Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Commons^™

Resolving Chronological And Temperature Constraints On Antarctic Deglacial Evolution Through Improved Dating Methodology, Cristina Subt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In order to determine the timing of Antarctic ice sheet retreat and advance during the Late Quaternary, various tools are used to measure the age of marginal marine sediments. Carbonate 14C dating is a well-established approach, but requires foraminiferal microfossils, shells or other carbonate materials that are rare in most Antarctic regions, and may also suffer from vital effects, which can result in variability of up to 500 years in living organisms. Bulk acid insoluble organic (AIO) 14C dates are frequently as an alternative, but this approach works best where high productivity and sedimentation rates reign, and not too well …

Suitability Of River Delta Sediment As Proppant, Missouri And Niobrara Rivers, Nebraska And South Dakota, 2015, Ronald B. Zelt, Christopher M. Hobza, Bethany L. Burton, Nathaniel J. Schaepe, Nadine M. Piatak-Hackley

United States Geological Survey: Water Reports and Publications

Document abstract

Sediment management is a challenge faced by reservoir managers who have several potential options, including dredging, for mitigation of storage capacity lost to sedimentation. As sediment is removed from reservoir storage, potential use of the sediment for socioeconomic or ecological benefit could potentially defray some costs of its removal. Rivers that transport a sandy sediment load will deposit the sand load along a reservoir-headwaters reach where the current of the river slackens progressively as its bed approaches and then descends below the reservoir water level. Given a rare combination of factors, a reservoir deposit of alluvial sand has …

Quaternary Sea-Level History And The Origin Of The Northernmost Coastal Aeolianites In The Americas: Channel Islands National Park, California, Usa, Daniel R. Muhs, Jeffrey S. Pigati, R. Randall Schumann, Gary L. Skipp, Naomi Porat, Stephen B. Devogel

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Along most of the Pacific Coast of North America, sand dunes are dominantly silicate-rich. On the California Channel Islands, however, dunes are carbonate-rich, due to high productivity offshore and a lack of dilution by silicate minerals. Older sands on the Channel Islands contain enough carbonate to be cemented into aeolianite. Several generations of carbonate aeolianites are present on the California Channel Islands and represent the northernmost Quaternary coastal aeolianites on the Pacific Coast of North America. The oldest aeolianites on the islands may date to the early Pleistocene and thus far have only been found on Santa Cruz Island. Aeolianites …

Paleoenvironmental Reconstruction Using Coral Microatolls (Sp. Siderastrea Siderea) From The Gulf Of Gonâve, Haiti, Gilman Reno Ouellette Jr.

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Natural and anthropogenic climate changes present unique and serious risks to society. In order to plan and implement adaptation and mitigation strategies successfully, regional manifestations of broad-scale climate changes must be understood robustly. The Caribbean region contains part of the Western Hemisphere Warm Pool (WHWP), a major sea surface temperature (SST) feature that plays a key role in North Atlantic climate. Climate variability in the Caribbean is captured poorly by climate models, due in part to a lack of continuous, multidecadal instrumental climate records from the region. I explored three research questions in this dissertation: Does non-systematic bias exist in …

Late Quaternary Uplift Along The North America-Caribbean Plate Boundary: Evidence From The Sea Level Record Of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Daniel R. Muhs, Eugene S. Schweig, Kathleen R. Simmons, Robert B. Halley

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The tectonic setting of the North America-Caribbean plate boundary has been studied intensively, but some aspects are still poorly understood, particularly along the Oriente fault zone. Guantanamo Bay, southern Cuba, is considered to be on a coastline that is under a transpressive tectonic regime along this zone, and is hypothesized to have a low uplift rate. We tested this by studying emergent reef terrace deposits around the bay. Reef elevations in the protected, inner part of the bay are ~11e12 m and outercoast, wave-cut benches are as high as ~14 m. Uranium-series analyses of corals yield ages ranging from ~133 …

How Dredge Pits Evolve Over Time: A Look At Their Geomorphologic Evolution And Infilling Processes, Patrick Robichaux

LSU Master's Theses

As coastal environments become more susceptible to land loss through accelerating sea level rise and subsidence, new restoration methods harnessing borrowed sediment are more valuable than ever. Mud-capped dredge pits (MCDPs) are a relatively new source of restoration-quality sediment that has only recently been utilized for beach and barrier island restorations in Louisiana. Because MCDPs have been in use for less than two decades in only a handful sites, little is understood about their evolution over decadal timescales. To improve our understanding of MCDPs after they are dredged, we have conducted a suite of geophysical surveys including bathymetry, sidescan sonar, …

Apathy And Concern Over The Future Habitability Of Earth: An Introductory College Assignment Of Forecasting Co2 In The Earth’S Atmosphere, Benjamin J. Burger

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Non-science, first year regional undergraduate students from rural Utah communities participated in an online introductory geology course and were asked to forecast the rise of CO₂ in the Earth’s atmosphere. The majority of students predicted catastrophic rise to 5,000-ppm sometime over the next 3,100 years, resulting in an atmosphere nearly uninhabitable to human life. However, the level of concern the students exhibited in their answers was not directly proportional with their timing in their forecasted rise of CO₂. This study showcases the importance of presenting students with actual data and using data to develop student forecasted models. …

Flash Droughts: A Review And Assessment Of The Challenges Imposed By Rapid-Onset Droughts In The United States, Jason A. Otkin, Mark Svoboda, Eric D. Hunt, Trent W. Ford, Martha C. Anderson, Christopher Hain, Jeffrey B. Basara

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Bonneville Basin Data, Larry V. Benson

United States Geological Survey: Datasets

In the Bonneville Basin folder, all data were reported in: Benson, L.V., Lund, S.P., Smoot, J.P., Rhode, D.E., Spencer, R.J., Verosub, K.L., Louderback, L.A., Johnson, C.A., Rye, R.O., Negrini, R., 2011. The rise and fall of Lake Bonneville between 45 and 10.5 ka. Quaternary International 235: 57-69.

http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usgsstaffpub/726

General Comment: in most cases an age model based on ¹⁴C analyses is not included with the data sets although ones were created for the original publications. Given the general problems with ¹⁴C ages in the lakes of the Great Basin, age models based on paleomagnetic secular variation (PSV) are …

A Study Of Marine Terrace Formation Along The California Central Coast, Mary C. Devlin

Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences

Marine terrace formation is in many instances attributed to wave action, and shore platforms are often called “wave-cut”. However, alternative models for marine terrace formation suggest that other types of physical and chemical weathering have a more central role in the formation of marine terraces than is widely acknowledged. Roering and Retallack (2012) concluded that the roles of subaerial physical and chemical weathering are significant, and played a major role in the formation of the terraces. In this study, weathering of beach cliffs and shore platforms associated with marine terraces at eight sites in two different locations along the central …

The Geochemistry Of Loess: Asian And North American Deposits Compared, Daniel R. Muhs

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Loess is widely distributed over Asia and North America and constitutes one of the most important surficial deposits that serve as terrestrial records of the Quaternary. The oldest Pleistocene loess in China is likely ∼2.6 Ma, thus spanning much or all of the Pleistocene. In North America, most loess is no older than the penultimate glacial period, with the exception of Alaska, where the record may go back to ∼3.0 Ma. On both continents, loess deposits date primarily to glacial periods, and interglacial or interstadial periods are represented by paleosols. Both glacial and non-glacial sources of silts that comprise the …

The Impact Of Climate Change On Biodiversity In Nepal: Current Knowledge, Lacunae, And Opportunities, Aishwarya Bhattacharjee, Jose D. Anadon, David L. Lohnman, Tenzing Doleck, Tarendra Lakhankar, Bharat Babu Shrestha, Praseed Thapa, Durga Devkota, Sundar Tiwari, Ajay Jha, Mohan Siwakoti, Naba R. Devkota, Pramod K. Jha, Nir Y. Krakauer

Publications and Research

Nepal has an extreme altitudinal range from 60–8850m with heterogeneous topography and distinct climatic zones. The country is considered a biodiversity hotspot, with nearly a quarter of the land area located in protected areas. Nepal and the surrounding Himalayan region are particularly vulnerable to climate change because of their abrupt ecological and climatic transitions. Tens of millions of people rely on the region’s ecosystem services, and observed and modeled warming trends predict increased climate extremes in the Himalayas. To study the ecological impacts of climate change in Nepal and inform adaptation planning, we review the literature on past, present, and …

How Accurate Are Satellite Estimates Of Precipitation Over The North Indian Ocean?, Satya Prakash, M. R. Ramesh Kumar, Simi Mathew, R. Venkatesan

Publications and Research

Following the launch of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory in early 2014, motivated from the successful Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) satellite, an advanced and sophisticated global multi-satellite precipitation product – Integrated Multi- satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) was released at finer spatio-temporal scales. This precipitation product has been upgraded recently after several refinements and supposed to be superior to other existing global or quasi-global multi-satellite precipitation estimates. In the present study, IMERG precipitation is comprehensively evaluated for the first time against moored buoy observations over the north Indian Ocean at hourly scale for the study period of …

Cruise Data For Neuston Net And Paired Bongo Net Tows From 47 Stations In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico From R/V Pelican Cruise Lf2017a July 2017, Jay R. Rooker, R.J. David Wells

DEEPEND Datasets

Shelf and slope waters in the Deep Water Horizon oil spill (DWHOS) area are known to serve as critical spawning, nursery, and foraging habitat of several important oceanic species including billfishes (e.g. blue marlin, white marlin, sailfish), tunas (bluefin tuna, yellowfin tuna), and other pelagic taxa (swordfish, dolphinfishes). The aim of this component was to further investigate potential ecological effects of the DWHOS on pelagic fishes during the early life period. Larval fishes were sampled from 48 stations in the northern Gulf of Mexico and cruise data was collected at each site including latitude/longitude, date, time and environmental data (sea …

The Role Of Young Environmental Activists In Iceland And Furthering Youth Engagement With Environmental Issues, Story Schwantes

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper looks at the role of youth environmental activism in Iceland and how these actors view their work in a country which has long held a reputation as one of the greenest in the world. Much of the credit for that distinction goes not to careful choices, sacrifice, or excellent stewardship but rather to its ideal geography providing massive geothermal energy which Iceland turns into electricity, a clean renewable source. So are there young environmental activists in Iceland, and if so what do they do? Short answer: yes, and they study and talk. The long answer is more complex. …

Odu Scientists Address Antarctic Ice Melt Affecting Sea Levels, Miasia Osbey

News Items

No abstract provided.

The Prairie Post Quarterly Newsletter Of The High Plains Regional Climate Center- October 2017, Natalie Umphlett, Warren Pettee, Crystal J. Stiles

Prairie Post: Quarterly Newsletter of the High Plains Regional Climate Center

Inside this issue:

Message from the interim director........................................1

Staff spotlight...........................1

Tribal engagement.................2

Product highlights..................3

Update on regional climate conditions..................................4

ENSO tool...................................4

Wind River project..................5

Recent and upcoming travel and activities.............................6

Do Advisors Perceive Climate Change As An Agricultural Risk? An In-Depth Examination Of Midwestern U.S. Ag Advisors’ Views On Drought, Climate Change, And Risk Management, Sarah P. Church, Michael Dunn, Nicholas Babin, Amber Saylor Mase, Tonya Haigh, Linda Stalker Prokopy

National Drought Mitigation Center: Faculty Publications

Through the lens of the Health Belief Model and Protection Motivation Theory, we analyzed interviews of 36 agricultural advisors in Indiana and Nebraska to understand their appraisals of climate change risk, related decision making processes and subsequent risk management advice to producers. Most advisors interviewed accept that weather events are a risk for US Midwestern agriculture; however, they are more concerned about tangible threats such as crop prices. There is not much concern about climate change among agricultural advisors. Management practices that could help producers adapt to climate change were more likely to be recommended by conservation and Extension advisors, …

Agricultural Responses To Climate Change: A Study Of Adaptive Farming Methods In Kizanda Village, Bailey Smith-Helman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Agriculture is vital to the economic and social systems in Tanzania, composing 30% of the country’s GDP as well as 80% of employment (FAO, 2014). Despite agriculture’s important role, it remains one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. Current trends project global average temperature to increase by 0.8-2.6 degrees Celsius, leaving farmers to face changes in rainfall, soil quality, and new pests and diseases (IPCC, 2007). Farmers will be forced to adapt to the changing climate if they are to sustain their livelihoods and the Tanzanian economy. For these reasons, it is important to understand the types of …

A Near-Global Atmospheric Distribution Of N2o Isotopologues, Peter F. Bernath, Mahdi Yousefi, Eric Buzan, Chris D. Boone

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications

The distributions of the four most abundant isotopologues and isotopomers (N₂O, ¹⁵NNO, N¹⁵NO, and NN¹⁸O of nitrous oxide have been measured in the Earth's stratosphere by infrared remote sensing with the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) Fourier transform spectrometer. These satellite observations have provided a near-global picture of N₂O isotopic fractionation. The relative abundances of the heavier species increase with altitude and with latitude in the stratosphere as the air becomes older. The heavy isotopologues are enriched by 20-30% in the upper stratosphere and even more over the poles. These observations are …

Droughtscape, Fall 2017, National Drought Mitigation Center

DroughtScape: Quarterly Newsletter of the National Drought Mitigation Center (2007–2023)

Contents

Drought worsens in northern Great Plains

Drought takes toll on agriculture, livestock

Study examines ag advisors’ views on climate change

New drought definition could lead to better preparation

McCook takes big steps toward drought readiness

Group hopes to map drought planning process for Korea

South African researcher working to forecast drought

Cultivating drought preparedness in South Africa

Selenium Distribution And Cycling In The Eastern Equatorial Pacific Ocean, Zoe Wambaugh

OES Theses and Dissertations

Oxygen minimum zones in oceanic waters have become increasingly important to the marine environment and society. Low oxygen waters affect not only the distribution and abundance of marine organisms, but also impact the solubility and transport of trace elements that are of biological importance, with the chemical speciation and solubility depending on the actual redox poise of the waters. One redox sensitive trace element of interest is selenium, which can be both toxic and essential for organisms, depending on its chemical speciation. In 2013, the US GEOTRACES program completed the GP16 transect from Peru to Tahiti, going through the oxygen …

Flood-Inundation Maps For The Meramec River At Valley Park And At Fenton, Missouri, 2017, Benjamin J. Dietsch, Jacob N. Sappington

United States Geological Survey: Water Reports and Publications

Two sets of digital flood-inundation map libraries that spanned a combined 16.7-mile reach of the Meramec River that extends upstream from Valley Park, Missouri, to downstream from Fenton, Missouri, were created by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the United States Army Corps of Engineers, St. Louis Metropolitan Sewer District, Missouri Department of Transportation, Missouri American Water, and Federal Emergency Management Agency Region 7. The flood-inundation maps, which can be accessed through the USGS Flood Inundation Mapping Science website at https://water.usgs.gov/osw/flood_inundation/, depict estimates of the areal extent and depth of flooding corresponding to selected water levels …

Umphlett Qci Sept 2017, Natalie Umphlett

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Highlights for the Basin

Temperature and Precipitation Anomalies

Drought

Wildfires Impact Montana and Beyond

Kansas City, MO Area Flooding

Numerous Impacts to Agriculture

3-Month Precipitation and Temperature Outlooks

U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook

Thermal Radiation Anomalies Associated With Major Earthquakes, Dimitar Ouzounov, Sergey Pulinets, Menas Kafatos, Patrick Taylor

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Recent developments of remote sensing methods for Earth satellite data analysis contribute to our understanding of earthquake related thermal anomalies. It was realized that the thermal heat fluxes over areas of earthquake preparation is a result of air ionization by radon (and other gases) and consequent water vapor condensation on newly formed ions. Latent heat (LH) is released as a result of this process and leads to the formation of local thermal radiation anomalies (TRA) known as OLR (outgoing Longwave radiation, Ouzounov et al, 2007). We compare the LH energy, obtained by integrating surface latent heat flux (SLHF) over the …

Variability In Methane Emissions From West Siberia's Shallow Boreal Lakes On A Regional Scale And Its Environmental Controls, Aleksandr F. Sabrekov, Benjamin R.K. Runkle, Mikhail V. Glagolev, Irina E. Terentieva, Victor M. Stephanenko, Oleg R. Kotsyurbenko, Shamil S. Maksyutov, Oleg S. Pokrovsky

Biological and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Small lakes represent an important source of atmospheric CH4 from northern wetlands. However, spatiotemporal variations in flux magnitudes and the lack of knowledge about their main environmental controls contribute large uncertainty into the global CH4 budget. In this study, we measured methane fluxes from small lakes using chambers and bubble traps. Field investigations were carried out in July–August 2014 within the West Siberian middle and southern taiga zones. The average and median of measured methane chamber fluxes were 0.32 and 0.30 mgCH4 m−2 h−1 for middle taiga lakes and 8.6 and 4.1 mgCH4 m−2 h−1 for southern taiga lakes, respectively. …

Evaluation Of Simple Geochemical Indicators Of Aeolian Sand Provenance: Late Quaternary Dune Fields Of North America Revisited, Daniel R. Muhs

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Dune fields of Quaternary age occupy large areas of the world's arid and semiarid regions. Despite this, there has been surprisingly little work done on understanding dune sediment provenance, in part because many techniques are time-consuming, prone to operator error, experimental, highly specialized, expensive, or require sophisticated instrumentation. Provenance of dune sand using K/Rb and K/Ba values in K-feldspar in aeolian sands of the arid and semiarid regions of North America is tested here. Results indicate that K/Rb and K/Ba can distinguish different river sands that are sediment sources for dunes and dune fields themselves have distinctive K/Rb and K/Ba …

Using P-Band Signals Of Opportunity Radio Waves For Root Zone Soil Moisture Remote Sensing, Phillip H. Lipinski, Benjamin R. Nold, James L. Garrison

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Retrieval of Root Zone Soil Moisture (RZSM) is important for understanding the carbon cycle for use in climate change research as well as meteorology, hydrology, and precision agriculture studies. A current method of remote sensing, GNSS-R uses GPS signals to measure soil moisture content and vegetation biomass, but it is limited to 3-5 cm of soil penetration depth. Signals of Opportunity (SoOp) has emerged as an extension of GNSS-R remote sensing using communication signals. P-band communication signals (370 MHz) will be studied as an improved method of remote sensing of RZSM. P-band offers numerous advantages over GNSS-R, including stronger signal …

Cytonuclear Discordance In The Florida Everglades Invasive Burmese Python (Python Bivittatus) Population Reveals Possible Hybridization With The Indian Python (P. Molurus), Margaret E. Hunter, Nathan A. Johnson, Brian J. Smith, Michelle C. Davis, John S.S. Butterfield, Ray W. Snow, Kristen M. Hart

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The invasive Burmese python (Python bivittatus) has been reproducing in the Florida Everglades since the 1980s. These giant constrictor snakes have caused a precipitous decline in small mammal populations in southern Florida following escapes or releases from the commercial pet trade. To better understand the invasion pathway and genetic composition of the population, two mitochondrial (mtDNA) loci across 1,398 base pairs were sequenced on 426 snakes and 22 microsatellites were assessed on 389 snakes. Concatenated mtDNA sequences produced six haplotypes with an average nucleotide and haplotype diversity of π = 0.002 and h = 0.097, respectively. Samples collected …

Effects Of Climate Warming On Net Primary Productivity In China During 1961–2010, Fengxue Gu, Yuandong Zhang, Mei Huang, Bo Tao, Rui Guo, Changrong Yan

Plant and Soil Sciences Faculty Publications

The response of ecosystems to different magnitudes of climate warming and corresponding precipitation changes during the last few decades may provide an important reference for predicting the magnitude and trajectory of net primary productivity (NPP) in the future. In this study, a process-based ecosystem model, Carbon Exchange between Vegetation, Soil and Atmosphere (CEVSA), was used to investigate the response of NPP to warming at both national and subregional scales during 1961–2010. The results suggest that a 1.3°C increase in temperature stimulated the positive changing trend in NPP at national scale during the past 50 years. Regardless of the magnitude of …