Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Earth Sciences

Central Washington University

All Master's Theses

2018

Articles 1 - 13 of 13

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Geomorphic Consequences Of Hydroelectricity And Transportation Development Near Celilo Falls, Lower Mid-Columbia River, Washington, Noah I. Oliver Jan 2018

Geomorphic Consequences Of Hydroelectricity And Transportation Development Near Celilo Falls, Lower Mid-Columbia River, Washington, Noah I. Oliver

All Master's Theses

Along the Columbia River, hundreds of miles of transportation infrastructure and over sixty hydroelectric dams have been constructed. This altered a rich cultural landscape with evidence of 10,000 years of continuous occupation. Researchers have attempted to understand the impacts of anthropogenic factors on the Columbia River, focusing on the riverine environment. However, the effect of transportation and hydroelectricity developments to eolian landforms on the floodplains and adjoining slopes have not been studied. Focusing on 2,800 acres near Celilo Falls, this study 1) establishes a baseline condition of eolian landforms from 1805 to 1900; 2) conducts an air photo increment analysis …

Go to article

Two Post-Glacial Sagebrush Steppe Fire Records At The Wildland-Urban Interface, Eastern Cascades, Washington, Dusty Pilkington Jan 2018

Two Post-Glacial Sagebrush Steppe Fire Records At The Wildland-Urban Interface, Eastern Cascades, Washington, Dusty Pilkington

All Master's Theses

Recent increases in large fires in the rapidly developing wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas of central Washington, where development intermixes with wildland fuels, contribute to federal firefighting costs exceeding of $1 billion annually. In addition, cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) invasion and anthropogenic-caused warming shorten fire return intervals while lengthening fire seasons. These climatic, ecological, economic, and social factors combine with fuel accumulation resulting from historic fire suppression to threaten lives and property in the WUI. To plan for safe growth in WUI areas, long-term fire histories are needed to expand understanding of past fire regimes in an understudied ecosystem, sagebrush …

Go to article

Abandoned Mine Land Impacts On Tributaries In The Upper Yakima River Watershed, Eastern Cascades, Washington, Scott Kugel Jan 2018

Abandoned Mine Land Impacts On Tributaries In The Upper Yakima River Watershed, Eastern Cascades, Washington, Scott Kugel

All Master's Theses

Effluent from abandoned mine lands (AMLs) in several drainages in Washington’s Eastern Cascades flows into the Yakima River. Similar sites in Idaho and Colorado are known producers of heavy metals and acid mine drainage. I determined the effects of nine AMLs on water quality in four tributaries to the Yakima River. Archival work was conducted to determine sites that were mined and contained a mill. Each site was characterized by physical features. Water and sediment samples were collected above, at, and below each AML. Samples were analyzed for pH and heavy metal content, and evaluated to determine if the AMLs …

Go to article

Quantifying Sedimentation Patterns Of Small Watersheds In The Central Oregon Coast Range Using Landslide-Dammed Lakes, Logan Wetherell Jan 2018

Quantifying Sedimentation Patterns Of Small Watersheds In The Central Oregon Coast Range Using Landslide-Dammed Lakes, Logan Wetherell

All Master's Theses

Up to 250 years of sedimentation patterns in headwater streams are preserved with detail in landslide-dammed lakes of the central Oregon Coast Range. I hypothesize that both anthropogenic and natural perturbations should increase linear and mass sediment accumulation rates and be discernible spatially and temporally in the sediment record with use of 137Cs, high resolution charcoal stratigraphy, and aerial photography. Klickitat Lake and Wasson Lake are landslide-dammed lakes in small watersheds (<10 >km2) that contain drowned Douglas-fir stumps that are used for accurate dendrochronology and precise timing of the lake formation. An age-depth relationship was developed using …

Go to article

Assessing The Use Of Tsunami Simulations As A Tool To Predict Source Magnitudes And Locations Of Paleoearthquakes In Chile, Rebeca Isabel Becerra Jan 2018

Assessing The Use Of Tsunami Simulations As A Tool To Predict Source Magnitudes And Locations Of Paleoearthquakes In Chile, Rebeca Isabel Becerra

All Master's Theses

A long-term goal of paleotsunami studies is the ability to predict paleoearthquake parameters based on tsunami deposits found on land. Chile provides an exemplary location for testing methods of making these predictions because the historical record includes 41 major earthquakes as far back as 1562 AD, and there are many known paleotsunami deposits throughout the region. Using these records as a comparison tool, I evaluated simulated tsunami wave heights and inundation extent with the tsunami model GeoClaw for nine hypothetical tsunamigenic large earthquakes (Mw 8.6, 8.8, and 9.0) in south-central Chile with epicenters at -35.1º, -38.8º, and -42.9º. As …

Go to article

Tsunami Excitation Estimation From Real-Time Gnss, Catherine Jeffries Jan 2018

Tsunami Excitation Estimation From Real-Time Gnss, Catherine Jeffries

All Master's Theses

Tsunami early warning systems currently comprise modeling of observations from the global seismic network, deep-ocean DART buoys, and a global distribution of tide gauges. While these tools work well for tsunamis traveling teleseismic distances, saturation of seismic magnitude estimation in the near field can result in significant underestimation of tsunami excitation for local warning (Wang et al., 2012). Moreover, DART buoy and tide gauge observations cannot be used to rectify the underestimation in the available time, typically 10-20 minutes, before local runup occurs. Real-time GNSS measurements of coseismic offsets may be used to estimate finite faulting within 1-2 minutes and, …

Go to article

Giant Plagioclase In The Steens Basalt, Se Oregon: Cumulate Entrainment Revealed By Textural And In Situ Chemical Analysis, Conner H. Toth Jan 2018

Giant Plagioclase In The Steens Basalt, Se Oregon: Cumulate Entrainment Revealed By Textural And In Situ Chemical Analysis, Conner H. Toth

All Master's Theses

Many of the lava flows comprising the Steens Basalt in SE Oregon, the oldest and most mafic formation of the Columbia River Basalt Group (CRBG), contain exceptionally large (up to 5 cm) and abundant (up to 40 modal %) plagioclase crystals. This thesis presents a model for giant plagioclase formation in a complex system that integrates petrographic and in situ plagioclase compositional analyses with whole-rock data and computational modeling to explain systematic textural and chemical differences between plagioclase of the lower and upper Steens Basalt sub-sections. Lower Steens plagioclase are typically more chemically homogenous than upper Steens plagioclase and exhibit …

Go to article

Spatial And Temporal Characterization Of The Petrified Springs Fault, Central Walker Lane, Nevada: Documenting Middle Miocene Dextral Slip, Andrew Hoxey Jan 2018

Spatial And Temporal Characterization Of The Petrified Springs Fault, Central Walker Lane, Nevada: Documenting Middle Miocene Dextral Slip, Andrew Hoxey

All Master's Theses

The Central Walker Lane, NV is an active dextral shear zone superimposed on the western boundary of the Basin and Range extensional province. Approximately 25% of dextral shear along the Pacific-North American plate boundary accommodated in the Walker Lane, a NW-striking, intracontinental dextral fault system in eastern California- western Nevada. In the Central Walker Lane, shear is accommodated on five major NW- striking faults, one of which is the Petrified Springs fault, with poorly constrained slip magnitudes, slip rates, and initiation ages. We completed new detailed geologic mapping, combined with structural studies, and 40Ar/39Ar geochronology document offset …

Go to article

Stream Water And Soil Water Chemistry After The Table Mountain Wildfire, Washington, Usa, Vincent J. Roccanova Jan 2018

Stream Water And Soil Water Chemistry After The Table Mountain Wildfire, Washington, Usa, Vincent J. Roccanova

All Master's Theses

Analyses of major and trace elements, major ions, and nutrient concentrations were made to investigate how stream water and soil water chemistry changed over 16 months following the Table Mountain wildfire. Sites with different burn severity were also compared. The fire occurred in 2012 in Kittitas County, north of Ellensburg, Washington. Samples were collected at severely burned, moderately burned, and unburned field sites from within and adjacent to the wildfire perimeter. Total nitrogen concentrations increased in the second year after the fire in both the severely and moderately burned sites. In contrast, total phosphorus was variable at all three sites …

Go to article

Slip Estimation From Real-Time Gps In Cascadia, Jesse Senko Jan 2018

Slip Estimation From Real-Time Gps In Cascadia, Jesse Senko

All Master's Theses

Current systems for rapidly characterizing earthquakes are based on seismic, teleseismic, and Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami (DART) buoy data. These systems have significant limitations that hinder them from making rapid and accurate assessments of large earthquakes used for local tsunami warnings where run-up can occur minutes after the earthquake. Seismic and teleseismic networks saturate around Mw 7.0. Tsunami waves take tens of minutes to reach the buoys, so rapid assessment is impossible. GPS overcomes these limitations for large earthquakes. GPS does not saturate, and the offsets being detected occur very quickly after an earthquake. This thesis develops …

Go to article

Internal Composition, Structure, And Hydrological Significance Of Rock Glaciers In The Eastern Cascades, Washington, Adam Riffle Jan 2018

Internal Composition, Structure, And Hydrological Significance Of Rock Glaciers In The Eastern Cascades, Washington, Adam Riffle

All Master's Theses

Low summer river base flow places a strain on natural and economic resources of the Eastern Cascades. A major contributor to stream flow in this region is snow pack which has declined over the past few decades because of a warming climate. In addition, glacial runoff, which contributes significantly to base flow in summer dry periods, will diminish from glacial recession. However, rock glaciers, because their internal ice (i.e., permafrost) is insulated by an outer debris layer, react slowly to climate change, thus acting as sinks for ice and liquid water storage in mountain environments. This study utilized ground penetrating …

Go to article

The Origin Of Dark Mats At The Sunrise Ridge Borrow Pit Site (45pi408) Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, Sean Stcherbinine Jan 2018

The Origin Of Dark Mats At The Sunrise Ridge Borrow Pit Site (45pi408) Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, Sean Stcherbinine

All Master's Theses

The Sunrise Ridge Borrow Pit Site is a precontact archaeological site located in the upland forest soils of Mount Rainier National Park. Site stratigraphy is complicated, consisting of tephra deposits from mostly known origins that are intercalated with dark sediments of unknown origin, referred to here as dark mats. Precontact occupation has been split previously into two components based on the ambiguous depositional history of the dark mats, notably their unknown parent material, depositional environment, and relationship with adjacent tephra strata. Stratigraphic samples from excavation units, features, and one off-site excavation unit was used to investigate these data gaps. Grain …

Go to article

Quantifying Crustal Assimilation In Historical To Recent (1329-2005) Lavas At Mt. Etna, Italy: Insights From Thermodynamic Modeling, Marie Takach Jan 2018

Quantifying Crustal Assimilation In Historical To Recent (1329-2005) Lavas At Mt. Etna, Italy: Insights From Thermodynamic Modeling, Marie Takach

All Master's Theses

The nearly continuous volcanic eruption record at Mt. Etna dating back approximately 700 years provides an excellent opportunity to investigate the geochemical evolution of a highly active volcano. Of particular interest is elucidating the cause of a selective enrichment in alkali elements (K, Rb, Cs) and 87Sr/86Sr. This alkali enrichment trend, which began in the 17th century and accelerated after 1971, was accompanied by an increase in the volume, frequency, and explosivity of eruptions. To explain this enrichment, two major arguments are invoked: (1) crustal contributions (e.g., assimilation of the sedimentary basement), and (2) changes in …

Go to article