Other Earth Sciences Commons^™

Using Geochemical Tracers To Determine Seasonal Inputs Of Freshwater To A Coastal Estuary: Biscayne Bay, Fl, Melaney Lara, Rene M. Price

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

Biscayne Bay is a coastal estuary that historically relied on rainfall and groundwater inputs from the karst Biscayne aquifer. The construction of major canals along the coastline has released point-source freshwater inputs into the bay, detrimentally affecting the Bay’s ecosystem balance. This project investigates the proportional inputs of freshwater between the wet and dry seasons in Deering Estate, adjacent to Biscayne Bay. The objective of this project was accomplished by analyzing the water chemistry of the bay using naturally occurring geochemical tracers. Water sampling occurred from May to August (wet season 2022) and January to March (dry season 2023); at …

Evaluating Changes In Visible To Short-Wave Infrared Spectral Reflectance Of Arctic Mosses In Response To Experimental Drying To Find The Best Predictors Of Moisture Content, Steven L. Unger

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Mosses are a dominant understory component in the Arctic and because of sparse canopy cover, contribute to spectral signals used in remote sensing estimates of various ecologically important characteristics such as productivity, phenology, and vegetation mapping. However, little is known about their contributions to community level spectra or how moisture content influences those spectral signals. Unlike vascular plants, mosses cannot actively regulate moisture content and are highly susceptible to desiccation. Previous research has shown that moss reflectance is sensitive to tissue moisture content. Here, a lab-controlled drying experiment was conducted to identify the best spectral predictors of moisture content of …

Sea Level Rise Impact Assessment Tool – A Web-Based Application For Community Resilience In Coral Gables, Florida, Levente Juhasz, Hartwig H. Hochmair, Sheyla Aguilar De Santana, Zhaohui J. Fu

GIS Center

No abstract provided.

Rip Current Generation, Flow Characteristics And Implications For Beach Safety In South Florida, Stephen B. Leatherman

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Rip currents are the most dangerous hazard at surf beaches. Rip currents in South Florida have previously not been studied. Beach profiles for three Florida beaches (Miami Beach, Lido Beach, Sarasota, and Pensacola Beach) and one Georgia beach (South Cumberland Island) were chosen for surveying because of their variable sand bar heights. Rip current hazard at each beach was assessed by lifeguard rip rescue and drowning statistics. A relationship was found between sand bar height, beach slope and rip current hazard.

Rip current measurements in South Florida, which involved utilizing GPS drifters, laser rangefinder and drone-imaged fluorescent tracer dye, showed …

A Functional Trait Approach To Examine Plant Community Dynamics In South Florida Hardwood Hammock Forests, Suresh Chandra Subedi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The tropical hardwood forests of south Florida persist as well-drained patches of broadleaf forest separated by brackish water swamp, marsh, or pineland. In this dissertation, a functional trait approach was used to understand the structure and dynamics of these communities and their responses to abiotic and biotic variation. Twenty-seven permanent plots (20 x 20 m²) were established across the south Florida landscape, representing four sub-regions: Everglades marsh, Long Pine Key, Upper Keys, and Lower Keys. Community weighted mean trait values for four of six selected traits showed significant inter-sub-regional variation. Out of them, three traits (specific leaf area, …

Linear And Nonlinear Motion Of A Barotropic Vortex, Israel Gonzalez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The linear Barotropic Non-Divergent simulation of a vortex on a beta plane is consistent with Willoughby’s earlier shallow-water divergent results in that it produced an unbounded accelerating westward and poleward motion without an asymptotic limit. However, Montgomery’s work which yielded finite linear drift speeds for his completely cyclonic vortex was inconsistent with ours. The nonlinearly-forced streamfunction exhibited a beta-gyre like structure, but with opposite polarity phase to the linear gyres. Utilization of the linear model with time-dependent, but otherwise beta-like, forcing revealed increasing magnitude and phase reversal in the neighborhood of a low cyclonic frequency. Here, the mean bounded vortex …

A Generalized Adaptive Mathematical Morphological Filter For Lidar Data, Zheng Cui

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology has become the primary method to derive high-resolution Digital Terrain Models (DTMs), which are essential for studying Earth’s surface processes, such as flooding and landslides. The critical step in generating a DTM is to separate ground and non-ground measurements in a voluminous point LIDAR dataset, using a filter, because the DTM is created by interpolating ground points. As one of widely used filtering methods, the progressive morphological (PM) filter has the advantages of classifying the LIDAR data at the point level, a linear computational complexity, and preserving the geometric shapes of terrain features. …