Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Commons^™

Genetic Control And Geo-Climate Adaptation Of Pod Dehiscence Provide Novel Insights Into The Soybean Domestication And Expansion, Jiaoping Zhang, Asheesh K. Singh

Agronomy Publications

Loss of pod dehiscence is a key step during soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] domestication. Genome-wide association analysis for soybean shattering identified loci harboring Pdh1, NST1A and SHAT1-5. Pairwise epistatic interactions were observed, and the dehiscent Pdh1 overcomes the resistance conferred by NST1A or SHAT1-5 locus, indicating that Pdh1 predominates pod dehiscence expression. Further candidate gene association analysis identified a nonsense mutation in NST1A associated with pod dehiscence. Allele composition and population differential analyses unraveled that Pdh1 and NST1A, but not SHAT1-5, underwent domestication and modern breeding selections. Geographic analysis showed that in Northeast China (NEC), indehiscence at both Pdh1 ...

Estimating Watershed Residence Times In Artificially-Drained Landscapes And Relation To Nutrient Concentrations, Emma Beck, Lisa Welp, Alexandra L. Meyer

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Nutrient runoff from agricultural lands feeds harmful algae blooms that create a variety of problems in freshwater ecosystems. In order to reduce the effects of this nutrient runoff, Best Management Practices (BMPs) are being put in place in agricultural lands. Most of these BMPs focus on slowing down the flow of water through the watershed to give nutrient concentrations time to deplete before the water flows to the stream or river. However, the effectiveness of these BMPs are highly unknown and the process of monitoring nutrient runoff is often complex and costly. The data in this study consists of 7 ...

A Quantitative Analysis Of Calcareous Nannofossils Across A Late Oligocene Paleolatitude Transect Of The North Atlantic Ocean, William Barrett Clark

Dissertations & Theses in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Samples from ODP Sites 926, 628, 563, U1406, 647, and 918, were analyzed quantitatively across a paleolatitude transect of the North Atlantic Ocean to determine the paleolatitudinal distribution of calcareous nannofossils in the Late Oligocene and the effects of that distribution on biostratigraphic resolution. Detrended Correspondence Analysis (DCA), a Temperature index (TI), and the Shannon Diversity Index (H), were used to examine the paleoenvironmental gradients which exerted the most control over the distribution of species and their abundances. The temperature index correlates significantly to the first axis of the DCA, suggesting that thermal controls were the most important factor in ...

Assessment Of Snow Atmosphere Forcing During Central Idaho Atmospheric Rivers, William Rudisill

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Atmospheric Rivers (AR) are globally occuring weather features and the primary mechanism through which water vapor moves from the tropics and subtropics towards the mid-latitudes, doing so at rates comparable to the world’s largest terrestrial rivers. AR that encounter mountains often cause extreme precipitation in the form of rain and snow, high winds, and flooding in many watersheds. They account for as much as 20-30% of cool season precipitation in the central Idaho Mountains. In the Northern Hemisphere, seasonal snow cover during Winter and Spring months is the most variable land surface component in space and time, and acts ...

Antipredatory Escape Behaviors Of Two Benthic Ctenophores In South Florida, Peter W. Glynn, Brian Coffman, Jeongran Vanderwoude, Nicolas Martinez, Joshua H. Dominguez, Julie M. Gross, Dorothy-Ellen A. Renegar

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Benthic ctenophores, members of the family Coeloplanidae (Order Platyctenida, Phylum Ctenophora) are more widespread and abundant in tropical and subtropical marine environments than formerly recognized. Coeloplanid ctenophores are members of the most speciose family of benthic ctenophores, with 33 recognized species of Coeloplana and one species of the genus Vallicula (Mills 1998). The majority of coeloplanids are ectosymbionts of algae and diverse benthic invertebrates (Matsumoto 1999, Alamaru et al. 2015). Hundreds to thousands of individuals can occupy preferred habitats in < 1 m² of substrate patches. Galt (1998) noted Vallicula multiformis inhabiting algae in Hawaii at population densities as high as 10 ...

Developing A Probabilistic Heavy-Rainfall Guidance Forecast Model For Great Lakes Cities, Cory Kevin Rothstein

Theses and Dissertations

A method for predicting the probability of exceeding specific warm-season (April-October) 0-24 hour precipitation thresholds is developed based upon daily maximums of meteorological parameters. North American Regional Reanalysis and Daily Unified Precipitation data from 2002-2017 were used to gather meteorological data for the Milwaukee and Chicago County Warning Areas. Individual artificial neural networks and multiple logistic regressions were conducted for daily rainfall thresholds above 0.5'', 1'', 1.5'' and 2'' to determine the probability of threshold exceedances for each County Warning Area. The most important parameters were 1000-500 hPa specific humidity, vertical velocities at various levels, high cloud cover ...

Using Advanced Post-Processing Methods With The Hrrr-Tle To Improve The Prediction Of Cold Season Precipitation Type, Timothy Thielke

Theses and Dissertations

In this study we explore advanced statistical methods with the operational High-Resolution Rapid Refresh Model (HRRR) Time-Lagged Ensemble (TLE) to improve the prediction of cold season precipitation type. TLEs are a computationally efficient method to provide a slightly improved probabilistic forecast as the differences between model runs are an approximation of initial condition uncertainty. We apply evolutionary programming, weight-decay bias correction, and Bayesian Model Combination with fifteen HRRR forecast variables that potentially relate to precipitation type for station locations in the contiguous United States that are along and to the east of 100 W longitude to obtain probabilistic precipitation type ...

An Investigation Of The Conditional Practical Predictability Of The 31 May 2013 Heavy-Rain-Producing Mesoscale Convective System, Aidan Kuroski

Theses and Dissertations

On 31 May 2013, strong thunderstorms initiated in west-central Oklahoma with one of the storms eventually creating a very strong tornado near El Reno, OK. The storms then grew upscale into a quasi-stationary mesoscale convective system that produced prolonged heavy rainfall that led to severe flooding across parts of Oklahoma, including the Oklahoma City metropolitan area. A 50-member ensemble of short range (0-24 h) forecasts was conducting using a set of initial conditions generated via cycled data assimilation to quantify event predictability and identify forecast sensitivities, primarily with CI and initial upscale growth. Both a composite and ensemble sensitivity analysis ...

Influence Of Global Atmospheric Circulation Variations On Weather And Climate Extremes, Yen-Heng Lin

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Global warming and climate change deeply influence weather and climate extremes, causing substantial property damage and loss every year around the world. Given the importance of heating differences between low-latitude and Arctic regions, which produce heat sources and cold sources that each influence global circulations, we investigate three extreme weather events in different regions in order to better understand the possible connections between extreme events and global circulation changes.

This study begins with climate variations in the low-latitude western North Pacific. In early summer, the timing of the wet season has shifted from late May to early June since 1979 ...

The Energy Yield Of Global Crops 1961-2016, Quinn Montana

Theses and Dissertations

It is often suggested that world food production must increase by 70%-100% or more by the year 2050 if we are to feed the anticipated world population at that time. To evaluate this claim, global crop production from 1961 to 2016 was inventoried using publicly available data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). To determine the adequacy of global crop output for humanity, annual global food crop production data (T y-1) were converted to energy yield in kilojoules (KJ y-1). These data were then compared to the annual metabolic energy requirement of the global human population ...

Estimating Watershed Mercury Contribution To Lake Fort Smith State Park, Arkansas, Usa, William Miles Harmon

Theses and Dissertations

Mercury contamination associated with human activities poses global human health and environmental risks. A fish-consumption advisory has been in effect at Lake Fort Smith in central west Arkansas for more than a decade due to observed methylmercury concentrations in fish tissue. Lake Fort Smith is an important municipal drinking water supply and recreational resource. Water samples from the majority contributing tributary stream, Frog Bayou creek, were collected periodically, under differing hydrologic conditions in order to quantify the allochthonous mercury load delivered to the lake. Temperature, specific conductance, and turbidity data were collected and used to estimate dissolved organic carbon, methylmercury ...

Towards The Prediction Of Climate Extremes With Attribution Analysis Through Climate Diagnostics And Modeling: Cases From Asia To North America, Boniface Opoku Fosu

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project summarizes the findings of research organized in two parts. The first involved the characterization of changes in the variability of climate that lead to extreme events. The second focused on the predictability of extreme climate on time-scales ranging from short forecast lead-times to long-lead climate predictions exceeding a year.

Initial studies focused on three interrelated, yet regionally unique extreme climate phenomena. First, the relationship between increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and particulate matter (PM) concentration in basin terrain was investigated. Next, we evaluated changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation associated with two climate phenomena at either extreme side of ...

Recovering Legacy Geological Data Into A Geospatial Database Product: An Example From Baja California Norte, MéXico, Alexander C. Audet

Honors College

This project develops a workflow for the extraction of legacy geological map data using a case study in the Baja California Norte, México by four workers over forty years. This project is unique from other digitization efforts worldwide because the data were already in an unregistered vector format, instead of a raster format. Thus, the methodology used in this project took advantage of this digital format by writing arcpy scripts for use inside of ArcMap, and using database feature manipulation software, in order to streamline the data extraction process, with the goal being to develop methods for dealing with ...

Seasonal Occurrence, Relative Abundance, And Migratory Movements Of Juvenile Sandbar Sharks, Carcharhinus Plumbeus, In Winyah Bay, South Carolina, Caroline Collatos

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Winyah Bay, located on the coast of South Carolina, is the fourth largest U.S. estuary by discharge rate (Voulgaris et al. 2002), and provides an annually used habitat for juvenile C. plumbeus (Abel et al. 2006, Gary 2009). From May to September 2016 and 2017, we set a total of 303 bottom longlines in middle and lower Winyah Bay to assess sex ratios, size distributions, and catch per unit effort (CPUE), as well as the potential influence of abiotic parameters on CPUE. A subset of eleven juvenile C. plumbeus was tagged with VEMCO (V16-4H) acoustic transmitters to analyze seasonal ...

Semi-Quantitative Assessment On Winyah Bay's Microplastic Contamination Levels, Samantha Ladewig

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Although there is much concern globally regarding microplastic contamination in aquatic environments, there is little documentation on microplastic contamination concentrations within South Carolina inland waters and coastal areas. Specifically, Winyah Bay, SC should be of high priority for microplastic contamination evaluations as it is the third largest drainage basin (47,060 km2) and the second largest (157 km2) estuarine system on the east coast of the United States. Today, the general influencing physical factors on microplastic transport are mostly known by the scientific community, however, transport and deposition patterns of microplastics heavily vary by location depending on various physical, chemical ...

Hydrodynamic Drivers Of Dissolved Oxygen Variability Within A Highly Developed Tidal Creek In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Douglas Matthew Pastore

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Erosion and water quality degradation have been observed in Singleton Swash in Myrtle Beach, SC, and have been hypothesized to be related to migration of the beach-face channel. Dredging this channel temporarily fixes erosional threats to nearby infrastructure but the effects on water quality are not well understood. It is hypothesized that variations in dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration (used here as a proxy for water quality) within the water column are related to changes in vertical mixing and transport due to oceanic tidal forcing. This study utilizes current meters, pressure sensors, and optical DO probes to measure and study the ...

Impact Of Data Selection On The Accuracy Of Atmospheric Refractivity Inversions Performed Over Marine Surfaces, Ian Joseph Matsko

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Within the Earth’s atmosphere there is a planetary boundary layer that extends from the surface to roughly 1 km above the surface. Within this planetary boundary layer exists the marine atmospheric boundary layer, which is a complex turbulent surface layer that extends from the sea surface to roughly 100 m in altitude. The turbulent nature of this layer combined with the interactions across the air-sea interface cause ever changing environmental conditions within it, including atmospheric properties that affect the index of refraction, or atmospheric refractivity. Variations in atmospheric refractivity lead to many types of anomalous propagation phenomena of electromagnetic ...

Effect Of Aerosol Distributions On Precipitation Patterns Needed For A Rapid Ice Age, Steven M. Gollmer

Steven M. Gollmer, Ph.D.

Introduced in the Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris (1961) and fleshed out by Oard (1979) a model for an ice age in the wake of the Genesis flood was used to explain the evidence of glaciation in Canada and the United States without resorting to eons of time. It was proposed that this rapid ice age was the consequence of post flood warm oceans, barren land and volcanic aerosols. The impact of warm oceans was simulated by Vardiman (1998) and Gollmer (2013) using climate models. Although warm oceans increase precipitation in the Arctic, global surface temperatures become unbearably hot ...

Effect Of Aerosol Distributions On Precipitation Patterns Needed For A Rapid Ice Age, Steven M. Gollmer

The Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism

Introduced in the Genesis Flood by Whitcomb and Morris (1961) and fleshed out by Oard (1979) a model for an ice age in the wake of the Genesis flood was used to explain the evidence of glaciation in Canada and the United States without resorting to eons of time. It was proposed that this rapid ice age was the consequence of post flood warm oceans, barren land and volcanic aerosols. The impact of warm oceans was simulated by Vardiman (1998) and Gollmer (2013) using climate models. Although warm oceans increase precipitation in the Arctic, global surface temperatures become unbearably hot ...

The Impact Of Mount Washington On The Height Of The Boundary Layer And The Vertical Structure Of Temperature And Moisture, Eric Kelsey, Adriana Bailey, Georgia Murray

Faculty Scholarship & Creative Works

Discrimination of the type of air mass along mountain slopes can be a challenge and is not commonly performed, but is critical for identifying factors responsible for influencing montane weather, climate, and air quality. A field campaign to measure air mass type and transitions on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire, USA was performed on 19 August 2016. Meteorological observations were taken at the summit and at several sites along the east and west slopes. Ozone concentrations were measured at the summit and on the valley floor. Additionally, water vapor stable isotopes were measured from a truck that drove ...