Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Climate Monitoring In The Caumont Cave And Quarry System (Northern France) Reveal Near Oxygen Isotopic Equilibrium Conditions For Carbonate Deposition, Ingrid Bejarano-Arias, Carole Nehme, Sebastian Breitenbach, Hanno Meyer, Sevasti Modestou, Damase Mouralis

International Journal of Speleology

The study of modern cave deposits forming under near isotopic equilibrium conditions can potentially help disentangle the processes influencing the oxygen isotope system and suitability of stalagmites as archives of past hydrological or thermal changes. We used cave monitoring to evaluate the impact of kinetic isotope fractionation and assess the conditions under which modern cave carbonates form in the Caumont cave and quarry system, located in Normandy, northwest France. Over 20 months, we collected climatological data, dripwater, and modern carbonate samples at 2–4-week intervals at three different stations inside the Caumont cave and quarry system. We find highly stable (10.4 …

Integration Of Algae And Biomass Processes To Synthesize Renewable Bioproducts For The Circular Economy, Jessica Martin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rapid population growth and global industrialization have substantially heightened the demand for fossil-based fuels and products in various sectors of the global economy, including energy production, transportation fuels, and as raw materials for petrochemicals. The intense consumption of fossil fuels has caused immense environmental impacts, especially pertaining to carbon dioxide emissions. Shifting to renewable feedstocks (raw materials) is expected to reduce these emissions by lowering the carbon footprint of fuels and products compared to traditional fossil-derived alternatives. This transition aligns with the goal of creating a sustainable and circular economy, emphasizing efficient resource use, and reducing waste generation through recycling …

Booker Creek: Wet Season Water Quality Trends In A Florida Urban Stream, Alexandra M. Shostak

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Booker Creek, a 1.9-mile stream with a 4.9-mi2 watershed, flows southeast through highly urbanized St. Petersburg, Florida, and empties into Bayboro Harbor, which connects with Tampa Bay. This study collected and analyzed water quality data for several parameters (TN, TP, nitrate-nitrite, ammonia, orthophosphate, chl-a, fecal coliform, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, temperature, and salinity) every two weeks, at four different sites, during the 2022 wet season to characterize the current state and geographic variability of Booker Creek. Current creek sampling regimes, though consistent, do not sample at multiple sites along the creek. Urban streams do not display uniform water quality along …

Labile Dissolved Nickel (Ni) Concentrations In The North Pacific, Calyn M. Crawford

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Nickel (Ni) is an important micronutrient for phytoplankton and bacteria that serves as a required co-factor in several metalloenzymes. Despite these known biological uses, total dissolved Ni concentrations remain elevated in global surface waters, in contrast to the surface depletion commonly observed for macronutrients and other nutrient-type trace elements. A prevailing hypothesis for the muted depletion of dissolved Ni concentrations in surface waters is that dissolved Ni in seawater is not in a bioavailable form. The chemical lability of Ni in seawater provides insight into Ni speciation and bioavailability, but few measurements have been made in the open ocean to …

Tree Planting As An Adaptive Management Tool For Climate Change In Morocco, Stephanie J. Robinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The practice of planting fruit trees to combat climate change impacts in Morocco has been growing in popularity with support from the Moroccan government and non-profit organizations. Although it is often considered a successful adaptive management tool, tree planting initiatives (TPIs) in arid lands have not been thoroughly analyzed, their management is unstandardized, and these initiatives can cause harm when trees are planted in areas that cannot support them. To implement tree planting better these TPIs need to find areas where the trees they are introducing have the best chance of survival without negatively impacting the surrounding ecosystem and human …

Book Review: Australian Caves And Karst Systems, John Webb, Susan White, Garry K. Smith, Jo De Waele

International Journal of Speleology

No abstract provided.

Use Of Silica Dust And Lunar Simulants For Assessing Lunar Regolith Exposure, Layzamarie Irizarry-Colon

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The utilization of the lunar regolith holds immense potential for future space exploration, but the potential health risks associated with lunar regolith are a significant concern. This literature review seeks to critically assess the use of silica and lunar simulants standards and permissible exposure limits (PELs) to evaluate the adverse health effects of lunar regolith. The literature review covers an extensive analysis of existing research, health risks, toxicological properties, and physical and chemical composition associated with silica, lunar simulants, and lunar regolith by using three main sources: regulations, scholarly articles, and Kennedy Space Center (KSC) discussion. This comprehensive analysis forms …

Bibliometric Analysis Of Sustainability In Gastronomy Research, Nihan Akdemir, Bilsen Bilgili

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

Sustainability can be called the ability to be permanent. The economic, social and ecological dimensions of sustainability are important in terms of gastronomy. The rapid development of gastronomy in recent years has led many studies in literature to discuss gastronomy from different perspectives. The aim of this study is to reveal the development of national and international research on sustainability in gastronomy over the years with bibliometric analysis. In this context, Web of Science (WOS) and ULAKBIM TR-Dizin databases were examined in the analysis of the data until February 2023. For this purpose, articles were selected from the relevant sources …

Climate Of A Cave Laboratory Representative For Rock Art Caves In The Vézère Area (South-West France), Delphine Lacanette, Léna Bassel, Fabien Salmon, Jean-Christophe Portais, Bruno Bousquet, Rémy Chapoulie, Faten Ammari, Philippe Malaurent, Catherine Ferrier

International Journal of Speleology

Leye Cave (Dordogne, France) is a laboratory cave in the Vézère area, a region that contains some of the most famous rock art caves in the world such as Lascaux, Font-de-Gaume and Combarelles, and is listed as Human World Heritage by UNESCO. Leye Cave was selected because it is representative of painted caves, with respect to parameters such as its geological stage, the presence of water and carbon dioxide, the geological state of its walls, and the size of the cave. These wall states are studied to better understand the conditions of conservation of rock art caves without damaging them. …

Organizing And Communicating Health: A Culture-Centered And Necrocapitalist Inquiry Of Groundwater Contamination In Rural West Bengal, Parameswari Mukherjee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As a discursive point of praxis, this dissertation project seeks to record knowledge from below around the overlaps between health, water and health interventions emerging from rural communities located in North 24 Parganas and Purulia in West Bengal that are disproportionately impacted by water-insecurity. My dissertation also documents how multiple-stakeholders such as local NGOs, international NGOs, non-profits, and donor agencies organize access to safe water and health interventions for the water-insecure communities located in North 24 Parganas and Purulia. The integration of the CCA and necrocapitalism afford theoretical and methodological guidance in this dissertation to help document the localocentric stories …

Exploratory Data-Driven Models For Water Quality: A Case Study For Tampa Bay Water, Sandra Sekyere

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Water, a crucial resource for sustaining life, covers approximately 70% of the earth's surface. Nonetheless, the quality of water is deteriorating rapidly due to the rapid growth of urban areas and industries, which is a worrying trend causing harm to human health and the ecosystem. Water quality forecasting has a key role in water resources management by enabling effective pollution control, ecosystem monitoring, and decision-making.

Previously, traditional statistical models were used to forecast water quality, but they were unable to examine the non-linear relationships between water quality parameters, and they assumed that all datasets were distributed normally. This study uses …

Analysis Of Ostds Failure Potential Due To Sea-Level Rise And Other Inundation Factors: An Integrated Geo-Spatial Analysis, Alec Colarusso

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While many aspects of climate change are well-studied, the vulnerability of Onsite Sewage Treatment and Disposal Systems (OSTDS) to sea-level rise (SLR) has not been thoroughly examined despite the potentially significant environmental impacts, including nutrient and pathogen loading. Research gaps include the need to determine the suitability of models to predict groundwater inundation due to SLR and the consequent impact on OSTDS. As such, this study aims to compare Bathtub/hydrostatic and physics-based/MODFLOW/3D numerical modeling methods of simulating groundwater inundation from SLR to identify OSTDS vulnerability to failure due to a reduction in the height of the vadose zone (saturation or …

Characteristics And Hydraulic Behavior Of Adsorptive Media For Use In Permeable Reactive Barriers, Shelby Rocha

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Cargill ditch is located on the property of Se7en Wetlands, a 1600-ac treatment wetland system in Lakeland, Polk County, Florida. The Se7en Wetlands property was previously utilized for phosphate mining prior to the construction of the system. Nonpoint nutrient sources derived from remnants of abandoned phosphate mines – known as “legacy phosphorus” – become mobilized by stormwater runoff and impair surface water bodies by promoting harmful algal blooms (HABs). Thus, the Cargill ditch likely conveys nutrient rich flow resulting from legacy phosphorus and is thought to be one contributing factor in the occurrence of HABs within the treatment wetland …

Preliminary Data Of Potentially Hazardous Radon Concentrations In Modrič Cave (Croatia), Robert Lončarić, Vanja Radolić, Maša Surić, Igor Miklavčić, Matea Šatalić, Dalibor Paar, Lukrecija Obšivač

International Journal of Speleology

Instigated by relatively high cave-air CO₂ concentrations in Modrič Cave (Croatia) recorded for the purpose of speleothem-based paleoclimate research, we established preliminary monitoring of radon (²²²Rn) concentrations within the cave for a 4.5-year period (2018–2022). As radioactive geogenic gas, radon, which often correlates with cave-air CO₂ concentrations, presents a potential health hazard in cases of longer exposure time in high concentration conditions. Since the Modrič Cave is open to tourists and long-term scientific research has been performed within, a safety assessment for radon concentrations was essential. The integrated measurements of radon concentrations were performed by passive …

Predicting Groundwater Spring Locations From Topographic And Climatic Data Using Maxent Modeling, Ayten Ece Koc

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The World Resources Institute reveals that 17 countries face extremely high levels of water stress. Moreover, with increasing population and industrialization, the gap between water supply and demand increases day by day around the world. Groundwater is a key freshwater source, and springs are important resources as they enable to access groundwater. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor, protect, and manage groundwater springs. The first step in spring management is to recognize and define freshwater resources and to determine the locations of groundwater springs that serve as natural discharge points. Traditionally, field studies have been employed to determine the locations …

Prepare For, Respond To, Recover, And Learn From Disasters: Using Data-Driven Methods To Model And Understand Disaster Resilience, Jinwen Xu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Community resilience reflects the ability of human communities to prepare for, respond to, recover, and learn from disastrous events. Community resilience carries different meanings in different phases of disaster management (i.e., preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation). With the emergence of new geospatial data sources, human activities now can be captured through social media, mobile signals, and nighttime illuminations, which makes it possible to describe the conditions among various communities before, during, and after disasters. Therefore, this dissertation explored the use of different types of geospatial data sources (social media, nighttime light remote sensing, land-use data, and census survey data) during …

An Analysis Of The Oil Pollution Act Of 1990: Regulatory Calibration In Anticipation Of 21st Century Environmental Disasters, Jessica S. Thornton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

After federal the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90) was promulgated in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, it helped restructure the nation’s environmental response capabilities and modernize the commercial shipping industry to effectively decrease environmental shipping disasters. However, in the 33 years since OPA 90’s inception, the oil and gas industry has transformed, especially in the offshore realm, as industry adopts new drilling technologies to gain access to deeper and heretofore untapped maritime environments. Though there have been two catastrophic offshore drilling accidents since the turn of the 21st century, OPA 90 remains categorically unchanged, …

Land Use/Land Cover Uncertainty Analysis Using Hydrological Modeling In The Northern Watershed Of Lake Okeechobee, Andres Lora Santos

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over the past 150 years, Florida has undergone a major land-form transformation, transitioning from a natural to a primarily built environment. The state's population has grown exponentially, from less than 50,000 residents in the 1850s to approximately 22 million residents today. This population growth has led to significant changes in land use, including urbanization, mining, and agriculture. This trend is expected to continue, with projections indicating an increase in urbanization across the state. 2070 land use/land cover projections were used as input for the Watershed Assessment Model (WAM) to analyze the potential impact of these changes on flow, total nitrogen …