Earth Sciences Commons^™

Economic Geology Of The San Bernardino Mountains, California, Nicolette Deannah Grill

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The San Bernardino Mountains are well known for their rich mining history, especially, gold in the mid-1800s and the current mining of one of the world’s largest deposits of high purity limestone. The purpose of this study was to compile new, current, and historical data of the major economic resources that are present and mining that has gone on in the San Bernardino Mountains. It is estimated that historical mining of the Holcomb Valley recovered $457,660,000 of gold or about 350,000 troy ounces based on samples collected for this study and 2013 gold price. The current major geologic resource is …

Geophysical Signatures Of Disseminated Iron Minerals: A Proxy For Understanding Subsurface Biophysicochemical Processes, Gamal Z. Abdel Aal, Estella A. Atekwana, Andre Revil

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Previous studies have linked biogeophysical signatures to the presence of iron minerals resulting from distinct biophysicochemical processes. Utilizing geophysical methods as a proxy of such biophysicochemical processes requires an understanding of the geophysical signature of the different iron minerals. Laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate the complex conductivity and magnetic susceptibility signatures of five iron minerals disseminated in saturated porous media under variable iron mineral content and grain size. Both pyrite and magnetite show high quadrature and inphase conductivities compared to hematite, goethite, and siderite, whereas magnetite was the highly magnetic mineral dominating the magnetic susceptibility measurements. The quadrature conductivity …

Speleothem And Biofilm Formation In A Granite/Dolerite Cave, Northern Sweden, Therese Sallstedt, Magnus Ivarsson, Johannes Lundberg, Rabbe Sjöberg, Juan Ramón Vidal Romaní

International Journal of Speleology

Tjuv-Antes grotta (Tjuv-Ante's Cave) located in northern Sweden is a round-abraded sea cave ('tunnel cave'), about 30 m in length, formed by rock-water abrasion in a dolerite dyke in granite gneiss. Abundant speleothems are restricted to the inner, mafic parts of the cave and absent on granite parts. The speleothems are of two types: cylindrical (coralloid, popcorn-like), and flowstone (thin crusts). Coralloids correspond to terrestrial stromatolite speleothems in which layers of light calcite alternate with dark, silica-rich laminae. The dark laminae are also enriched in carbon and contain incorporated remains of microorganisms. Two types of microbial communities can be distinguished …

Caves In Caves: Evolution Of Post-Depositional Macroholes In Stalagmites, Nurit Shtober-Zisu, Henry P. Schwarcz, Tom Chow, Christopher R. Omelon, Gordon Southam

International Journal of Speleology

In a previous paper (Shtober-Zisu et al., 2012) we described millimeter to centime-sized fluid-free holes within the interiors of stalagmites of widely varying origin. We present here further observations of this phenomenon, using X-ray tomography, macroscopic and microscopic observation of sections of twenty-six stalagmites from various sites in North America and the Caribbean region. We can distinguish three types of cavities in speleothems: primary µm-sized fluid inclusions; mm to cm sized holes, aligned along the stalagmite growth axis which are clearly syngenetic; and µm to cm-sized holes away from the growth axis (“off-axis holes or OAHs”) deeply buried inside their …

Coastal Change Analysis Of Lovells Island Using High Resolution Ground Based Lidar Imagery, Jennifer K. Ly

Graduate Masters Theses

Many methods have been employed to study coastline change. These methods range from historical map analysis to GPS surveys to modern airborne LiDAR and satellite imagery. These previously used methods can be time consuming, labor intensive, and expensive and have varying degrees of accuracy and temporal coverage. Additionally, it is often difficult to apply such techniques in direct response to an isolated event within an appropriate temporal framework. Here we utilize a new ground based Canopy Biomass LiDAR (CBL) system built at The University of Massachusetts Boston (in collaboration with the Rochester Institute of Technology) in order to identify and …

U.S. Drought Monitor, August 26, 2014, David Simeral

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for August 26, 2014 (8/26/14) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

Research On The Application Of Sea Ice Information In The Arctic North West Passage, Yuanhui Yang

Maritime Safety & Environment Management Dissertations (Dalian)

No abstract provided.

Risk Assessment Of Navigation Safety In The Water Area Of Bohai, Bingcong Dai

Maritime Safety & Environment Management Dissertations (Dalian)

No abstract provided.

Optimized Method For Black Carbon Analysis In Ice And Snow Using The Single Particle Soot Photometer, I. A. Wendl, James A. Menking, R. Färber, M. Gysel, Susan D. Kaspari, M. J. G. Laborde, M. Schwikowski

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

In this study we attempt to optimize the method for measuring black carbon (BC) in snow and ice using a Single Particle Soot Photometer (SP2). Beside the previously applied ultrasonic (CETAC) and Collison-type nebulizers we introduce a jet (Apex Q) nebulizer to aerosolize the aqueous sample for SP2 analysis. Both CETAC and Apex Q require small sample volumes (a few milliliters) which makes them suitable for ice core analysis. The Apex Q shows the least size-dependent nebulizing efficiency in the BC particle diameter range of 100–1000 nm. The CETAC has the advantage that air and liquid flows can be monitored …

Discovery Of Shallow-Marine Biofacies Conodonts In A Bioherm Within The Carboniferous-Permian Transition In The Omalon Massif, Ne Russia Near The North Paleo-Pole: Correlation With A Warming Spike In The Southern Hemisphere, Vladimir I. Davydov, Alexander S. Biakov

Geosciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

The conodont genera Hindeodus and Streptognathodus are reported for the first time within the Carboniferous-Permian transition in the northern high latitudes of the Paren’ River, Omolon Massif, NE Russia. Several fossil groups, including brachiopods, bivalves, scaphopods and microgastropods were found to be prolific in the invertebrate-dominated bioherms. These bioherms occur within predominantly siliciclastic sequences with extremely poor fauna, whereas in the studied bioherms the diversity of the bivalves and brachiopods exceeded observed diversity elsewhere in coeval facies in NE Russia. The bioherms are biostratigraphically constrained as uppermost Pennsylvanian to lowermost Cisuralian based on ammonoids. The very unusual peak of bivalve …

U.S. Drought Monitor, August 19, 2014, Richard Tinker

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for August 19, 2014 (8/19/14) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

Fluid Properties In The Formation Of High-Grade Iron Ore In Northern Minnesota, Elizabeth Drommerhausen

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

The Mesabi Iron Range in Northern Minnesota has been a major producer of iron ore for over 100 years. Production has been from the 1.85 – billion-year –old Biwabik Iron Formation, an iron-rich sedimentary rock that is tilted gently to the south. Most of the known high-grade ore lies near the surface and has been already mined. Determining whether more high-grade ore may lie at depth could have significant economic impact on the mining industry in northern Minnesota. To evaluate the likelihood of finding more high-grade iron ore deeper underground, it is important to determine the source of the fluids …

History And Dynamics Of Net Rotation Of The Mantle And Lithosphere, Maxwell L. Rudolph, Shijie Zhong

Geology Faculty Publications and Presentations

The net rotation of Earth’s lithosphere with respect to the underlying mantle is the longestwavelength component of toroidal flow in the mantle and is sensitive to both mantle buoyancy structure and lateral viscosity variations. The lithospheric net rotation in the geologic past implied by plate reconstructions using a hotspot reference frame for the past 100 Myr is up to five times greater than the presentday rate of lithospheric net rotation. We explore the role of lateral viscosity variations associated with subcontinental keels in producing the lithospheric net rotation for the geologic past and find that the introduction of subcontinental keels …

Crop Advisors As Climate Information Brokers: Building The Capacity Of Us Farmers To Adapt To Climate Change, Maria Carmen Lemos, Yun-Jia Lo, Christine Kirchhoff, Tonya Haigh

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

This paper examines the role of crop advisors as brokers of climate information to support US corn farmers to adapt to climatic change. It uses quantitative data collected from a broad survey of crop advisors in the US Corn Belt to examine the factors that shape advisors’ use of (and willingness to provide) climate information to their clients. Building upon a general model of climate information usability we argue that advisors’ willingness to provide climate advice to farmers is influenced by three main factors: their information seeking habits and behavior, their experience with innovation in the past, and how climate …

Estimating Landslide-Induced Riverbed Roughness Variation By Using Lidar Data, Mon-Shieh Yang, Ming-Chee Wu, Jin-King Liu

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

With advancements in the efficiency and accuracy of investigation techniques and equipment, remote sensing technologies have been widely used to investigate river conditions. Quantifying the morphology along a river channel was difficult before airborne laser altimetry technology, light detection and ranging (LiDAR), was introduced, facilitating the collection of high-resolution, highly accurate topographical data. This study adopted airborne LiDAR data for analyzing and recognizing riverbed morphology. The roughness index was defined as the standard deviation of a residual topography. A variable moving-window was used to derive a smoothed digital elevation model (DEM). According to the roughness index, the residual topography was …

Composition, Alteration, And Texture Of Fault-Related Rocks From Safod Core And Surface Outcrop Analogs: Evidence For Deformation Processes And Fluid-Rock Interactions, Kelly Keighley Bradbury, Colter R. Davis, John W. Shervais, Susanne U. Janecke, James P. Evans

Geosciences Faculty Publications

We examine the fine-scale variations in mineralogical composition, geochemical alteration, and texture of the fault-related rocks from the Phase 3 whole-rock core sampled between 3,187.4 and 3,301.4 m measured depth within the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) borehole near Parkfield, California. This work provides insight into the physical and chemical properties, structural architecture, and fluid-rock interactions associated with the actively deforming traces of the San Andreas Fault zone at depth. Exhumed outcrops within the SAF system comprised of serpentinite-bearing protolith are examined for comparison at San Simeon, Goat Rock State Park, and Nelson Creek, California. In the Phase …

Seasonal And Elevational Variations Of Black Carbon And Dust In Snow And Ice In The Solu-Khumbu, Nepal And Estimated Radiative Forcings, Susan Kaspari, T. H. Painter, M. Gysel, S. M. Skiles, M. Schwikowski

All Faculty Scholarship for the College of the Sciences

Black carbon (BC) and dust deposited on snow and glacier surfaces can reduce the surface albedo, accelerate snow and ice melt, and trigger albedo feedback. Assessing BC and dust concentrations in snow and ice in the Himalaya is of interest because this region borders large BC and dust sources, and seasonal snow and glacier ice in this region are an important source of water resources. Snow and ice samples were collected from crevasse profiles and snow pits at elevations between 5400 and 6400 m a.s.l. from Mera glacier located in the Solu-Khumbu region of Nepal during spring and fall 2009, …

Investigating The Link Between Surface Water And Groundwater In The Tule Lake Subbasin, Oregon And California, Esther Maria Pischel

Dissertations and Theses

Water allocation in the upper Klamath Basin of Oregon and California has been challenging. Irrigators have increasingly turned to groundwater to make up for surface water shortages because of shifts in allocation toward in-stream flows for Endangered Species Act listed fishes. The largest increase in groundwater pumping has been in and around the Bureau of Reclamation's Klamath Irrigation Project, which includes the Tule Lake subbasin in the southern part of the upper Klamath Basin. Previous groundwater flow model simulations indicate that water level declines from pumping may result in decreased flow to agricultural drains in the Tule Lake subbasin. Agricultural …

Silica Distribution In Oxidized Biwabik Iron Formation: Ore-Waste Cutoff Prediction, Ryan Rague

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Oxidation of iron formation in the Mesabi Iron Range, Minnesota, has negatively impacted recovery of the main ore mineral, magnetite, by two mechanisms. First, magnetite has been partially or completely oxidized to hematite (martite), which is not magnetically separable. Second, silica has been remobilized during the oxidation process, and comprises a higher percentage of the ore concentrate than is desirable due to its altered grain size, making it difficult to grind sufficiently. Fluid inclusion data showed that fault-channeled, diagenesis-stage fluids (mean T homog = 154° C; mean salinity = 9.5 wt% NaCl equivalent) were responsible for early oxidation of iron …

U.S. Drought Monitor, August 12, 2014, Richard Tinker

United States Agricultural Commodities in Drought Archive

Drought map of U.S. for August 12, 2014 (8/12/14) plus: U.S. crop areas experiencing drought (map), Approximate percentage of crop located in drought, by state (bar graph), Percent of crop area located in drought, past 52 weeks (line graph) for: Corn, Soybeans, Hay, Cattle, Winter wheat.

Tectonic Studies Of The Atlantic Margin In The Southeastern United States, Andrew C. Pollack

Theses and Dissertations

Reanalysis of published seismic and well data from the South Georgia Embayment provides important new constraints on the geologic structure and evolution of the Eastern North American margin. A lower Paleozoic stratigraphic section (Silurian to Devonian) sampled in offshore wells drilled in the late 1970’s, can be correlated continuously along the entire ~250 km N-S length of the BA-3 profile acquired in 1989. Other than gentle warping and minor fault offsets, this Paleozoic section is essentially undeformed, precluding both Paleozoic contractional deformation associated with Appalachian orogeny, or subsequent Mesozoic extensional deformation and magmatism associated with continental rifting and formation of …

Garzón Massif Basement Tectonics: A Geopyhysical Study, Upper Magdalena Valley, Colombia, Kadir Baris Bakioglu

Theses and Dissertations

The mechanics and kinematics of basement tectonic uplifts, such as the Laramide Rocky Mountain orogeny, remain poorly understood and controversial. The debate continues in part because of the limited number of well-documented present day analogs. The Garzón Massif rising between the Upper Magdalena Valley and the Llanos Basin of Colombia is an active basement uplift with well, seismic, gravity, and magnetic data available. In the past 10 Ma, PreCambrian age granitic rocks of the Garzón Massif have been uplifted and displaced against Cretaceous and Tertiary sediments of the Upper Magdalena Valley along the Garzón fault.

Aerogravimetric data calibrated by well …

Channel Properties Of Fluvial-Tidal Transition, Santee River, Sc, Kyungho Jeon

Theses and Dissertations

A range of studies shows that terrestrial and tidal channel dimensions increase in the downstream direction, transitioning seaward from a power function of discharge to an exponential function of distance from the coast. There are also an increasing number of studies on tidal hydrodynamics and sedimentology in channel reaches where river and tidal flows meet. However, there is a dearth of information on the channel form in fluvial-tidal transition, and therefore we have little understanding of what constitutes the fluvial-tidal transition channel, or channel reach. The Santee River in South Carolina is a gently sloping (average 10-5) coastal plain river …

Flow Dynamics In The Transition Zone From Estuarine Tidal To Fluvial Regime In The Santee River, Sc, Usa, Legna M. Torres-Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

Estuaries are important systems that link fresh, inland waters to oceanic salt water, where they act to deliver large amounts of nutrients, sediments and pollutants into the ocean. Traditionally, the study of estuarine systems has been marked by difficulty owing to the complex hydrodynamics influenced by strong bathymetric changes, changes in tidal range, intricate geomorphology, among other factors; thus beginning to unravel the complexities of estuarine hydrodynamics will help to illuminate the nature of estuaries as well as to provide a foundation for their further study. In this study I focus on the transition zone from tidal to fluvial regime, …

Genes Mediating Cardiac Remodeling During Pregnancy And The Early Post-Partum-Period In Mice, Esam Aljrbi

Theses and Dissertations

The female heart undergoes adaptive remodeling during pregnancy to compensate for the increased hemodynamic load imposed by the developing fetus. However, unlike a similar adaptive process which occurs under pathological conditions (such as hypertension and valvular heart disease) the cardiac changes observed during hypertrophy associated with pregnancy are reversible. The goal of this study is to identify changes in gene expression associated with pregnancy-induced hypertrophy. We tested the hypothesis that pregnancy-induced physiological hypertrophy has a unique genetic signature, likely due to altered hormone levels, which supports and promotes reversible remodeling. Comparing the gene expression profile associated with physiological remodeling with …

Laurentian Great Lakes Phytoplankton And Their Water Quality Characteristics, Including A Diatom-Based Model For Paleoreconstruction Of Phosphorus, Euan D. Reavie, Adam J. Heathcote, Victoria L. Shaw Chraïbi

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

Recent shifts in water quality and food web characteristics driven by anthropogenic impacts on the Laurentian Great Lakes warranted an examination of pelagic primary producers as tracers of environmental change. The distributions of the 263 common phytoplankton taxa were related to water quality variables to determine taxon-specific responses that may be useful in indicator models. A detailed checklist of taxa and their environmental optima are provided. Multivariate analyses indicated a strong relationship between total phosphorus (TP) and patterns in the diatom assemblages across the Great Lakes. Of the 118 common diatom taxa, 90 (76%) had a directional response along the …

Cosmogenic Radionuclides In Ice Cores From West Antarctica, Zhijie Chen, Thomas Edward Woodruff, Marc W. Caffee

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Cosmogenic nuclides such as ¹⁰Be and ²⁶Al are formed in the atmosphere by cosmic rays and come down to the ground through snow which became ice in Antarctica. The concentrations of ¹⁰Be and ²⁶Al in ice cores can reveal important information about climate change, solar activity and geomagnetic change in the past. They can also be used to date very old ice. Since there is very little ²⁶Al in the ice, its actual concentration is poorly known and the measured results don’t agree with each other. My research is focused on the measurement of the …

Three-Dimensional Deformable Pore Networks, Jack W. Conrad, Laura J Pyrak-Nolte

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Porous structures in materials play a part in many areas of research and development. A couple of examples of this are extraction of water through aquifers and oil through fracking processes. Current understanding of the small scale fluid-fluid interactions in the structure of these porous materials stops at data of the two dimensional interface between the two fluids. This experiment aimed to create three dimensional, transparent, deformable micro-models which are expected allow us to obtain three dimensional data sets of the capillary pressure–saturation–interfacial area per volume relationship. The micro-models were synthesized using a grain deposition technique. Grains were formed using …

Earth History Visualization System, Xinjie Lei, James G. Ogg

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Time Scale Creator (TSCreator), a geological chart generator, displays any portion of Earth history including chemo- magneto-, and other aspects. TSCreator is used by many universities, petroleum companies, and international geological surveys. In order to improve the quality of Time Scale Creator, tools were developed to provide users with more friendly graphical user interfaces (GUIs), accurate scaling of specific isotope, internationalization of data input and output, and smart depth scaling in wells to age conversion. To implement such tools, research for algorithm and common methods was basically done by searching articles online and reading posts on forums for Java developers. …

Late Cenozoic Evolution Of Sedimentation And Slope Stability Along The U.S. Atlantic Margin, Bradley Kevin Craig

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The U.S. Mid-Atlantic margin,from the Norfolk Canyon south to Cape Hatteras, exhibits three major seafloor morphologies: elongated shelf-edge blowouts, the Currituck submarine landslide, and a large slope-sourced canyon failure. The late Cenozoic evolution of slope stability on the Middle Atlantic margin can be linked to the framework geology as well as spatial and temporal variations in sedimentation patterns across the margin. The framework geology impacts sediment pathways, while the shape of the margin influences the position of sediment depocenters across the margin. Changes in sedimentation rates and sediment source dictate the amount of sediment being delivered to each region and …