Earth Sciences Commons^™

Production, Utilization And Quality Of Irrigated Grasses And Legumes In The Mountain West Usa Under Mob Stocking Or Clipping, Jennifer W. Macadam, Brody Maughan, Xin Dai

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Feed is the most costly input for US ruminant livestock production systems, and increasing the utilization efficiency of irrigated forage systems can improve system profitability. This study assessed the production, utilization and quality of 22 intensively managed perennial grasses and legumes. Forages were cultivated as monocultures under irrigation and subjected to similarly intense clipping or mob stocking for two years at six-week intervals between May and September. Grasses and legumes were randomly assigned to 22 adjacent 1.5-m-wide by 9-m-long subplots within each whole plot, and pairs of whole plots were randomly assigned to grazing or clipping management. Seven grasses did …

Cambrian Trilobites From The Nounan Dolomite And Lower St. Charles Formation (Upper Marjuman To Lower Sunwaptan; Miaolingian To Furongian Series), Smithfield Canyon, Northern Utah, Frederick A. Sundberg, Hannah R. Cothren, Carol M. Dehler

Geosciences Faculty Publications

The trilobite faunas that occur with the Steptoean Positive Isotope Carbon Excursion (SPICE) at Smithfield Canyon, Utah, have been reported, but not illustrated. Given the importance of the SPICE at this section for international correlations, the trilobites from new collections from the upper Nounan Dolomite to lower St. Charles Formation at Smithfield Canyon are reported herein and integrated with the previously reported taxa. Trilobite assemblages indicate that the upper Cedaria to the Ellipsocephaloides biozones (Miaolingian Series, Guzhangian Stage to Furongian Series, Jiangshanian Stage) are present stratigraphically below or above the SPICE.

Some of the taxa reported herein may represent new …

The Irrigation Efficiency Trap: Rational Farm-Scale Decisions Can Lead To Poor Hydrologic Outcomes At The Basin Scale, Christina N. Morrisett, Robert W. Van Kirk, London O. Bernier, Andrea L. Holt, Chloe B. Perel, Sarah E. Null

Watershed Sciences Faculty Publications

Agricultural irrigation practices have changed through time as technology has enabled more efficient conveyance and application. In some agricultural regions, irrigation can contribute to incidental aquifer recharge important for groundwater return flows to streams. The Henrys Fork Snake River, Idaho (United States) overlies a portion of the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer, where irrigated agriculture has occurred for over a century. Using irrigator interviews, aerial and satellite imagery, and statistical streamflow analysis, we document the impact of farm-scale decisions on basin-scale hydrology. Motivated to improve economic efficiency, irrigators began converting from surface to center-pivot sprinkler irrigation in the 1950s, with rapid …

Evaluation Of Temperature-Index And Energy-Balance Snow Models For Hydrological Applications In Operational Water Supply Forecasts, Tian Gan, David G. Tarboton, Tseganeh Z. Gichamo

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

In the western United States, snow accumulation, storage, and ablation affect seasonal runoff. Thus, the prediction of snowmelt is essential to improve the reliability of water supply forecasts to guide water allocation and operational decisions. The current method used at the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center (CBRFC) couples the SNOW-17 temperature index snow model and the Sacramento Soil Moisture Accounting (SAC-SMA) runoff model in a lumped approach. Limitations in parameter transferability and calibration requirements for changing conditions with the temperature-index model motivated this research, in which new avenues were investigated to assess and prototype the application of an energy-balance snow …

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (Pah) Contamination In Urban Soils: Testing And Management, Melissa Chilinski, Paul Grossl, Melanie Stock

All Current Publications

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are a large class of chemicals and common environmental pollutants. Understanding which PAHs and soil test levels may impact human health is an important aspect of gardening and micro-farming, particularly in urban environments that are at increased risk of soil contamination. Land use histories, such as sites associated with vehicle and industrial emissions, burning, and dumping, can elevate concentrations of PAHs in soils. This fact sheet provides instructions on assessing your site for PAHs that may present health risks to humans, testing the soil, and first steps for interpretation and management.

Digital Atlas Of The Vascular Plants Of Utah, R. Douglas Ramsey, Leila M. Shultz, Wanda Lindquist, Chris Garrard, Mindy Wheeler

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Locations of 74,755 vascular plant vouchers representing 2,425 species were digitized into a spatial database from the Atlas of the Vascular Plants of Utah (Albee et al. 1988). Source maps consisted of 1:6,000,000-scale shaded relief maps of Utah with points representing collection locations by species. Location points, representing 1 or more specimens, were transposed onto these maps from the approximately 400,000 herbarium records of 3 major universities and federal land management agencies.

Pariette Wetlands Water, Sediment And Plant Total Selenium Concentration, Colleen P. Jones, Paul R. Grossl, Astrid R. Jacobson

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We measured total Selenium in plants from July through November of 2012 and in water, macroinvertebrates, plants, and sediments from July of 2014 from Pariette Wetlands, Utah, U.S.A. to test for spatial, temporal, plant species and plant tissue distribution of Selenium.

Trace Element Contamination In Urban Soils: Testing And Management, Melissa Chilinski, Melanie Stock, Paul R. Grossl, Eli Oliver

All Current Publications

Trace elements, often referred to as heavy metals, naturally occur in the soil at low levels. Certain land use histories can elevate the concentrations of trace elements to levels that present health risks. Understanding which elements and soil test values may impact human or crop health is an important aspect of gardening and micro-farming, particularly in urban environments that are at increased risk of soil contamination. This fact sheet provides instructions on interpreting soil test results for trace elements through the Total Element Composition EPA 3050B Soil Test (#S19) at Utah State University Analytical Laboratory.

Simulating The Storm Environment Responsible For Nepal's First Observed Tornado, Jonathan David Douglas Meyer, Binod Pokharel, Robert R. Gillies

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

A high-resolution numerical forecast model was used to simulate the meteorological conditions leading up to the March 31st, 2019 severe weather event that produced Nepal's first-ever observed tornado. The sparse meteorologic observations in the region capturing the storm environment limit the ability to anticipate another similar situation should the particular set of conditions present themselves again. This study presents a multifaced view of the storm environment through 1) a synoptic perspective provided by the Global Data Assimilation System (GDAS) reanalysis dataset and 2) a trio of progressively higher resolution one-way nested simulations (12 km–4km–1km) driven by GDAS boundary conditions to …

Moderate Plant–Soil Feedbacks Have Small Effects On The Biodiversity–Productivity Relationship: A Field Experiment, Josephine Grenzer, Andrew Kulmatiski, Leslie Forero, Anne Ebeling, Nico Eisenhauer, Jeanette Norton

Wildland Resources Student Research

Plant–soil feedback (PSF) has gained attention as a mechanism promoting plant growth and coexistence. However, most PSF research has measured monoculture growth in greenhouse conditions. Translating PSFs into effects on plant growth in field communities remains an important frontier for PSF research. Using a 4-year, factorial field experiment in Jena, Germany, we measured the growth of nine grassland species on soils conditioned by each of the target species (i.e., 72 PSFs). Plant community models were parameterized with or without these PSF effects, and model predictions were compared to plant biomass production in diversity–productivity experiments. Plants created soils that changed subsequent …

Collaborative Research: Deciphering The Role Of Extreme Rainstorms And Hydroclimatic Regime On Arid Escarpment Retreat And Sub-Cliff Slope Evolution, Joel Pederson

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Collaborative Research: A Fossil Ecosystem Under The Ice: Deciphering The Glacial And Vegetation History Of Nothwest Greenland Using Long Lost Camp Century Basal Sediment, Tammy M. Rittenour

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Plant-Soil Feedbacks Help Explain Biodiversity-Productivity Relationships, Leslie E. Forero, Andrew Kulmatiski, Josephine Grenzer, Jeanette M. Norton

Wildland Resources Student Research

Species-rich plant communities can produce twice as much aboveground biomass as monocultures, but the mechanisms remain unresolved. We tested whether plant-soil feedbacks (PSFs) can help explain these biodiversity-productivity relationships. Using a 16-species, factorial field experiment we found that plants created soils that changed subsequent plant growth by 27% and that this effect increased over time. When incorporated into simulation models, these PSFs improved predictions of plant community growth and explained 14% of overyielding. Here we show quantitative, field-based evidence that diversity maintains productivity by suppressing plant disease. Though this effect alone was modest, it helps constrain the role of factors, …

Digital Appendix Of Masters Thesis "Constraining Deformation Mechanisms Of Damage Zones: A Case Study Of The Shallow San Andreas Fault At Elizabeth Lake, Southern California, James P. Evans, Caroline Studnicky

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We performed macroscopic, optical petrographic, scanning electron microscopy, and geochemical analyses on rock core acquired across the San Andreas Fault at Elizabeth Lake, California, in order to understand the distribution and accommodation of fault-related slip and energy within the shallow damage zone of this continental scale strike-slip fault. We characterized the deformation structures, alteration textures, and elemental variabilities to constrain the properties of the uppermost ~2 km fault-related damage zone at this site. We identified evidence for coseismic slip in the form of pulverized rocks, injection veins, clay-clast aggregates, and pseudotachylyte, and aseismic slip through calcite twins, dilatant vein fills, …

Collaborative Research: Identifying Shallow Slow Slip Using Hematite Tectures And (U-Th)/He Thermochonometry Of Exhumed And Experimental Faults, Alexis Ault

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Collaborative Research: Quantifying Watershed Dynamics In Snow Dominated Mountainous Karst Watersheds Using Hybrid Physically Based And Deep Learning Models, Bethany T. Neilson

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Computational Modeling For Decision-Making Under Climate Change Uncertainty: Reservoir Simulation Game, Julianne Quinn

All ECSTATIC Materials

Almost every decision you make is under uncertainty. Will I need a rain jacket in the afternoon? Will they say yes if I ask them out? Is 1 hour enough time to finish this assignment? Oftentimes, we can use computational modeling to simulate different scenarios of what might happen in the future to inform what decisions are best on average, or what decisions minimize the worst case outcome. For example, you could decide what player to draft for your Fantasy Football team by simulating player performance. In this activity, we will simulate how much water to release from a dam …

Collaborative Research: Constraining The Tempo And Dynamics Of Cambrian Earth Systems In Western Laurentia, Carol M. Dehler

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Fire Suppression Impacts On Fuels And Fire Intensity In The Western U.S.: Insights From Archaeological Luminescence Dating In Northern New Mexico, Christopher I. Roos, Tammy M. Rittenour, Thomas W. Swetnam, Rachel A. Loehman, Kacy L. Hollenback, Matthew J. Liebmann, Dana Drake Rosenstein

Geosciences Faculty Publications

Here, we show that the last century of fire suppression in the western U.S. has resulted in fire intensities that are unique over more than 900 years of record in ponderosa pine forests (Pinus ponderosa). Specifically, we use the heat-sensitive luminescence signal of archaeological ceramics and tree-ring fire histories to show that a recent fire during mild weather conditions was more intense than anything experienced in centuries of frequent wildfires. We support this with a particularly robust set of optically stimulated luminescence measurements on pottery from an archaeological site in northern New Mexico. The heating effects of an October 2012 …

Structural Controls On Crustal Fluid Circulation And Hot Spring Geochemistry Above A Flat‐Slab Subduction Zone, Peru, Brandt E. Scott, Dennis L. Newell, M. J. Jessup, T. A. Grambling, C. A. Shaw

Geosciences Faculty Publications

Hot spring geochemistry from the Cordillera Blanca and Cordillera Huayhuash, Peru, reveal the influence of crustal‐scale structures on geothermal fluid circulation in an amagmatic region located above a flat‐slab subduction zone. To test the influence of contrasting modes of faulting in these regions, springs were targeted along the Cordillera Blanca detachment fault, within its hanging wall, in the footwall of the detachment, and in the Cordillera Huayhuash. Hot springs along the Cordillera Blanca detachment fault zone are associated with recent extension and normal faulting, and those in its footwall and the Cordillera Huayhuash are located in the Marañon fold and …

Developing And Implementing A 100% Renewable Electricity Resolution: A Research-Based Framework, Emily E. Skill, Roslynn Brain Mccann, Sarah C. Klain

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While it may seem that the efforts of local governments have only a marginal impact on the global issue of climate change, local action can spread to generate large-scale change. Local action can inspire other communities to adopt policies, creating the potential to expand and form regional action on climate change. Furthermore, local policies can influence state and federal policies. This guide will walk you through a five-step framework that was developed from the results of a qualitative research study that explored how three Utah cities, Salt Lake City, Park City, and Moab, successfully adopted 100% renewable electricity resolutions.

Empirical Models For Predicting Water And Heat Flow Properties Of Permafrost Soils, Michael T. O'Connor, M. Bayani Cardenas, Stephen B. Ferencz, Yue Wu, Bethany T. Neilson, Jingyi Chen, George W. Kling

Publications

Warming and thawing in the Arctic are promoting biogeochemical processing and hydrologic transport in carbon‐rich permafrost and soils that transfer carbon to surface waters or the atmosphere. Hydrologic and biogeochemical impacts of thawing are challenging to predict with sparse information on arctic soil hydraulic and thermal properties. We developed empirical and statistical models of soil properties for three main strata in the shallow, seasonally thawed soils above permafrost in a study area of ~7,500 km² in Alaska. The models show that soil vertical stratification and hydraulic properties are predictable based on vegetation cover and slope. We also show that …

Snow Processes In Mountain Forests: Interception Modeling For Coarse-Scale Applications, Nora Helbig, David Moeser, Michaela Teich, Laure Vincent, Yves Lejeune, Jean-Emmanuel Sicart, Jean-Matthieu Monnet

Wildland Resources Student Research

Snow interception by the forest canopy controls the spatial heterogeneity of subcanopy snow accumulation leading to significant differences between forested and nonforested areas at a variety of scales. Snow intercepted by the forest canopy can also drastically change the surface albedo. As such, accurately modeling snow interception is of importance for various model applications such as hydrological, weather, and climate predictions. Due to difficulties in the direct measurements of snow interception, previous empirical snow interception models were developed at just the point scale. The lack of spatially extensive data sets has hindered the validation of snow interception models in different …

Hematite (U-Th)/He Thermochronometry Detects Asperity Flash Heating During Laboratory Earthquakes, Melissa S. Chapot, Alexis K. Ault, Greg Hirth, Robert G. Mcdermott

Geosciences Faculty Publications

Evidence for coseismic temperature rise that induces dynamic weakening is challenging to directly observe and quantify in natural and experimental fault rocks. Hematite (U-Th)/He (hematite He) thermochronometry may serve as a fault-slip thermometer, sensitive to transient high temperatures associated with earthquakes. We test this hypothesis with hematite deformation experiments at seismic slip rates, using a rotary-shear geometry with an annular ring of silicon carbide (SiC) sliding against a specular hematite slab. Hematite is characterized before and after sliding via textural and hematite He analyses to quantify He loss over variable experimental conditions. Experiments yield slip surfaces localized in an ∼5–30-µm-thick …

Collaborative Research: Quantifying Crustal Hydration Effects In The Colorado Plateau From Xenoliths, Dennis Newell

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Crustal Composition And Moho Variations Of The Central And Eastern United States: Improving Resolutionand Geologic Interpretation Of Earthscope Usarray Seismic Images Using Gravity, H. L. Zhang, D. Ravat, Anthony R. Lowry

Geosciences Faculty Publications

EarthScope's USArray Transportable Array has shortcomings for the purpose of interpreting geologic features of wavelengths less than the Transportable Array station spacing, but these can be overcome by using higher spatial resolution gravity data. In this study, we exploit USArray receiver functions to reduce nonuniqueness in the interpretation of gravity anomalies. We model gravity anomalies from previously derived density variations of sedimentary basins, crustal V_p/V_s variation, Moho variation, and upper mantle density variation derived from body wave imaging informed by surface wave tomography to estimate V_p/V_s. Although average densities and density contrasts for …

Mariana Serpentinite Mud Volcanism Exhumes Subducted Seamount Materials: Implications For The Origin Of Life., Patricia Fryer, C. Geoffrey Wheat, Trevor Williams, Christopher Kelley, Kevin Johnson, Jeffrey Ryan, Walter Kurz, John W. Shervais, Elmar Albers, Barbara Bekins, Baptiste Debret, Jianghong Deng, Yanhui Dong, Philip Eickenbusch, Emanuelle Frery, Yuji Ichiyama, Richard Kevorkian, Et Al.

Geosciences Faculty Publications

The subduction of seamounts and ridge features at convergent plate boundaries plays an important role in the deformation of the overriding plate and influences geochemical cycling and associated biological processes. Active serpentinization of forearc mantle and serpentinite mud volcanism on the Mariana forearc (between the trench and active volcanic arc) provides windows on subduction processes.  Here, we present (1) the first observation of an extensive exposure of an undeformed Cretaceous seamount currently being subducted at the Mariana Trench inner slope; (2) vertical deformation of the forearc region related to subduction of Pacific Plate seamounts and thickened crust; (3) recovered Ocean …

Ueb Parallel: Distributed Snow Accumulation And Melt Modeling Using Parallel Computing, Tseganeh Z. Gichamo, David G. Tarboton

Publications

The Utah Energy Balance (UEB) model supports gridded simulation of snow processes over a watershed. To enhance computational efficiency, we developed two parallel versions of the model, one using the Message Passing Interface (MPI) and the other using NVIDIA's CUDA code on Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Evaluation of the speed-up and efficiency of the MPI version shows that the effect of input/output (IO) operations on the parallel model performance increases as the number of processor cores increases. As a result, although the computation kernel scales well with the number of cores, the efficiency of the parallel code as a whole …

Climate Diagnostics Of The Extreme Floods In Peru During Early 2017, Rackhun Son, Shih-Yu Simon Wang, Wan-Ling Tseng, Christian W. Barreto Schuler, Emily Becker, Jin-Ho Yoon

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

From January through March 2017, a series of extreme precipitation events occurred in coastal Peru, causing severe floods with hundreds of human casualties and billions of dollars in economic losses. The extreme precipitation was a result of unusually strong recurrent patterns of atmospheric and oceanic conditions, including extremely warm coastal sea surface temperatures (SST) and weakened trade winds. These climatic features and their causal relationship with the Peruvian precipitation were examined. Diagnostic analysis and model experiments suggest that an atmospheric forcing in early 2017, which was moderately linked to the Trans-Niño Index (TNI), initiated the local SST warming along coastal …

A 100-M-Scale Modeling Study Of A Gale Event On The Lee Side Of A Long Narrow Mountain, Halie Xue, Jian Li, Tingting Qian, Hongping Gu

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

In this study, a gale event that occurred on the lee side of a long narrow mountain was investigated, together with the associated mountain flows, using a realistic-case large-eddy simulation (LES) that is based on the Weather Research and Forecasting Model. The mountain is located on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau, where approximately 58 gales occur annually, mostly in the afternoons during the winter season. Benefitting from realistic topography and high horizontal resolution as fine as 111 m, the LES can replicate features similar to the wind fields observed during the gale period. Investigation of the early morning wind structure over …