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Evaluating Soil Loss From Ephemeral Gullies With Photogrammetry, Chinthaka B. Weerasekara

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

No abstract provided.

Glacial Deposits, Vol. 44, 2019, Department Of Geography, Geology, And The Environment

Glacial Deposits

Newsletter of the Department of Geography, Geology, and the Environment

Floodplains Provide Important Amphibian Habitat Despite Multiple Ecological Threats, Meredith Holgerson, Adam Duarte, Marc P. Hayes, Michael J. Adams, Julie A. Tyson, Keith A. Douville, Angela L. Strecker

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Floodplain ponds and wetlands are productive and biodiverse ecosystems, yet they face multiple threats including altered hydrology, land use change, and non-native species. Protecting and restoring important floodplain ecosystems requires understanding how organisms use these habitats and respond to altered environmental conditions. We developed Bayesian models to evaluate occupancy of six amphibian species across 103 off-channel aquatic habitats in the Chehalis River floodplain, Washington State, USA. The basin has been altered by changes in land use, reduced river–wetland connections, and the establishment of non-native American bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana = Lithobates catesbeianus) and centrarchid fishes, all of which we hypothesized could …

Cosmic Ray Sensors For The Continuous Measurement Of Arctic Snow Accumulation And Melt, Anton Jitnikovitch

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In the Arctic, winter persists for much of the year, resulting in a hydrological system that is primarily regulated by snow and snowmelt runoff, and has important implications on vegetation, animals, and on the thermal regime of the active layer and permafrost. Snow water equivalent (SWE) measurements such as remote sensing techniques provide coarse resolution data, while snow surveys and snow-pits are labour intensive, have limited spatial coverage and do not provide a continuous reading. Over the last few decades, cosmic ray sensors (CRS) have been proposed as a way to provide much improved snow data, but few studies have …

Middle To Late Holocene (7200-2900 Cal. Bp) Archaeological Site Formation Processes At Crumps Sink And The Origins Of Anthropogenic Environments In Central Kentucky, Usa, Justin Nels Carlson

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

Though some researchers have argued that the Big Barrens grasslands of Kentucky were the product of anthropogenic land clearing practices by Native Americans, heretofore, this hypothesis had not been tested archaeologically. More work was needed to refine chronologies of fire activity in the region, determine the extent to which humans played a role in the process, and integrate these findings with the paleoenvironmental and archaeological record. With these goals in mind, I conducted archaeological and geoarchaeological investigations at Crumps Sink in the Sinkhole Plain of Kentucky. The archaeological record and site formation history of Crumps Sink were compared with environmental …

Using Paleolimnology To Establish Baseline Conditions For Metal Contaminants In Advance Of Proposed Mining To Inform A Northern Community-Led Aquatic Monitoring Program, Tłı̨Chǫ Lands, Northwest Territories, Canada., James Telford

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The Marian Watershed Stewardship Program (MWSP), a community-driven aquatic ecosystem monitoring program, was developed by the Tłı̨chǫ Government to address concerns regarding the cumulative impacts of multiple potential stressors. In particular, the MWSP aims to develop methods that will be effective for detecting potential pollution from the proposed cobalt-gold-copper-bismuth NICO mine within Tłı̨chǫ Lands. In collaboration with the MWSP, paleolimnological methods and geochemical normalization are used to establish pre-mine baselines of lake sediment metals concentrations in the Marian River watershed prior to mine development. This baseline framework can be used to assess for pollution from surficial sediment once the mine …

Climate Evolution Across The Mid-Brunhes Transition, Aaron M. Barth, Peter U. Clark, Nicholas S. Bill, Feng He, Nicklas G. Pisias

School of Earth & Environment Departmental Research

The Mid-Brunhes Transition (MBT) began ∼ 430 ka with an increase in the amplitude of the 100 kyr climate cycles of the past 800 000 years. The MBT has been identified in ice-core records, which indicate interglaciations became warmer with higher atmospheric CO2 levels after the MBT, and benthic oxygen isotope (δ18O) records, which suggest that post-MBT interglaciations had higher sea levels and warmer temperatures than pre-MBT interglaciations. It remains unclear, however, whether the MBT was a globally synchronous phenomenon that included other components of the climate system. Here, we further characterize changes in the climate system across the MBT …

Land Use And Land Cover Changes, And Environment And Risk Evaluation Of Dujiangyan City (Sw China) Using Remote Sensing And Gis Techniques, Biswajit Nath, Zheng Niu, Ramesh P. Singh

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Understanding of the Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) change, its transitions and Landscape risk (LR) evaluation in earthquake-affected areas is important for planning and urban sustainability. In the present study, we have considered Dujiangyan City and its Environs (DCEN), a seismic-prone area close to the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (8.0 Mw) during 2007–2018. Five different multi-temporal data sets for the years 2007, 2008, 2010, 2015, and 2018 were considered for LULC mapping, followed by the maximum likelihood supervised classification technique. The individual LULC maps were further used in four time periods, i.e., 2007–2018, 2008–2018, 2010–2018, and 2015–2018, to evaluate the …

Keeping Pace With Relative Sea Level Rise: Marsh Platform Monitoring Shows Minimal Sediment Deficit Along The Louisiana Coast, Kelly Marie Sanks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent reports estimate that the marshes of the Mississippi Delta receive just 30% of the sediment necessary to sustain current land area1. An extensive monitoring campaign by the USGS and LCPRA provides direct measurements of sediment accumulation, subsidence rates, and deposit characteristics along the coast over the past 10 years2, allowing us to directly evaluate this sediment balance. By interpolating bulk density, organic fraction, and vertical accretion rates from 273 sites, a direct measurement of organic and inorganic sediment accumulation can be made. Results show that a total of 82 MT/year of sediment is delivered to the coast. Using a …

Metal Contamination And Food Web Changes Alter Exposure To Upper Trophic Levels In Upper Blackfoot River Basin Streams, Montana, Jack E. Landers, Sean Sullivan, Lisa Eby, Andrew C. Wilcox, Heiko Langner

Geosciences Faculty Publications

Reduced invertebrate abundance and diversity are common responses to metals contamination in mining-impacted streams. The resulting changes in community composition may have implications for metals accumulation and transfer through the food web. We investigated how changes in invertebrate community composition (abundance, species richness, and food web complexity) influence metals bioaccumulation and exposure risk to upper trophic levels along a contamination gradient in the upper Blackfoot River Basin, Montana. Invertebrate species richness exhibited the strongest decline with increasing sediment metals concentrations, driven by the loss of metals-sensitive taxa. These changes in invertebrate community composition resulted in a decline in the proportion …

Crustal Composition Beneath Southern Idaho: Insights From Teleseismic Receiver Functions, Thomas Branson Harper

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Receiver functions derived from teleseismic earthquakes contain seismic amplitude and velocity information that relate to compositional changes within the Earth’s crust and upper mantle. The receiver function waveform is a combination of P-S converted waves that have reverberated within the lithosphere. Although the largest seismic velocity boundary is found at the base of the crust, I explore the use of lower amplitude receiver function arrivals that represent smaller velocity contrasts within the crust. In my thesis, I calculate and model receiver functions via a Metropolis algorithm approach to extract seismic velocity distributions in the lithosphere. I use the results to …

Evolution Of Noble Gas And Water Isotopes Along The Regional Groundwater Flow Path Of The Konya Closed Basin, Turkey, N. Nur Ozyurt, C. Serdar Bayari

International Journal of Speleology

Noble gas and water isotope compositions of regional groundwater were investigated along two transects in the Konya Closed Basin (KCB) of central Turkey. According to the ³He/⁴He versus Ne/He plot of samples, crust (up to 86%) and mantle (up to 26%) appear to be the primary and secondary sources of dissolved He in groundwater, respectively. After the beginning of both transects where the flow domain is confined, both ³He and ⁴He accumulate steadily in groundwater. Thereafter, the intermediate recharge from the surface in the unconfined part of regional flow system disrupts the steady accumulation trend …

Recruiting And Retaining K9–16 Students Through Field- And Laboratory - Based Geoscience Experiences, Nazrul I. Khandaker, Stanley Schleifer, Arif M. Sikder, Krishna Mahabir, Ality Aghedo, Charren Cabaroy, Mildred M. Selby, Gugu Ginindza, Leonardo Sanchez

Publications and Research

Since 2004, we have been directly involved with the GSA to provide access and opportunities for K9-16 students, particularly those interested in the broader aspects of geoscience-related topics, to present their field-and- laboratory based research outcomes at professional conferences and to learn from each other. So far, well-over 400 students from the U. S. and abroad have taken advantage of this opportunity and participated our topical sessions. It is quite gratifying to report that many of these students, as a result of their attendance at the GSA conference, felt a continuing need for exposure to high-level professional venues with effective …

Examining Patterns In Nest Predation Using Artificial Nests, Victoria L. Simonsen

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The use of artificial nests to study the predation of avian nests has faced disregard by ecologists due to inconsistencies found between the survival rates of real and artificial nests across studies and reviews. The negative perception of artificial nests providing an inconsistent assessment of survival has thus fostered the perception that artificial nests are a secondary option to be used to overcome logistical hurdles associated with achieving sufficient sample sizes in systems where study species are rare or elusive, or as merely a preliminary method to study predation across gradients. We argue that the greatest mistake ecologists have made …

A Sub-Millennial Sediment Record Of Ice-Stream Retreat And Meltwater Storage In The Baltic Ice Lake During The Bølling-Allerød Interstadial, April Lynn Kelly, Sandra Passchier

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The rapid retreat of the Baltic Ice Stream and the development of the Baltic Ice Lake is assessed using data from sediment cores retrieved from three sub-basins in the southern Baltic Sea. Hydraulic piston coring by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) recovered for the first time intact glacial lake sequences overlying diamictons and other ice-contact deposits at Sites M0063, M0064 and M0065. Based on the particle size and bulk sediment chemical composition the glacial lake sediments were subdivided into a proximal and a distal varve sequence. The origin of a dark, lithologically distinct horizon between the proximal and distal …

On Biospeleothems From A Venezuelan Tepui Cave: U-Th Dating, Growth Rates, And Morphology, Joyce Lundberg, Charles Brewer-Carías, Donald A. Mcfarlane

International Journal of Speleology

Seven silica biospeleothems from Cueva Charles Brewer, Chimantá Plateau, Venezuela have been successfully U-Th dated despite very low U and high detrital Th concentrations. Growth rates are low, between ~100 to ~800 µm/ka, and are greater closer to water level. Dates in unaltered material are in good stratigraphic order, but secondary silicification may compromise the U-Th system, yielding unreliable sequences of ages. Detritally-enriched layers correlate with global climate cycles of the Late Quaternary, in particular the cooler, drier phases of MIS 5d, 5a, and 4. SEM studies indicate that the peloidal material is made up of silica nano-particles assembled to …

Using Satellite Remote Sensing To Study The Impact Of Climate And Anthropogenic Changes In The Mesopotamian Marshlands, Iraq, Reyadh Albarakat, Venkat Lakshmi, Compton J. Tucker

Faculty Publications

The Iraqi Marshes in Southern Iraq are considered one of the most important wetlands in the world. From 1982 to the present, their area has varied between 10,500 km² and 20,000 km². The marshes support a variety of plants, such as reeds and papyrus, and are home to many species of birds. These marshes are Al-Hammar, Central or Al-Amarah, and Al-Huwaiza. Freshwater supplies to the marshes come from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq and from the Karkha River from Iran. For this analysis, we used the Land Long-Term Data Record Version 5 (LTDR V5) Normalized …

Be-10/Be-9 Ratios Reflect Antarctic Ice Sheet Freshwater Discharge During Pliocene Warming, Rachel D. Valletta, Jane K. Willenbring, Sandra Passchier, Chiara Elmi

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Along glaciated margins, ratios of meteoric cosmogenic beryllium‐10, ¹⁰Be, normalized to its stable isotope, ⁹Be, reflect an environmental signal, driven ultimately by climatic change. We explore the application of this isotopic pair as a proxy for East Antarctic Ice Sheet dynamics. We analyze ¹⁰Be/⁹Be in middle Pliocene glaciomarine sediments offshore the Wilkes Land Region (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) Site U1361A) and examine our new record alongside existing biochemical/geochemical records (Ba/Al, opal %_wt, εNd, and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr). ¹⁰Be/⁹Be ratios reach local maxima during pulsed, mild warming events and …

Invasive-Plant-Removal Frequency—Its Impact On Species Spread And Implications For Further Integration Of Forest-Management Practices, Bernabas Wolde, Pankaj Lal

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

For a given invasive plant species and control method, effective invasive plant eradication requires regular monitoring and management. While most previous studies characterize invasive plant species, develop appropriate control methods, or prioritize species for management using aggressiveness and other considerations, few study why some forestland owners are less likely than others to regularly remove invasive plant species. Such information is useful in prioritizing and targeting forestland owners who are at greater risk for invasion, with the stands threatening adjacent forestlands. Towards this end, we surveyed 1800 forestland owners in Virginia and Texas. We use data on forestland owners’ socioeconomics and …

Effects Of Volcanicity In Iceland, Lilian Njoki Ng'ang'a

Student Works

Iceland is greatly known for its volcanicity as there are several eruptions that have occurred over the years. The country’s volcanology is due to its location on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is a divergent tectonic boundary (Promote Iceland, n.d.). Due to this, the country is known to be responsible for a third of all the fresh lava on earth (Marteinn, 2018).

This research provides a deep dive into the effects of volcanicity and how the Icelandic people have adapted to it. The methods used to collect data for this research were secondary sources and interviews. It was evident that the …

Seasonal Differences In Trace Element Concentrations And Distribution In Spartina Alterniflora Root Tissue, Huan Feng, Yu Qian, J. Kirk Cochran, Qingzhi Zhu, Christina Heilbrun, Li Li, Wen Hu, Hanfei Yan, Xiaojing Huang, Mingyuan Ge, Evgeny Nazareski, Yong S. Chu, Shinjae Yoo, Xuebin Zhang, Chang Jun Liu

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The present study uses nanometer-scale synchrotron X-ray nanofluorescence to investigate season differences in concentrations and distributions of major (Ca, K, S and P) and trace elements (As, Cr, Cu, Fe and Zn) in the root system of Spartina alterniflora collected from Jamaica Bay, New York, in April and September 2015. The root samples were cross-sectioned at a thickness of 10 μm. Selected areas in the root epidermis and endodermis were mapped with a sampling resolution of 100 and 200 nm, varying with the mapping areas. The results indicate that trace element concentrations in the epidermis and endodermis vary among the …

Improvement Of Soil Structure Through Organic Crop Management, Conservation Tillage And Grass-Clover Ley, Viviana Loaiza Puerta, Engil Isadora Pujol Pereira, Raphaël Wittwer, Marcel G. A. Van Der Heijden, Johan Six

School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Highlights

• Organic crop management combined with reduced tillage improved soil structure.
• The ley period improved soil structure for conventional intensive tillage.
• The ley period increased total carbon in organic crop management at 0–6 cm soil depth.

Abstract

Conventional intensive tillage is a widespread soil management practice that controls weeds and promotes nutrient mineralization at the expense of a degraded soil structure and soil carbon (C) loss. Alternative soil management practices such as no tillage, reduced tillage and temporary leys, however, can minimize the negative effects of intensive tillage on soil structure. To improve understanding of these management practices on …

Projected Trends In Climate Extremes In The Passaic River Basin Based On Bias-Corrected And Spatially Downscaled Global Climate Model Simulations, Archana Prasad

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Global Climate Models (GCMs) are increasingly becoming useful tools for predicting future climatic changes. These GCMs typically employ large spatial scales while municipalities may experience varied impacts at the local level. By downscaling and bias-correcting GCM outputs, more accurate predictions concerning specific regions can be made. The Multivariate Adaptive Constructed Analogs (MACA) models provide daily precipitation and temperature information for point localities by modifying coarse resolution data from GCMs to a higher spatial resolution. In this study, trends in climate extremes over the Passaic River Basin (PRB) between 1981-2005 are estimated based on three MACA models (bcc-csm1-1m, CCSM4, and MRI-CGCM3). …

The Global Food-Energy-Water Nexus, Paolo D’Odorico, Kyle Frankel Davis, Lorenzo Rosa, Joel A. Carr, Davide Chiarelli, Jampel Dell’Angelo, Jessica Gephart, Graham K. Macdonald, David A. Seekell, Samir Suweis, Maria Cristina Rulli

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Abstract Water availability is a major factor constraining humanity’s ability to meet the future food and energy needs of a growing and increasingly affluent human population. Water plays an important role in the production of energy, including renewable energy sources and the extraction of unconventional fossil fuels that are expected to become important players in future energy security. The emergent competition for water between the food and energy systems is increasingly recognized in the concept of the “food-energy-water nexus.” The nexus between food and water is made even more complex by the globalization of agriculture and rapid growth in food …

Forewarned Is Forearmed: Review Of Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards And Risk Reduction In The Modern World By Timothy H. Dixon (2017), Jason Makansi

Numeracy

Timothy H. Dixon. 2017. Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards and Risk Reduction in the Modern World. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press) 300 pp. ISBN 978-1108113663.

Curbing Catastrophe for the most part lives up to what is claimed in the foreword: “…a compelling account of recent and historical disasters, both natural and human-caused, drawing on common themes and providing a holistic understanding of hazards, disasters, and mitigation for anyone interested in this important and topical subject.” This is a pretty thorough treatment of an extraordinarily complex subject, and the gaps identified in this review should be considered explications more than …

Advances In Amino Acid Analysis For Marine Related Matrices And Its Application To Coastal Shelf Settings In The Canadian Arctic, Rachel M. Mcmahon

OES Theses and Dissertations

Amino acids comprise up to 50% of organic matter in cellular material and are a major fraction of oceanic organic carbon. Amino acids are also considered highly labile during organic matter recycling, making them useful proxies for organic carbon cycling. Nevertheless, analysis of individual amino acids has been burdened by lengthy derivatization and complex analysis since the 1950s. In this thesis, I describe the modification of advanced analytical techniques, developed in the biomedical field, for analysis of marine matrices which allow the determination of at least 40 amino acids without the need for lengthy sample preparation and derivatization, twice the …

Estimating Live Fuel Moisture In Southern California Using Remote Sensing Vegetation Water Content Proxies, Shenyue Jia, Seung Hee Kim, Son V. Nghiem, Wonhee Cho, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Wildfires are a major ecological disturbance in Southern California and often lead to great destruction along the Wildland-Urban Interface. Live fuel moisture has been used as an important indicator of wildfire risk in measurements of vegetation water content. However, the limited field measurements of live fuel moisture in both time and space have affected the accuracy of wildfire risk estimations. Traditional estimation of live fuel moisture using remote sensing data was based on vegetation indices, indirect proxies of vegetation water content and subject to influence from weather conditions. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of estimating live fuel moisture …

Full Issue 47(2)

International Journal of Speleology

No abstract provided.

Adapting Extension And Outreach Content To Audiences' Educational Interests, Bernabas Wolde, Pankaj Lal, Pralhad Burli, Pricila Iranah, John Munsell, Jianbang Gan, Eric Taylor

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

For various, largely unknown reasons, decision makers do not have equal interest in all Extension and outreach topics pertinent to a particular concept. This situation hampers Extension's ability to effectively deliver information and efficiently allocate limited resources. Using survey data, we identified heterogeneous preference for various topics related to the concept of woody bioenergy, our case study subject, and built profiles of forestland owners who expressed interest in topics that received above-average and below-average preference rates. Given our results, we argue for using this approach in objectively ranking audiences' educational interests in various forest and nonforest products and services and …

Spatial And Temporal Analysis Of Island Morphology In Lower Pool 18 Of The Mississippi River, Marissa C. Iverson

Celebration of Learning

The Upper Mississippi River System has a significant trend in island loss due to river engineering structures. However, Lower Pool 18 is observed as a counterexample to the island loss pattern with its island development near Lock and Dam 18 during the past 80 years. This research is modeled after a study done in Lower Pool 6 of the Upper Mississippi River where an island development was found to contradict the island loss prevalence. The Lower Pool 18 research’s goal is to map, describe, and explain spatial patterns of islands growth, persistence and loss. Historical maps and aerial photographs of …