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