Other Earth Sciences Commons^™

Relating Fires Affect On Forest Succession And Forest's Effect On Fire Severity In One Burned And Unburned Environment, Tyler Jay Seiboldt

Department of Environmental Studies: Undergraduate Student Theses

Wildfires are a natural part of many forest ecosystems and play a vital role in maintaining their health. Wildfires can have a critical influence on a landscapes plant community through their relative frequency, seasonality, and severity. One of the most heavily influenced regions by wildfire disturbance is the Klamath Mountain region of California. I looked at the affect a wildfires severity had on the Whiskey creek valley within the Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. 8 tree species and 4 flower species were examined on both the burned and unburned regions within this valley nearly a year after the wildfire (May 17-23 …

Estimation Of Chlorophyll-A Concentration In Case Ii Waters Using Modis And Meris Data—Successes And Challenges, Wesley Moses, Anatoly Gitelson, Sergey Berdnikov, Vasiliy Povazhnyi

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

We present and discuss here the results of our work using MODIS (moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer) and MERIS (medium resolution imaging spectrometer) satellite data to estimate the concentration of chlorophyll-a (chl-a) in reservoirs of the Dnieper River and the Sea of Azov, which are typical case II waters, i.e., turbid and productive. Our objective was to test the potential of satellite remote sensing as a tool for near-real-time monitoring of chl-a distribution in these water bodies. We tested the performance of a recently developed three-band model, and its special case, a two-band model, which use the reflectance at red and …

Droughtscape- Fall 2009, Kelly Smith

Droughtscape, Quarterly Newsletter of NDMC, 2007-

Drought Monitor Forum to be in Austin, Oct. 7-8

El Niño Likely to Bring More Needed Precipitation

NDMC Welcomes Visiting Chinese Scientist

TX, CA Feeling Worst of Impacts

Grant to Bring Climate Change Ed to Teachers

Speaking of Drought ...

NDMC Takes Message Across Nebraska and World

Heat And Smoke Effects On Red Brome Soil Seed Banks, Scott R. Abella, E. Cayenne Engel

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Publications

Management of exotic plants that are annuals entails understanding and managing their soil seed banks. We completed a study of the influences of heat and liquid smoke on red brome (Bromus rubens) soil seed banks collected from Red Rock Canyon in southern Nevada as part of a collaborative fire effects monitoring effort with Bureau of Land Management - Las Vegas. We collected the samples from the 2005 Loop Fire, where we observed in a monitoring field study that exotic grasses such as red brome were relatively sparse in the first 2-3 years (which were during a dry period) following the …

Geogram 2009, David J. Keeling Editor, Wku Department Of Geography And Geology

Earth, Environmental, and Atmospheric Sciences Publications

No abstract provided.

Droughtscape- Summer 2009, Kelly Smith

Droughtscape, Quarterly Newsletter of NDMC, 2007-

U.S. Drought Monitor Forum, 2009

El Niño Could Bring Wet Winter After Hot Summer

Around the World

Agriculture Hit Hard in California, Texas

Predictable Patterns in Missouri River Basin?

Seeking Low-Flow Effects in Colorado, Southeast

VegDRI Began Coast-to-Coast Coverage in May

Land Rehabilitation Of Construction Damaged Parcel At Santa Fe Road And Hoover Avenue In San Luis Obispo, California, Patience J. West

Earth and Soil Sciences

A plan for the rehabilitation of a construction damaged parcel of land with constructed swale running through it using native plants.

Droughtscape- Spring 2009, Kelly Smith

Droughtscape, Quarterly Newsletter of NDMC, 2007-

U.S. Drought Monitor Publishes Map 500!

Weakening La Niña May Mean Relief for Texas

Upcoming Workshops

Drought Impacts Worst in California, Texas

CoCoRaHS to Request Drought Impact Data, Too

NDMC Adds Researcher

K-12 Students Learn About Drought

Paleomagnetic Behavior Of Volcanic Rocks From Isla Socorro, Mexico, Elise Sbarbori, Lisa Tauxe, Avto Goguitchaichvili, Jaime Urrutia-Fucugauchi, Wendy A. Bohrson

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

The direction and magnitude of the geomagnetic field vary both spatially and temporally and undergo significant departures from that of a geocentric axial dipole. In order to properly characterize persistent behaviors, time-averaged field models must be based on the highest quality data. Here we present full-vector paleomagnetic data for volcanic units exposed in the southeast quadrant of the island of Socorro, Mexico. We carried out a joint expedition between the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma México to Isla Socorro in January of 2005 during which we collected oriented paleomagnetic samples from 21 sites, representing as many …

The Concept Of The Islands Extraction In Satellite Images Using Mathematical Morphology, Przemysław Kupidura

Przemysław Kupidura

The neighborhood is one of the indirect features of the object which may be used in the interpretation of the image. Sometimes, this feature may be essential, what can be shown using an example of islands. According to Oxford Dictionary (Internet edition) island is "a piece of land surrounded by water" so, as we can see, this element of landscape is defined by its neighborhood. The traditional, pixel-based classification is useless in such a case, taking into account only digital numbers of individual pixels. It is impossible to classify islands properly, using this kind of non-contextual algorithms. This paper presents …

The Morphological Filtering Of The Remote Sensing Images For The Noise Reduction Comparing To Traditional Filters, Przemysław Kupidura, Magdalena Jakubiak

Przemysław Kupidura

The advantages and disadvantages of the traditional (non-morphological) filters are commonly known. Focusing only on disadvantages, it is necessary to mention that most of these filters mainly blur noise over the image, making it less visible. That operation causes depreciation of the amount of information on the image rather than increasing its quality. In recent years there has been a trend to develop more efficient procedures for improving image quality. Theoretically, morphological filters have potential in such usage without possessing the drawbacks of traditional filters. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of an evaluation of the …

A Robust, Multisite Holocene History Of Drift Ice Off Northern Iceland: Implications For North Atlantic Climate, John T. Andrews, Dennis Darby, Dennis Eberle, Anne E. Jennings, Matthias Moros, Astrid Ogilvie

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

An important indicator of Holocene climate change is provided by evidence for variations in the extent of drift ice. A proxy for drift ice in Iceland waters is provided by the presence of quartz. Quantitative xray diffraction analysis of the < 2 mm sediment fraction was undertaken on 16 cores from around Iceland. The quartz weight (wt.)% estimates from each core were integrated into 250-yr intervals between −0.05 and 11.7 cal. ka BP. Median quartz wt.% varied between 0.2 and 3.4 and maximum values ranged between 2.8 and 11.8 wt.%. High values were attained in the early Holocene and minimum values were reached 6–7 cal. ka BP. Quartz wt.% then rose steadily during the late Holocene. Our data exhibit no correlation with counts on haematite-stained quartz (HSQ) grains from VM129-191 west of Ireland casting doubt on the ice-transport origin. A pilot study on the provenance of Fe oxide grains in two cores that cover the last 1.3 and 6.1 cal. ka BP indicated a large fraction of the grains between 1 and 6 cal. ka BP were from either Icelandic or presently unsampled sources. However, there was a dramatic increase in Canadian and Russian sources from the Arctic Ocean ~1 cal. ka BP. These data may indicate the beginning of an Arctic Oscillation-like climate mode.

Toxicity Of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (De-71) In Chicken (Gallus Gallus), Mallard (Anas Platyrhynchos), And American Kestrel (Falco Sparverius) Embryos And Hatchlings, Moira A. Mckernan, Barnett A. Rattner, Robert C. Hales, Mary Ann Ottinger

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Embryonic survival, pipping and hatching success, and sublethal biochemical, endocrine, and histological endpoints were examined in hatchling chickens (Gallus gallus), mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), and American kestrels (Falco sparverius) following air cell administration of a pentabrominated diphenyl ether (penta-BDE; DE-71) mixture (0.01–20 µg/g egg) or polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) congener 126 (3,3’,4,4’,5-pentachlorobiphenyl; 0.002 µg/g egg). The penta-BDE decreased pipping and hatching success at concentrations of 10 and 20 µg/g egg in kestrels but had no effect on survival endpoints in chickens or mallards. Sublethal effects in hatchling chickens included ethoxyresorufin-O-dealkylase (EROD) induction and histological …

Droughtscape- Winter 2009, Kelly Smith

Droughtscape, Quarterly Newsletter of NDMC, 2007-

Bastrop TX: Feb. 12 Central CA: Feb. 24, 26

La Niña May Keep West and Gulf Coast Dry

Big Canoes to Launch

2008 in Review

U.S. Feels Drought Impacts in 2008

NDMC Welcomes Widhalm, Sakamoto

Climate Modelers at Workshop Look to Sea Surface Temperatures for Drought Prediction

Structured Decision Making As A Conceptual Framework To Identify Thresholds For Conservation And Management, Julien Martin, Michael C. Runge, James D. Nichols, Bruce C. Lubow, William L. Kendall

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Thresholds and their relevance to conservation have become a major topic of discussion in the ecological literature. Unfortunately, in many cases the lack of a clear conceptual framework for thinking about thresholds may have led to confusion in attempts to apply the concept of thresholds to conservation decisions. Here, we advocate a framework for thinking about thresholds in terms of a structured decision making process. The purpose of this framework is to promote a logical and transparent process for making informed decisions for conservation.

Specification of such a framework leads naturally to consideration of definitions and roles of different kinds …

Climate Trends Of The North American Prairie Pothole Region 1906–2000, Bruce Millett, W. Carter Johnson, Glenn Guntenspergen

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is unique to North America. Its millions of wetlands and abundant ecosystem goods and services are highly sensitive to wide variations of temperature and precipitation in time and space characteristic of a strongly continental climate. Precipitation and temperature gradients across the PPR are orthogonal to each other. Precipitation nearly triples from west to east from approximately 300 mm/year to 900 mm/year, while mean annual temperature ranges from approximately 1◦C in the north to nearly 10◦C in the south. Twentieth-century weather records for 18 PPR weather stations representing 6 ecoregions revealed several trends. The climate generally …

Climate Trends Of The North American Prairie Pothole Region 1906–2000, Bruce Millett, W. Carter Johnson, Glenn R. Guntenspergen

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is unique to North America. Its millions of wetlands and abundant ecosystem goods and services are highly sensitive to wide variations of temperature and precipitation in time and space characteristic of a strongly continental climate. Precipitation and temperature gradients across the PPR are orthogonal to each other. Precipitation nearly triples from west to east from approximately 300 mm/year to 900 mm/year, while mean annual temperature ranges from approximately 1◦C in the north to nearly 10◦C in the south. Twentieth-century weather records for 18 PPR weather stations representing 6 ecoregions revealed several trends. The climate generally …

Structured Decision Making As A Conceptual Framework To Identify Thresholds For Conservation And Management, Julien Martin, Michael C. Runge, James D. Nichols, Bruce C. Lubow, William L. Kendall2

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Threshold and their relevance to conservation have become a major topic of discussion in the ecological literature. Unfortunately, in many cases the lack of a clear conceptual framework for thinking about thresholds in terms of a structured decision making process. The purpose of this framework is to promote a logical and transparent process for making informed decisions for conservation.

Specification of such a framework leads naturally to consideration of definitions and roles of different kinds of thresholds in the process. We distinguish among three categories of thresholds. Ecological thresholds are values of system state variables at which small changes bring …

Possible Sources Of Archaeological Maize Found In Chaco Canyon And Aztec Ruin, New Mexico, Larry Benson, J. R. Stein, H. E. Taylor

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Maize played a major role in Chaco’s interaction with outlying communities in the southern Colorado Plateau. This paper seeks to determine where archaeological corn cobs brought to Chaco Canyon were grown. Strontium-isotope and trace-metal ratios of 180 soil-water and 18 surface-water sites in the Southern Colorado Plateau have revealed possible source areas for some of 37 archaeological corn cobs from Chaco Canyon and 10 archaeological corn cobs from Aztec Ruin, New Mexico. The most probable source areas for cobs that predate the middle-12th-century drought include several Upper Rio Chaco sites (not including Chaco Canyon). There are many potential source areas …

The Neoglacial Landscape And Human History Of Glacier Bay, Glacier Bay National Park And Preserve, Southeast Alaska, Usa, Cathy Connor, Greg Streveler, Austin Post, Daniel Monteith, Wanye Howell

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The Neoglacial landscape of the Huna Tlingit homeland in Glacier Bay is recreated through new interpretations of the lower Bay’s fjordal geomorphology, late Quaternary geology and its ethnographic landscape. Geological interpretation is enhanced by 38 radiocarbon dates compiled from published and unpublished sources, as well as 15 newly dated samples. Neoglacial changes in ice positions, outwash and lake extents are reconstructed for c. 5500–200 cal. yr ago, and portrayed as a set of three landscapes at 1600–1000, 500–300 and 300–200 cal. yr ago. This history reveals episodic ice advance towards the Bay mouth, transforming it from a fjordal seascape into …

History Of Wildlife Toxicology, Barnett A. Rattner

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The field of wildlife toxicology can be traced to

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Initial

reports included unintentional poisoning of birds from

ingestion of spent lead shot and predator control agents,

alkali poisoning of waterbirds, and die-offs from maritime

oil spills. With the advent of synthetic pesticides in the

1930s and 1940s, effects of DDT and other pesticides were

investigated in free-ranging and captive wildlife. In

response to research findings in the US and UK, and the

publication of Silent Spring in 1962, public debate on the

hazards of pollutants arose and national contaminant

monitoring programs were initiated. …

Riparian And Associated Habitat Characteristics Related To Nutrient Concentrations And Biological Responses Of Small Streams In Selected Agricultural Areas, United States, 2003–04, Ronald B. Zelt, Mark D. Munn

Publications of the US Geological Survey

Physical factors, including both in-stream and riparian habitat characteristics that limit biomass or otherwise regulate aquatic biological condition, have been identified by previous studies. However, linking the ecological significance of nutrient enrichment to habitat or landscape factors that could allow for improved management of streams has proved to be a challenge in many regions, including agricultural landscapes, where many ecological stressors are strong and the variability among watersheds typically is large. Riparian and associated habitat characteristics were sampled once during 2003–04 for an intensive ecological and nutrients study of small perennial streams in five contrasting agricultural landscapes across the United …