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2019

Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Articles 1 - 19 of 19

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Optimization Of Over-Summer Snow Storage At Midlatitudes And Low Elevation, Hannah S. Weiss, Paul R. Bierman, Yves Dubief, Scott D. Hamshaw Dec 2019

Optimization Of Over-Summer Snow Storage At Midlatitudes And Low Elevation, Hannah S. Weiss, Paul R. Bierman, Yves Dubief, Scott D. Hamshaw

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Climate change, including warmer winter temperatures, a shortened snowfall season, and more rain-on-snow events, threatens nordic skiing as a sport. In response, oversummer snow storage, attempted primarily using woodchips as a cover material, has been successfully employed as a climate change adaptation strategy by high-elevation and/or high-latitude ski centers in Europe and Canada. Such storage has never been attempted at a site that is both low elevation and midlatitude, and few studies have quantified storage losses repeatedly through the summer. Such data, along with tests of different cover strategies, are prerequisites to optimizing snow storage strategies. Here, we assess the …

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The Northwestern Greenland Ice Sheet During The Early Pleistocene Was Similar To Today, Andrew J. Christ, Paul R. Bierman, Paul C. Knutz, Lee B. Corbett, Julie C. Fosdick, Elizabeth K. Thomas, Owen C. Cowling, Alan J. Hidy, Marc W. Caffee Dec 2019

The Northwestern Greenland Ice Sheet During The Early Pleistocene Was Similar To Today, Andrew J. Christ, Paul R. Bierman, Paul C. Knutz, Lee B. Corbett, Julie C. Fosdick, Elizabeth K. Thomas, Owen C. Cowling, Alan J. Hidy, Marc W. Caffee

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

The multi-million year history of the Greenland Ice Sheet remains poorly known. Ice-proximal glacial marine diamict provides a direct but discontinuous record of ice sheet behavior; it is underutilized as a climate archive. Here, we present a novel multiproxy analysis of an Early Pleistocene marine diamict from northwestern Greenland. Low cosmogenic nuclide concentrations indicate minimal near-surface exposure, similar to modern terrestrial sediment. Detrital apatite (U-Th-Sm)/He (AHe) ages all predate glaciation by >150 million years, suggesting the northwestern Greenland Ice Sheet had, by 1.9 Ma, not yet incised fjords of sufficient depth to excavate grains with young AHe ages. The diamict …

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Water Quality Improvements Offset The Climatic Debt For Stream Macroinvertebrates Over Twenty Years, Ian P. Vaughan, Nicholas J. Gotelli Dec 2019

Water Quality Improvements Offset The Climatic Debt For Stream Macroinvertebrates Over Twenty Years, Ian P. Vaughan, Nicholas J. Gotelli

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Many species are accumulating climatic debt as they fail to keep pace with increasing global temperatures. In theory, concomitant decreases in other stressors (e.g. pollution, fragmentation) could offset some warming effects, paying climatic debt with accrued environmental credit. This process may be occurring in many western European rivers. We fit a Markov chain model to ~20,000 macroinvertebrate samples from England and Wales, and demonstrate that despite large temperature increases 1991–2011, macroinvertebrate communities remained close to their predicted equilibrium with environmental conditions. Using a novel analysis of multiple stressors, an accumulated climatic debt of 0.64 (±0.13 standard error) °C of warming …

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Soil Aggregates As A Source Of Dissolved Organic Carbon To Streams: An Experimental Study On The Effect Of Solution Chemistry On Water Extractable Carbon, Malayika M. Cincotta, Julia N. Perdrial, Aaron Shavitz, Arianna Libenson, Maxwell Landsman-Gerjoi, Nicolas Perdrial, Jesse Armfield, Thomas Adler, James B. Shanley Nov 2019

Soil Aggregates As A Source Of Dissolved Organic Carbon To Streams: An Experimental Study On The Effect Of Solution Chemistry On Water Extractable Carbon, Malayika M. Cincotta, Julia N. Perdrial, Aaron Shavitz, Arianna Libenson, Maxwell Landsman-Gerjoi, Nicolas Perdrial, Jesse Armfield, Thomas Adler, James B. Shanley

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Over the past two decades, headwater streams of the northern hemisphere have shown increased amounts of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), coinciding with decreased acid deposition. The exact nature of the mechanistic link between precipitation composition and stream water DOC is still widely debated in the literature. We hypothesize that soil aggregates are the main source of stream water DOC and that DOC release is greater in organic rich, riparian soils vs. hillslope soils. To test these hypotheses, we collected soils from two main landscape positions (hillslope and riparian zones) from the acid-impacted Sleepers River Research Watershed in northeastern Vermont. We …

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Late Quaternary Tectonics, Incision, And Landscape Evolution Of The Calchaquí River Catchment, Eastern Cordillera, Nw Argentina, James A. Mccarthy, Lindsay M. Schoenbohm, Paul R. Bierman, Dylan Rood, Alan J. Hidy Aug 2019

Late Quaternary Tectonics, Incision, And Landscape Evolution Of The Calchaquí River Catchment, Eastern Cordillera, Nw Argentina, James A. Mccarthy, Lindsay M. Schoenbohm, Paul R. Bierman, Dylan Rood, Alan J. Hidy

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Unraveling the relative impacts of climate, tectonics, and lithology on landscape evolution is complicated by the temporal and spatial scale over which observations are made. We use soil and desert pavement classification, longitudinal river profiles, 10Be-derived catchment mean modern and paleo-erosion rates, and vertical incision rates to test whether, if we restrict our analyses to a spatial scale over which climate is relatively invariant, tectonic and lithologic factors will dominate the late Quaternary landscape evolution of the Calchaquí River Catchment, NW Argentina. We find that the spatial distribution of erosion rates, normalized channel steepness indices, and concavity indices reflect active …

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Optimizing Wetland Restoration To Improve Water Quality At A Regional Scale, Nitin K. Singh, Jesse D. Gourevitch, Beverley C. Wemple, Keri B. Watson, Donna M. Rizzo, Stephen Polasky, Taylor H. Ricketts May 2019

Optimizing Wetland Restoration To Improve Water Quality At A Regional Scale, Nitin K. Singh, Jesse D. Gourevitch, Beverley C. Wemple, Keri B. Watson, Donna M. Rizzo, Stephen Polasky, Taylor H. Ricketts

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. Excessive phosphorus (P) export to aquatic ecosystems can lead to impaired water quality. There is a growing interest among watershed managers in using restored wetlands to retain P from agricultural landscapes and improve water quality. We develop a novel framework for prioritizing wetland restoration at a regional scale. The framework uses an ecosystem service model and an optimization algorithm that maximizes P reduction for given levels of restoration cost. Applying our framework in the Lake Champlain Basin, we find that wetland restoration can reduce P export by 2.6% for a budget of $50 M and …

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Ecological Drift And Competitive Interactions Predict Unique Patterns In Temporal Fluctuations Of Population Size, Werner Ulrich, Radosław Puchałka, Marcin Koprowski, Giovanni Strona, Nicholas J. Gotelli Apr 2019

Ecological Drift And Competitive Interactions Predict Unique Patterns In Temporal Fluctuations Of Population Size, Werner Ulrich, Radosław Puchałka, Marcin Koprowski, Giovanni Strona, Nicholas J. Gotelli

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Recent studies have highlighted the importance of higher-order competitive interactions in stabilizing population dynamics in multi-species communities. But how does the structure of competitive hierarchies affect population dynamics and extinction processes? We tackled this important question by using spatially explicit simulations of ecological drift (10 species in a homogeneous landscape of 64 patches) in which birth rates were influenced by interspecific competition. Specifically, we examined how transitive (linear pecking orders) and intransitive (pecking orders with loops) competitive hierarchies affected extinction rates and population dynamics in simulated communities through time. In comparison to a pure neutral model, an ecological drift model …

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Pace And Process Of Active Folding And Fluvial Incision Across The Kantishna Hills Anticline, Central Alaska, A. M. Bender, R. O. Lease, P. J. Haeussler, T. Rittenour, L. B. Corbett, P. R. Bierman, M. W. Caffee Mar 2019

Pace And Process Of Active Folding And Fluvial Incision Across The Kantishna Hills Anticline, Central Alaska, A. M. Bender, R. O. Lease, P. J. Haeussler, T. Rittenour, L. B. Corbett, P. R. Bierman, M. W. Caffee

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Rates of northern Alaska Range thrust system deformation are poorly constrained. Shortening at the system's west end is focused on the Kantishna Hills anticline. Where the McKinley River cuts across the anticline, the landscape records both Late Pleistocene deformation and climatic change. New optically stimulated luminescence and cosmogenic 10Be depth profile dates of three McKinley River terrace levels (~22, ~18, and ~14–9 ka) match independently determined ages of local glacial maxima, consistent with climate-driven terrace formation. Terrace ages quantify rates of differential bedrock incision, uplift, and shortening based on fault depth inferred from microseismicity. Differential rock uplift and incision (≤1.4 …

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Deliberation And The Promise Of A Deeply Democratic Sustainability Transition, Michael B. Wironen, Robert V. Bartlett, Jon D. Erickson Feb 2019

Deliberation And The Promise Of A Deeply Democratic Sustainability Transition, Michael B. Wironen, Robert V. Bartlett, Jon D. Erickson

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Ecological economics arose as a normative transdiscipline aiming to generate knowledge and tools to help transition the economy toward a scale which is sustainable within the bounds of the earth system. Yet it remains unclear in practice how to legitimize its explicitly normative agenda. One potential means for legitimation can be found in deliberative social and political theory. We review how deliberative theory has informed ecological economics, pointing to three uses: first, to support valuation of non-market goods and services; second, to inform environmental decision-making more broadly; third, to ground alternative theories of development and wellbeing. We argue that deliberation …

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Does Stream Water Composition At Sleepers River In Vermont Reflect Dynamic Changes In Soils During Recovery From Acidification?, Jesse R. Armfield, Julia N. Perdrial, Alex Gagnon, Jack Ehrenkranz, Nicolas Perdrial, Malayika Cincotta, Donald Ross, James B. Shanley, Kristen L. Underwood, Peter Ryan Feb 2019

Does Stream Water Composition At Sleepers River In Vermont Reflect Dynamic Changes In Soils During Recovery From Acidification?, Jesse R. Armfield, Julia N. Perdrial, Alex Gagnon, Jack Ehrenkranz, Nicolas Perdrial, Malayika Cincotta, Donald Ross, James B. Shanley, Kristen L. Underwood, Peter Ryan

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Stream water pH and composition are widely used to monitor ongoing recovery from the deposition of strong anthropogenic acids in many forested headwater catchments in the northeastern United States. However, stream water composition is a function of highly complex and coupled processes, flowpaths, and variations in soil and bedrock composition. Spatial heterogeneity is especially pronounced in headwater catchments with steep topography, potentially limiting stream water composition as an indicator of changes in critical zone (CZ) dynamics during system recovery. To investigate the link between catchment characteristics, landscape position, and stream water composition we used long-term data (1991–2015) from the Sleepers …

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Human And Natural Controls On Erosion In The Lower Jinsha River, China, Amanda H. Schmidt, Alison R. Denn, Alan J. Hidy, Paul R. Bierman, Ya Tang Feb 2019

Human And Natural Controls On Erosion In The Lower Jinsha River, China, Amanda H. Schmidt, Alison R. Denn, Alan J. Hidy, Paul R. Bierman, Ya Tang

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

The lower Jinsha River has the highest sediment yield rates of the entire Yangtze watershed; these high yields have previously been attributed to a mix of the local geologic setting as well as intensive human land use, particularly agriculture. Prior studies have not quantified long-term background rates of sediment generation, making it difficult to know if modern sediment yield is elevated relative to the long-term rate of sediment generation. Using in situ 10Be in detrital river sediments, we measured sediment generation rates for tributaries to the lower Jinsha River. We find that the ratio of modern sediment yield to long-term …

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Measurement Of Biodiversity (Mob): A Method To Separate The Scale-Dependent Effects Of Species Abundance Distribution, Density, And Aggregation On Diversity Change, Daniel J. Mcglinn, Xiao Xiao, Felix May, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Thore Engel, Shane A. Blowes, Tiffany M. Knight, Oliver Purschke, Jonathan M. Chase, Brian J. Mcgill Feb 2019

Measurement Of Biodiversity (Mob): A Method To Separate The Scale-Dependent Effects Of Species Abundance Distribution, Density, And Aggregation On Diversity Change, Daniel J. Mcglinn, Xiao Xiao, Felix May, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Thore Engel, Shane A. Blowes, Tiffany M. Knight, Oliver Purschke, Jonathan M. Chase, Brian J. Mcgill

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Little consensus has emerged regarding how proximate and ultimate drivers such as productivity, disturbance and temperature may affect species richness and other aspects of biodiversity. Part of the confusion is that most studies examine species richness at a single spatial scale and ignore how the underlying components of species richness can vary with spatial scale. We provide an approach for the measurement of biodiversity that decomposes changes in species rarefaction curves into proximate components attributed to: (a) the species abundance distribution, (b) density of individuals and (c) the spatial arrangement of individuals. We decompose species richness by comparing spatial and …

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Modeling Streamflow Response To Persistent Drought In A Coastal Tropical Mountainous Watershed, Sierra Nevada De Santa Marta, Colombia, Natalia Hoyos, Alexander Correa-Metrio, Steven M. Jepsen, Beverley Wemple, Santiago Valencia, Matthew Marsik, Rubén Doria Jan 2019

Modeling Streamflow Response To Persistent Drought In A Coastal Tropical Mountainous Watershed, Sierra Nevada De Santa Marta, Colombia, Natalia Hoyos, Alexander Correa-Metrio, Steven M. Jepsen, Beverley Wemple, Santiago Valencia, Matthew Marsik, Rubén Doria

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Droughts constitute natural hazards that affect water supply for ecosystems and human livelihoods. In 2013-2016, the Caribbean experienced the worst drought since the 1950s, and climate projections for the southern Caribbean predict less rainfall by the end of the 21st century. We assessed streamflow response to drought for a watershed in the Colombian Caribbean by analyzing the effects of drought length and land cover on streamflow recovery. We generated a calibrated SWAT model and created annual and monthly drought scenarios from rainfall records. We used our model to predict water yield for selected land covers (wet forest, shade coffee, shrub, …

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Estimation Of The Water Balance Of For A Small Tropical Andean Catchment, Paola Duque-Sarango, Ronald Cajamarca-Rivadeneira, Beverley C. Wemple, Manuel E. Delgado-Fernández Jan 2019

Estimation Of The Water Balance Of For A Small Tropical Andean Catchment, Paola Duque-Sarango, Ronald Cajamarca-Rivadeneira, Beverley C. Wemple, Manuel E. Delgado-Fernández

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

The present study seeks to estimate the water balance for a tropical catchment in the Andes of Ecuador. Temporal variation in precipitation and temperature of the Chaquilcay microcatchment were studied; it is a natural ecosystem situated in the Aguarongo Protected Forest in Gualaceo, Ecuador. Four meteorological stations of the National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (INAMHI-Instituto Nacional de Meteorología e Hidrología) were studied for 33 years (1982-2015), in order to quantify the contributions and losses of water, and statistical analyzes of the time series. To fill and validate the series of precipitation and temperature, a double mass analysis was used …

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Impact Of An Extreme Storm Event On River Corridor Bank Erosion And Phosphorus Mobilization In A Mountainous Watershed In The Northeastern United States, Donald S. Ross, Beverley C. Wemple, Lindsay J. Willson, Courtney M. Balling, Kristen L. Underwood, Scott D. Hamshaw Jan 2019

Impact Of An Extreme Storm Event On River Corridor Bank Erosion And Phosphorus Mobilization In A Mountainous Watershed In The Northeastern United States, Donald S. Ross, Beverley C. Wemple, Lindsay J. Willson, Courtney M. Balling, Kristen L. Underwood, Scott D. Hamshaw

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Movement of sediment, and associated phosphorus, from stream banks to freshwater lakes is predicted to increase with greater frequency of extreme precipitation events. This higher phosphorus load may accelerate harmful algal blooms in affected water bodies, such as Lake Champlain in Vermont, New York, and Québec. In the Mad River, a subwatershed in central Vermont's Lake Champlain Basin, extreme flooding from Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 caused extensive erosion. We measured stream channel change along the main stem between 2008 and 2011 by digitizing available prestorm and poststorm aerial imagery. Soils were sampled post Irene at six active stream erosion …

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From The Anthropocene To Mutual Thriving: An Agenda For Higher Education In The Ecozoic, Ivan Vargas Roncancio, Leah Temper, Joshua Sterlin, Nina L. Smolyar, Shaun Sellers, Maya Moore, Rigo Melgar-Melgar Jan 2019

From The Anthropocene To Mutual Thriving: An Agenda For Higher Education In The Ecozoic, Ivan Vargas Roncancio, Leah Temper, Joshua Sterlin, Nina L. Smolyar, Shaun Sellers, Maya Moore, Rigo Melgar-Melgar

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Higher education in the global North, and exported elsewhere, is complicit in driving the planet's socio-ecological crises by teaching how to most effectively marginalize and plunder Earth and human communities. As students and activists within the academic system, we take a firm stand to arrest this cycle, and to redirect education toward teaching how to create conditions for all life to thrive. In this paper, we articulate a research and education agenda for co-constructing knowledge and wisdom, and propose shifts in the 'ologies from the current, destructive modes to intended regenerative counterparts. We offer to shift from an ontology of …

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Structural Versatility Of The Quasi-Aromatic Möbius Type Zinc(Ii)-Pseudohalide Complexes-Experimental And Theoretical Investigations, Mariusz P. Mitoraj, Farhad Akbari Afkhami, Ghodrat Mahmoudi, Ali Akbar Khandar, Atash V. Gurbanov, Fedor I. Zubkov, Rory Waterman Jan 2019

Structural Versatility Of The Quasi-Aromatic Möbius Type Zinc(Ii)-Pseudohalide Complexes-Experimental And Theoretical Investigations, Mariusz P. Mitoraj, Farhad Akbari Afkhami, Ghodrat Mahmoudi, Ali Akbar Khandar, Atash V. Gurbanov, Fedor I. Zubkov, Rory Waterman

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

In this contribution we report for the first time fabrication, isolation, structural and theoretical characterization of the quasi-aromatic Möbius complexes [Zn(NCS)2LI] (1), [Zn2(μ1,1-N3)2(LI)2][ZnCl3(MeOH)]2·6MeOH (2) and [Zn(NCS)LII]2[Zn(NCS)4]·MeOH (3), constructed from 1,2-diphenyl-1,2-bis((phenyl(pyridin-2-yl)methylene)hydrazono)ethane (LI) or benzilbis(acetylpyridin-2-yl)methylidenehydrazone (LII), respectively, and ZnCl2 mixed with NH4NCS or NaN3. Structures 1-3 are dictated by both the bulkiness of the organic ligand and the nature of the inorganic counter ion. As evidenced from single crystal X-ray diffraction data species 1 has a neutral discrete heteroleptic mononuclear structure, whereas, complexes 2 and 3 exhibit a salt-like structure. Each structure contains a ZnII atom chelated by one tetradentate twisted ligand …

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Draft Aphaenogaster Genomes Expand Our View Of Ant Genome Size Variation Across Climate Gradients, Matthew K. Lau, Aaron M. Ellison, Andrew Nguyen, Clint Penick, Bernice Demarco, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Nathan J. Sanders, Robert R. Dunn, Sara Helms Cahan Jan 2019

Draft Aphaenogaster Genomes Expand Our View Of Ant Genome Size Variation Across Climate Gradients, Matthew K. Lau, Aaron M. Ellison, Andrew Nguyen, Clint Penick, Bernice Demarco, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Nathan J. Sanders, Robert R. Dunn, Sara Helms Cahan

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

Given the abundance, broad distribution, and diversity of roles that ants play in many ecosystems, they are an ideal group to serve as ecosystem indicators of climatic change. At present, only a few whole-genome sequences of ants are available (19 of >16,000 species), mostly from tropical and sub-tropical species. To address this limited sampling, we sequenced genomes of temperate-latitude species from the genus Aphaenogaster, a genus with important seed dispersers. In total, we sampled seven colonies of six species: Aphaenogaster ashmeadi, Aphaenogaster floridana, Aphaenogaster fulva, Aphaenogaster miamiana, Aphaenogaster picea, and Aphaenogaster rudis. The geographic ranges of these species collectively span …

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Spatiotemporal Heterogeneity Of Water Flowpaths Controls Dissolved Organic Carbon Sourcing In A Snow-Dominated, Headwater Catchment, Anna G. Radke, Sarah E. Godsey, Kathleen A. Lohse, Emma P. Mccorkle, Julia Perdrial, Mark S. Seyfried, W. Steven Holbrook Jan 2019

Spatiotemporal Heterogeneity Of Water Flowpaths Controls Dissolved Organic Carbon Sourcing In A Snow-Dominated, Headwater Catchment, Anna G. Radke, Sarah E. Godsey, Kathleen A. Lohse, Emma P. Mccorkle, Julia Perdrial, Mark S. Seyfried, W. Steven Holbrook

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

The non-uniform distribution of water in snowdrift-driven systems can lead to spatial heterogeneity in vegetative communities and soil development, as snowdrifts may locally increase weathering. The focus of this study is to understand the coupled hydrological and biogeochemical dynamics in a heterogeneous, snowdrift-dominated headwater catchment (Reynolds Mountain East, Reynolds Creek Critical Zone Observatory, Idaho, USA). We determine the sources and fluxes of stream water and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) at this site, deducing likely flowpaths from hydrometric and hydrochemical signals of soil water, saprolite water, and groundwater measured through the snowmelt period and summer recession. We then interpret flowpaths using …

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