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Towards Sociobiogeochemistry: Critical Perspectives On Anthropogenic Alterations To Soil Nitrogen Chemistry Via U.S. Urban And Suburban Development, Christopher D. Ryan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The ecological impacts of changes to land use are relevant to concerns about climate change, eutrophication of waterbodies, and reductions in biodiversity. As a foundational component of ecosystem functioning, changes to soil biogeochemistry have significant effects on overall ecosystem health. With cities continuing to grow and develop in extent, the impacts of urbanization and suburbanization on soils are of particular concern. Despite a wide range of natural climatic and geologic conditions, several factors have driven similar patterns of land transformation and management across the United States. In particular, federal initiatives including the Home Owners Loan Corporation, the Federal Housing Administration, …

College Of Natural Sciences 2023 Year-End Publication, College Of Natural Sciences

College of Natural Sciences Newsletters and Reports

Page 1 Dean's Message
Page 3 Department Highlights
Page 4 One Day for State
Page 5 Noble Prize Winner Speaks on Campus
Page 6-7 Faculty Excellence
Page 8-9 Student Excellence
Page 10 Outreach Program
Page 10 Events and Traditions
Page 11 Connections Abroad
Page 12 Student Spotlight
Page 13 Alumni Spotlight
Page 14 First Ever Drone Day
Page 15 Grand Opening of POET Bioproducts Center
Page 16 Work Anniversaries

Mapping Urban Form Into Local Climate Zones For The Continental Us From 1986–2020, Meng Qi, Chunxue Xu, Wenwen Zhang, Matthias Demuzere, Perry Hystad, Tianjun Lu, Peter James, Benjamin Bechtel, Steve Hankey

Earth and Environmental Sciences Faculty Publications

Urbanization has altered land surface properties driving changes in micro-climates. Urban form influences people’s activities, environmental exposures, and health. Developing detailed and unified longitudinal measures of urban form is essential to quantify these relationships. Local Climate Zones [LCZ] are a culturally-neutral urban form classification scheme. To date, longitudinal LCZ maps at large scales (i.e., national, continental, or global) are not available. We developed an approach to map LCZs for the continental US from 1986 to 2020 at 100 m spatial resolution. We developed lightweight contextual random forest models using a hybrid model development pipeline that leveraged crowdsourced and expert labeling …

Inventory Of Western United States Glaciers- 2020, Shrinidhi Ambinakudige, Bernard Abubakari

CAS Publications

The dataset employed for delineating glacier boundaries in the Western United States comprises a compilation of original Sentinel-2 images obtained from the European Space Agency's Copernicus website. These images were instrumental in generating the glacier inventory. Additionally, the dataset includes a Python and R script specifically crafted for processing and classifying Sentinel images. The outcome of this process is represented in an ESRI shapefile, which contains an inventory of glaciers extracted from Sentinel images.

Landslide Susceptibility Assessment Of The Asi Watershed, Southern Türkiye, Senem Teki̇n, Adolfo Quesada Román, Tolga Çan

Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences

Landslides constitute recurrent natural hazards worldwide with greater socioeconomic impacts in low-income places. Landslide susceptibility studies are carried out to determine the potential for landslides to occur in a region, to predict possible risks in the future and to integrate this information into sustainable planning and management strategies. Slip-type landslides occur in limited areas of less than 1% of the Asi watershed in Southern Türkiye. Therefore, meaningful estimations cannot be made with classical statistical models. So, using the maximum entropy approach (MaxEnt), a technique for estimating based on a small number of observations, a landslide susceptibility assessment was constructed. The …

The Future Of Clovers In Forage Systems And As Cover Crops, J. H. Bouton, John R. Caradus

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Clovers (Trifolium spp.) are the most widely used genera of legumes in forage systems, although only a limited number of the hundreds of perennial and annual species are commercially available. The number of varieties available within each of the main commercial species can be high and demonstrates past breeding achievements. Success relates to any clover’s ability to persist in mixtures with other forage species, across a range of soil types, management systems, and climates, while providing animal nutrition and biologically fixed nitrogen benefits. Uses range from traditional pasture mixtures with grasses to inclusion in multi-species mixtures, and as cover …

Modelling Leucaena Biomass Under Rainfed Production Systems Of Semiarid Regions, M. J. D. Cândido, J. L. G. Santos, A. C. R. Cavalcante, S. R. Maranhão, M. A. Santos, J. M. Osorio Leyton

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

The climatic variability of semiarid regions is the main source of uncertainties associated with forage and animal production, indicating a need for tools that accurately estimate forage production in order to construct a forage budgeting plan for livestock. This study simulated the biomass of Leucaena (Leucaena leucocephala) using the PHYGROW model in four locations located in Brazilian Semiarid. The work was carried out based on field data collected from 2019 to 2021. After sowing in 2018, leucaena was harvested when it reached 200 cm and to a target residual height of 70 cm. The biomass (fresh matter) was …

Spatial Analyses On Pre-Earthquake Ionospheric Anomalies And Magnetic Storms Observed By China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite In August 2018, Jann-Yeng Tiger Liu, Xuhui Shen, Fu-Yuan Chang, Yuh-Ing Chen, Yang-Yi Sun, Chieh‑Hung Chen, Sergey Pulinets, Katsumi Hattori, Dimitar Ouzounov, Valerio Tramutoli, Michel Parrot, Wei-Sheng Chen, Cheng-Yan Liu, Fei Zhang, Dapeng Liu, Xue-Min Zhang, Rui Yan, Qiao Wang

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The China Seismo-Electromagnetic Satellite (CSES), with a sun-synchronous orbit at 507 km altitude, was launched on 2 February 2018 to investigate pre-earthquake ionospheric anomalies (PEIAs) and ionospheric space weather. The CSES probes manifest longitudinal features of four-peak plasma density and three plasma depletions in the equatorial/low-latitudes as well as mid-latitude troughs. CSES plasma and the total electron content (TEC) of the global ionosphere map (GIM) are used to study PEIAs associated with a destructive M7.0 earthquake and its followed M6.5 and M6.3/M6.9 earthquakes in Lombok, Indonesia, on 5, 17, and 19 August 2018, respectively, as well as to examine ionospheric …

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 …

Surface Rupture During The 6th Of February 2023 Mw 7.6 Elbistan-Ekinözü (Kahramanmaraş) Earthquake: Implications For Fault Rupture Dynamics Along The Northern Branch Of East Anatolian Fault Zone, Mustafa Softa, Fi̇kret Koçbulut, Eli̇f Akgün, Ercan Aksoy, Hasan Sözbi̇li̇r, Orhan Tatar, Volkan Karabacak, Çağlar Özkaymak, Mehmet Utku, Özkan Cevdet Özdağ, Recep Çakir, Ahmet Demi̇r, Gökhan Arslan

Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences

On the 6th of February 2023, Mw 7.7 Pazarcık (Kahramanmaraş) and Mw 7.6 Ekinözü (Kahramanmaraş) earthquakes that occurred in Türkiye are devastating earthquake series that filled the existing seismic gaps on East Anatolian Fault Zone on the same day. The first Mw 7.7 earthquake caught most people in their sleep and 9 h later, a second one was triggered, ending up with more than 50k death toll, widespread damage to buildings, and massive landslides. This study presents the surface rupture geometry and coseismic displacement characteristics determined with field observations immediately after February 6, 2023, Ekinözü (Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye) earthquake (Mw 7.6). …

Tepehan Rockslide: A Large-Scale Earthquake-Induced Geological Structure Formed By Mw:7.8 Kahramanmaraş (Pazarcık) Earthquake, Türkiye, Ökmen Sümer

Turkish Journal of Earth Sciences

Three devastating and powerful earthquakes hit the southeastern and eastern parts of Turkey and the northestern part of Syria in February of 2023, causing many earthquake-induced slope movements. One of these major mass movements is called the “Tepehan Rockslide”, which was formed by the first Mw: 7.8 earthquake on February 6th, 2023 at Pazarcık (Kahramanmaraş) located in the Altınözü district of Hatay province. The rockslide involved the movement of Middle Miocene basement rocks that consist of clayey limestone, marl, and fine-grained clastic sedimentary rocks. The morphogenetic evaluation of the structure reveals that the Tepehan Rockslide is a very rapidly developed …

Cataloguing Minerals, Part One: Historical Cataloguing Practices And The Logics Of Colonialism, Selby Hearth, Carrie Robbins, Marianne Weldon, Aha Anderson, Rosa Bieber-Stanley, April Chernila, Helen Christ, Hannah Cosgrove, Morgan Hanson-Rosenberg, Carly Hill, Maya Hofstetter, Emily Lazo, Izzie Ludlow, Samantha Lyster, Rachel Myers, Jasper Nash, Georgia Reed, Julia Saint- Amour

Geology Faculty Research and Scholarship

Mineral wealth has motivated and funded extractive empires, often at the expense of local communities, workers, natural environments, and public health. Yet those connections are not recorded in traditional mineral catalogues, which divorce specimens from context. This article examines the roots of those omissions and situates mineral cataloguing in the larger body of literature on knowledge organization systems and their relation to power. We examine how colonial ideologies of land and people become entrenched in mineral cataloguing practices, and how this reinforces the ways that contemporary geologists think about their work. We argue that revising mineral cataloguing practices is a …

Atmospheric And Earth Science 498 Professsional Development, Tess Olten, Robert Griffin

Open Educational Resources (OER)

Whether you're already in the workforce, or you're still in school and haven't yet applied for your first position -- the job application process can be both exciting and demoralizing. Sometimes, finding a new job feels like a full-time job itself -- especially when the competition is steep and the field of candidates is crowded.

How can you help yourself stand out from other applicants and land the job of your dreams? In this course, you'll work through each step of the application process, as well as consider graduate school as an alternative or additional choice. First, you'll explore tips …

Why Is Grant Lake A Reservoir? A Brief Geological And Human History, From The Pleistocene To The Present, Robert B. Marks

Eastern Sierra History Journal

Drawing on a range of archival resources and illustrative material, Prof. Marks probes why and how Grant Lake in the Eastern Sierra of California became a reservoir. The process is long and involved, and has much to do with a remote and ancient lake ultimately being developed to serve the water needs of the distant city of Los Angeles.

Correlation Of Geochemical Zones In Great Onyx Cave, Mammoth Cave National Park, To Surficial Geological Units, William Strehl

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Cave passages in Great Onyx Cave, developed within the Girkin and Ste. Genevieve Limestones of Mammoth Cave National Park, contain a variety of secondary features on cave walls, including speleothems such as stalactites, stalagmites, and flowstone, evaporite minerals, and dissolution features such as pits and domes. What secondary features are present on the walls of a cave passage depends on the flow and geochemistry of capillary water that has interacted with the cave passage. In the Mammoth Cave aquifer, five distinct geochemical zones have been broadly defined and each typically contains a particular set of secondary features. Geochemical zonation in …

Thermochronology And Exhumation Dynamics Of Metamorphic Units In The Salmon River Suture Zone, Jonathan J. Cone

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The Salmon River suture zone in western Idaho records the Jurassic-Cretaceous (160-90 Ma) accretion of amalgamated volcanic arc terranes onto the North American continent. Rocks exposed at the surface record burial to depths of more than 20 kilometers, with unclear drivers for uplift and exhumation. Two competing hypotheses have been proposed to explain the transport of deep crustal rocks to the surface: (1) delamination of a dense lithospheric root resulted in rapid isostatic uplift of the crust and (2) exhumation of crustal blocks along thrust faults. To test these models, I present temperature-time (T-t) paths for mid-crustal metamorphic rocks constructed …

Geology Of The Bishop 7.5-Minute Quadrangle And Geophysical Modeling To Constrain Syndepositional Deformation Of The Black Warrior Foreland Basin, Joseph Edward Lane

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The Black Warrior basin is a foreland basin formed by the Ouachita–Appalachian orogeny during the late Paleozoic Era. Mississippian strata record the transition from the carbonate platform within the Tuscumbia Limestone to the clastic-rich units within the overlying Pride Mountain Formation and Hartselle Sandstone. The western and southern-most fringes of the Black Warrior basin are covered by thin, post orogenic Cretaceous sediments of the East Gulf Coastal Plain. Geological mapping of the Bishop 7.5-Minute quadrangle revealed subtle deformation in Mississippian strata in the form of gentle folds (

Bank Erosion Dynamics In Response To Anthropogenic Disturbances In The Cuivre River Watershed Of Missouri, Usa, Nathan Douglas Sines

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Riverbank erosion is increasingly recognized as a pressing issue exacerbated by human activities. The Cuivre River, a tributary of the Mississippi River, located in northeast Missouri, has limited documentation on bank erosion, with the most recent study conducted in the early 1990s. This research aims to fill this gap by exploring the stream bank erosion dynamics from 1816 to 2015. The objectives are to: (i) understand the channel width dynamics for 1816 to 1994 ii) determine the sediment erosion and deposition volume along the riverbank in the period of 1994 to 2015. iii) identify the anthropogenic disturbances particularly land use …

Origin Of Carbonate Mud Mounds In Southwestern Missouri, Jared Mcavoy

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Small carbonate mud mounds are found in Lower Mississippian strata of southwestern Missouri. These compare favorably with larger mounds, known as Waulsortian mounds, located in the Meuse River valley of southern Belgium. The origin of Waulsortian and similar mounds is unknown, but they commonly are interpreted as accumulations of mud, where the presence of biological organisms responsible for supposed bio-construction remains uncertain. Alternative hypotheses are that these may have been non-cohesive slump or cohesive slide masses. Multiple techniques, including δ13C and δ18O isotopic analyses and unmanned aerial vehicle photography, were used to determine the most feasible working hypothesis. Determining the …

Hydrogeomorphic Response Of Fluvial Systems To Climate Change - An Example From James River, Missouri, Afrida Aranya

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Climate change has led to unpredictable hydrological patterns, significantly altering the fluvial environment and their flow regime. Despite extensive research, our knowledge about the impacts of climate change on flow regimes in the US Midwest is limited, particularly in karst-dominated fluvial landscapes. This research addresses this gap by investigating the effects of climatic change on the hydrogeomorphology of the James River, located in the karst-dominated Ozark Highlands in southwest Missouri, USA. The study focuses on two ~1.5 km stream segments—one relatively active and one stable in the context of geomorphology—near Springfield, Missouri. The research aims to (i) understand the changing …

Crowdsourcing Geospatial Data For Earth And Human Observations: A Review, Xiao Huang, Siqin Wang, Di Yang, Tao Hu, Meixu Chen, Mengxi Zhang, Guiming Zhang, Filip Biljecki, Tianjun Lu, Lei Zou, Connor Y. H. Wu, Yoo Min Park, Xiao Li, Yunzhe Liu, Hongchao Fan, Jessica Mitchell, Zhenlong Li, Alexander Hohl

Earth and Environmental Sciences Faculty Publications

The transformation from authoritative to user-generated data landscapes has garnered considerable attention, notably with the proliferation of crowdsourced geospatial data. Facilitated by advancements in digital technology and high-speed communication, this paradigm shift has democratized data collection, obliterating traditional barriers between data producers and users. While previous literature has compartmentalized this subject into distinct platforms and application domains, this review offers a holistic examination of crowdsourced geospatial data. Employing a narrative review approach due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topic, we investigate both human and Earth observations through crowdsourced initiatives. This review categorizes the diverse applications of these data and …

Research On Multiscale Openstreetmap In China: Data Quality Assessment With Ewm-Topsis And Gdp Modeling, Chuqiao Han, Binbin Lu, Jianghua Zheng, Danlin Yu, Shudan Zheng

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a voluntary platform designed to provide free and up-to-date geographic data. Since OSM is based on multisource geographic data provided by the public, the quality of the data has become a concern of researchers. In this study, a unified measure for evaluating OSM data quality was constructed, and the entropy weight method (EWM) and Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) model were used to evaluate the quality of multiscale OSM data in China from 2014 to 2020. In addition to evaluating the data quality, the use of OSM data quality index factors in …

Exploring The Potential Of Openstreetmap Data In Regional Economic Development Evaluation Modeling, Zhe Wang, Jianghua Zheng, Chuqiao Han, Binbin Lu, Danlin Yu, Juan Yang, Linzhi Han

Department of Earth and Environmental Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

In regional development studies, GDP serves as an important indicator for evaluating the developing levels of a region. However, due to statistical methods and possible human-induced interfering factors, GDP is also a commonly criticized indicator for less accurately assessing regional economic development in a dynamic environment, especially during a globalized era. Moreover, common data collection approaches are often challenging to obtain in real-time, and the assessments are prone to inaccuracies. This is especially true in economically underdeveloped regions where data are often less frequently or accurately collected. In recent years, Nighttime Light (NTL) data have emerged as a crucial supplementary …

Battles, Bustles, And Ballots: The Struggle For Michigan Women's Enfranchisement, Anna Bennett

Senior Honors Theses and Projects

The struggle for women’s rights was long fought throughout American history and Michigan played a vital role in the movement’s success. This thesis explores three monumental eras that shaped the struggle for women’s suffrage in Michigan, detailing the evolution from the 1860s Civil War Era through the late 19th and early 20th century Progressive Era. The first era highlights how the Civil War provided women opportunities to challenge prevailing gender conventions and express political opinions. The second era examines the 1874 election, when suffrage was on the ballot but ultimately defeated, largely due to the Beecher-Tilton Scandal that tarnished the …

Post-Glacial Landscape Evolution Of The Lower St. Croix River Valley: The Enigma Of Glacial Lake Grantsburg, The Osceola Bench, And The St. Croix Dells, Hunter Delikowski

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The St. Croix River valley (SCRV) is the product of dyssynchronous glacial advance and retreat of several glacial lobes during regional deglaciation of the Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene transition. Additionally, the SCRV has been dramatically shaped by multiple proglacial lake drainage episodes. Therefore, the SCRV is an important case study to understanding the impacts of proglacial lake spillover processes. However, the magnitude, frequency, timing, duration, and geomorphic impacts of these floods remain enigmatic. We focus on a specific reach of the SCRV, which we name the Lower SCRV for the purpose of this study. The lower SCRV contains several anomalous landforms …

Multi-Jurisdictional Hazard Mitigation Plan For Landslides For The Big Sandy Area Development District, Kentucky, Matt M. Crawford, Hudson J. Koch, Jason M. Dortch

Contract Reports--KGS

Landslides are a complex geologic hazard that occurs worldwide, impacting lives, infrastructure, and property. The Big Sandy Area Development District, Kentucky incurs high landslide activity impacting several municipalities. This hazard mitigation planning project includes landslide susceptibility and risk assessments for the Big Sandy Area Development District. We based the landslide susceptibility model on statistics of hillslope morphological features such as slope, curvature, roughness, aspect, and elevation. Using a dual machine learning approach, we modeled the probability of landslide occurrence, defined as an area that is occupied, or might be occupied in the future, by a landslide. We also developed the …

Geomorphological Evolution Of The Mun River, Surin Province Northeastern Thailand, Chutiwat Sawangkit

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

From 1973 to 2023, the Mun River in Surin Province, Thailand, underwent geomorphological evolution. This study examines changes in channel parameters to determine how human activity and natural processes affect river shape. This study measures changes in four important geomorphological parameters channel sinuosity, radius of curvature, channel width, and channel length by analyzing the data from C (ERT), satellite imagery, and topographic maps. A dynamic meandering process that has created oxbow lakes, neck and chute cut-offs, and other geomorphological features throughout time is visible on satellite photos. Significant morphological changes have been brought about, notably, by the building of dams, …

Improving Accessibility And Understanding: Studying The Impact Of Human Activities And Dam Removals On Anadromous Fish Species In The Pacific Northwest, Adia F. Bennett

Scripps Senior Theses

Human activities in North American watersheds have significantly impacted anadromous fish, causing some species of salmon and steelhead to become threatened and endangered. These fish hold ecological, cultural, and economic importance, yet factors such as habitat destruction, overfishing, pollution, climate change, and hydroelectric dams continue to degrade populations. Dams are particularly harmful to anadromous fish, sparking a recent movement advocating for dam removals. This study uses NOAA’s 2022 Biological Viability Assessment to examine the response of anadromous fish to recent dam removals in the Pacific Northwest. Four populations were selected to analyze due to their interaction with sites that had …

An Unsupervised Learning Framework For Determining The Excitation Coefficients Using Near-Field Antenna Measurements, Yanming Zhang, Peifeng Ma, Steven Gao, Lijun Jiang

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This article presents a novel unsupervised learning framework based on multiscale dynamic mode decomposition for determining the excitation coefficients of antennas using time-domain near-field measurements. The proposed framework integrates temporal multiscale analysis to extract a joint distribution of frequency, damping factors, and spatial modes, enabling precise extraction of excitation frequencies, rising/falling edges, and phases without labeled data. We validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach through two examples involving on-off keying modulation and a phase-shift dipole antenna. It is found that the proposed method performs well in handling nonstationary excitation signals and proves particularly advantageous for calibrating tunable antenna systems. …

Relationship Between Hotspot And Geography – Meteorology Factors In Thailand And Neighboring Countries, Thanchanok Ngernted

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Air pollution is a critical issue in many countries and has become a significant problem in Southeast Asia. Wildfires, agricultural burning, and biomass burning are major sources of pollution emissions. This study aims to analyze hotspot activity and study the relationship between hotspots and geographic-meteorological factors in Thailand and neighboring countries. MODIS hotspot data were analyzed using the frequency-magnitude distribution (FMD) and geography-meteorology factors. The results indicate that areas with high hotspot activity were mainly found in northwestern to eastern Cambodia and northern Laos. Additionally, northern Laos and some pockets in Myanmar showed high hotspot intensity, capable of generating a …