Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Lake Whatcom Monitoring Project 2015/2016 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.

Rapid Variations In Fluid Chemistry Constrain Hydrothermal Phase Separation At The Main Endeavour Field, Brooke Love, Marvin Douglas Lilley, David Allen Butterfield, Eric J. Olson, Benjamin Isaac Larson

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Previous work at the Main Endeavour Field (MEF) has shown that chloride concentration in high-temperature vent fluids has not exceeded 510 mmol/kg (94% of seawater), which is consistent with brine condensation and loss at depth, followed by upward flow of a vapor phase toward the seafloor. Magmatic and seismic events have been shown to affect fluid temperature and composition and these effects help narrow the possibilities for sub-surface processes. However, chloride-temperature data alone are insufficient to determine details of phase separation in the upflow zone. Here we use variation in chloride and gas content in a set of fluid samples …

Changes In Cormorant Populations In The Strait Of Georgia, British Columbia, 1955-2015, Harry R. Carter, Trudy A. Chatwin, Mark C. Drever

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

Between 1987 and 2000, nesting populations of Pelagic Cormorant (Phalacrocorax pelagicus; PECO) and Double-crested Cormorant (P. auritus; DCCO) declined in the Strait of Georgia, BC. This northern section of the Salish Sea is a rapidly urbanizing area, and piscivorous birds are important indicators of ecosystem health. To update population status, we conducted a complete survey of 35 PECO and 23 DCCO colonies in July 2014 and opportunistic surveys of some colonies between 2001 through 2015. The PECO population decreased from ~2100-2400 nests in 1959-1987 to ~1100 nests by about 2000, and then rose slightly …

Advances In Salish Sea Acoustic Telemetry: 2015 Array Deployments And Promising Transmitter Performance, Erin L. Rechisky, David W. Welch, Aswea D. Porter, Paul Winchell

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

The first fish tracking arrays were deployed in the Salish Sea over a decade ago. These arrays have yielded a rich data set which have provided the first direct estimates of early marine-survival and migratory behavior for acoustic-tagged juvenile sockeye, Chinook, Coho and steelhead >130 mm in fork length (FL). In spring of 2015, as part of the Salish Sea Marine Survival Project, the Pacific Salmon Foundation, the Ocean Tracking Network and Kintama Research deployed additional arrays in the Discovery Islands and Johnstone Strait (north of the Strait of Georgia) to provide higher resolution survival data. These new arrays use …

Stronger Together: The Cross-Cultural Coalition To Stop Fossil Fuel Exports In The Salish Sea, Margaret Allen

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

A commonly observed paradox in conservation is that restriction of people’s access to nature and natural resources may protect ecosystem health, but sometimes decreases the wellbeing of local people and can invite conflict and reduce people’s willingness to protect resources. At a middle ground between complete protection and unrestricted commercial use is ecosystem-based management (EBM), which strives to maximize the overall wellbeing of both people and ecosystems. An important domain of human wellbeing to track for the purposes of EBM is resource access, or the ability to gain and maintain uses and benefits of the natural environment. Access does not …

Cluster Analysis And Topoclimate Modeling To Examine Bristlecone Pine Tree-Ring Growth Signals In The Great Basin, Usa, Tyler J. Tran, Jamis M. Bruening, Andrew Godard Bunn, Matthew W. Salzer, Stuart B. Weiss

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Tree rings have long been used to make inferences about the environmental factors that influence tree growth. Great Basin bristlecone pine is a long-lived species and valuable dendroclimatic resource, but often with mixed growth signals; in many cases, not all trees at one location are limited by the same environmental variable. Past work has identified an elevational threshold below the upper treeline above which trees are limited by temperature, and below which trees tend to be moisture limited. This study identifies a similar threshold in terms of temperature instead of elevation through fine-scale topoclimatic modeling, which uses a suite of …

Fine-Scale Modeling Of Bristlecone Pine Treeline Position In The Great Basin, Usa, Jamis M. Bruening, Tyler J. Tran, Andrew Godard Bunn, Stuart B. Weill, Matthew W. Salzer

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) and foxtail pine (Pinus balfouriana) are valuable paleoclimate resources due to their longevity and climatic sensitivity of their annually-resolved rings. Treeline research has shown that growing season temperatures limit tree growth at and just below the upper treeline. In the Great Basin, the presence of precisely dated remnant wood above modern treeline shows that the treeline ecotone shifts at centennial timescales tracking long-term changes in climate; in some areas during the Holocene climatic optimum treeline was 100 meters higher than at present. Regional treeline position models built exclusively from climate …

Predicting Landscape Effects Of Mississippi River Diversions On Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration, Hongqing Wang, Gregory D. Steyer, Brady R. (Brady Randall) Couvillion, Holly Beck, John M. Rybczyk, Victor H. Rivera-Monroy, Ken W. Krauss, Jenneke M. (Jenneke Maria) Visser

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Large Mississippi River (MR) diversions (peak water flow >1416 m³/s and sediment loads >165 kg/s) have been proposed as part of a suite of coastal restoration projects and are expected to rehabilitate and rebuild wetlands to alleviate the significant historic wetland loss in coastal Louisiana. These coastal wetlands are undergoing increasing eustatic sea-level rise, land subsidence, climate change, and anthropogenic disturbances. However, the effect of MR diversions on wetland soil organic carbon (SOC)

sequestration in receiving basins remains unknown. The rate of SOC sequestration or carbon burial in wetlands is one of the variables used to assess the …

Western Spruce Budworm And Wildfire: Is There A Connection?, Daniel G. Gavin, Aquila Flower, Greg M. Cohn, Russell A. Parsons, Emily K. Heyerdahl

Environmental Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

In the interior Pacific Northwest, extensive defoliation of mixed conifer forests during outbreaks of western spruce budworm (WSB) may leave the visual impression of a tinderbox with trees primed to burst into flame. But is this the case?

We addressed this question with funding from the USDA/U.S. Department of the Interior Joint Fire Science Program (project 09– 1–06–5). Here we summarize our three recent publications exploring the potential relationship between WSB outbreaks and fire. We used a multimethod approach to explore potential disturbance interactions that might cause one disturbance to change the occurrence or severity of the other. We used …

Occam's Razor Vol. 7 - Full (2017)

Occam's Razor

No abstract provided.

Rainbow Turán Problems For Paths And Forests Of Stars, Daniel Johnston, Cory Palmer, Amites Sarkar

Mathematics Faculty Publications

For a fixed graph F, we would like to determine the maximum number of edges in a properly edge-colored graph on n vertices which does not contain a rainbow copy of F, that is, a copy of F all of whose edges receive a different color. This maximum, denoted by ex^∗ (n, F), is the rainbow Turán number of F, and its systematic study was initiated by Keevash, Mubayi, Sudakov and Verstraëte [Combinatorics, Probability and Computing 16 (2007)]. We determine ex^∗ (n, F) exactly when F is a forest of stars, and …

Weierstrass Points On X 0+(P) And Supersingular J-Invariants, Stephanie Treneer

Mathematics Faculty Publications

We study the arithmetic properties of Weierstrass points on the modular curves X₀⁺(p) for primes p. In particular, we obtain a relationship between the Weierstrass points on X₀⁺(p) and the j-invariants of supersingular elliptic curves in characteristic p.

Phillipsite And Al-Tobermorite Mineral Cements Produced Through Low-Temperature Water-Rock Reactions In Roman Marine Concrete, Sean R. Mulcahy, Marie D. Jackson, Heng Chen, Yao Li, Piergiulio Cappelletti, Hans-Rudolf Wenk

Geology Faculty Publications

Pozzolanic reaction of volcanic ash with hydrated lime is thought to dominate the cementing fabric and durability of 2000-year-old Roman harbor concrete. Pliny the Elder, however, in first century CE emphasized rock-like cementitious processes involving volcanic ash (pulvis) “that as soon as it comes into contact with the waves of the sea and is submerged becomes a single stone mass (fierem unum lapidem), impregnable to the waves and every day stronger” (Naturalis Historia 35.166). Pozzolanic crystallization of Al-tobermorite, a rare, hydrothermal, calcium-silicate-hydrate mineral with cation exchange capabilities, has been previously recognized in relict lime clasts of the concrete. Synchrotron-based X-ray …

The Planet, 2017, Winter, Jesse Nichols, Huxley College Of The Environment, Western Washington University

The Planet

No abstract provided.

A Pulsed-Air Model Of Blue Whale B Call Vocalizations, R. P. Dziak, J. H. Haxel, T-K. Lau, S. Heimlich, Jacqueline Caplan-Auerbach, D. K. Mellinger, H. Matsumoto, B. Mate

Geology Faculty Publications

Blue whale sound production has been thought to occur by Helmholtz resonance via air flowing from the lungs into the upper respiratory spaces. This implies that the frequency of blue whale vocalizations might be directly proportional to the size of their sound-producing organs. Here we present a sound production mechanism where the fundamental and overtone frequencies of blue whale B calls can be well modeled using a series of short-duration (<1 >s) wavelets. We propose that the likely source of these wavelets are pneumatic pulses caused by opening and closing of respiratory valves during air recirculation between the lungs and …

Simulation Modeling Of Population Expansion For Introduced Mountain Goats In The Olympic Mountains Of Washington State, Melissa M. Oscarson

WWU Graduate School Collection

Mountain goats (Oreamnos americanus) are not native to the Olympic Peninsula as they are to other regions of Washington State. A total of eleven or twelve animals were translocated from Alaska and British Columbia between 1925 and 1929 then released in the foothills of Mount Storm King. By 1970 these founding goats had colonized the entire Olympic range and concerns about the management of this introduced species developed as damage to alpine soil and vegetation was noted. An aerial census of the Olympic range conducted in July 1983 estimated the mountain goat population at 1,175 (95% CI 840 – 1510). …

Effectiveness Of Salmon Carcass Analogs As A Form Of Nutrient Enhancement For Juvenile Coho Salmon (Oncorhynchus Kisutch) In Three Lower Columbia Watersheds, Matthew T. Sturza

WWU Graduate School Collection

Adult Pacific salmon exhibit a form of parental care after spawning and perishing by depositing a subsidy of marine derived nutrients (MDN) that may be incorporated into the stream food web and feed juvenile salmon. Adult salmon populations have significantly declined since the late 19th century, thereby reducing the amount of MDN within Pacific Northwest Streams. This loss in nutrients within stream food webs may be limiting the growth and survival of juvenile salmon and therefore reducing the population sizes of adult salmon. One strategy to mitigate for nutrient deficiencies within a stream is the use of salmon carcass analogs …

Testing The Time Dependence Of Slip On The Western Klamath Lake Fault Zone, Oregon, Gunnar Speth

WWU Graduate School Collection

New geomorphic mapping and cosmogenic 3He geochronology on the Western Klamath Lake fault zone in southern Oregon reveals moderate, but resolvable changes in the rate of normal-fault slip rates over the past ~170 kyr. We focus on a sequence of glacial and post-glacial surfaces that record progressive offset by the fault zone over multiple time intervals. Thirty-nine new cosmogenic ³He surface exposure dates and a cosmogenic nuclide depth profile establish the first late-Pleistocene glacial chronology in the Cascade Range of Oregon and constrains the timing of the last two major glacial advances in the region at 17.6 ± 2.1 …

Building Arc Crust – Plutonic To Volcanic Connections In An Extensional Island Arc, The Alisitos Arc Crustal Section (Southern Rosario Segment), Baja California, Rebecca A. (Rebecca Anne) Morris

WWU Graduate School Collection

The southern volcano-bounded basin of the Rosario segment of the Cretaceous Alisitos oceanic arc provides outstanding 3-D exposures of the upper 7 km of an extensional arc, where crustal generation processes are recorded in the upper crustal volcanic rocks and underlying plutonic rocks. These exceptional exposures allow for the study of the physical and chemical links between the rock units, and helps constrain the differentiation processes active during the growth and evolution of the arc.

Upper crustal volcanic rocks comprise a 3-5 km thick volcanic-volcaniclastic stratigraphy with shallow sill and dike intrusions. Coarse-grained plutonic rocks intrude these units over a …

Towards The Substrate-Bound Structure Of Streptococcus Pneumoniae Sortase A, Orion Banks

WWU Graduate School Collection

Bacterial sortases have been widely studied for their usefulness in protein modification, however, the variable substrate specificity and activity between homologs of these enzymes is not yet fully characterized. To attempt to further understand sorting signal recognition, we have made advances towards a substrate bound structure of Streptococcus pneumoniae sortase A (SrtA_pneu). This enzyme displays a wide tolerance for alternate amino acids within the canonical LPXTG sorting motif. Our strategy involves a non-cleavable peptide analog that can be docked into the active site, allowing for elucidation of a structure displaying the key contacts that allow the enzyme to …

Changes In Water Chemistry And Biological Communities Associated With Metal Mining In Streams In The North Cascades, Brooke G. Bannerman

WWU Graduate School Collection

Hard rock and placer mining have been occurring throughout the mountains in the northern portion of Washington State since the late-1800s. As a result, aquatic ecosystems in this region are susceptible to the physical, chemical and biological changes that result from mining activities. These alterations, which include changes in water chemistry, habitat modifications, and reduction or contamination of food sources, can adversely impact aquatic communities of periphyton, benthic macroinvertebrates and fish. To evaluate changes in water chemistry and biological communities in two regions with extensive mining histories, the Ruby Creek watershed and Upper Skagit River watershed, I analyzed metals in …

Population Characteristics And Habitat Use By The Recently Introduced Asiatic Clam (Corbicula Fluminea) In Lake Whatcom, Washington, Jason A. (Jason Alexander) Buehler

WWU Graduate School Collection

The Asiatic Clam (Corbicula fluminea) was found in Lake Whatcom in 2011. This exotic clam is common throughout North America and is spread between watersheds by infested boats, fishing activities, as well as passively by waterfowl. Corbicula fluminea is a well documented invasive species that survives in many environments and exhibits an rselected life history which can lead to potentially rapid population growth via a clonal reproductive ability typical among invasive bivalves and members of the family Corbiculidae. There are more reproductive strategies in Corbiculidae than any other freshwater bivalve. This rapid growth of a single organism and its associated …

Holocene Fault Reactivation And Landscape Evolution In The Eastern Cascades, Wa, Benjamin M. Carlson

WWU Graduate School Collection

Significant uncertainty remains in how and where modest, distributed shortening is accommodated throughout the eastern Cascade Range in Washington State. Using lidar imagery, I identified a ~5 km long lineament in Swakane Canyon near Wenatchee, roughly coincident with a strand of the Entiat fault. Topographic profiles show the lineament is formed by a southwest-side-up break in slope with between 2 and 42 m of vertical separation of the ground surface. Trenching reveals deformed saprolite and colluvium consistent with southwest-side-up folding caused by blind reverse faulting at depth. Radiocarbon and luminescence dating combined with stratigraphic constraints suggest up to three Holocene …

Mothers' Roots Curriculum Project, Sonya Gobert

WWU Graduate School Collection

Since time immemorial, Indigenous mothers have taught their children how to survive in Indigenous way of being. When we remind our daughters of the strength, and the generations of resiliency and self-love before them, is when we will see real change. The truth is, when we teach our children their identity, we are giving them the tools to restore and rebuild their roots. These children are then the seeds which will be planted with the promise to grow in the awareness of true sovereignty, nationhood, and self-empowerment steeped in Indigenous truth which will ultimately trickle down in their own parenting …

Seismicity And Velocity Structure Of Offshore Hawai`I, Including Lo`Ihi Submarine Volcano, Dara K. Merz

WWU Graduate School Collection

This study presents the earthquake data collected from a nine month deployment (September 2010 - June 2011) of a temporary ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) network fully surrounding Lo‘ihi submarine volcano, Hawai‘i. This allowed us to widen the aperture of earthquake detection around the Big Island, lower the magnitude detection threshold, and better constrain the hypocentral depths of offshore seismicity that occurs between the OBS network and the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) land based network. Although this deployment occurred during a time of volcanic quiescence for Lo‘ihi, it establishes an important basis for background seismicity of the volcano. 463 earthquakes were …

A Theoretical And Experimental Study Into The Kinetics Of Solution Phase Thin Film Deposition, Cyrus Schaaf

WWU Graduate School Collection

The performance of electronic and optoelectronic devices based on solution-processed organic semiconductor layers is strongly influenced by their mesoscale polycrystalline structure, including domain size and spatial distributions. In solution-processed films prepared by spin casting, solvent-based printing, and related methods, morphology is governed by a combination of interrelated thermodynamic and kinetic factors. Classical models of crystal formation in bulk solution or on bare surfaces in vacuum-deposited films fail to adequately capture these effects; the current theoretical understanding of crystallization in solution-deposited films is generally unable to provide much insight, let alone predictive design guidance for tailoring films with specific structural characteristics …

Structural Evolution Of The San Juan Thrust System, Orcas And Shaw Islands, Wa, Kevin Quillan

WWU Graduate School Collection

The San Juan Thrust System represents the western elements of the Cascades orogen and preserves evidence for Cretaceous Cordilleran margin tectonics. The kinematics of deformation phases and their temporal relationship to accretionary wedge high-pressure low-temperature metamorphism remains uncertain. The structural and metamorphic evolution of the San Juan Thrust System was studied on Orcas and Shaw Islands in Western Washington. Detailed field mapping indicates that a widespread S1 flattening fabric (formed during D1) is subparallel to and cut by an S2 fabric found within brittle-ductile shear zones that bound the terranes (formed during D2). Post-cleavage brittle structures (formed during D3) offset …

Probing The Catalytic Properties Of Ni-Based Bimetallic Phosphides For Deep Hydrodesulfurization, Peter J. Topalian

WWU Graduate School Collection

Global demand for transportation fuels continues to rise while environmental standards for sulfur impurities in fuels have become more stringent. Upgrading crude oil feed stocks via deep hydrodesulfurization (HDS) is necessary to meet the ultra-low sulfur standards for transportation fuels. Transition metal phosphides (e.g. Ni₂P, Ru₂P) represents a new class of hydrotreating catalysts that show promise for improved HDS properties relative to conventional molybdenum sulfide based catalysts. Incorporating a second metal into Ni₂P can influence the surface properties and be used to tailor the catalytic properties (activity, selectivity) for improved hydrotreating performance. Bimetallic phosphides …

Modeling, Design And Fabrication Of Biocompatible Silk-Based Electronics And Actuators, Nicholas Ostrovsky-Snider

WWU Graduate School Collection

Biocompatible actuators are widely desired for a variety of biomedical devices such as micromanipulators, steerable catheters and artificial muscles but current devices have shortcomings in the range of motion they can achieve. Biocompatible electrodes made from conducting polymers (CPs) have been successfully created but achieving the spatial patterning of these polymers needed for electronic devices like strain gauges, stimulation electrodes and micro circuitry has been difficult. Previous work has relied on complex chemical incorporation of CPs into photoresists or electropolymerization onto vapor-deposited metal substrates. A simple method to produce metal-free flexible electronics would be highly desirable for biomedical electronics. This …

A Computational Investigation Of Bodipy Excited State Properties And Photosensitization Of Molecular Oxygen, Keenan Komoto

WWU Graduate School Collection

Cancer has long been a significant problem that has affected our world’s population for years and continues to this day. With the number of cases expected to increase annually there is a societal pressure to find effective treatment methods for eliminating cancer. Current forms of cancer treatment tend to cause detrimental effects to the human body and are usually quite expensive and long lasting, some costing upwards of $30,000 over an 8 week period. A more recently established form of cancer treatment known as photodynamic therapy is an effective treatment option for ridding cancers that lie on or just below …