Geology Commons^™

Impacts Of Hard Stabilization On The Shore Of Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Usa, John Chandler Dennis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Discussions related to the adverse impacts associated with shore armor (i.e. seawalls and riprap) are a common topic within the coastal community. While many agree that the installation of these structures alters the shores geomorphic response, there is disagreement in the type and degree of response. Furthermore, studies that have delved into this topic have been conducted in numerous settings but have been confounded by a lack of data regarding shore morphologies prior to installation of these structures. At Yellowstone National Park, there is an opportunity to assess the impacts of shore armor quantitatively because the National Park Service requires …

The Fluvial Muddy Creek Formation Near Overton, Nevada, Carl Taylor Swenberg

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Muddy Creek Formation (MCF) may represent an ancestral Colorado River deposit. To test this hypothesis, I mapped exposures of the MCF within the Virgin River Depression (VRD), a rift basin in the central Basin and Range. This is the first study to analyze fluvial MCF facies and test their viability as ancestral Colorado River deposits.

Mapping, paleocurrent analysis, conglomerate provenance, and architectural elements analysis were used in order to characterize the fluvial MCF near Overton NV. Architectural elements analysis revealed that MCF fluvial facies are most closely associated with those of a high-energy sand-bed braided river system. These results …

Geoarchaeology Of The Orontes River Floodplain Surrounding Tell Qarqur, Syria, Anna Flora Wieser

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project combines geoarchaeological soil description and GIS analysis of archaeological site distribution to investigate the history of marsh formation in the northern Ghab Basin, located within the Orontes River Valley of western Syria. Tell Qarqur, the archaeological site around which this project is focused, has a continuous occupational sequence throughout the Holocene. Annual inundation of the site by seasonal marshlands suggests that the marsh was either smaller or non-existent in the past, but its history remains unknown. The objectives of this investigation are to interpret the nature of depositional environments, particularly fluvial action, in the vicinity of Tell Qarqur, …

Data Integration And Reservoir Characterization Of The Pennsylvanian Bartlesville Sandstone, Caroline Vance O'Keefe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Glenn Pool Oil Field of Northeastern Oklahoma was established as the first major oil discovery of the fledgling state of Oklahoma. Fully developed by 1912, the field is now nearing depletion even under secondary and tertiary recovery efforts after production for approximately 100 years. Large amounts of residual oil estimated to still be in place have motivated exploration into other recovery methods, including polymer flooding and horizontal drilling. Success of these programs is dependent upon accurate characterization of the reservoir. Because most of the drilling occurred many decades ago, much of the data associated with this field predates electric …

Stratigraphy And Provenance Of Shallow Sandstones Endountered In Wells In Townships 9 And 10 North, Ranges 6 And 7 West, White County, Arkansas, Lacie Knight

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Paleozoic formations in western Arkansas have been well-studied; however, they are not well-understood in the eastern part of the state. The study area encompasses Townships 9. N. and 10. N., Ranges 6. W. and 7. W. in north-central White County, Arkansas. This area is at the intersection of four physiographic provinces as defined by the Arkansas Geologic Survey- the Ozark Plateaus, the Arkansas River Valley, the Ouachita Mountains, and the Mississippi Alluvial Plain. Interpretations of the surface unit in the area disagree. The Arkansas Geologic Map shows that the Morrowan Hale Formation crops out in the area; however, various petroleum …

Effects Of High-Impedance-Contrast Boundary Upon Multi-Modal Seismic Surface Wave Data, Prajwol Tamrakar

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Synthetic studies and analyses of an experimental dataset were conducted to address the use of Rayleigh-type surface waves for estimation of shear wave velocity (VS) profiles of shallow bedrock sites. The shallow bedrock presents a high impedance contrast boundary which causes surface wave energy to be partitioned to higher modes. Idealized studies of hypothetical datasets and root-mean-squared calculations of error surfaces showed that if reliable dispersion data are available over a broad frequency spectrum, the VS profile can be recovered using the fundamental mode alone. However, when dispersion data are limited to a relatively narrow frequency band representing what might …

Paired Positive Carbonate Carbon Isotope, Organic Carbon Isotope, And Oxygen Isotope Composition Study Across The Lower Mississippian Positive Carbon Isotope Excursion, Southeastern Nevada, Usa, Robert Alan Henry

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

A prominent positive carbonate carbon isotope (delta13Ccarb) excursion of Early Mississippian age (ca 351 Ma) has been documented by previous studies from numerous sites globally. This delta13Ccarb excursion has been interpreted as resulting from enhanced organic carbon burial that removed 13C-depleted carbon from the ocean and atmosphere. Anticipated outcomes from enhanced organic carbon burial would include a similar positive excursion in organic carbon isotopes (delta13Corg) and a global cooling event resulting from reduced CO2 in the atmosphere and ocean. These predictions, however, were not tested sufficiently in previous studies. This research has tested these predictions through an integrated study of …

Magma Chamber Processes At Mutnovsky Volcano, Russia, Kelly L. Robertson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation is composed of two manuscripts about the evolution of Mutnovsky Volcano in Kamchatka, Russia. Mutnovsky has been active for the past approximately 80,000 years, during which there was the formation and subsequent eruption of four major stratocones. These four eruptive centers, named Mutnovsky I, II, III, and IV from oldest to youngest, have a range of erupted product compositions from basalt to dacite. The first major goal of this project was to investigate the melt source for Mutnovsky. Whole rock trace element and Nd, Sr, and Pb isotopic data were used to determine that the melt source was …

Microstructural Characterization Of Kinked Germanate Olivine Grains, Alex Gregory Drue

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Olivine is the most common and the weakest mineral in the upper mantle. Thus the strength of olivine controls the rheology of the earth's upper mantle. The rheology of olivine in the upper mantle has important implications for mantle flow, mountain building, and rates of isostatic adjustment. Recent experimental measurements of the flow strength of deformed olivine polycrystals have assumed a homogeneous state of stress. X-ray synchrotron diffraction experiments have implied that this assumption is not always valid. Elastic Plastic Self Consistent (EPSC) modeling offers an approach to estimating the flow strength of olivine that does not assume a homogeneous …

Field-Based Constraints On The Origin Of The Benton Uplift, Ouachita Mountains, Rachel Victoria Keng

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Ouachita Mountains are an east-west trending fold-and-thrust belt exposed in west central Arkansas and southeastern Oklahoma. The Mississippian-Pennsylvanian Ouachita orogeny occurred when the Sabine arc terrane collided during south-facing subduction, during closure of the Cambrian passive margin of the North American plate. Deep-water Paleozoic strata were incorporated into an accretionary wedge as the Sabine terrane approached the North American plate. Folds and thrust faults in the Ouachita Mountains generally verge north due to tectonic transport of an accretionary wedge from south to north. Structures in the Benton and Broken Bow Uplifts (located in the core of the wedge) locally …

Mesozoic Burial, Mesozoic And Cenozoic Exhumation Of The Funeral Mountains Core Complex, Death Valley, Southeastern California, Mengesha Assefa Beyene

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Funeral Mountains of Death Valley National Park, CA, provide an opportunity to date metamorphism resulting from crustal shortening and subsequent episodic extensional events in the Sevier hinterland. It was not clear whether crustal shortening and thus peak temperature metamorphism in the hinterland of the Sevier-Laramide orogenic wedge have occurred whether in Late Jurassic, Early Cretaceous , Late Cretaceous or somewhere between. Particularly ambiguous is the timing of crustal shortening in the deep levels of the hinterland of the Sevier belt, now manifest in the metamorphic core complexes, and how and when these middle-to-lower crustal rocks were exhumed. A 6-point …

Geochemical Controls On Mercury Methylation In Backwaters Of A Gulf Coastal Plain River System, Implications For Water Column Processes, Liam N. Schenk

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The abundance and distribution of mercury and methyl mercury were investigated at three sites in the lower Ouachita River in the summer of 2010 in an effort to provide the first characterization of the extent of mercury contamination in this river system, and to investigate the potential for mercury methylation in the water column of backwaters off of the main channel. Results showed that filtered methyl mercury was positively correlated to dissolved organic carbon (r2=0.76) for water samples taken from the bottom 1 ft of the water column at three sites, suggesting the importance of dissolved organic carbon in mercury …