Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Commons^™

Mapping The Water Quality Of Jamaica Bay, New York (1996-2024): Principal Component Analysis And K-Means Clustering, Sneha Srivastava

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Jamaica Bay, located along the southeastern coast of New York City, acts as a biodiverse estuary of wetlands, meadows, and salt marsh islands. The purpose of this study is to analyze the water quality conditions of the region over time, comparing locations around the bay to identify hyperlocal features that influence larger trends in the hydrological system. Ten variables were used as water quality indicators, including total Kjeldahl nitrogen, salinity, pH, Secchi disk depth, and total phosphorus, among others, across five stations in the bay, between 1994 and 2024. After data cleaning and standardization methods were applied, principal component analysis …

Global Performance Of Remote Sensing-Based And Reanalysis-Driven Models To Estimate Open Water Evaporation, Júlia Brusso Rossi, Ayan Santos Fleischmann, Leonardo Laipelt, Bruno Comini De Andrade, Joshua B. Fisher, Justin L. Huntington, Christopher Pearson, R. Iestyn Woolway, Roseilson Vale, Júlio Tota, Gabriel B. Senay, Huilin Gao, Anderson Ruhoff

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Evaporation plays an essential role in the water cycle, influencing local and regional climates while directly impacting water availability in lakes. However, directly measuring evaporation over water bodies remains challenging due to the high costs of installing and maintaining the required in situ instrumentation. Although several remote sensing algorithms have been providing evaporation estimates, the lack of a global validation hinders our understanding of their relative uncertainties and performances across different regions. Here, we analyze the performance of a suite of models that leverage satellite data and meteorological reanalysis to estimate evaporation over lakes worldwide. We compare 3 remote sensing‐based …

Career: New Insights Into The Ancient Carbon Cycle From Siliceous Deep-Sea Sediments, Donald Penman

Funded Research Records

No abstract provided.

Toward The Significance Of Crevasse Orientation In Low And High Crevassed Regions On The Kennicott Glacier, Alaska, Usa, Claire A. Sturm

DePaul Discoveries

Supraglacial landforms serve as potential indicators of underlying bedrock morphology and glacier dynamics. The distribution and morphology of crevasses are closely associated with stress fields and ice-flow regimes, representing processes of stable glaciers, in contrast to their reduced occurrence in stagnant or receding ice masses. The orientation and density of crevasses influence a glacier’s ability to absorb solar energy, as they facilitate movement of meltwater down to subglacial rivers. Beyond the meltwater acting as a lubricant for basal sliding, the slope of the bedrock further impacts the local velocity and ice deformation of a glacier. The study of ice-fracturing mechanics …

Ecological Footprint Assessment, Santina Benincasa

Open Educational Resources

This handout guides students through a structured ecological footprint assessment using the online Footprint Calculator. By following a series of steps—selecting their location, entering detailed lifestyle information, and reviewing personalized results—students evaluate how many planets would be required if everyone lived with their same resource consumption patterns. The activity prompts learners to identify the largest contributors to their footprint, quantify their impact in global hectares, and explore scenario-based changes that could reduce their environmental demand. Through reflection, students consider how everyday human behaviors influence Earth’s productive capacity and resource availability. Overall, the exercise encourages critical thinking about sustainability and personal …

Synoptic Conditions Favoring Tropical Cyclone-Enhanced Southwest Monsoon High Precipitation Events In The Philippines, Alwin Andriel L. Bathan, Lyndon Mark P. Olaguera, Faye Abigail T. Cruz, Jose Ramon T. Villarin, John A. Manalo, Jun Matsumoto

SOSE Affiliate: Manila Observatory

The interaction of tropical cyclones (TCs) with the southwest monsoon frequently causes heavy precipitation events (HPEs) and widespread flooding across the Philippines. Despite their substantial socio-economic impacts, the synoptic conditions that favor these events remain insufficiently understood, underscoring the need for systematic investigation to help improve forecasting and risk assessment. Lag composite analysis of daily rainfall records and reanalysis data from July to September for the period 1981–2023 shows that HPEs are more likely to occur when: (1) enhanced monsoon westerlies are present over the tropical Indian Ocean for at least nine days before the HPE, (2) a TC passes …

Crustal Structure Of The Vøring Plateau And Vøring Spur From Joint Refraction And Reflection Travel-Time Tomography, Anika Nawar Mayeesha

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Crustal architecture of the Vøring Plateau and Vøring Spur in the mid-Norwegian continental margin remains debated because the geophysical data in the area do not uniquely constrain whether the crust is continental, oceanic, or transitional. This study reanalyzes wide-angle ocean-bottom seismometer data from Profile 11-03 across the Vøring passive continental margin using joint travel-time tomography of crustal refractions and Moho reflections. A total of 6,760 first-arrival picks and 542 PmP picks from sixteen instruments were inverted for P-wave velocity and reflector depth. Three starting models were inverted independently to test sensitivity to the initial crustal configuration. The first two used …

Observing System Simulation Experiments To Investigate Impacts Of Deep-Tropospheric Uas Flights On Forecasts, Kenneth Alexander Swan

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Uncrewed aircraft systems have emerged as a promising option to address meteorological gaps in observations in the lower troposphere. With recent advancements, UAS may be able to address gaps aloft in areas that lack coverage from radiosondes and commercial aircraft. UAS have shown the potential to significantly benefit NWP forecasts from profiles in the lowest 2 km AGL, but the impact of UAS profiles to the tropopause has yet to be quantified. Additionally, the impacts of hazardous flying conditions that UAS would encounter need to be addressed to guide future UAS capabilities. To address these questions, we designed an observing …

Hydroclimatic Whiplash Across The Contiguous United States: Characterizing Wet–Dry Transitions In Pdsi And Phdi, James Lam, Thomas Christopher Piechota

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Hydroclimatic whiplash, characterized by rapid transitions between wet and dry conditions, poses a growing challenge for water resource management and ecosystem stability. However, the spatial and statistical characteristics of wet–dry transitions across the contiguous United States are not fully understood. This study analyzed Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and Palmer Hydrological Drought Index (PHDI) records from 344 NOAA climate divisions spanning 1895–2024. Whiplash was defined as a transition between severe drought and severe wetness within 12-month rolling windows. Statistical descriptors including lag-1 autocorrelation, variance, and skewness were evaluated for whiplash and non-whiplash windows to assess differences between them. Whiplash hotspots …

The Impact Of Madden-Julian Oscillation On Rainfall Variability In South Sulawesi And Its Implications For Science Education, Misbahuddin Mansur, Pariabti Palloan, Agus Susanto

Jurnal Pendidikan Sains

This study examined the relationship between the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) and rainfall variability in South Sulawesi Province, Indonesia, using daily rainfall observations from 24 stations during 1990–2020. A quantitative observational design based on long-term climatological time-series analysis was employed. MJO activity was identified using the Real-time Multivariate MJO (RMM) index, while rainfall variability was analyzed through rainfall anomalies, rainfall frequency, and spatial patterns across Seasonal Zones (ZOM). The results indicate that active MJO phases were generally associated with wetter conditions and higher rainfall frequency, whereas suppressed phases corresponded to drier conditions. Rainfall responses varied considerably among regions, with coastal areas …

Lowland Tropical Forests Remain A Methane Sink Under Warming And Long-Term Hurricane Disturbance Recovery, Gabriele Larocca Conte, Lucia Zuvela, Rachel Cruz-Pérez, Tatiana Barreto-Vélez, Nibia Becerra-Santillan, Sophia F. Campbell, Hieu P. Chu, Trung Dam, Iana F. Grullón-Penkova, Miriam Kleit, Deyaneira A. Ortiz-Iglesias, Laura C. Rubio-Lebrón, Molly A. Cavaleri, Sasha C. Reed, Debjani Sihi, Tana E. Wood, Christine S. O'Connell

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Methane (CH₄) is a potent greenhouse gas, and tropical forests account for roughly one–third of global atmospheric CH₄ uptake by soils. Projected warming and more frequent hurricanes in these ecosystems may alter soil CH₄ sink strength, as warmer and wetter soils enhance methanogenesis activity. We measured soil CH₄ and CO₂ efflux during the calendar summer months of 2023 and 2024 alongside continuous records of soil moisture, soil and air temperature, and precipitation in an in–situ warming experiment (TRACE) located in a lowland tropical forest in Puerto Rico, six to seven years after Hurricanes Irma …

Somatic Prosthetics For Planetary Resonance, Disha Dharesh Kumar R

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates how industrial design can transcend extractive technological paradigms in favor of relational interfaces that foster planetary attunement. Framing the climate crisis as a 'crisis of imagination', the research challenges the Western bifurcation of nature and culture by drawing on Indic cosmologies- which recognize stones, plants, and ecosystems as conscious at different levels and participants in a shared cosmic field. By synthesizing research in Biosemiotics, Quantum Information Pansycishm, and Neuroscience, the project redefines intelligence as a distributed, more-than-human phenomenon.

The research materializes as a speculative design artifact: a device that functions as a somatic prosthetic for planetary resonance. …

Evapotranspiration Everywhere, All The Time: Towards A Unified View From Earth Observation, Joshua B. Fisher, Martha C. Anderson, Diego G. Miralles, Kanishka Mallick, Paul C. Stoy, Youngryel Ryu, Wim G. M. Bastiaanssen

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Scientists want to know everything, everywhere, and all the time. This is particularly true in Earth science, where we seek to understand processes that span from the molecular to the planetary scale in how the world works, how it affects us, and how we impact it—especially the water cycle. Evapotranspiration (ET) was the last component to be measured in closing the water cycle: for decades, closing the water budget meant adding up all the measurable components, then inferring ET as the residual. Early measurements relied on water loss from pans and weighing lysimeters, followed by sensors inserted into plants to …

Riki&Dolphin: Real Time Data Transmission From The Bottom Of A Cave To A Website, Luca Tringali, Giacomo Canciani Dr., Tecla Tripari, Alexander Debenjak, Caterina Bearzotti

International Journal of Speleology

Coming from over 10 years of experience in cave monitoring in northeast Italy, Gruppo Speleologico Talpe del Carso, has designed Riki and Dolphin: customizable, low cost, and easy to assemble tools for getting real time data transmission from the bottom of a cave, even underwater, to a webserver. Their use has been tested to monitor air temperature inside the Abisso Bonetti Cave (Classical Karst, Italy), proving for the first time that a cave in Gorizian Karst can systematically be colder than the outdoor temperature even in winter, recording an internal temperature even lower than 0°C. The Dolphin device can be …

Do National Parks Significantly Improve Air Quality?, Xinyi Liu

Honors Capstones

Healthy living has long been a goal pursued by individuals. In an era where PM2.5 concentrations and greenhouse gas levels are steadily increasing, many people prefer to live in areas with relatively lower levels of air pollution. National parks, as well-known protected areas, typically contain more vegetation and water resources, along with lower levels of human activity. This suggests two potential mechanisms: first, pollutant emissions are expected to be lower; second, vegetation, water bodies, and non-urban land may contribute to the removal or deposition of airborne pollutants, including particulate matter. In everyday experience, people often perceive the air to be …

Examining Extremes: A Comparison Between Machine Learning Based Southwestern Conus Seasonal Drought And High Fire Risk Event Synoptic Climatologies, Ethan M. Greenberg

School of Natural Resources: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Southwestern United States (SW CONUS), comprised of California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah, is a vast region that tens of millions of people call home. Hosting ecosystems ranging from grasslands and shrublands to temperate forests and climate zones ranging from Mediterranean climates to arid deserts, the region is nearly unanimously prone to intense droughts and devastating wildfires. While fire weather conditions and drought are often studied separately or mentioned as background conditions for the other, there are relatively few studies that compare the typical meteorological conditions between the two. This study aims to more closely understand the meteorological relationship between …

Warming Climate Amplifies Vapor Pressure Deficit Limits On Gross Primary Productivity, Shiqin Xu, Nate G. Mcdowell, Tim R. Mcvicar, Diego G. Miralles, Stephen Sitch, Pablo Sanchez-Martinez, Joshua B. Fisher, Pierre Friedlingstein, Hylke E. Beck, Matthew F. Mccabe

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Ongoing climate warming may profoundly impact terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP), a key component of the global carbon cycle. However, uncertainty in the relative roles of atmospheric water demand (vapor pressure deficit, VPD) and root-zone soil moisture (SM) limits predictions of drought impacts on GPP. Here, we show that growing-season GPP was more strongly constrained by VPD than SM globally, based on observation-constrained model estimates, satellite retrievals and Dynamic Global Vegetation Model simulations. The importance of VPD increased with higher temperatures and more severe and prolonged droughts. This pattern reflects VPD’s critical role in regulating stomatal conductance and plant hydraulic …

Exploring Alternate Methods Of Flood Output Estimation During Natural Disasters, Finley Gardner

Honors College Theses

In April of 2025, extreme flooding damaged many homes and buildings of people across Kentucky. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) produces maps that show the potential for flooding in areas around water bodies, but many of the April flooding damaged areas were well outside of the FEMA classification zones. The main purpose of this thesis research was to create an accurate model of potential flood extent in Kentucky and compare it to FEMA maps. This model did not require extensive computing power and produced a map that accurately depicted flood extent through the use of Digital Elevation Model (DEM) …

Recent Wetland Elevation Dynamics In Coastal Louisiana, Usa, Elizabeth Harris

LSU Master's Theses

Coastal marshes globally are increasingly vulnerable to accelerating relative sea-level rise (RSLR), which threatens their capacity to maintain elevation through feedbacks among sediment supply, vegetation productivity, hydrology, and soil processes. Although many marshes can persist under moderate rates of sea-level rise through vertical accretion and belowground biomass production, this resilience is strongly constrained by sediment availability and subsurface processes such as autocompaction and organic matter decomposition. High accretion is often assumed to confer marsh resilience; however, subsurface processes, particularly autocompaction driven by surface loading, can substantially offset elevation gains. Coastal Louisiana experiences among the highest rates of RSLR worldwide due …

Regional Drought Modulation By Enso And Iod As Indicated By The Standardized Precipitation Index, Arpit Tiwari, Preethi Nanjundan, Tanu Sharma, Ravi Ranjan Kumar, Satyaban Bishoyi Ratna

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS)

Understanding the modulation of drought by large-scale ocean–atmosphere teleconnections is crucial for strengthening drought prediction and resilience in India. This study investigates the influence of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) on meteorological drought characteristics across India from 1950 to 2024 using the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) at a 12-month timescale. Drought events were quantified in terms of frequency, duration, severity, and intensity and linked to ENSO–IOD variability through composite, correlation, and mediation analyses. Results reveal that El Niño events consistently correspond to widespread and severe droughts, particularly over central and southern India, with drought …

Changes In Land, Ocean, Atmospheric Parameters Associated With The 2025 Myanmar (Mw 7.7) Earthquake, Feng Jing, Akshansa Chauhan, Ashwani Raju, Ramesh P. Singh

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Multiple parameters associated with the land, atmosphere, and ocean were analyzed to study short-term and immediate pre-earthquake changes associated with the 28 March 2025 Myanmar earthquake (Mw 7.7). Anomalous clear-sky outgoing longwave radiation (ClrOLR) and trace gases (CH₄, CO, and O₃) were detected within two months prior to the mainshock. Vertical changes at different pressure levels suggest a possible underground source. High-temporal-resolution observations of the infrared brightness temperature and surface air pressure revealed short-lived fluctuations shortly before the earthquake, which may reflect localized stress adjustments and surface latent heat flux release during the final stage of earthquake preparation. In the …

Reconstructing 5000 Years Of Hurricane Activity In Holyrood Pond Using Sediment Core Analysis, Jamie Mclaulin, Arielle Nogueira, Elizabeth Wallace

Knowledge and Creativity Expo

Hurricanes are hazardous and costly events that annually negatively impact people that live in coastal areas in North America.  The current observational record of hurricanes is short (1970- present) and does not offer insight into the effects of climate change on hurricane frequency.  One method of improving and extending our observational record of hurricanes is to reconstruct paleohurricanes using sediment cores.  These cores record hurricane activity in the form of coarse-grained overwash layers that are deposited when hurricanes move sand from beaches into backbarrier ponds.  In this project, we analyzed sediment cores from Atlantic Canada to locate coarse-grained storm layers …

Is The Chesapeake Bay Browning?, Samantha Williamson, Jessie Turner

Knowledge and Creativity Expo

Brownification is when water bodies turn brown over time. It occurs due to high amounts of color-dissolved organic matter (CDOM). CDOM is organic material, such as decaying leaves and organisms, that leaches into the water column like tea. It absorbs ultraviolet and blue light more than red light, causing the water to appear brown. After comparing surveys from 1987 and 2018, scientists discovered the Adirondack lakes underwent brownification as they recovered from acid rain. However, while increased CDOM can signify an ecosystem’s recovery, it can also hinder seagrass growth. Although scientists have studied this phenomenon in lakes, estuaries have not …

How Much Does Shape Matter: Investigating The Impact Of Marine Particle Morphological Features On In-Situ Settling Velocities Using Pca And Various Ml Models, Huanqing Huang, Alexander B. Bochdansky

Knowledge and Creativity Expo

Particle settling velocity serves as an essential component in ocean biological pump, as it determines particle retention time in the water column. Stokes’ law has been widely used to predict particle settling velocities by particle size and excess density in aquatic environments. However, an increasing number of studies suggest that Stokes’ law fits poorly in the size-velocity relationship of observations on small oceanic particles. Here, we present a series of novel approaches to investigate the relative contribution of settling velocities by the particle shape and optical densities using machine learning (ML) models and principal component analysis (PCA), based on 3906 …

Bioclimatic Reorganization Of Carbon–Water–Energy Coupling Revealed By Eddy Covariance And Interpretable Machine Learning, Koong Yi, Margaret S. Torn, Gabriel B. Senay, Lixin Wang, Kosana Suvočarev, Joshua B. Fisher, Arman Ahmadi, Housen Chu, Gil Bohrer, Georgianne W. Moore, Stephen P. Good, Steven A. Kannenberg, Justine E. C. Missik, Kanishka Mallick, Kul Khand, Youngryel Ryu, Kuno Kasak, A. Christopher Oishi, David E. Reed, Xiangzhong Luo, Carl J. Bernacchi, Dennis Baldocchi

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Ecosystem exchanges of carbon, water, and energy are central to Earth system functioning, yet their sensitivities to environmental variability remain poorly constrained across biomes and climates. Here, we analyzed ≥ 5 years of eddy covariance data from 87 AmeriFlux sites (964 site-years) spanning six vegetation types and a broad range of climatic conditions to examine the controls and multi-year trends of gross primary productivity (GPP), evapotranspiration (ET), water-use efficiency (WUE), and the Bowen ratio. We trained boosted regression tree ensembles with environmental (air temperature, vapor pressure deficit, soil water content, atmospheric CO2, radiation, wind speed) and temporal (month, year) variables …

Biogeochemical Controls On Phosphorus Transport And Legacy Storage Across A Coastal Watershed, Lee Potter

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Excess phosphorus (P) loading is a key driver of eutrophication and harmful algal blooms (HABs) in aquatic systems worldwide. This relationship is of increasing concern in coastal Louisiana, where climate variability, altered hydrology, and land-use change converge, resulting in increased hydrologic and nutrient loading into coastal systems. This dissertation examines controls on P cycling in the Lake Pontchartrain Basin through a multi-scale framework linking estuarine processes, watershed loading, climate and weather patterns, and sediment dynamics. The dissertation begins with an overview of the study region, P dynamics, and changes in hydrology and nutrient loading patterns. Chapter 2 presents a spatial …

A Probabilistic Deep Learning Framework For Retrieving Chlorophyll-A From Hyperspectral Imagery: Integrating Channel Attention And Mixture Density Networks, Wenzhao Li, Surendra Maharjan, Rejoice Thomas, Junde Chen, Hesham Morgan, Michael J. Garay, Olga V. Kalashnikova, Shahryar Fazli, Charles Ichoku, Hesham El-Askary

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Accurate monitoring of Chlorophyll-a (Chla) is critical for assessing aquatic ecosystem health, yet ecological complexity often leads to ambiguous spectral signatures in satellite data. Traditional deterministic models assume a one-to-one mapping between spectra and pigments, often failing to capture these high-dimensional analytical challenges. In this study, we propose a novel deep learning architecture, the Channel Attention-Mixture Density Network (CA-MDN), to retrieve Chla from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) hyperspectral mission. The CA-MDN integrates an attention mechanism to dynamically select ecologically relevant spectral bands and employs a probabilistic output layer to quantify …

Monitoring Strategies In Cave Microclimate Studies, Nenad Buzjak, Dalibor Paar, Aurel Persoiu, Christos Pennos, Franci Gabrovšek, Valerija Rossi

International Journal of Speleology

Cave atmospheres are spatially confined but dynamical systems that influence subterranean ecosystems, geomorphological processes, registration and preservation of climatic signals in sedimentary archives, cultural heritage, and conservation management. Despite major advances in cave climatology, methodological approaches to microclimate monitoring remain fragmented and are in some cases still shaped by the long-standing assumption that cave air temperature simply reflects the mean annual surface temperature. This paper revisits that assumption and develops an experience- and literature-based methodological framework for cave microclimate research. Key terminology is addressed by distinguishing between cave climate, cave microclimate, and cave meteorology, and by situating microclimatic variability within …

Microplastics In St. John, United States Virgin Islands Sediments: Methodological Approaches And Variability Of Microplastics Concentrations And Accumulation Rates, Henry B. Arbaugh, Sarah C. Gray, Dimitri Deheyn

Theses

Sediment samples were collected from a near shore and reef site in Coral Bay, St. John, United States Virgin Islands (USVI) from 2007-2016, using tube sediment traps. These samples provide an opportunity to study microplastics (MPs) in an area where no previous MP studies have been performed. Most sedimentary MP studies utilize benthic samples which can only measure MP concentrations (#MP/g or #MP/mL sediment), while sediment traps can provide MP accumulation rates (#MP/cm²/day) as a function of time. However, the methods used for extracting MPs from benthic samples have not been tested using sediment trap samples whose characteristics, …

A High-Resolution Daily Precipitation Fusion Framework Integrating Radar, Satellite, And Nwp Data Using Machine Learning Over South Korea, Hyoju Park, Hiroyuki Miyazaki, Menas Kafatos, Seung Hee Kim, Yangwon Lee

Institute for ECHO Articles and Research

Accurate precipitation mapping is essential for effective disaster management; however, individual radar, satellite, and numerical weather prediction products often struggle in the topographically complex terrain of South Korea. This study proposes a high-resolution (~500 m) daily precipitation fusion framework that integrates Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) radar, Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Integrated Multi-Satellite Retrievals for GPM (IMERG), and Local Data Assimilation and Prediction System (LDAPS) data. The framework employs a Random Forest model augmented with a monthly Empirical Cumulative Distribution Function (ECDF) correction. Auxiliary predictors are incorporated to enhance physical interpretability and stability, including terrain attributes to represent orographic effects, land-cover …