Climate Commons^™

Odu Research Is Showcased In ‘Waters Rising’ Exhibition At The Chrysler Museum Of Art, Amber Kennedy

News Items

No abstract provided.

Spatiotemporal Variations Of Precipitation And Climate-Resilient Structure Design In Virginia, Xiaomin Yang

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

How to consider effects of climate change on the design and management of hydrology related infrastructure is crucial but remains a challenge for sustaining resilient society. To address this challenge, existing hydrologic design procedures may need to be revised and/or redeveloped to take into account the precipitation non-stationarity resulting from climate change. Using the state of Virginia as a testbed and advanced statistical techniques such as nonparametric test, spatial autocorrelation, linear regression, distribution fitting, and spatial interpolation, this dissertation developed an innovative framework to detect the historical spatiotemporal variations of various precipitation characteristics, namely maximum precipitation intensity, precipitation amount, simple …

Risk Management And Biases In How Drivers Respond To Nuisance Flooding, Saige Hill, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Burton St. John Iii, Pragati Rawat, Carol Considine

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

Nuisance flooding, or recurrent flooding, occurs during high tide and may be exacerbated when combined with other events such as heavy precipitation, strong winds, or storm surge. Sea level rise has contributed to increased frequency and duration of nuisance flooding in low-lying coastal areas and is causing community-specific impacts such as transportation disruption, road closures, compromises to life and property, overwhelmed storm water systems, and infrastructure damage. This chapter focuses on how drivers respond during nuisance flooding events. Specifically, we discuss how drivers in the Hampton Roads region of southeastern coastal Virginia obtain information about road flooding, how they respond, …

Risk Communication In The Tourism Industry, Lindsay E. Usher, Ashley Schroeder

Human Movement Studies & Special Education Faculty Publications

This chapter focuses on risk communication in the tourism sector. Tourism organizations must communicate with a variety of stakeholders when conveying messages about impending severe weather or disasters, which are increasing due climate change and sea level rise. There is also an increased need to distribute information to tourism stakeholders about preparing for, continuing service during, and recovering from, disasters. Stakeholders involved with the tourism industry include business owners, government officials and tourists, all of whom have differing degrees of vulnerability in a destination when a threat occurs. Different messages regarding disaster preparation and recovery must be communicated to the …

Engaging Residents In Policy And Planning For Sea Level Rise: Application Of The Action-Oriented Stakeholder Engagement For A Resilient Tomorrow (Asert) Framework, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, J. Gail Nicula, Daniel P. Richards, Ogechukwu Agim, Michelle Covi, Khairul A. Anuar

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

This chapter describes the application of the Action-oriented Stakeholder Engagement for a Resilient Tomorrow (ASERT) framework for communicating with and engaging both residents and community stakeholders in their localities’ efforts to prepare for and to respond to flooding and sea level rise. The application of ASERT incorporates communication, education/learning, and gamification elements that can be embedded into community meetings. We describe the way in which ASERT community meetings are designed (1) to provide an inclusive and engaging process that will allow residents to participate in their city’s resilience efforts; (2) to provide information about resilience in an environment that encourages …

Communicating And Co-Producing Information With Stakeholders: Examples Of Participatory Mapping Approaches Related To Sea Level Rise Risks And Impacts, Pragati Rawat, Khairul A. Anua, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Jon Derek Loftis, Ren-Neasha Blake

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

This chapter discusses practical approaches for using participatory mapping as a tool to visualize and communicate sea level rise (SLR) and climate change risks, to share information about the vulnerability to, and threats of, climate change, and to co-produce knowledge with stakeholders. The examples presented in this chapter are from demonstrated applications in communities in Virginia (USA) that involve participatory mapping and that utilize a web-Geographic Information System (GIS). The web-GIS is innovatively combined with other technologies and participatory processes to create low-cost high-tech approaches so that even people with little to no knowledge of GIS can interact with maps …

Odu Scientist Tapped To Edit National Climate Assessment, Amber Kennedy

News Items

No abstract provided.

Virginia Beach Flood Protection Program Bond Referendum Analysis, Robert Mcnab, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Afi Anuar, Jessica Whitehead

Presentations, Lectures, Posters, Reports

[First paragraph of the Executive Summary]

On November 2, 2021, voters in the City of Virginia Beach will vote on a referendum that determines whether or not the City Council should increase real estate taxes to fund a Flood Protection Program. The proposal accelerates the construction of six flood mitigation projects already in the Virginia Beach Capital Improvement Plan by 3 years, and funds design and construction of 15 additional projects that would also be completed by 2031. This report, jointly produced by Old Dominion University’s Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience (ICAR) and the Dragas Center for Economic Analysis …

Odu Highlights Climate Resilience Leadership During Legislators’ Visit To Campus, Amber Kennedy

News Items

No abstract provided.

Physiological And Molecular Responses Of Eurythermal And Stenothermal Populations Of Zostera Marina L (Eelgrass) To Climate Change, Carmen C. Zayas-Santiago

OES Theses and Dissertations

As CO₂ levels in Earth’s atmosphere and oceans steadily rise, varying organismal responses may produce ecological losers and winners. Increased ocean CO₂ can enhance seagrass productivity and thermal tolerance, providing some compensation for climate warming. However, the consistency of this CO₂ effect across populations of cosmopolitan species such as Zostera marina L. (eelgrass) remains largely unknown. This study analyzed whole-plant performance metabolic profiles and gene expression patterns of distinct eelgrass populations in response to CO₂ enrichment. Populations were transplanted from Nisqually Landing and Dumas Bay, two cold water environments in Puget Sound, WA (USA) that rarely …

Examining Melt Pond Dynamics And Light Availability In The Arctic Ocean Via High Resolution Satellite Imagery, Austin Wesley Abbott

OES Theses and Dissertations

As the Arctic experiences consequences of climate change, a shift from thicker, multi-year ice to thinner, first-year ice has been observed. First-year ice is prone to extensive pools of meltwater (“melt ponds”) forming on its surface, which enhance light transmission to the ocean. Changes in the timing and distribution of melt pond formation and associated increases in under-ice light availability are the primary drivers for seasonal progression of water column primary production and warming. Observations of melt pond development and distribution require meter scale resolution and have traditionally been limited to airborne images. However, recent advances in high spatial resolution …

Odu-Led Study Published In Nature Climate Change, Tiffany Whitfield

News Items

No abstract provided.

Pediatric Asthma – Another Negative Outcome Of Recurrent Flooding, Odu Researchers Find, News @ Odu

News Items

No abstract provided.

Examining Arctic Melt Pond Dynamics Via High Resolution Satellite Imagery, Austin Abbott, Victoria Hill

College of Sciences Posters

The Arctic Ocean is a rapidly changing environment, and a key observational system for monitoring climate change. The Arctic is going under a rapid transition from thicker, multi-year ice, to thinner first-year ice, that may have many potential consequences. As first year Arctic sea ice begins to retreat in the spring and early summer, melting snow and ice form ponds on the surface- “melt ponds”. These melt ponds increase light transmission to the water column, resulting in warming and increased primary production under the ice. Recent advances in high resolution satellite imagery now allow us to monitor the development and …

Alaska Trip Geared To Support K-16 Climate Change Education Initiative, Joe Garvey

News Items

No abstract provided.

Stability Of Low Crested And Submerged Breakwaters: A Reanalysis And Model Development, Christopher P. Burgess

Civil & Environmental Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Low-crested and submerged structures (LCS) play an integral part in the stabilization of shorelines for recreational purposes, yet there are a plethora of empirical models and gaps in the understanding of their stability and damage progression. The objectives were: i) to evaluate the present formulae, ii) explore variable importance, iii) formulate a stability model, iv) extend the current datasets and v) explore a new model for LCS. The literature points to an increasing understanding of the initiation of damage of LCS and recent exploration of the shear stress-induced erosion (van Rijn, 2019). Assessment of two existing models (Kramer, 2006 and …

Reconstructing Surface Water Carbonate Ion Concentration Changes In The Eastern Equatorial Pacific Across Glacial Transitions, Lenzie Gail Ward

OES Theses and Dissertations

Today, the eastern equatorial Pacific (EEP) plays a critical role in the global CO₂ budget as a major source of CO₂ to the atmosphere, but recent studies suggest the region may shift to a sink for atmospheric CO₂ under different climate states. Here, I focus on two transitional periods, the last deglaciation (25 kyr to present) and last glaciation (the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5a-4 transition, 96 to 60 kyr), to investigate how the carbon system in the EEP responds to major climate changes. I measured B/Ca ratios in the planktic foraminifera Globigerina bulloides from core MV1014-17JC …

Understanding The Effect Of Internal Climate Variability On 20th Century Indian Ocean Sea Level: Results From Newly Reconstructed Sea Level Data, Praveen Kumar

OES Theses and Dissertations

Densely populated low-lying coastal zones of countries that border the Indian Ocean are at risk due to sea level rise. However, sea level change in the Indian Ocean is poorly understood primarily due to short and sparse tide gauge observations. Although satellite altimetry provides accurate basin-wide sea level measurements, trends computed from its relatively short (~27-year) data record are heavily influenced by interannual to multi-decadal variability. To accurately project future Indian Ocean sea level trends using altimeter data it is imperative that trends associated with fluctuating internal variability (interannual-decadal) be identified and extracted, which in turn requires long (~100-year) data. …

Institutional Stretching: How Moroccan Ngos Illuminate The Nexus Of Climate, Migration, Gender And Development, Shelby Mertens

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The global migration crisis the world has experienced thus far is only the tip of the iceberg. As the earth’s temperature continues to warm and extreme weather conditions worsen, millions of people across the globe will be displaced, and women in particular will face more difficult challenges. What the climate migration literature fails to study is these longer-term impacts beyond sudden onset disasters. Governments and institutions will be forced to respond and adapt to the new reality resulting from the climate crisis. This research provides a case study of Morocco and, by using institutional ethnography, investigates how NGOs working in …

Agenda- Hampton Roads Sea Level Rise/Flooding Adaptation Forum, Ben Mcfarlane, Wie Yusuf

March 19, 2021: Updates from Hampton Roads: Moving the Needle on Resilience

Agenda for the Hampton Roads Sea Level Rise/Flooding Adaptation Forum on March 19, 2021 via Virtual Forum.

• Opening Remarks and Introductions: Ben McFarlane, Hampton Roads Planning District Commission Dr. Wie Yusuf, Old Dominion University and Virginia Sea Grant
• Dr. Jessica Whitehead, ODU Institute for Coastal Adaptation and Resilience (ICAR): Update on ODU ICAR
• Terry O’Neill, City of Hampton: Hampton’s Experience with Environmental Impact Bonds
• Dr. Joshua Behr, Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center, ODU: Recover Hampton Roads
• Dr. Daniel Richards, ODU and Ashley Gordon, Hampton Roads Planning District: Commission Flood Insurance Outreach: Calculating and Communicating Risk 11:20 AM Ben McFarlane, …

Jessica Whitehead Named Joan P. Brock Endowed Executive Director For Old Dominion University’S Institute For Coastal Adaptation And Resilience (Icar), Sarah Huddle

News Items

No abstract provided.

Estimated 2020 Co2 Emission Reductions In Virginia’S Transportation Sector From Covid-19, Eden E. Rakes, Pamela R. Grothe, Jeremy S. Hoffman

Virginia Journal of Science

The initial lockdown phase of the COVID-19 pandemic presented an unfortunate opportunity to observe how abrupt, large-scale changes in traffic volume can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This study explores how carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from Virginia’s transportation sector may have been affected by the changes in activity stemming from COVID-19 to inform more carbon-neutral policies as the state recovers from the economic downfall. Emission savings were calculated by multiplying the percent change from 2019 to 2020 in traffic volume from the Virginia Department of Transportation with the business-as-usual 2020 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimate of CO₂ emissions …

Professors Study Evacuation Practices, Marcus Coles

News Items

No abstract provided.

Odu To Lead Coastal Virginia Consortium, Sherry Dibarri

News Items

No abstract provided.

Life In Hampton Roads Survey Press Release #7: Perceptions Of Flooding, Hurricane Evacuation, & Sheltering During Covid-19, Social Science Research Center, Old Dominion University

Life in Hampton Roads Survey Report

Life in Hampton Roads 2021 - Flooding, Hurricane Evacuation, & Sheltering During COVID-19

The changing climate and rising sea levels touch nearly every aspect of life in Hampton Roads, with some neighborhoods and communities experiencing it more acutely. But, overall, how persistent is recurrent flooding as perceived by Hampton Roads residents? This year’s survey finds that nearly 23% of respondents state that recurrent flooding is a problem in their neighborhood, a number broadly consistent with the responses seen since this question was first asked in 2013 when 23% of respondents also indicated that recurrent flooding was a problem in their …

Odu Professors Study Gulf Stream Decline, News @ Odu

News Items

No abstract provided.

Central Equatorial Pacific Cooling During The Last Glacial Maximum, Minda Moriah Monteagudo, Jean Lynch-Stieglitz, Thomas M. Marchitto, Matthew W. Schmidt

OES Faculty Publications

Establishing tropical sea surface temperature (SST) during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) is important for constraining equilibrium climate sensitivity to radiative forcing. Until now, there has been little data from the central equatorial Pacific in global compilations, with foraminiferal assemblage‐based estimates suggesting the region was within 1°C of modern temperatures during the LGM. This is in stark contrast to multi‐proxy evidence from the eastern and western Pacific and model simulations which support larger cooling. Here we present the first estimates of glacial SST in the central equatorial Pacific from Mg/Ca in Globigerinoides ruber. Our results show that the central Pacific …

Constraining 20th‐Century Sea‐Level Rise In The South Atlantic Ocean, Thomas Frederikse, Surendra Adhikari, Tim J. Daley, Sönke Dangendorf, Roland Gehrels, Felix Landerer, Marta Marcos, Thomas L. Newton, Graham Rush, Aimée B.A. Slangen, Guy Wöppelmann

OES Faculty Publications

Sea level in the South Atlantic Ocean has only been measured at a small number of tide-gauge locations, which causes considerable uncertainty in 20th-century sea-level trend estimates in this basin. To obtain a better-constrained sea-level trend in the South Atlantic Ocean, this study aims to answer two questions. The first question is: can we combine new observations, vertical land motion estimates, and information on spatial sampling biases to obtain a likely range of 20th-century sea-level rise in the South Atlantic? We combine existing observations with recovered observations from Dakar and a high-resolution sea-level reconstruction based on salt-marsh sediments from the …

The Renaissance Of Odum's Outwelling Hypothesis In 'Blue Carbon' Science, Isaac R. Santos, David J. Burdige, Tim C. Jennerjahn, Steven Bouillon, Alex Cabral, Oscar Serrano, Thomas Wernberg, Karen Filbee-Dexter, Julia A. Guimond, Joseph J. Tamborski

OES Faculty Publications

The term ‘Blue Carbon’ was coined about a decade ago to highlight the important carbon sequestration capacity of coastal vegetated ecosystems. The term has paved the way for the development of programs and policies that preserve and restore these threatened coastal ecosystems for climate change mitigation. Blue carbon research has focused on quantifying carbon stocks and burial rates in sediments or accumulating as biomass. This focus on habitat-bound carbon led us to losing sight of the mobile blue carbon fraction. Oceans, the largest active reservoir of carbon, have become somewhat of a blind spot. Multiple recent investigations have revealed high …

Diatom Hotspots Driven By Western Boundary Current Instability, Hilde Oliver, Weifeng G. Zhang, Walker O. Smith Jr., Philip Alatalo, P. Dreux Chappell, Andrew J. Hirzel, Corday R. Selden, Heidi M. Sosik, Rachel H.R. Stanley, Yifan Zhu, Dennis J. Mcgillicuddy Jr.

OES Faculty Publications

Abstract Climatic changes have decreased the stability of the Gulf Stream (GS), increasing the frequency at which its meanders interact with the Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB) continental shelf and slope region. These intrusions are thought to suppress biological productivity by transporting low-nutrient water to the otherwise productive shelf edge region. Here we present evidence of widespread, anomalously intense subsurface diatom hotspots in the MAB slope sea that likely resulted from a GS intrusion in July 2019. The hotspots (at ∼50 m) were associated with water mass properties characteristic of GS water (∼100 m); it is probable that the hotspots resulted from …