Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Mangrove Peat Collapse Following Mass Tree Mortality: Implications For Forest Recovery From Hurricane Mitch, Donald R. Cahoon, Philippe Hensel, John M. Rybczyk, Karen L. Mckee, Edward Proffitt, Brian C. Perez

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

• 1 We measured sediment elevation and accretion dynamics in mangrove forests on the islands of Guanaja and Roatan, Honduras, impacted by Hurricane Mitch in 1998 to determine if collapse of underlying peat was occurring as a result of mass tree mortality. Little is known about the balance between production and decomposition of soil organic matter in the maintenance of sediment elevation of mangrove forests with biogenic soils.
• 2 Sediment elevation change measured with the rod surface elevation table from 18 months to 33 months after the storm differed significantly among low, medium and high wind impact sites. Mangrove forests suffering …

Effects Of Deposit-Feeder Gut Passage And Fecal Pellet Encapsulation On Germination Of Dinoflagellate Resting Cysts, David Shull, Anke Kremp, Donald M. (Donald Mark) Anderson

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Many species of dinoflagellates spend much of their lives buried in sediments as resting cysts. While on the bottom, cysts may pass through the guts of deposit feeders before conditions become favorable for germination. Little is known, however, about how dinoflagellate cysts are affected by deposit-feeder digestion, fecal pellet formation, and translocation within the sediment column. To answer the question of whether gut passage or pelletization reduces cyst germination, we fed cysts of the dinoflagellate Scrippsiella lachrymosa to 3 polychaete deposit feeders, Capitella sp., Streblospio benedicti, and Polydora cornuta. Fecal pellets of these species have different morphologies …

The Planet, 2003, Fall, Jessi Loerch, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

Aquatic And Riparian Effectiveness Monitoring Program, Johanna Gillham

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

I chose to use my experience as an employee of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in order to fulfill Huxley College graduation requirements, as well as Western Washington University (WWU) Honors Program requirements. Therefore, I completed a term position as a Biological Technician for the Aquatic Riparian Effectiveness Monitoring Program (AREMP) during the summer of 2003.

AREMP is the watershed condition module of the Interagency Regional Monitoring Program for President Bill Clinton’s Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP). The NWFP encompasses more than 25 million acres of federally managed land in Western Washington and Oregon, and Northwestern California, and is …

Effects Of Barnacle Encrustation On The Swimming Behaviour, Energetics, Morphometry, And Drag Coefficient Of The Scallop Chlamys Hastata, Deborah Anne Donovan, Brian L. Bingham, Milton From, Abby F. Fleisch, Eli S. Loomis

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Barnacle encrustation negatively influenced every aspect of swimming in the scallop Chlamys hastata measured in this study. Scallops swam significantly longer, travelled further and attained greater elevation once epibiotic barnacles had been removed. Shell morphometry of barnacle-encrusted scallops was similar to shells of unencrusted scallops. Specifically, shell length was positively allometric with shell height and shell mass was negatively allometric. However, adductor muscle mass scaled isometrically to shell height, in contrast to unencrusted scallops. In the laboratory, the drag coefficient (C_d) of barnacle-encrusted scallops decreased after barnacle removal, in contrast to sponge-encrusted scallops in which no decrease in …

Spatial Variation In Distribution And Growth Patterns Of Old Growth Strip-Bark Pines, Andrew Godard Bunn, Rick L. Lawrence, Gabriel J. Bellante, Lindsey A. Waggoner, Lisa Graumlich

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Postindustrial rises in CO₂ have the potential to confound the interpretation of climatically sensitive tree-ring chronologies. Increased growth rates observed during the 20th century in strip-bark trees have been attributed to CO₂ fertilization. Absent in the debate of CO₂ effects on tree growth are spatially explicit analyses that examine the proximate mechanisms that lead to changes in rates of tree growth. Twenty-seven pairs of strip-bark and companion entire-bark trees were analyzed in a spatially explicit framework for abiotic environmental correlates. The strip-bark tree locations were not random but correlated to an abiotic proxy for soil moisture. The …

Lake Whatcom Monitoring Project 2001/2002 Report, Robin A. Matthews, Michael Hilles, Joan Vandersypen, Robert J. Mitchell, Geoffrey B. Matthews

Lake Whatcom Annual Reports

This report is part of an on-going series of annual reports and special project reports that document the Lake Whatcom monitoring program. This work is conducted by the Institute for Watershed Studies and other departments at Western Washington University.

The major objective of this program is to provide long-term baseline water quality monitoring in Lake Whatcom and selected tributaries. Each section contains brief explanations about the water quality data, along with discussions of patterns observed in Lake Whatcom.

Paths Of Length Four, Béla Bollobás, Amites Sarkar

Mathematics Faculty Publications

For each sufficiently large m, we determine the unique graph of size m with the maximum number of paths of length four. If m is even, this is the complete bipartite graph K(m/2,2).

The Planet, 2003, Spring, Kate Koch, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

Urban Hydrologic Design: Water Balance Analysis, Conservation Techniques, And Feasibility Study Of Rainwater Harvesting At Boundary Bay Brewery, Bellingham, Washington, Kerri Cook, Alasia Heinritz

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

As population and consumption levels continue to increase against a fixed supply of renewable fresh water, creative new ways of sustaining this resource must be explored. Particularly in the Pacific Northwest, climatic variability and increasing water demands are creating a situation that is forcing water resource managers to critically examine the sustainability of current water usage. The drought-like summer conditions of 2002 forced the City of Bellingham Public Works into distributing the majority of all legally available freshwater from the Lake Whatcom reservoir, yet there are no financial-based incentives encouraging Bellingham residents to decrease their water consumption. The price of …

Suicidal Weasel.Com: A Website Redesign, Darren Kovalchik

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This documentation provides an overview of the process I went through while redesigning my website, Suicidal Weasel, located at http://www.suicidalweasel.com.

Increasing Expression Yields Of Circularly-Permuted Myoglobins, Casey Kulla

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

The permuted myoglobin HGL16 is known to be structurally and functionally similar to the wild-type (wt) sperm whale myoglobin (swMb) yet is less stable to chemical denaturation by 5.2 kcal/mole. Given published reports that stabilities of myoglobin mutants are correlated to expression yields and our own confirmation of this correlation, we are eager to increase expression yields of our destabilized permutants to facilitate protein characterization. One method, fusing HGL16 to Maltose-Binding Protein (MBP), increases yields but appears to destabilize the fused HGL16. Another method for increasing yields, overexpressing protein in the form of inclusion bodies, is particularly useful as it …

Ecotones: The Heartbeat Of Huxley, 2003, Winter, Issue 07, Laurel Eddy, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

Historical Collection of Huxley Newsletters

No abstract provided.

On The Location Of Critical Points Of Polynomials, Branko Ćurgus, Vania Mascioni

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Given a polynomial p of degree n ≥ 2 and with at least two distinct roots let Z(p) = { z: p(z) = 0}. For a fixed root α ∈ Z(p) we define the quantities ω(p, α) := min (formula) and (formula). We also define ω (p) and τ (p) to be the corresponding minima of ω (p,α) and τ (p,α) as α runs over Z(p). Our main results show that the ratios τ (p,α)/ω (p,α) and τ (p)/ω (p) are bounded above and below by constants that only depend on the degree of p. In particular, …

Continuous Embeddings, Completions And Complementation In Krein Spaces, Branko Ćurgus, H. Langer

Mathematics Faculty Publications

Let the Krein space (A,[^. , ^. ]_A) be continuously embedded in the Krein space (K,[^.,^.]_K )_^. A unique self-adjoint operator A in K can be associated with(A,[^. , ^. ]_A) via the adjoint of the inclusion mapping of A in K. Then (A,[^. , ^. ]_A) is a Krein space completion of R(A) equipped with an A-inner product. In general this completion is not unique. If, additionally, the embedding of A …

The Planet, 2003, Winter, Kate Koch, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

Huxley Horizon, 2003, Winter, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

Historical Collection of Huxley Newsletters

No abstract provided.

Nsea - Environmental Stewardship Intern, Alexandra Haase

College of the Environment Internship Reports

My responsibilities as a Stewardship Intern at NSEA revolved around prepping, setting up, and striking weekly work parties, teaching volunteers the tools and techniques used in river restoration, and educating community members about the significance of salmon as a keystone species in the Nooksack Watershed.

Pre-Drift Extension Of The Atlantic Margins Of North America And Europe Based On Paths Of Permo-Triassic Apparent Polar Wander, Myrl E. Beck Jr., Bernard A. Housen

Geology Faculty Publications

We reconstruct the relative configuration of North America and Europe prior to separation using paths of apparent polar wander (APW) for the interval 300 to 200 Ma. The Bullard et al. (1965) reconstruction closely superimposes the 300 Ma points on the two APW paths but leaves the 200 Ma points far apart. Conversely, anomaly-based reconstructions for later times approximately superimpose the 200 Ma ends of the paths but leave the older ends far apart. This indicates that separation of the interiors of the two continents began during the interval 300 to 200 Ma, long before surficial rifting commenced in the …

Paleomagnetism Of The Mt. Stuart Batholith Revisited Again: What Has Been Learned Since 1972?, Bernard A. Housen, Myrl E. Beck Jr., Russ R. Burmester

Geology Faculty Publications

We have collected 20 new paleomagnetic sites from the Mount Stuart batholith and the adjacent Beckler Peak stock. Using thermal and low-temperature demagnetization, and rockmagnetic tests, we have found that the remanence in most of the batholith is carried by single-domain magnetite. The mean of the new Mount Stuart batholith sites is D = 354.2°, I = 46.2°, k = 87.2, α95 = 4.6°, N = 11, and is similar to those of the Beck and Noson (1972) and Beck and others (1981) studies. Examination of Ar geochronology of hornblende and biotite from the Mt. Stuart batholith finds that the …

Delineation Of Landslide Slip Surfaces Using Ground Penetrating Radar As Compared And Contrasted With Existing Slip Surface Data: Evaluation Of Gpr For Landslide Slip Surface Determination, Michael E. (Michael Eric) Hutchinson

WWU Graduate School Collection

Ground penetrating radar (GPR) was used to investigate two landslides within the South Puget Sound region to evaluate if this technology could be used to delineate slip surface location. The internal structures of two landslides with similar stratigraphic and geographic settings in the South Puget Sound Region were evaluated using GPR. For the two landslides studied, results of prior geologic and geotechnical work identified the location and extent of each landslide slip surface. Longitudinal and latitudinal GPR transects were completed on each landslide mass to map subsurface radar reflection amplitudes (radargrams) and times. To convert radar travel times to depths, …

Structural And Biochemical Analyses Of Dna And Rna Binding By A Bifunctional Homing Endonuclease And Group I Intron Splicing Factor, Jill M. Bolduc, P. Clint Spiegel, Pivali Chatterjee, Kristina L. Brady, Maureen E. Downing, Mark G. Caprara, Richard B. Waring, Barry L. Stoddard

Chemistry Faculty and Staff Publications

We determined the crystal structure of a bifunctional group I intron splicing factor and homing endonuclease, termed the I-AniI maturase, in complex with its DNA target at 2.6 Å resolution. The structure demonstrates the remarkable structural conservation of the (3-sheet DNA-binding motif between highly divergent enzyme subfamilies. DNA recognition by I-AniI was further studied using nucleoside deletion and DMS modification interference analyses. Correlation of these results with the crystal structure provides information on the relative importance of individual nucleotide contacts for DNA recognition. Alignment and modeling of two homologous maturases reveals conserved basic surface residues, distant …