Soil Science Commons^™

Dissolved Organic Matter Movement Across Lake Superior’S Terrestrial-Stream-Coastal Interface, Karl M. Meingast

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) represents a carbon pool that can be easily translocated between ecosystems with the movement of water. This study examines the controls on DOM quantity and character delivered to Lake Superior primarily during the snowmelt period. We employed long-term stream dissolved organic carbon (DOC) data to determine quantity as well as absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy to analyze DOM structure. Our results indicate that an increasing trend in DOC concentrations, likely driven by decreases in acidity of precipitation, combined with slightly less annual runoff have resulted in relatively constant fluxes of DOM to Lake Superior. Additionally, our study …

Effects Of Wildfire And Post-Fire Salvage Logging On Rill Networks And Sediment Delivery In California Forests, Will Olsen

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

Wildfires can increase soil erosion by orders of magnitude over rates in unburned forests and negatively impact aquatic resources. Rill erosion is a dominant erosion and sediment transport mechanism in burned forests, and hydrologically connected rills can form networks on burned hillslopes. At the swale scale (< 10,000 m²), little is known about how rill networks develop under different burn severities over time, their relationship with sediment yields, and the effect of post-fire salvage logging on rill networks and sediment yields.

The first study assessed rill networks and sediment yields in three burn severities in the inland Coast Range of …