Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Mussel Squeeze: Dissolved Oxygen And Temperature Can “Squeeze” Zebra Mussels Out Of Invaded Reservoirs, Crysta A. Gantz, Rich Miller, Steve Wells, Mark Sytsma, Angela Lee Strecker

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) are an aquatic invasive species that cause extensive economic and ecological impacts and are a management priority in areas outside of their native range. Survivorship and distribution of zebra mussels within a waterbody are thought to be influenced by temperature and dissolved oxygen conditions, but detailed information to confirm the importance of these environmental controls is necessary to inform management efforts. We measured planktonic zebra mussel veliger density and adult survivorship in San Justo Reservoir in central California to determine distribution and timing of spawning in relation to temperature and dissolved oxygen throughout winter, spring, and …

Chromophoric Dissolved Organic Matter And Dissolved Organic Carbon In Lakes Across An Elevational Gradient From The Mountains To The Sea, Kyle Juetten, Angela Lee Strecker, Aaron Harrison, Zachary Landram, Warren J. De Bruyn, Catherine D. Clark

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) in lakes across elevation gradients is a complex function of topography, climate, vegetation coverage, land use, and lake properties. To examine sources and processing of DOM from sea level to mountain lakes (3–1,574 m), we measured dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations and chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) optical properties, lake characteristics, and water quality parameters in 62 freshwater lakes in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Higher elevation lakes had lower DOC concentrations and absorbance. These lakes had higher forest cover and minimal wetlands in their watershed, in addition to low nutrients, water temperatures, and chlorophyll a in …

Magnetic Methods To Characterize The Emplacement Of The Nodule Point Intrusion (Marrowstone Island, Wa), Charlie Nuncio

Geology Graduate and Undergraduate Student Scholarship

The mafic intrusion of Nodule Point, Marrowstone Island, WA has sparse scientific literature to substantiate the local geologic history around its emplacement conditions. To fill this gap, rock magnetism and paleomagnetic methods have been applied to the intrusion and the sandstone of Scow Bay host rock. Samples taken from both lithologies were subject to thermal and alternating field demagnetization to assess paleomagnetic components. The Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS) of samples was measured, and the maximum axis of susceptibility, K1, was used as an analog to hypothesize emplacement conditions. The host rock: the sandstone of Scow Bay, returned magnetization characteristics …

A Field Guide To Jezero Crater, Mars, Lee Adair

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This project aims to blend art, creative writing, and scientific inquiry to explore the possibilities of geology research on our neighboring planet, Mars. This exploratory field guide combines journals, notes, and images to inform the reader of what they can expect to see on the Martian surface.

The Impact Of Cross-Border Environmental Media And Advocacy At The Skagit River Headwaters, Derek Moscato

Border Policy Research Institute Publications

The regional media of Cascadia has directed significant media attention toward the Skagit River watershed since 2018 as a result of a controversial mining proposal at the international border dividing British Columbia and Washington State. At the center of this con-troversy sits the so-called “Donut Hole” located at the headwaters of the Skagit watershed. As a result of concerns about impacts to wildlife and the surrounding North Cascades ecosystem, opposition to the project was substantial, led by environmental advocates and Indigenous community leaders. In turn, they harnessed extensive media coverage and advocacy to facilitate a larger regional dialogue about the …

Supporting Information For Chromophoric Dissolved Organic Matter (Cdom) Across An Elevational Gradient From Sea Level To Mountain Lakes In The Pacific Northwest, Kyle Juetten, Angela L. Strecker, Aaron Harrison, Zachary Landram, Warren J. De Bruyn, Catherine D. Clark

Chemistry Faculty and Staff Publications

This dataset is in support of Juetten et al., which has been submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences for consideration for publication. Chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) in lakes across elevation gradients is a complex function of topography, climate, vegetation coverage, land use, and lake properties. To examine sources and processing of CDOM from sea level to mountain lakes (3 to 1574 m), we measured CDOM optical properties, lake characteristics, and water quality parameters in 62 freshwater lakes in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Higher elevation lakes had lower dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and absorbance. These lakes had higher …

Heavy Metals In Moss Guide Environmental Justice Investigation: A Case Study Using Community Science In Seattle, Wa, Usa, Sarah E. Jovan, Christropher Zuidema, Monika M. Derrien, Amanda L. Bidwell, Weston Brinkley, Robert J. Smith, Dale Blahna, Roseann Barnhill, Linn Gould, Alberto J. Rodriguez, Michael C. Amacher, Troy D. Abel, Paulina Lopez

College of the Environment on the Peninsulas Publications

Heavy metal concentrations often vary at small spatial scales not captured by air monitoring networks, with implications for environmental justice in industrial-adjacent communities. Pollutants measured in moss tissues are commonly used as a screening tool to guide use of more expensive resources, like air monitors. Such studies, however, rarely address environmental justice issues or involve the residents and other decision makers expected to utilize results. Here, we piloted a community science approach, engaging over 55 people from nine institutions, to map heavy metals using moss in two industrial-adjacent neighborhoods. This area, long known for disproportionately poor air quality, health outcomes, …

Storytelling For Energy Solutions Toolkit, Solomon Duke

Energy Studies Student Scholarship

As a fundamental form of human communication, storytelling can play a powerful role in advancing global energy efforts; that is what this toolkit aims to do. This toolkit is created from academic literature, interviews, and action-based evidence. It includes methods of gathering energy stories, empowering marginalized voices, finding common ground on polarized issues, and effectively communicating stories for change.

Mastcam Multispectral Database From The Curiosity Rover’S Traverse In Gale Crater, Mars (Sols 0-2302), Melissa S. Rice

Geology Faculty Publications

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover has explored fluvio-deltaic, lacustrine, and aeolian strata as it climbed over 400 m in elevation over the first 2302 sols of its traverse. Curiosity’s Mast Camera (Mastcam) instrument is a pair of multispectral imagers covering visible to near-infrared (VNIR) wavelengths (445 nm - 1013 nm). Mastcam spectra can broadly distinguish between iron phases and oxidation states, and in combination with chemical data from other instruments, Mastcam spectra can help constrain mineralogy, depositional origin, and diagenesis. This dataset includes representative Mastcam spectra from >600 multispectral observations acquired across Curiosity’s traverse through Vera Rubin ridge …

Zooplankton Recovery From A Whole-Lake Disturbance: Examining Roles Of Abiotic Factors, Biotic Interactions, And Traits, Brian N. Mcgann, Angela L. Strecker

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Community assembly following disturbance is a key process in determining the composition and function of the future community. However, replicated studies of community assembly at whole-ecosystem scales are rare. Here, we describe a series of whole-lake experiments, in which the recovery of zooplankton communities was tracked following an ecosystem-scale disturbance, that is, application of the piscicide, rotenone. Using a before-after-control-impact design, 14 lakes in eastern Washington were studied: Seven lakes were treated with rotenone, while seven lakes acted as reference systems. Each lake was monitored up to 6 months before and 1–2 years after the rotenone treatments. Zooplankton samples and …

Nsea's Future Leaders Of Whatcom County (Flow), Emma Burgess

College of the Environment Internship Reports

During the spring of 2022 I was a Future Leaders of Whatcom County (FLOW) intern with the Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association (NSEA), a community-based nonprofit organization that educates, inspires, and engages the community to take action to keep wild salmon here for future generations.

This paper will provide a background detailing my motivations and the events that lead me to this internship, a description of NSEA and the specific projects I completed, a discussion of my personal and professional development over the course of the spring, and a collection of my pictures from the season.

Bootstrapping The Likelihood Ratio Test To Determine Change Points, Lili Donovan

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Change point analysis is the process of determining changes to the mean of a sequence of independent observations. The goal is to determine the location of the change and how the change impacts the parameter in question. In this project, we applied the likelihood ratio test (LR) which uses a binary segmentation method to split the data at each change point. The data is iteratively split at each change point until every location of change is identified. The p-value is typically computed using the asymptotic distribution of the test statistic, however, it can be unreliable when the number of observations …

Software As A Tool Not A Master, Dalton Leif Lange

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Modern Software takes advantage of users, by designing their software to prey upon the user. Through a historical analysis this paper hopes to better understand what has been done in the past to protect user's liberties, and what we can do going forward to ensure that software can be used as a tool, and not a master.

Extraction And Interpretation Of Fatty Alcohols In The Chuckanut Formation, Ellis Lower

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Earth’s climate can be tracked through geologic time by studying palaeobotanical conditions, as plants are sensitive to fluctuations in climate. Plant biomarkers (molecules found in the epicuticular wax of leaves) can be preserved for millions of years in sedimentary rocks, act as molecular fossils, and provide insight into the type of vegetation cover at the time of deposition. This project focused on extracting one such class of compounds: fatty alcohols. We used fatty alcohols as biomarkers to improve palaeobotanical reconstructions of the Chuckanut Formation during the Eocene. The fatty alcohols found in samples lacking macrofossils from the Slide member of …

Can Women Science?: A Climate Survey To Address Gender Inequity In Wwu’S Geology And Physics/Astronomy Departments, Raina Shaw

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This research study aims to assess and analyze gendered differences in student perceptions of the environment and climate in WWU’s Geology and Physics & Astronomy Departments. Underlying hypotheses involve the perceptions, comfort, and discrimination of women and gender minorities in male-dominated spaces. We also theorize that these gendered differences will increase with seniority and more so within physics than in geology. In addition to testing these hypotheses, we sought to collect relevant student feedback on factors that influence their perceptions of the climate & environment, to identify areas for future study and formal program assessment. From 56 respondents, this study …

Exploring Methods Of Collecting Accessibility Feedback, Selah Bellscheidt

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Accessibility, the practice of making a website or application easily usable and understandable by people with disabilities, is essential to ensuring that all users are able to participate equally in using the Web. However, currently many websites have accessibility issues. This study interviews 11 software developers and designers to learn about the methods that they use to collect accessibility feedback during the development and maintenance of websites and mobile applications. The research revealed a lack of standardized accessibility education at the post-secondary level, as well as a myriad of methods used to obtain accessibility feedback from automatic accessibility checkers to …

Synthetic Development Of Carbodiimide-Containing Polymers As Precursors To Guanidine-Based Covalent Adaptable Networks, Hayden Houck

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Covalent adaptable networks (CANs) are a newly emerging class of polymers that uniquely bridge the gap between traditional thermosets and thermoplastics. The distinguishing characteristic of these polymer networks is that they contain reversible crosslink bonds that allows these materials to be recycled. Two of the currently best-understood CAN systems include those based on Diels-Alder1 and transesterification2 reactions, both of which involve dissociative exchange mechanisms. Our group aimed to create a novel CAN system based on the thermal guanidine metathesis (TGM) reaction3 by using a guanidine functional group as a crosslinker. In order to create a guanidine-crosslinked network, our research took …

Coach Otto: Creating A Program To Program Weightlifting, Haylee Rawdin

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper contains the software documentation for an app called Coach Otto. Coach Otto is an app that assists coaches in creating individualized Olympic Weightlifting programs for their athletes. The documentation for Coach Otto explores the product in the context of user-centered design. Through the use of a PR/FAQ, User Personas, User Journeys, and User Stories, the document explores who the users are, what challenges they face, and how Coach Otto aims to address those challenges.

Physical Properties Of Brackett Emitters In The Apogee Dr17 Catalog, Elliott Khilfeh, Hunter Campbell, Kevin R. Covey, Marina Kounkel, Richard Ballentyne

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

In the process of accumulating mass (accretion), young stars channel ionized gas from the protoplanetary disk to the stellar surface along magnetic field lines. Upon impacting the photosphere, the gas cools down, recombining and emitting hydrogen spectral lines. Measuring these emission lines allows us to determine the temperature and density of the gas in those accretion streams. This then enables us to test whether those parameters depend on the accretion rate. We present measurements of equivalent widths and line ratios for Brackett (Br) 11 – 20 lines for 3366 observations of 940 pre-main sequence stars observed with APOGEE as of …

Chemical And Physical Tailoring Of Guanidine-Based Covalent Adaptable Networks, Kate A. Mcconnell, Michael B. Larsen

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

We present the synthesis of two different guanidine-based CAN materials which, unlike traditional thermoset polymer networks, can undergo an exchange reaction called thermal guanidine metathesis (TGM) and be reprocessed. Thermosets, which are polymer networks characterized by permanent covalent crosslinks between chains, have a myriad of commercial applications. However, a major drawback to thermosets is their inability to be reprocessed. To develop a more sustainable thermoset-like material, CANs exhibit breaking and reforming of crosslinks under certain conditions that enable reprocessing. To elucidate the effects of varied guanidine structure on the rheological and mechanical properties of these dissociative CANs, we synthesized two …

Indel Mapping, Lilu Martin

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Insertion and deletion mutations (InDels) are an understudied dynamic of protein structure. Little real world data exists for these types of mutations. Computational modeling can help fill in these gaps and support researchers in obtaining and analyzing data. In this paper, we present a unique approach to gathering exhaustive data on InDel mutations to create heat maps and other visualizations useful in analysis. Every possible InDel in a set of proteins is modelled in silico, rigidity data is obtained for all of those computational InDels, and the rigidity data of each is then compared to that of the wildtype, providing …

Dark Patterns: How Interaction Design Turned To Deception, Ian Bansenauer

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This essay examines the influence of human computer interaction design history on the current practice of deceptive “dark patterns” in interface design. It traces the design evolution of the computer from its initial use as a mathematical tool to the creation of the internet, and towards the current focus on user retention and profitability through the rise of growth hacking and deceptive design practices. Examples of past and current research on interaction design and dark patterns are used to determine that design choices have a measurable effect on user actions. After reviewing the types of dark patterns and their modes …

Blood Coagulation Factor Ix: Purification, Isolation, Activation, Alex Macneil

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

This paper attempts to provide an optimized strategy for the purification, activation, and isolation of blood coagulation Factor IX mutants. The goal of this work is to enable future biochemical and structural studies of Factor IX to a gain a better understanding of the structural-functional role this protein plays in the blood coagulation cascade. The orchestration and amplification of the blood coagulation cascade requires the binding of Factor VIII (FVIII) to an activated platelet surface, where it serves as a cofactor to a serine protease, Factor IX (FIX). Factor IX circulates the bloodstream as a catalytically silent multidomain protein1. Like …

Google Earth Model Of The Southern Alisitos Arc Crustal Section, Baja California, Rebecca Morris, Sarah Medynski, Susan M. Debari, Cathy Busby

Geology Faculty Publications

The Cretaceous Alisitos Ocean Arc 3D Model version 1 (v1) is a publically accessible and interactive 3D arc crustal model, with geologic map overlays on Google Earth. The model provides a virtual field trip through the upper- to middle-crust transition in the exhumed 110 Ma southern Alisitos Arc, Baja California, Mexico. This region was chosen for the model as it exposes a structurally intact and minimally altered transition zone between heterogeneous volcanic upper crust through the underlying plutonic rocks (up to ~7 km deep). The model is organized into three paleo-volcanic centers, which include (from north to south): a northern …

Lake Whatcom Monitoring Project 2020/2021 Report, Angela Strecker, Michael Hilles, Joan Pickens, Robert Mitchell, Robin Matthews, Geoffrey Matthews

Lake Whatcom Annual Reports

This report describes the results from the 2020/2021 Lake Whatcom monitoring program conducted by the Institute for Watershed Studies at Western Washington University (www.wwu.edu/iws).

The major objectives in 2020/2021 were to continue long-term baseline water quality monitoring in Lake Whatcom and its major tributaries; collect storm runoff water quality data from representative streams in the watershed; and continue collection of hydrologic data from Austin and Smith Creeks.

Cross-Disciplinary Learning Index: A Quantitative Measure Of Cross-Disciplinary Learning About Energy, Todd Haskell, Emily Borda, Andrew Boudreaux

Physics & Astronomy

The structure of many science programs at the college level assumes that students are able to draw on and integrate ideas from multiple disciplinary contexts. However, most assessment tools focus on learning in the context of a single discipline. We describe the development and validation of an instrument to measure how well students are able to combine energy ideas from different disciplines into a coherent understanding of a phenomenon. The final version of the instrument consists of a pair of multiple-choice online assessments, along with a metric calculated from the assessment scores: the cross disciplinary learning index (CDLI). The items …

Whatcom Marine Resource Committee Intern, Stephen Hullin

College of the Environment Internship Reports

worked with Whatcom MRC on many different projects including public outings, events, beach cleanups, festivals, oyster surveys, and digital marketing. I generated digital media for volunteer recruitment for a beach cleanup on Lummi Island in July 2022. I was asked to create original works and send them to the committee for approval. I made 3 different flyers. The committee requested a photo be used, so the flyer with the photograph was used and published throughout the region.

Padilla Bay Research Assistant, Lucas Lane

College of the Environment Internship Reports

Focuses on the characteristics of climate change on the two eelgrass species in the bay: Zostera Marina (Native eelgrass) and Zostera Japonica (non-native eelgrass). This was done by creating distribution models of the two species, with the data being created from multiple measurements. I assisted Jacqui with collecting these data and measurements for 2-3 days during low tide during each month. These data included imagery captured by Unoccupied Aerial Systems (UAS), otherwise known as drones, and in-situ elevation measurements of the sediment along with vegetative landcover surveys. The study area (an area already defined by Padilla Bay’s Research Reserve) was …

Nooksack Salmon Enhancement Association (Nsea) Flow Intern, Emma Burgess

College of the Environment Internship Reports

Going into the internship, the intern team spent a day creating individual goals for the term. I hoped to learn more about the natural systems that support salmon populations, and specifically how ecosystems are benefited by the presence of a vibrant salmon population. I wanted to learn about our local watershed, the projects NSEA was currently working on to improve its health, and how I could best contribute to their mission during my internship term. Additionally, I wanted to gain confidence speaking about all of this information so that I could teach others about the importance of these systems. More …

Wwu Institute For Watershed Studies Research Assistant And This Kind Planet Intern, Isabella Cobert

College of the Environment Internship Reports

In the field, I worked with a partner to monitor two streams: Austin Creek, on the south side of Lake Whatcom, and Smith Creek, on the north side of Lake Whatcom. I performed hydrological measurements with a Flowtracker in various conditions of weather and water velocity. My partner and I also downloaded stage data and verified this data by measuring the staff data accurately. Occasional maintenance was needed such as replacing batteries, bolting the staff back down, and manually resetting the stage to match the staff. The work done in the field was taken back to the lab to transfer …