Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Commons^™

Time Series Decomposition Of Land Surface Temperature For Long-Term Trend Forecasting And Impact On Nesting Sea Turtle Habitats In The Arabian Gulf, Sachi Perera, Rommel H. Maneja, Mohamed Allali, Cyril Rakovski, Erik Linstead, Daniele Struppa, Ali Qasem, Hesham El-Askary

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Improving land surface temperature (LST) modeling is vital for mitigating climate change effects on various ecosystems and marine habitats such as important sea turtle habitats. Over the past decade, extreme temperatures have likely significantly affected nesting sea turtle habitats in the Arabian Gulf, with predominantly female hatchlings creating an imbalance in the sex ratio. Such shifts have profound implications for these habitats’ long-term survival and conservation management. This study leverages statistical machine learning models to measure ongoing temporal variations in LST. We break down the LST time series into trend, seasonal, and noise components using classical decomposition methods like X11, …

2024 December - Tennessee Monthly Climate Report, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Monthly Reports

Hi All,

December was relatively warm and wet for West Tennessee, while areas further east were closer to average. The main weather and climate stories of December 2024 included the strong blast of cold air early in the month that led to widespread light snowfall and record cold temperatures from December 3-6, and two cold fronts that brought strong thunderstorms, localized flash flooding, some small hail, and strong winds to the state on December 18 and December 28-29. Heavy rains on the 29th led to flash flooding and closure of roads and temporary bridges in parts of Carter County that …

Multi-Temporal Analysis Of Urbanization-Driven Slope And Ecological Impact Using Machine-Learning And Remote Sensing Techniques, Zhang Hao, Muhammad Haseeb, Zheng Xiangtian, Zainab Tahir, Syed Amer Mahmood, Aqil Tariq, Rana Waqar Aslam, M. Abdullah-Al-Wadud, Hesham El-Askary

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Rapid urbanization in Lahore, Pakistan, has led to significant ecological and thermal challenges, particularly the intensification of Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects and increased thermal stress as measured by the Urban Thermal Field Variance Index (UTFVI). This study employs a multi-temporal evaluation of Landsat satellite imagery and GIS-based analysis to investigate the Spatio-temporal trends in land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes from 1994 to 2024. We detected substantial changes in urban growth, vegetation cover, and barren areas using supervised classification (Random Forest) methods and remote sensing indices such as NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), NDMI (Normalized Difference Moisture Index), NDBI (Normalized …

Spatial Gap-Filling Of Himawari-8 Hourly Aod Products Using Machine Learning With Model-Based Aod And Meteorological Data: A Focus On The Korean Peninsula, Youjeong Youn, Seoyeon Kim, Seung Hee Kim, Yangwon Lee

Institute for ECHO Articles and Research

Given the complex spatiotemporal variability of aerosols, high-frequency satellite observations are essential for accurately mapping their distribution. However, optical remote sensing encounters difficulties in detecting Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) over cloud-covered regions, creating data gaps that limit comprehensive environmental analysis. This study introduces a spatial gap-filling method for Himawari-8/Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) hourly AOD data, using a Random Forest (RF) model that integrates meteorological variables and model-based AOD data. Developed and validated over South Korea from 1 January to 31 December 2019, the model effectively improved data coverage from 6% to 100%. The approach demonstrated high performance in blind tests, …

Characterizing West Florida Shelf Reef Fish Communities Using A Scientific Echosounder, Edmund A. Hughes

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The advancement and application of non-invasive fisheries survey technologies, such as the scientific echosounder, have significantly enhanced our understanding of fish populations and their habitats, more recently in regions where traditional sampling methods are limited, such as complex reef habitats. This research, conducted as part of the Continental Shelf Characterization, Assessment, and Mapping Project (C-SCAMP) on the West Florida Shelf, leverages acoustic and visual technologies to investigate the distribution of fish densities, fish target strength and length relationships, and the relationship between seafloor topography and fish biomass distribution.

The first study compared reef fish densities estimated from near-concurrent acoustic (Simrad …

Climatological Trends And Effects Of Aerosols And Clouds On Large Solar Parks: Application Examples In Benban (Egypt) And Al Dhafrah (Uae), Harshal Dhake, Panagiotis Kosmopoulos, Antonis Mantakas, Yashwant Kashyap, Hesham El-Askary, Omar Elbadawy

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Solar energy production is vastly affected by climatological factors. This study examines the impact of two primary climatological factors, aerosols and clouds, on solar energy production at two of the world’s largest solar parks, Benban and Al Dhafrah Solar Parks, by using Earth observation data. Cloud microphysics were obtained from EUMETSAT, and aerosol data were obtained from the CAMS and assimilated with MODIS data for higher accuracy. The impact of both factors was analysed by computing their trends over the past 20 years. These climatological trends indicated the variations in the change in each of the factors and their resulting …

Artificial Reefs As Management Tools, Tiff Raetzel

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Artificial reefs are attractive tools for fisheries management and reef conservation, as they can host large fish biomasses, including fisheries-important species, and they may supplement natural recruitment. Prior studies have established that artificial and natural reefs differ in habitat complexity and host both taxonomically and functionally distinct assemblages. These differences may impact how the reef types respond to environmental disturbance because ecosystem stability is dependent upon habitat structure, species composition, and trophic interactions. A question of management importance is whether artificial reefs host a less- or more-sensitive suite of species than natural reefs, and whether the assemblage is conducive to …

Predicting Cloud-To-Ground Lightning In The Western United States From The Large-Scale Environment Using Explainable Neural Networks, Dmitri A. Kalashnikov, Frances V. Davenport, Zachary M. Labe, Paul C. Loikith, John T. Abatzoglou, Deepti Singh

Geography Faculty Publications and Presentations

Lightning is a major source of wildfire ignition in the western United States (WUS). We build and train convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to predict the occurrence of cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning across the WUS during June-September from the spatial patterns of seven large-scale meteorological variables from reanalysis (1995-2022). Individually trained CNN models at each 1° × 1° grid cell ( = 285 CNNs) show high skill at predicting CG lightning days across the WUS (median AUC = 0.8) and perform best in parts of the interior Southwest where summertime CG lightning is most common. Further, interannual correlation between observed and predicted …

Hurricane Evacuation: Navigating Uncertainty During Covid 19 And With Existing Communication Scales, And Considering Public And Expert Perception Of Alternative Scales, Leilani D. Paxton

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the effectiveness of current hurricane warning products and communication strategies, exploring factors influencing public perception of risk and decision-making during evacuations. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, combining survey data, focus group discussions, and interviews with meteorologists and emergency managers. The first paper examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hurricane risk perception and evacuation decisions. Findings indicate that while COVID-19 concerns played a role in some individuals' decisions, particularly those with pets or concerns about shelter conditions, the majority of participants evacuated for Hurricane Ian. The study highlights the importance of providing clear, consistent, and …

Climate Change And Its Effects On Maternal Mental Health, Sara Cordero

Undergraduate Research Symposium Lightning Talks

Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns primarily caused by human activities, which have facilitated more climate crises, such as floods, wildfires, hurricanes, etc. They tend to have the greatest effect on vulnerable populations, such as women and children. This study is aimed to view how climate change-related environmental stressors impact the mental health and well-being of mothers. A scoping literature review approach was used by analyzing scientific databases (i.e. APA-Psycinfo, Scopus, PRIMO) to find peer-reviewed papers that studied the effects of extreme weather events and climate change on maternal mental health. Results suggest that hurricanes, …

Effects Of Fire Temperatures On Mojave Desert Native And Nonnative Seeds, Sophia Lorenzana, Lindsay Chiquoine

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Large-scale wildfires have been historically rare in hot deserts like the Mojave, largely due to the scarcity or uneven distribution of native plant biomass as fuel. Thus, native plants in these regions are ill-adapted to withstand spreading wildfire, resulting in slow post-fire recovery. Here, I test the hypothesis that nonnative grasses respond better to heat cues than native plant species. Seeds from 3 invasive and 13 native plant species were collected from research sites located in the eastern Mojave Desert, near surrounding Clark County Flood Control District weather stations. Seeds were buried in an artificial substrate mimicking field soil conditions …

Bottom-Up Global Change: Stealth Action In A Decentralized World, Art Blaser, Trinity Huynh

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

The climate justice and disability rights movements reflect a paradigm shift from a top-down approach to policy-making to one that emphasizes local efforts by non-state actors.

Lengthening Atlantic Hurricane Seasons With Earlier Storm Formation Dates Including Implications From 2020, Barry D. Keim, L. C. Hamilton, V. M. Brown, P. J. Klotzbach, A. B. Lewis, D. T. Thompson

School of Public Health Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes the formation dates of the nth storm in a sequence for all named North Atlantic tropical cyclones (TCs) and assesses whether the intraseasonal length of the Atlantic hurricane season has changed temporally. The record-breaking 2020 season, with 30 named storms, set records for the earliest third TC formation (Cristobal) and from the sixth TC (Fay) onward. Analysis of season length from 1851 to 2022 identifies only one statistically significant breakpoint detected in the early 1970s, roughly coinciding with the introduction of satellite observations. Since 1970, we also find a trend toward longer North Atlantic hurricane seasons. The …

2024 November 21 - Tennessee Weekly Drought Summary, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Weekly Drought Summaries

No abstract provided.

Changing Characteristics Of Land Cover, Landscape Pattern And Ecosystem Services In The Bohai Rim Region Of China, Jiaqi Liu, Wei Chen, Hu Ding, Zhanhang Liu, Min Xu, Ramesh P. Singh, Congqiang Liu

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Since the Anthropocene, ecosystems have been continuously deteriorating due to global climate change and human intervention. Exploring the changing characteristics of land use/land cover (LULC), landscape pattern and ecosystem service (ES) and their drivers is crucial for regional ecosystem management and sustainable development. Taking the Bohai Rim region of China as an example, we used the land use transfer matrix, landscape pattern index and InVEST model to analyze the changing characteristics of LULC, landscape pattern and six key ESs [crop production (CP), water yield (WY), carbon storage (CS), soil conservation (SC), habitat quality (HQ), landscape aesthetics (LA)] during 2000–2020. Detailed …

Understanding The Plastic Issue (Poster Presentation), Regan Bossie, Peter Nguyen, John Mcswiggin, Adam Meadows

Sustainability Conference

The Plastic-Free Campus Initiative is an Embry-Riddle initiative advocating for the reduction and elimination of single-use plastics on the Daytona Beach campus.

Our poster presentation aims to highlight current issues and concerns by presenting plastic production trends, quantifying how plastic pollution has affected global ecosystems, and discussing the material characteristics of plastics and their consequences. The poster will provide an overview of the current state of global recycling and will outline key concerns that microplastics, and plastics in general, pose to public health. By presenting the current facts and concerns related to plastic and recycling, we hope to encourage individuals …

2024 November 15 - Tennessee Weekly Drought Summary, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Weekly Drought Summaries

No abstract provided.

Spatiotemporal Dynamics Of Coastal Nekton Metacommunities In The Western Atlantic, Jonathan A. Peake

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The processes of diversification, selection, dispersal, and stochastic drift can combine in many ways to assemble ecological communities. A key focus in ecology is to describe and quantify the relative influences of these processes for different systems and explain the mechanisms by which these processes produce patterns of community structure. To accomplish this goal, ecologists have developed several frameworks that seek to integrate processes that occur locally andregionally. The metacommunity concept treats local communities as pieces of a broader landscape that are connected through dispersal of their constituent organisms. Empirical studies have generally lagged behind the development of metacommunity theory. …

A Paradigm For Ecological Dynamics In Predator-Prey Systems: Applications To Climate Change, Grayson D. Adams, Aditi Ghosh Dr.

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

2024 November 08 - Tennessee Weekly Drought Summary, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Weekly Drought Summaries

No abstract provided.

Coupling Between Evapotranspiration, Water Use Efficiency, And Evaporative Stress Index Strengthens After Wildfires In New Mexico, Usa, Ryan C. Joshi, Annalise Jensen, Madeleine Pascolini-Campbell, Joshua B. Fisher

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Aim

Methods

Results …

Sea Surface Temperatures, The Gulf Of Mexico Loop Current, Hurricane Ian, And Their Junction, Alexander K. Nickerson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the first chapter, a climatology was created for the deep Gulf of Mexico, West Florida Shelf, and Tampa Bay. These climatologies were compared to each other and to global temperatures. Seasonal variability is shown to be a product of bathymetry as well as latitude. In Chapter Two, using the self-organizing map neural network, patterns of the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current were analyzed to establish phases with necessary and sufficient conditions for translation from one phase to the next. Two separate patterns of evolution were established from these analyses, and empirical arguments are used to confirm the findings from …

Examining Wildfire Dynamics Using Ecostress Data With Machine Learning Approaches: The Case Of South-Eastern Australia's Black Summer, Yuanhui Zhu, Shakthi B. Murugesan, Ivone K. Masara, Soe W. Myint, Joshua B. Fisher

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Wildfires are increasing in risk and prevalence. The most destructive wildfires in decades in Australia occurred in 2019–2020. However, there is still a challenge in developing effective models to understand the likelihood of wildfire spread (susceptibility) and pre-fire vegetation conditions. The recent launch of NASA's ECOSTRESS presents an opportunity to monitor fire dynamics with a high resolution of 70 m by measuring ecosystem stress and drought conditions preceding wildfires. We incorporated ECOSTRESS data, vegetation indices, rainfall, and topographic data as independent variables and fire events as dependent variables into machine learning algorithms applied to the historic Australian wildfires of 2019–2020. …

Characterizing The Temporal And Nearshore To Offshore Spatial Scale Of Phytoplankton Assemblages Within The Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Sebastian P. Di Geronimo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the spatial and temporal dynamics of phytoplankton communities within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) from 2016 to 2021. Phytoplankton biomass and community composition were analyzed across four seasons and from both Nearshore (within 2 km of shore) and Offshore (8 to 10 km from shore) locations along the Florida Keys from Miami to the Western Sambo Ecological Reserve. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) quantified chlorophyll-a (tchla) as a proxy for bulk biomass, and other pigments. CHEMTAX, a chemotaxonomic identification method, was employed to estimate phytoplankton community composition. Our results revealed significant seasonal variability in bulk biomass, …

Satellite-Based Mapping Of Seagrass Habitats And Coastal Wetlands In The Us Gulf Of Mexico And Florida: A Remote Sensing Approach For Environmental Conservation And Management, Luis Lizcano-Sandoval

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Coastal wetlands and seagrass meadows provide multiple services to nature and human society, but their spatial and temporal changes are often not well characterized. They are habitats that are threatened by natural and human causes such as changes in water quality, urban development, pollution, and climate change, among others. Coastal ecosystems rely on water quality and sea level variability for survival, and changes in those variables and their potential effects are of concern to many coastal communities. Satellite remote sensing is a powerful tool that has been used for mapping ecosystem distribution on land and in the ocean. Satellite sensors …

Zooplankton Abundance, Composition, And Diversity And Associated Environmental Factors Across The Gulf Of Mexico And Along The Northwestern Coast Of Cuba, Shaniqua J. Gladney

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My research focused on characterizing the zooplankton community of two regions in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) along two transects, one across the middle of the GOM from Tuxpan, Mexico, to St. Petersburg, FL, and one along the northwestern coast of Cuba. Zooplankton bongo samples and associated environmental and physical processes were examined. These data were collected during two Center for Integrated Modeling and Analysis of Gulf Ecosystems (C-IMAGE) expeditions aboard the R/V Weatherbird II, during September 2015 (GOM) and May 2017 (Cuba). A Zooscan imaging system was used to identify and enumerate zooplankton taxa. Then zooplankton abundance, composition, and …

Evaporation Basins For Salinity Management, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Natural resources factsheets

An evaporation basin is an engineered earth structure designed to safely store and evaporate saline water discharged from drainage or pumping, while protecting high-value agricultural land, natural assets or built infrastructure.

DPIRD recommends that evaporation basins should form part of an integrated water and salinity management program. Information on this page is a guide only.

It is recommended that landholders seek expert advice plus engineering design and related support from qualified contractors.

Measuring Soil Salinity, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Natural resources factsheets

To make sound decisions on managing saline sites, you need to know the source of salt, how salinisation is occurring, the landscape context, and most importantly, the actual salt concentration of the soil.

The most common 'measures' of salt concentration are actually estimates based on electrical conductivity of a soil and water solution. Soil salt content can be measured in a laboratory by measuring the total dissolved solids in a sample. In the field, salt concentration can also be estimated using electromagnetic induction-based soil sensors.

2024 November - Tennessee Monthly Climate Report, Tennessee Climate Office, East Tennessee State University

Tennessee Climate Office Monthly Reports

No abstract provided.

Roaded Catchments In Wa, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Natural resources factsheets

Roaded catchments are earthwork structures designed to increase the amount of run-off from the catchment above a receiving farm dam.

Roaded catchments are lined with clay and compacted to make a smooth surface that reduces infiltration and increases run-off. Roaded catchments should discharge into a silt trap and then into a dam (excavated earth tank). This combined structure should be fenced to exclude livestock.

The Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development recommends that roaded catchments are part of an integrated water and salinity management program.

The information in this page is only a guide – seek expert advice before …