Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Commons^™

Storm Surge Dynamics Over Wide Continental Shelves: Numerical Experiments Using The Finite-Volume Coastal Ocean Model, Joao Lima Rego

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Storm surge is an abnormal rise of the sea surface caused by atmospheric forcing, including the wind stress and atmospheric pressure associated with extra-tropical and tropical cyclones. Hurricanes and typhoons have a great impact on coastal regions, and can cause severe loss of lives and great damages. A systematic investigation of storm surge impact to the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, where the continental shelf reaches up to 200 km in width, is conducted here using the hydrodynamics Finite-Volume Coastal Ocean Model, FVCOM (Chen et al., 2003). The model is applied to the northern Gulf of Mexico to simulate the …

Assessing Linkages Between Petroleum Platforms And Pelagic Fishes Using Telemetry With Emphasis On Blue Runner (Caranx Crysos), Harmon Brown

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Petroleum platforms number greater than 4,200 in the Gulf of Mexico and Caranx crysos (blue runner) is one of the most abundant fish species around these platforms. Forty-six blue runner were tagged with acoustical transmitters in August 2005, though the study was terminated prematurely due to the impending arrival of Hurricane Katrina. Nineteen blue runner were tagged in September 2006 and tracked for up to two months. Blue runner exhibited limited site fidelity around the platforms in 2005. The home range of twenty-three blue runner was calculated in 2005. A significant difference was found between the fork length of the …

State Of The River Report For The Lower St. Johns River Basin, Florida: Water Quality, Fisheries, Aquatic Life, And Contaminants 2009, Environmental Protection Board, City Of Jacksonville, University Of North Florida, Jacksonville University

State of the River Report

No abstract provided.

Land Resources Series No 21 - Tambellup-Borden Area Land Resources Survey, Angela Stuart-Street, Rohan Marold

Natural resources published reports

AGDEX 526

Land Resources Series No. 21

This report presents results from soil-landscape mapping at a scale of 1: 100,000 in the Tambellup- Borden area of Western Australia. It is accompanied by a soil-landscape map covering almost 511,000 hectares.

Most of the survey occurs within the upper Frankland-Gordon, Kent, North Stirlings Basin and upper reaches of the Pallinup and Kalgan River catchments. The survey falls within the Katanning and Albany Department of Agriculture and Food advisory districts.

Seventeen soil-landscape systems have been identified and are represented on the map on the accompanying CD-ROM. These systems have been further divided into …

Setting Targets For Resource Condition In Yilliminning Catchment, Leon Van Wyk, Gregory Paul Raper

Resource management technical reports

No abstract provided.

Bending Of Woody Riparian Vegetation As A Function Of Hydraulic Flow Conditions, John O. Goreham

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Vegetation encroachment reduces channel conveyance capacity below design objectives and greatly increases the risk for loss of life and property damage in the case of large flood events. Given minimal knowledge of hydraulic roughness for shrubs and woody vegetation, accurate estimation of channel capacity and water surface elevation is difficult. The ability to predict a tree's bent, reduced height in the presence of flow permits more accurate prediction of hydraulic roughness and water surface elevation.

In this study, field tests were performed to elucidate tree bending properties, which in turn served as input parameters for a numerical algorithm designed to …

Soil Moisture And Water Stage Estimation Using Precipitation Radar, Sumit Puri

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In south-western United States, soil moisture data is important for drought studies in the region which is experiencing a drought for many years, whereas in South Florida, water stage data is required by hydrologists to monitor the hydrological flow in wetlands. Soil moisture data and water stage data are not sufficiently available due to sparse monitoring stations. Installation of dense measuring stations over an extended area is costly and labor intensive. Therefore, there is a need to develop an alternative method of measuring soil moisture and water stage. Microwave remote sensing has proven to be a useful tool in the …

Validation Of Modis Terra, Airs, Ncep/Doe Amip-Ii Reanalysis-2, And Aeronet Sun Photometer Derived Integrated Precipitable Water Vapor Using Ground-Based Gps Receivers Over India, Anup K. Prasad, Ramesh P. Singh

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Water vapor is an important and highly variable constituent in time and space; the knowledge of its variability is important in climate studies. In India, the ground observations of water vapor using conventional methods such as radiosonde are limited. In this paper, a comparison of hourly estimates of total column water vapor from Global Positioning System (GPS) with multisensor satellite is presented over three stations. We show quantitatively seasonal and monthly dependency of bias, standard deviation, root mean square error (RMSE), and the correlation coefficient between the water vapor data sets. The GPS and Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) water vapor …

Possible Sources Of Archaeological Maize Found In Chaco Canyon And Aztec Ruin, New Mexico, Larry Benson, J. R. Stein, H. E. Taylor

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Maize played a major role in Chaco’s interaction with outlying communities in the southern Colorado Plateau. This paper seeks to determine where archaeological corn cobs brought to Chaco Canyon were grown. Strontium-isotope and trace-metal ratios of 180 soil-water and 18 surface-water sites in the Southern Colorado Plateau have revealed possible source areas for some of 37 archaeological corn cobs from Chaco Canyon and 10 archaeological corn cobs from Aztec Ruin, New Mexico. The most probable source areas for cobs that predate the middle-12th-century drought include several Upper Rio Chaco sites (not including Chaco Canyon). There are many potential source areas …

A Robust, Multisite Holocene History Of Drift Ice Off Northern Iceland: Implications For North Atlantic Climate, John T. Andrews, Dennis Darby, Dennis Eberle, Anne E. Jennings, Matthias Moros, Astrid Ogilvie

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

An important indicator of Holocene climate change is provided by evidence for variations in the extent of drift ice. A proxy for drift ice in Iceland waters is provided by the presence of quartz. Quantitative xray diffraction analysis of the < 2 mm sediment fraction was undertaken on 16 cores from around Iceland. The quartz weight (wt.)% estimates from each core were integrated into 250-yr intervals between −0.05 and 11.7 cal. ka BP. Median quartz wt.% varied between 0.2 and 3.4 and maximum values ranged between 2.8 and 11.8 wt.%. High values were attained in the early Holocene and minimum values were reached 6–7 cal. ka BP. Quartz wt.% then rose steadily during the late Holocene. Our data exhibit no correlation with counts on haematite-stained quartz (HSQ) grains from VM129-191 west of Ireland casting doubt on the ice-transport origin. A pilot study on the provenance of Fe oxide grains in two cores that cover the last 1.3 and 6.1 cal. ka BP indicated a large fraction of the grains between 1 and 6 cal. ka BP were from either Icelandic or presently unsampled sources. However, there was a dramatic increase in Canadian and Russian sources from the Arctic Ocean ~1 cal. ka BP. These data may indicate the beginning of an Arctic Oscillation-like climate mode.

History Of Wildlife Toxicology, Barnett A. Rattner

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The field of wildlife toxicology can be traced to

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Initial

reports included unintentional poisoning of birds from

ingestion of spent lead shot and predator control agents,

alkali poisoning of waterbirds, and die-offs from maritime

oil spills. With the advent of synthetic pesticides in the

1930s and 1940s, effects of DDT and other pesticides were

investigated in free-ranging and captive wildlife. In

response to research findings in the US and UK, and the

publication of Silent Spring in 1962, public debate on the

hazards of pollutants arose and national contaminant

monitoring programs were initiated. …

Climate Trends Of The North American Prairie Pothole Region 1906–2000, Bruce Millett, W. Carter Johnson, Glenn Guntenspergen

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is unique to North America. Its millions of wetlands and abundant ecosystem goods and services are highly sensitive to wide variations of temperature and precipitation in time and space characteristic of a strongly continental climate. Precipitation and temperature gradients across the PPR are orthogonal to each other. Precipitation nearly triples from west to east from approximately 300 mm/year to 900 mm/year, while mean annual temperature ranges from approximately 1°C in the north to nearly 10°C in the south. Twentieth-century weather records for 18 PPR weather stations representing 6 ecoregions revealed several trends. The climate generally …

Climate Trends Of The North American Prairie Pothole Region 1906–2000, Bruce Millett, W. Carter Johnson, Glenn R. Guntenspergen

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is unique to North America. Its millions of wetlands and abundant ecosystem goods and services are highly sensitive to wide variations of temperature and precipitation in time and space characteristic of a strongly continental climate. Precipitation and temperature gradients across the PPR are orthogonal to each other. Precipitation nearly triples from west to east from approximately 300 mm/year to 900 mm/year, while mean annual temperature ranges from approximately 1◦C in the north to nearly 10◦C in the south. Twentieth-century weather records for 18 PPR weather stations representing 6 ecoregions revealed several trends. The climate generally …

Is Seagrass An Important Nursery Habitat For The Caribbean Spiny Lobster, Panulirus Argus, In Florida?, Donald C. Behringer, Mark J. Butler Iv, William Herrnkind, John H. Hunt, Charles A. Acosta, William C. Sharp

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Caribbean spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) settle preferentially in macroalgal-covered hard-bottom habitat, but seagrass is more prevalent in Florida (United States) and the Caribbean, so even low settlement of lobsters within seagrass could contribute substantially to recruitment if post-settlement survival and growth were high. We tested the role of seagrass and hard-bottom habitats for P. argus recruitment in three ways. We first explored possible density-dependent regulation of early benthic juvenile lobster survival within cages deployed in seagrass and hard-bottom habitats. Second, we compared settlement and survival of P. argus in both habitats, by comparing the recovery of microwire-tagged early …

The Epidemiological Status Of Pav1, And The Effects Of Infection On Caribbean Spiny Lobster (Panulirus Argus) Condition, Olfaction, And Predation Risk, Donald C. Behringer, Mark J. Butler Iv, Jeffrey D. Shields

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Phytoplankton Blooms: Their Occurence And Composition Within Virginia's Tidal Tributaries, Harold G. Marshall, Todd A. Egerton

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Sporadic algal bloom development within a 10 year monitoring program in Virginia tidal tributaries of Chesapeake Bay is reviewed. These blooms were common events, characteristically producing a color signature to the surface water, typically short lived, occurring mainly from spring into autumn throughout different salinity regions of these rivers, and were produced primarily by dinoflagellates. The abundance threshold levels that would identify bloom status from a non-bloom presence were species specific, varied with the taxon's cell size, and ranged from ca. 10 to 10(4) cells mL(-1). Among the most consistent sporadic bloom producers were the dinoflagellates Akashiwo sanguinea, Cochlodinium …

Just Passing Through! The Water Cycle! On-Site Programming (Grade 4), Discover Mojave: Forever Earth

Curriculum materials (FE)

In “Just Passing Through! The Water Cycle!,” students begin exploring the importance of Lake Mead by making and recording observations of how water is being used in different ways by plants, animals, and people. Students view an animated PowerPoint presentation that follows one drop of water through Lake Mead’s water use cycle and then re-create the cycle on a magnet board. Working as scientists, students determine if water is the same in all parts of the lake by comparing water samples from the middle of the lake and from Las Vegas Bay. By examining a number of scenarios, students use …

Progress In Strategic Research Areas, Scott R. Abella

Public Policy and Leadership Faculty Research

Three years ago through conversations with resource managers, assessing the status of knowledge of the scientific literature, and our own interests, we set forth several strategic research areas that we believed would be timely for advancing Mojave Desert conservation and management.

Hierarchical Modeling: Biogeochemical Processes And Mechanisms That Drive Clay Nano-And Microfabric Development, Kenneth J. Curry, Richard H. Bennett, Paula J. Smithka, Matthew H. Hulbert

Faculty Publications

Conceptual scientific models of clay and clay fabric development can be constructed profitably by considering chemical and physical systems in terms of an ordered hierarchy. We develop here a hierarchical model of early stages of marine sediment development identifying processes and focusing on mechanisms. While the focus of our model is on mechanisms, the physical aspects of the hierarchy are cast in terms of the nanometer (nanofabric) level of organization of sediment fabric. This level is nested below the micrometer (microfabric) level that includes aggregates of clay signatures and is nested above the molecular level that includes edges and faces …

Lsuhsc Facilities Daily Update: January 2009, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Daily Updates: 2009

LSUHSC Dailly Facilities Updates from January 2009. These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Lsuhsc Facilities Biweekly Update: January 2009, Lsuhsc Property And Facilities Management

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates: 2009

LSUHSC Facilities Biweekly Updates from January 16 and 30, 2009.

These updates describe damage and a timeline of repairs at the LSU Health Sciences Center - New Orleans campus due to Hurricane Katrina which made landfall August 29, 2005.

Nutrient Dynamics In A Created Desert Wetland: Implications For The Rio Bosque Wetlands Park, Ruth Rodriguez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Rio Bosque Wetland Park is an arid wetland currently under restoration, which primarily receives water inputs from the Bustamante Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) during the non-irrigation season. Understanding the ability of a desert wetland to remove nutrients from the water column through uptake by primary producers or sediment transformations is key to justifying the protection and creation of other similar wetland sites. Nitrate concentrations tended to be reduced, relative to the inflow, near the outflow of the wetland.To further understand these trends, sediment nutrient release experiments and algal nutrient limitation experiments were completed. Sediment phosphorus release experiments indicated that …

Mid-Ocean Ridge Transform Faults, Margaret S. Boettcher

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

No abstract provided.

The Vertical Structure Of Shallow Water Flow In The Surf Zone And Inner Shelf, Thomas C. Lippmann

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

No abstract provided.

Macroalgae And Eelgrass Mapping In Great Bay Estuary Using Aisa Hyperspectral Imagery., Shachak Pe'eri, John Ru Morrison, Frederick T. Short, Arthur C. Mathieson, Phil Trowbridge

Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping

Results Increases in nitrogen concentration and declining eelgrass beds in Great Bay Estuary have been observed in the last decades. These two parameters are clear indicators of the impending eutrophication for New Hampshire’s estuaries. The NH Department of Environmental Services (DES) in collaboration with the Piscataqua Region Estuaries Partnership adopted the assumption that eelgrass survival can be used as the target for establishing numeric water quality criteria for nutrients in NH’s estuaries. One of the hypotheses put forward regarding eelgrass decline is that an eutrophication response to nutrient increases in the Great Bay Estuary has been the proliferation of nuisance …

Potential Export Of Unattached Benthic Macroalgae To The Deep Sea Through Wind Driven Langmuir Circulation, H. M. Dierssen, Richard C. Zimmerman, Lisa A. Drake, David J. Burdige

OES Faculty Publications

Carbon export to the deep sea is conventionally attributed to the sinking of open ocean phytoplankton. Here, we report a Langmuir supercell event driven by high winds across the shallow Great Bahama Bank that organized benthic non-attached macroalgae, Colpomenia sp., into visible windrows on the seafloor. Ocean color satellite imagery obtained before and after the windrows revealed a 588 km² patch that rapidly shifted from highly productive macroalgae to bare sand. We assess a number of possible fates for this macroalgae and contend that this event potentially transported negatively buoyant macroalgae to the deep Tongue of the Ocean …

Influence Of Irradiance And Iron On The Growth Of Colonial Phaeocystic Antarctica: Implications For Seasonal Bloom Dynamics In The Ross Sea, Antarctica, Nathan S. Garcia, Peter N. Sedwick, Giacomo R. Ditullio

OES Faculty Publications

Laboratory culture experiments were used to investigate the growth rate of colonial Phaeocystis anarctica as a function of irradiance and dissolved iron concentration. The experiments were conducted with a P. antarctica strain isolated from the southern Ross Sea, Antarctica, and made use of natural, low-iron (P. antarctica attained an average maximum cell-specific growth rate of 0.37 d^-1at an irradiance of 68 μE m^-2s^-1, above which growth rates decreased to 0.27 d^-1 at an irradiance of 314 μE m^-2s^-1. The dependence of growth rate on ambient dissolved iron concentration was …

Anthropogenic Osmium In Rain And Snow Reveals Global-Scale Atmospheric Contamination, Cynthia Chen, Peter N. Sedwick, Mukul Sharma

OES Faculty Publications

Osmium is one of the rarer elements in seawater, with typical concentration of ≈10 x 10^-15 g g^-1 ( 5.3 x 10^-14 mol kg^-1. The osmium isotope composition (¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os ratio) of deep oceans is 1.05, reflecting a balance between inputs from continental crust (≈ 1.3) and mantle/cosmic dust (≈ 0.13). Here, we show that the ¹⁸⁷Os/¹⁸⁸Os ratios measured in rain and snow collected around the world range from 0.16 to 0.48, much lower than expected (>1), but similar to the isotope composition of ores (approximate to 0.2) …

Cirene Air-Sea Interactions In The Seychelles-Chagos Thermocline Ridge Region, J. Vialard, J. P. Duvel, M. J. Mcphaden, P. Bouruet-Aubertot, B. Ward, E. Key, D. Bourras, R. Weller, P. Minnett, A. Weil

OES Faculty Publications

A field experiment in the southwestern Indian Ocean provides new insights into ocean-atmosphere interactions in a key climatic region.

Thin Layer Formation During Runaway Stratification In The Tidally Dynamic San Francisco Estuary, Alexander B. Bochdansky, Stephen M. Bollens

OES Faculty Publications

During the course of a year, we repeatedly collected high-resolution vertical fluorometer data timed to coincide with a specific state during the tidal cycle. The time (end of the ebb during neap tide) and the location (a deep channel half-way between the Golden Gate and the point of tidally averaged bottom salinity of 2 psu) were chosen with the goal to observe runaway stratification. We consistently found at least one pronounced chlorophyll peak in the water column; however, the vertical location of these peaks varied within three types including surface, bottom and subsurface maxima. Our results showed that heterogeneity of …