Geology Commons^™

Ground-Based And Satellite Remote Sensing Of Paroxysmal Eruptions At Etna Volcano, 2011-2012., Estelle Bonny

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Mt Etna's activity has increased during the last decade with a tendency towards more explosive eruptions that produce paroxysmal lava fountains. From January 2011 to April 2012, 25 lava fountaining episodes took place at Etna's New South-East Crater (NSEC). Improved understanding of the mechanism driving these explosive basaltic eruptions is needed to reduce volcanic hazards. This type of activity produces high sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, associated with lava flows and ash fall-out, but to date the SO2 emissions associated with Etna's lava fountains have been poorly constrained. The Ultraviolet (UV) Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite and the …

A Study Of So2 Emissions And Ground Surface Displacements At Lastarria Volcano, Antofagasta Region, Northern Chile, Lucie Guihem Krewcun

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Lastarria volcano (Chile) is located at the North-West margin of the `Lazufre' ground inflation signal (37x45 km²), constantly uplifting at a rate of ~2.5 cm/year since 1996 (Pritchard and Simons 2002; Froger et al. 2007). The Lastarria volcano has the double interest to be superimposed on a second, smaller-scale inflation signal and to be the only degassing area of the Lazufre signal. In this project, we compared daily SO2 burdens recorded by AURA's OMI mission for 2005-2010 with Ground Surface Displacements (GSD) calculated from the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) images for 2003-2010.

We found a constant maximum displacement rate …

Tandem-X High Resolution Dems And Their Applications To Flow Modeling, Kelly M. Wooten

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

Lava flow modeling can be a powerful tool in hazard assessments; however, the ability to produce accurate models is usually limited by a lack of high resolution, up-to-date Digital Elevation Models (DEMs). This is especially obvious in places such as Kilauea Volcano (Hawaii), where active lava flows frequently alter the terrain. In this study, we use a new technique to create high resolution DEMs on Kilauea using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data from the TanDEM-X (TDX) satellite. We convert raw TDX SAR data into a geocoded DEM using GAMMA software [Werner et al., 2000]. This process can be completed in …

Characterizing The First Historic Eruption Of Nabro, Eritrea: Insights From Thermal And Uv Remote Sensing, Christine Ruth Sealing

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

June 2011 saw the first historic eruption of Nabro volcano, one of an ongoing sequence of eruptions in the Afar-Red Sea region since 2005. It halted air travel in northern Africa, contaminated food and water sources, and displaced thousands from their homes. Due to its remote location, little was known about this event in terms of the quantity of erupted products and the timing and mechanisms of their emplacement. Geographic isolation, previous quiescence and regional civil unrest meant that this volcano was effectively unmonitored at the time of eruption, and opportunities for field study are limited. Using free, publicly available …

Volcanic Processes And Human Exposure As Elements To Build A Risk Model For Volcan De Fuego, Guatemala, Rüdiger P. Escobar Wolf

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

The activity of Fuego volcano during the 1999 - 2013 eruptive episode is studied through field, remote sensing and observatory records. Mapping of the deposits allows quantifying the erupted volumes and areas affected by the largest eruptions during this period. A wide range of volcanic processes results in a diversity of products and associated deposits, including minor airfall tephra, rockfall avalanches, lava flows, and pyroclastic flows. The activity can be characterized by long term, low level background activity, and sporadic larger explosive eruptions. Although the background activity erupts lava and ash at a low rate (~ 0.1 m3/s), the persistence …

Bulletin No. 41: Trap Rock Ridges Of Connecticut: Natural History And Land Use, Penelope C. Sharp, Ralph S. Lewis, David L. Wagner, Cara Lee

Bulletins

No abstract provided.

Delineation And Classification Of Karst Depressions Using Lidar: Fort Hood Military Installation, Texas, Melinda G. Shaw-Faulkner, Kevin W. Stafford, Aaron W. Bryant

Faculty Publications

The Fort Hood Military Installation is a karst landscape characterized by Cretaceous-age limestone plateaus and canyons in Bell and Coryell Counties, Texas. The area is located in the Lampasas Cut Plain region of the Edwards Plateau and is stratigraphically defined by exposures of the Fredericksburg Group. Spatial interpolation of 105 km2 of the Fort Hood Military Installation provided depression data that were delineated and classified using geoanalytical methods. Most of the karst features within the study area are predominantly surficial expressions of collapse features, creating windows into karst conduits with surficial exposures of epikarst spatially limited.

The increasing capabilities of …

Ceramic Petrofacies: Modeling The Angelina River Basin In East Texas, Robert Z. Selden Jr.

CRHR: Archaeology

Ceramic provenance studies remain the basis of worldwide archaeological research concerned with reconstructing exchange networks, tracing migrations, and informing upon ceramic economy. Unfortunately, Texas archaeologists have been plagued with an inability to trace ceramic production sources to the same extent as researchers within other regions. Ceramic petrofacies models have been employed successfully in archaeological contexts at the San Pedro Valley, Tonto basin, Tucson basin, Agua Fria, and Gila and Phoenix basins in Arizona, but have not yet been employed east of Arizona. Data resulting from the construction of an actualistic petrofacies model in the prehistoric coastal environment of East Texas …

Epistemology And Synthesis: Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis And The Caddo Tradition, Robert Z. Selden Jr.

CRHR: Archaeology

The statistical groupings illustrated herein represent the current iteration of Caddo INAA compositional groups based upon the chemical composition of archaeologically-recovered ceramics. For some time, a number of Caddo archaeologists have thought these results to be lacking. This poster symbolizes the first step toward a new interpretation of chemical composition groups, and the initial instancce within which GIS has been employed as an analytical tool.

Radiocarbon Trends And The East Texas Caddo Tradition (Ca. A.D. 800-1680), Robert Z. Selden Jr., Timothy K. Perttula

CRHR: Archaeology

Through the employment of radiocarbon (¹⁴C) dates as data, we use the date combination process to refine site-specific summed probability distributions for 555 dates from Caddo sites (n = 19) in East Texas with 10 or more ¹⁴C dates. Summed probability distributions are then contrasted across river basins and natural regions with the remainder of the East Texas Caddo Radiocarbon Database (n = 338 dates from 132 other Caddo sites), highlighting the temporal and spatial character of Caddo archaeological sites throughout East Texas.

Consilience: Radiocarbon, Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis, And Litigation In The Ancestral Caddo Region, Robert Z. Selden Jr.

CRHR: Archaeology

Through the creation and analysis of databases for radiocarbon, instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA), and law, macro-level trends are exposed that form the framework of a broader research program aimed at advancing ideas of craft specialization and archaeological theory in the ancestral Caddo region of Southwest Arkansas, Northwest Louisiana, Northeast Texas, and Southeast Oklahoma. The findings of this investigation illustrate the research potential that remains buried within the context of cultural resource management (CRM) reports and legal databases (Westlaw and LexisNexis) that is awaiting consumption within regional research designs aimed at exploring the nuances and trends that appear through synthetic …

Influence Of Management And Precipitation On Carbon Fluxes In Great Plains Grasslands, Matthew Rigge, Bruce K. Wylie, Li Zhang, Stephen P. Boyte

United States Geological Survey: Staff Publications

Suitable management and sufficient precipitation on grasslands can provide carbon sinks. The net carbon accumulation of a site from the atmosphere, modeled as the Net Ecosystem Productivity (NEP), is a useful means to gauge carbon balance. Previous research has developed methods to integrate flux tower data with satellite biophysical datasets to estimate NEP across large regions. A related method uses the Ecosystem Performance Anomaly (EPA) as a satellite-derived indicator of disturbance intensity (e.g., livestock stocking rate, fire, and insect damage). To better understand the interactions among management, climate, and carbon dynamics, we evaluated the relationship between EPA and NEP data …

Seismic Anisotropy Of The Upper Crust In The Mountain Ranges Of Taiwan From The Taiger Explosion Experiment, Kuo-Chen Hao, Piotr Sroda, Francis T. Wu, Chien-Ying Wang, Yao-Wen Kuo

Earth Sciences Faculty Scholarship

Taiwan is known as a strongly anisotropic region observed from SKS 1 - 2 s delay time and other teleseismic phases. An estimate of the crustal contribution to the total anisotropy from the foliated Central Range is essential to understanding the overall teleseismic results. We used P wave arrivals from the dense seismic arrays deployed during the TAIGER active source experiments and the permanent broadband seismic stations to determine the crustal anisotropy. From the arrival time analysis as a function of azimuth, we detected a clear cos(2 theta) pattern. The strength of the crustal anisotropy (0 - 15 km depth) …

Melt Generation Beneath Arctic Ridges: Implications From Ule, Lynne J. Elkins, K. W. Sims, J. Prytulak, J. Blichert-Toft, T. Elliott, J. Blusztajn, S. Fretzdorff,, M. Reagan, K. Haase, S. Humphris, J.-G. Schilling

Geology Faculty Research and Scholarship

We present new ²³⁸U-²³⁰Th-²²⁶Ra-²¹⁰Pb, ²³⁵U-²³¹Pa, and Nd, Sr, Hf, and Pb isotope data for the slow- to ultraslow-spreading Mohns, Knipovich, and Gakkel Ridges. Combined with previous work, our data from the Arctic Ridges cover the full range of axial depths from the deep northernmost Gakkel Ridge shallowing upwards to the Knipovich, Mohns, and Kolbeinsey Ridges north of Iceland. Age-constrained samples from the Mohns and Knipovich Ridges have (²³⁰Th/²³⁸U) activity ratios ranging from 1.165 to 1.30 and 1.101 to 1.225, respectively. The high ²³⁰Th excesses of …

The Urban Heat Island And Its Influence On Precipitation In Denver, Colorado, Diana Thunen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Anthropogenic modification of the climate is an unintended yet serious effect of urbanization and it is happening in every city across the globe in the form of the urban heat island. The purpose of this study was to see if Denver, Colorado exhibits evidence of an urban heat island using meteorological data and if there has been a change in precipitation amounts since the urbanization of the city. It was concluded that Denver, Colorado does have an urban heat island that varies seasonally throughout the year with an average magnitude of 3.57°C during the day and 3.82°C at night. The …

Biostratigraphy Of The Halgaito Formation, Cutler Group Near Mexican Hat, San Juan County, Utah, Kimberly Marie Scott

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a better understanding of the paleontology and biostratigraphy of the Halgaito Formation and the position of the Carboniferous-Permian Boundary (CPB) within the Halgaito Formation which would provide useful data that can be extrapolated to other terrestrial ecosystems of the southwestern United States of America that are of comparable age.

Scales Over Shale: How Pennsylvania Got Fracked, Carlo E. Sica

Geography and the Environment - Theses

Shale gas has become one of Pennsylvania's major resources in recent years and the gas boom has proceeded in spite of uncertainty over the environmental risks of its production process. This thesis argues that location alone cannot explain why shale gas boomed in Pennsylvania. Using interviews with corporate and state executives, I argue that the scalar dimensions of the neoliberal environmental governance of shale gas were critical to understanding why shale gas boomed in Pennsylvania. These actors supported the preemption of local scales of governance by the state as a scalar fix for capital accumulation from shale gas development. They …

Probabilistic Modeling Of Rainfall Induced Landslide Hazard Assessment In San Juan La Laguna, Sololá, Guatemala, Patrice F. Cobin

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open

The municipality of San Juan La Laguna, Guatemala is home to approximately 5,200 people and located on the western side of the Lake Atitlán caldera. Steep slopes surround all but the eastern side of San Juan. The Lake Atitlán watershed is susceptible to many natural hazards, but most predictable are the landslides that can occur annually with each rainy season, especially during high-intensity events. Hurricane Stan hit Guatemala in October 2005; the resulting flooding and landslides devastated the Atitlán region. Locations of landslide and non-landslide points were obtained from field observations and orthophotos taken following Hurricane Stan. This study used …

Understanding And Managing Karst Water Resources In Belize: Case Studies Of Both Past And Present In A Changing Climate, Jason S. Polk, Leslie North, Ben Miller, Jonathan Oglesby, Kegan Mcclanahan, Lowell Neeper, Aaron Holland, Bernie Strenecky

Earth, Environmental, and Atmospheric Sciences Faculty Publications

Belize is a developing country that faces water resource issues in the forms of both quality and quantity, stemming from a long history of environmental stress and population threats, from the ancient Maya to present. Belize’s karst landscape, which comprises a large part of the country from the coast to the Maya Mountains, is characterized by springs, caves, sinkholes, and aquifers systems formed from the dissolution of carbonate (limestone, dolomite) rock. This research presents several different case studies, spanning from the ancient Maya and issues with drought to modern communities that rely on groundwater resources quickly being depleted. Past drought …

Ua12/13 Big Red, Small Planet, Christian Ryan-Downing , Editor, Leslie North , Editor

Sustainability Publications and Resources

At WKU, “The Spirit Makes the Master”. Our commitment to continuous improvement is clearly reflected in our sustainability efforts. WKU’s commitment to sustainability, whether demonstrated in campus operations or in educational programs, helps to ensure that our graduates are prepared to address the complicated environmental, social and economic issues we face today. They will be able to think critically, solve problems creatively and be engaged citizens. If that’s all we accomplish then we will have achieved great success. But our sustainability commitment pays dividends, as it also leads us to reduce our environmental footprint, practice social responsibility, and conserve natural …