Geology Commons^™

Assessing The Use Of Tsunami Simulations As A Tool To Predict Source Magnitudes And Locations Of Paleoearthquakes In Chile, Rebeca Isabel Becerra

All Master's Theses

A long-term goal of paleotsunami studies is the ability to predict paleoearthquake parameters based on tsunami deposits found on land. Chile provides an exemplary location for testing methods of making these predictions because the historical record includes 41 major earthquakes as far back as 1562 AD, and there are many known paleotsunami deposits throughout the region. Using these records as a comparison tool, I evaluated simulated tsunami wave heights and inundation extent with the tsunami model GeoClaw for nine hypothetical tsunamigenic large earthquakes (M_w 8.6, 8.8, and 9.0) in south-central Chile with epicenters at -35.1º, -38.8º, and -42.9º. As …

Stream Water And Soil Water Chemistry After The Table Mountain Wildfire, Washington, Usa, Vincent J. Roccanova

All Master's Theses

Analyses of major and trace elements, major ions, and nutrient concentrations were made to investigate how stream water and soil water chemistry changed over 16 months following the Table Mountain wildfire. Sites with different burn severity were also compared. The fire occurred in 2012 in Kittitas County, north of Ellensburg, Washington. Samples were collected at severely burned, moderately burned, and unburned field sites from within and adjacent to the wildfire perimeter. Total nitrogen concentrations increased in the second year after the fire in both the severely and moderately burned sites. In contrast, total phosphorus was variable at all three sites …

Occupational Seasonality And Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction At Quebrada Jaguay 280, Stephanie Melissa Gruver

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Quebrada Jaguay 280 (QJ-280) is one of the oldest maritime archaeological sites in the New World. Previous excavations of the southern Peruvian coastal site have dated occupation from ~13,000-8,000 cal yr BP. These excavations also determined that the occupants of the site used preferential maritime resource procurement strategies and had an interzonal connection to the highlands. In 2017 a new excavation was conducted at QJ-280 and the remains of the marine mollusk Mesodesma donacium were recovered. Geochemical examinations on the shell remains informed on the occupational seasonality of the site and reconstructed sea surface temperatures experienced off the coast of …

Hydrogen, Carbon, And Oxygen Isotopes In Prosopis Sp. Trees: A New Climate Proxy For Holocene Paleoclimate In The Atacama Desert, Chile, Elizabeth Joy Olson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The spatial ubiquity of trees in terrestrial ecosystems worldwide facilitates the use of stable isotope research in tree-rings to address a wide-range of interdisciplinary questions related to climate, ecology, archaeology, and hydrology. This dissertation focuses on the development and application of Prosopis tamarugo tree-ring stable isotope records as a paleoclimate proxy for the Atacama Desert, Chile. Current paleoclimate proxies from this region lack the spatial and temporal resolution to quantify a causal mechanism for observed Holocene hydroclimate variability. P. tamarugo tree-ring isotopes provide a high-resolution proxy that facilitates the reconstruction of hydroclimate variability at a regional scale. In order to …

Investigating The Effect Of Magma Viscosity Changes On The Eruption Style Of Masaya Caldera Complex, Nicaragua, Garima Lohani

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The Masaya caldera complex is a basaltic shield volcano that has produced rare basaltic Plinian eruptions (BPE) but is characterized by effusive activity in the last 6000 years. More than two million people live within a 20 km radius of the caldera. Magma viscosity plays an important role in determining the eruption style of a volcano. In this thesis, I provide the first viscosity measurements on an erupted magma composition and examine the role of magma viscosity in determining eruptive style at Masaya and in promoting BPE’s.

Viscosity experiments were conducted for a Masaya lava sample at superliquidus, subliquidus and …

Environmental Governance And Climate Change Adaptation In The Okavango Delta, Botswana, Jamie Shinn

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Increased environmental variability as a result of climate change will continue to intensify in coming decades, with particularly acute consequences for those living in already marginal conditions. The impacts of these biophysical changes require new approaches to environmental governance to facilitate successful forms of climate change adaptation for individuals and communities in changing social-ecological systems.

Risk Assessment And Mapping Of Hand, Foot, And Mouth Disease At The County Level In Mainland China Using Spatiotemporal Zero-Inflated Bayesian Hierarchical Models, Chao Song, Yaqian He, Yanchen Bo, Jinfeng Wang, Zhoupeng Ren, Huibin Yang

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) is a worldwide infectious disease, prominent in China. China’s HFMD data are sparse with a large number of observed zeros across locations and over time. However, no previous studies have considered such a zero-inflated problem on HFMD’s spatiotemporal risk analysis and mapping, not to mention for the entire Mainland China at county level. Monthly county-level HFMD cases data combined with related climate and socioeconomic variables were collected. We developed four models, including spatiotemporal Poisson, negative binomial, zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP), and zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) models under the Bayesian hierarchical modeling framework to explore disease …

Crustal Structure Beneath The Eastern Margin Of The Tibetan Plateau And Adjacent Areas From Receiver Function Stacking And Gravity Modeling, Yunxin Peng

Doctoral Dissertations

"To provide constraints on the mechanisms responsible for the uplift and crustal thickening of the eastern Tibetan Plateau, the thickness and Vp/Vs values of the Moho beneath 153 seismic stations are obtained by stacking P-to-S converted phases from the Moho and gravity modeling. The resulting crustal thickness generally decreases from the northwest to the south-east, from about 60 km in the Bayan Har Block to 30 km in the Sichuan Basin. The crustal Vp/Vs measurements in the Qinling Orogenic Belt, Bayan Har Block, Chuxiong Basin, and Yangtze Platform indicate an overall intermediate to felsic crustal composition. With a relatively thick …

The Sedimentary Record Of Eocene Deformation In The Interior Of The Southern Canadian Cordillera, Erica May Rubino

Theses and Dissertations

Eocene sedimentary strata exposed in the interior of the southern Canadian Cordillera (SCC) in British Columbia (BC) and northernmost Washington (WA) record a poorly understood history of extension-related deformation in the hinterland of the orogen. Today these strata are exposed in isolated, distinct outcrop belts, although the nature of the original basin(s) is unknown. We examined 650 m of Eocene strata, analyzed 2,995 detrital zircons for uranium-lead (U-Pb) ages, and measured 67 detrital zircons for Hf isotope systematics in an effort to better understand the physiography of the SCC during this time period. Eocene strata consist of clast- and matrix-supported …

Organic Acids And Amino Acids In Serpentinization Related Fluids From The Atlantis Massif, Nicholas Camper

Theses and Dissertations

Serpentinization is a low temperature, low pressure process that occurs when water reacts with ultramafic rocks. Fluids that have interacted with serpentinites have elevated concentrations of hydrogen and reduced carbon species that can fuel chemolithoautotrophy. International Ocean Discovery Program Expedition 357 drilled a series of boreholes into the Atlantis Massif with the goal of investigating how serpentinization impacts carbon cycling and sustains life in the subseafloor. Bottom water samples (CTD), fluids flushed from the boreholes during drilling (Rock Drill), and fluids that were trapped in the liners of the cores (Liner fluids) were collected. The changes and distributions of organic …

Encrusting Sclerobiont Paleoecology And Bioerosion Of Oysters In The Type Campanian (Upper Cretaceous) Of Southwestern France, Macy A. Conrad

Senior Independent Study Theses

The Campanian Stage of the Upper Cretaceous was established by Henri Coquand in 1857 based on a sequence of richly fossiliferous shallow water carbonates in the Charente and Charente-Maritime departments of southwestern France. One of the most common macrofossils is the gryphaeid oyster Pycnodonte vesicularis (Lamarck, 1806), which often forms extensive shell beds. This bivalve lived primarily on soft marly substrates, forming hard substrate islands. They frequently supported sclerobiont communities comprising encrusters (diverse cheilostome and cyclostome bryozoans, foraminiferans, oysters, bivalves, sabellid and serpulid polychaetes, calcareous sponges), borers (the sponge borings Entobia, the worm borings Maeandropolydora and Caulostrepsis, the barnacle borings …

Seismic Characteristics Of Paleo-Pockmarks At Great South Basin, New Zealand, Arunee Karaket

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Paleo-pockmarks and present-day pockmarks are founded in several varieties both onshore and offshore worldwide. These features can be used as an indicator of fluid flow process which expulses through an unconsolidated sediment within the basin. The Great South Basin, New Zealand is one of the basins that paleo-pockmarks are observed covering the southeast offshore of South Island at around 1.5 s (TWT) depth beneath the surface. This study aims to identify seismic characteristics of paleo-pockmarks in the Great South Basin and predict the possible fluid origins and their mechanism. The numerous paleo-pockmarks are identified and imaged by using 3D seismic …

The Influence Of Geological Structure On Stratigraphic Development During Multiphase Rifting In The Songkhla Basin, Gulf Of Thailand, Jidapa Phoosongsee

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The Cenozoic N-S trending Songkhla rift basin, located in the southwest Gulf of Thailand, was developed as a predominantly orthogonal extended half graben structure. The half graben is controlled by a boundary fault zone on the western side of the basin, which forms a series of N-S to NNE-SSW, east-dipping normal faults. The rift spans two phases of rifting; the Eocene-Oligocene and the Oligocene-Miocene phases, the late syn-rift to post-rift transition occurred from the late Early Miocene to Middle Miocene. The main clastic hydrocarbon reservoirs in the basin are located in the Early Miocene to Middle Miocene section. These reservoirs …

Influences Of Geologic Conditions And Anthropogenic Activities On Changes Of Geomorphology And Sediment Load Characteristics Of The Ping And Chao Phraya Rivers, Nikhom Chaiwongsaen

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

The Chao Phraya River flows into the largest river basin of Thailand. The Ping River is one of its the major upstream branches flowing down slope southwardly, joining the Chao Phraya River in the central plain and ends at the Gulf of Thailand. The sand-choked is extensively observed and the flood overflow occurs frequently and rapidly at the Lower Ping River. In contrary, the Chao Phraya River, the erosion of river bank and shoreline around the river mouth has been spatially increasing in place. The Landsat imageries taken in 1987, 1997, 2007 and 2017 were used to analyze geomorphological changes …

Aftershock Analysis In The Mainland Southeast Asia, Premwadee Traitangwong

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

In this study, the characteristics of the aftershock in the mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) were investigated using the several seismological techniques, i.e., i) the Gutenberg-Richter relationship (G-R relationship) ii) the modified Omori's law iii) the Bath's law and iv) the fractal dimension. After declustering, 1,697 clusters during 1985-2017, which represent the aftershocks occurring after mainshock were investigated in 13 seismic source zones recognized in the MSEA. According to the Bath's law, the maximum magnitude of the aftershock depends on the magnitude of the mainshock, with the difference value between 0.4-2.5. In the intraplate zone, it is less than in the …

Mineral Inclusions In Ruby And Sapphire From Bo Welu And Bo Rai Deposits, Eastern Thailand, Supparat Promwongnan

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

Corundum deposits located in several places around the world which appear to have different genesis models. The origins of corundum can be distinguished by mineral inclusions. In this study, most of the rough gem corundum from Bo Rai deposit, Trat Province, and Bo Welu deposit, Chanthaburi Province, in Eastern Thailand show etched or dissolved surfaces that were resulted from dissolution by hot basaltic magma during transportation to the surface. Moreover, these gem corundums also show absorption spectral characteristics related to trace elements which typical for corundum from this area. Corundums from Bo Rai deposit in Trat Province, and from Bo …

Qualitative And Quantitative Analysis Of Carbonate Waters In The Peters Mountain Region Of Monroe County, Wv, Emily A. Bausher

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Water in Monroe County, WV is used extensively for public and private supply and requires quantification, chemical analysis, and assessment for contamination susceptibility. Over 250 springs were previously identified in the eastern side of Monroe County on or near Peters Mountain; 14 were continuously monitored in this study. Springs were grouped based on geologic and spatial distribution: interbedded clastic-rock springs on the mountain flanks, carbonate springs in the valley, and a thermal spring associated with the St. Clair thrust fault. Clastic and carbonate springs have calcium-magnesium-bicarbonate chemistries, neutral pHs and high alkalinities; the thermal spring has calcium-magnesium-sulfate-carbonate chemistry, low pH, …

Trace Element And Isotopic Fingerprinting Of Olivine Phenocrysts As Recorders Of Magmatic Processes In The Golden Trout Volcanic Field, Kern Plateau, Ca, Mark E. Szymanski

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Quaternary mafic volcanism in the western Basin and Range and in the southeastern Sierra Nevada is largely controlled by extensional stresses that promote magma generation through decompression melting of the lithospheric and asthenospheric mantle. Where volcanism occurs in the Sierra Nevada, like at the Golden Trout Volcanic Field GTVF), the eruption rate, number of vents, and eruption volume is an order of magnitude less than at neighboring Basin and Range volcanic fields such as the Big Pine Volcanic Field (BPVF). To determine the factors that cause these differences in adjacent and contemporaneous volcanic fields, I sampled rocks from both fields …

Temporal Changes In Submarine Groundwater Discharge In A Georgia Salt Marsh, Tanner C. Avery, Jacque L. Kelly

Earth, Environment & Sustainability: Faculty Presentations (1988-2022)

No abstract provided.

Comparing Source Rock Maturity With Pore Size Distribution And Fluid Saturation In The Bakken-Three Forks Petroleum System, Williston Basin, North Dakota, Adedoyin Suleman Adeyilola

Theses and Dissertations

With the continuous demand for fossil fuel and advancement in technology, the unconventional petroleum resources have come into limelight. The Devonian Three Forks Formation consisting of carbonate and clastic sediments is an unconventional oil accumulation

containing about 3.73 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil. However, understanding rock properties of the various lithofacies and fluid saturation is still challenging.

The petroleum prospectivity was evaluated by integrating organic maturity and hydrocarbon generation with porosity distribution and fluid saturation in the Ambrose field and adjacent fields. The organic maturity was done with a programmed pyrolysis analysis (Source

Rock Analyzer) using samples taken at …

Re-Evaluation Of The Extent And Tectonic History Of The Helena Banks Fault Zone, Offshore South Carolina, Ahmet Postaagasi

Theses and Dissertations

The Helena Banks Fault Zone (HBFZ), first identified in the early 1980’s offshore Charleston, S.C., was originally interpreted to be a major, high-angle, basin-bounding normal fault associated with Mesozoic rifting. Subsequent work suggests that (1) Mesozoic rift basins are not present on the continental shelf of South Carolina, (2) the HBFZ originated as a strike-slip fault within Paleozoic sedimentary rocks of the Suwannee Basin sequence, (3) a mafic intrusion inferred from aeromagnetic data is coincident with a broadly circular zone of highly-complex faulting along the north-eastward continuation of the HBFZ where (4) up to 300 m of local relief can …

The Impact Of Upland Development And Marsh Width On Groundwater Composition In Estuarine Tidal Creeks In The Southeastern Coastal United States, Meghan Shanahan

Theses and Dissertations

Coastal upland development has been shown to negatively impact surface water quality in tidal creeks along the southeastern coastal United States, but the impact of development on groundwater quality is not well understood. Increases in impervious cover associated with development has the potential to increase groundwater contamination as well as reduce fresh rainwater infiltration into the subsurface, which may decrease discharge of fresh groundwater to the estuary. We hypothesized that groundwater nutrient concentrations and salinity ranges would be higher in developed watersheds than in undeveloped watersheds.

Groundwater discharging from coastal uplands often travels through salt marshes before discharging to tidal …

Assessment Of Upper Cretaceous Strata For Offshore Co2 Storage: Southeastern United States, Khaled F. Almutairi

Theses and Dissertations

This is the first assessment of Upper Cretaceous strata for offshore CO2 storage resources in the southeastern United States outer continental shelf. This research focuses on Upper Cretaceous geological units using legacy industry 2-D seismic reflection and well data. It provides an integrated description and reliable subsurface evaluation of Upper Cretaceous potential storage reservoirs. In addition, it provides a detailed evaluation on how rock porosities and permeabilities are distributed across the Upper Cretaceous strata restricted to the South Georgia Embayment (SGE). Structure and thickness (isochore) maps were generated for the main potential reservoirs and seals on a regional and local …

Facies Architecture And Controls On Reservoir Behavior In The Turonian Wall Creek Member Of The Frontier Formation, Powder River Basin, Wyoming, Nathan M. La Fontaine

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Inter-well heterogeneities influencing fluid migration in deltaic reservoirs are controlled by lateral lithofacies changes and vertical complexities such as low permeability thin-beds. Subsurface tools often cannot predict the spatial and stratigraphic organization of these architectural elements, nor their influence on effective reservoir properties and connectivity. This study integrates sedimentological, stratigraphic, and fluid simulation data to 1) document the facies architecture and depositional evolution of the Turonian Wall Creek Member (WCM) of the Frontier Formation, and 2) quantify the role of multi-scale stratigraphic heterogeneity on reservoir behavior. Upscaled permeability properties derived from fluid simulation of nested, small-scale facies models condition the …

Spatiotemporal Evolution Of Land Subsidence In The Beijing Plain 2003–2015 Using Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (Psi) With Multi-Source Sar Data, Chaodong Zhou, Huili Gong, Youquan Zhang, Timothy A. Warner, Cong Wang

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Land subsidence is one of the most important geological hazards in Beijing, China, and its scope and magnitude have been growing rapidly over the past few decades, mainly due to long-term groundwater withdrawal. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) has been used to monitor the deformation in Beijing, but there is a lack of analysis of the long-term spatiotemporal evolution of land subsidence. This study focused on detecting and characterizing spatiotemporal changes in subsidence in the Beijing Plain by using Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) and geographic spatial analysis. Land subsidence during 2003–2015 was monitored by using ENVISAT ASAR (2003–2010), RADARSAT-2 (2011–2015) …

Reducing Uncertainties In Applying Remotely Sensed Land Use And Land Cover Maps In Land-Atmosphere Interaction: Identifying Change In Space And Time, Yaqian He, Timothy A. Warner, Brenden E. Mcneil, Eungul Lee

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Land use and land cover (LULC) data are a central component of most land-atmosphere interaction studies, but there are two common and highly problematic scale mismatches between LULC and climate data. First, in the spatial domain, researchers rarely consider the impact of scaling up fine-scale LULC data to match coarse-scale climate datasets. Second, in the temporal domain, climate data typically have sub-daily, daily, monthly, or annual resolution, but LULC datasets often have much coarser (e.g., decadal) resolution. We first explored the effect of three spatial scaling methods on correlations among LULC data and a land surface climatic variable, latent heat …

Past And Future Drought In Mongolia, Amy Hessl, Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Casey Jelsema, Benjamin Cook, Oyunsanaa Byambasuren, Caroline Leland, Baatarbileg Nachin, Neil Pederson, Hanqin Tian, Laia Andreu Hayles

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The severity of recent droughts in semiarid regions is increasingly attributed to anthropogenic climate change, but it is unclear whether these moisture anomalies exceed those of the past and how past variability compares to future projections. On the Mongolian Plateau, a recent decade-long drought that exceeded the variability in the instrumental record was associated with economic, social, and environmental change. We evaluate this drought using an annual reconstruction of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) spanning the last 2060 years in concert with simulations of past and future drought through the year 2100 CE.We show that although the most recent …

Improved Kerogen Models For Determining Thermal Maturity And Hydrocarbon Potential Of Shale, Vikas Agrawal, Shikha Sharma

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Kerogen is the insoluble component of organic-rich shales that controls the type and amount of

hydrocarbons generated in conventional and unconventional reservoirs. Significant progress has

recently been made in developing structural models of kerogen. However, there is still a large gap in understanding the evolution of the molecular components of kerogen with thermal maturation and their hydrocarbon (HC) generative potential. Here, we determine the variations in different molecular fragments of kerogen from a Marcellus Shale maturity series (with VRo ranging from 0.8 to 3) using quantitative 13C MultiCP/MAS NMR and MultiCP NMR/DD (dipolar dephasing). These molecular variations provide insight into …

Attributes Of The Fisher Valley Megaflap And Comparison To The Gypsum Valley Megaflap, Paradox Basin, Utah And Colorado: Implications For Controls On Megaflap Formation, Kate Grisi

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Megaflaps are panels of steeply dipping to overturned strata that extend kilometers up the side of a salt diapir or equivalent weld. They often form important components of salt-diapir related hydrocarbon systems, though little is known about their geologic characteristics or how they form. In this study, I collected structural, stratigraphic, and sedimentologic data of the Fisher Valley megaflap and compared these attributes to the previous studied Gypsum Valley megaflap to test the differential sediment loading model proposed for initiation of megaflap formation. This model predicts that the sediment source proximal megaflap of Fisher Valley should have started rotation earlier, …

Mapping Complex Fold-Thrust Systems In An Inverted Rift Basin: Indio Mountains, West Texas, Samantha Ramirez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study reports on new geologic mapping in the southern Indio Mountains of west Texas, where minimal research has been done since development of modern fold-thrust belt concepts. This study integrated an analysis of structure and the stratigraphy of the region. A stratigraphic column of the middle Cretaceous upper Yucca Formation was measured to 1) compare the lithology to that of the section previously measured in the hanging wall of the Squaw Peak thrust in the footwall of the Indio normal fault, 2) create informal members in the formation to aid mapping; and 3) identify previously unmapped structures in the …