Geomorphology Commons^™

A Tourism Impact Index For Water-Based Natural Attractions Field-Tested In Subarctic And Maritime Climates, Jason Fox

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Tourism in cold and cool-climate regions is largely characterized by recreational and sightseeing activities at water-based natural attractions such as beaches, coastal cliffs, and waterfalls. While the economic benefits of the tourism industry can contribute to a sustainable future for these regions, the environmental implications of a hastilydeveloped industry cannot be ignored given that cold-climate and cool-climate landscapes are at risk of rapid environmental change from a warming climate and other environmental concerns. This study consisted of the development of the Tourism Impact Index for Water-Based Natural Sites, the first of its kind, and its application and refinement in the …

Distributary Channel Networks As Moving Boundaries: Causes And Morphodynamic Effects, Robert C. Mahon, John B. Shaw, Wun-Tao Ke, Christopher A. Cathcart

Earth and Environmental Sciences Faculty Publications

We propose an exploratory model to describe the morphodynamics of distributary channel network growth on river deltas. The interface between deep channels and the shallow, unchannelized delta front deposits is modeled as a moving boundary. Steady flow over the unchannelized delta front is friction dominated and modeled by Laplace's equation. Shear stress along the network boundary produces nonlinear erosion rates at the interface, causing the boundary to move and network elements (channels and branches) to form. The model was run for boundary conditions resembling the Wax Lake Delta in coastal Louisiana, 20 parameterizations of sediment transport, and 3 …

Structural Control Of Mesic Vegetation Communities Within The Owl And Bear Creek Watersheds, Fort Hood Military Installation, Texas, Melinda S. Faulkner, Matthew Mcbroom, Kenneth W. Farrish, Kevin Stafford

Faculty Publications

The Fort Hood Military Installation is a karst landscape, dominated by Lower Cretaceous carbonates of the Trinity and Fredericksburg groups. The study area is the northeastern peninsula known as the Owl Mountain Province, utilized by the U.S. Army for troop maneuvers and training. The geomorphic evolution of the province has been controlled by the structural development of incised canyons in the Owl and Bear creek watersheds, following the deformational trend of the Balcones/Ouachita fault system and the transverse Belton High-Central Texas Reef Trend. These trends control cave development in the subsurface, karst manifestations at the surface, joints in outcrop, stream …

Understanding The Relationship Between Sedimentation, Vegetation And Topography In The Tijuana River Estuary, San Diego, Ca., Darbi Berry

Theses

The aim of this study is to identify and characterize key geomorphic properties and relationships within the study site, the Tijuana River Estuary. This is a first step in contributing data to and assisting current and future restoration projects in employing a holistic management approach. The study identifies specific physical parameters, grain size and metal concentrations, within the estuary whose relationship to one another is not mutually exclusive and therefore should be addressed in tandem. This study also tests a remote sensing method for use as a tool for monitoring habitat changes in the estuary.

Middle Miocene To Holocene History Of The Delacroix Island Fault System, Jarrett Leigh Levesh

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

An in-depth field study of the Delacroix Island producing field illustrates the evolution of the east-trending Delacroix Island Fault during the last 13 My. Well log correlations and 3-D seismic interpretation of 22 subsurface bio-stratigraphic horizons across the fault reveal variable stratigraphic thicknesses and displacement. Wells, with well log curve data as shallow as 31 m (100 ft) below the surface, were used to calculate interval thicknesses, expansion indices, sediment accumulation rates, burial history and magnitudes of displacement. Through these analyses, a correlation was found between the positioning of ancient Miocene depocenters over Delacroix Island and a period of increased …

Geomorphic And Temporal Evolution Of A Mississippi Delta Flanking Barrier Island: Grand Isle, La, Julie A. Torres

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating beach ridge sediments is one method for resolving barrier island growth at intermediate scales (decades-centuries), information that is lacking for Louisiana. This research combines OSL, GPR, aerial imagery, and cores to document temporal and spatial evolution of a Louisiana barrier island.

Grand Isle is composed of beach ridges organized in distinct, unconformable sets that began forming 0.75 ka until 0.575 ka when deposition ceased, the ridges were partially eroded, and deposition resumed in a more eastward direction. The central ridges formed between 370±30 and 170±10 years ago at a rate of one ridge every 11.6 …

Seamless Lidar Surveys Reveal Rates And Patterns Of Subsidence In The Mississippi River Delta, Celeste E. Woock

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar) data are used to report the temporal and spatial patterns of subsidence as well as the potential contributors to subsidence within the Barataria and Terrebonne Bays. In recent decades, subsidence in southeast Louisiana has become a topic of substantial and growing concern to the scientific community, the local residents, and all those invested in the region. Lidar data were acquired from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and the LSU Center for Geoinformatics. The data has been manipulated to map the differenced Lidar, complete an instantaneous slope analysis, and determine the thickness of the Holocene …

Geomorphic Effects Of Engineered Log Structures And Response To A Catastrophic Flood Event In A Missouri Ozarks River, Joseph S. Nash

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Engineered log structures (ELSs) composed of local tree logs have been installed in river channels throughout the Pacific Northwest as a restoration technique. However, ELSs have not been tested for use in the Ozark Highlands until recently. In October 2016 the U.S. Forest Service installed four ELSs to stabilize banks along the North Fork of the White River in Ozark County, Missouri. The purpose here is to report on monitoring studies of pre- and post-restoration channel conditions and to assess geomorphic responses to floods. Over a ten-day period in April 2017 there were two bankfull floods, and on April 30, …

Geomorphic Response To Catastrophic Flooding In A Karst Mountain Stream System, Brighton-Blue Hole Watershed, Southwest Jamaica, Sarah M. Letarte

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The geomorphic effects of flooding are poorly understood in the karst, mountain watersheds along the southwest coast of Jamaica. This study describes the flow path and geomorphic response of an extreme flood event in the Brighton-Blue Hole watershed (BBHW) (6.8 km²) near Belmont, Westmoreland, Jamaica. A tropical depression classified as a >100-year rainfall event produced 32 inches of rain in a 24 hour period in Westmoreland on June 12, 1979. For this study, geomorphic indicators of flood disturbance in BBHW were assessed in 2017-18, finding that channel system responded to the flood with channel incision, debris flows, and …

Numerical Modeling Of Wave Dynamics And Sediment Transport Near The Mississippi Birdfoot Delta And Barataria Estuary, Soroush Sorourian

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The Barataria Basin is a large estuarine system in Southeastern Louisiana, connected to the Gulf of Mexico through a number of inlets, the most important of which is the Barataria Pass. This research examines, during April-June 2010 including both cold front passage and calm summer-time wind regimes, the wave dynamics in this basin and in its major inlets, morphological evolution near the Barataria Pass, and the budgeting and dispersal of the Mississippi River sediment in the birdfoot delta region. An unstructured grid, terrain following, high resolution coupled FVCOM-SWAVE-SED model is employed and validated in this study. The numerical model results …

Lead Contamination Of Soils In An Abandoned Rifle Range, Augusta County, Virginia, Logan Mahoney

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Presence of high concentrations of Lead within the soil and water could lead to various health related impacts on humans and wildlife. Exposure to Lead short termly or long termly could lead to many detrimental impacts due to Lead poisoning. The overall concentration of Lead in a soil can be measured using an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICPMS) under laboratory conditions. The present study investigates the Lead concentration of contaminated abandoned riffle range located in Augusta County, Virginia. Soil samples were obtained using soil augurs from three locations randomly based on the severity of contamination. Location three, which was …

Grain Size And Vegetation As Controlling Variables Of Stream Channel Morphology, Grant Colip

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Streams are one of the major driving forces that shape the landscapes in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and the eastern United States as a whole, and they serve an important role in transporting both water and sediment to the Atlantic Ocean. However, streams are often modified for human use, thus altering their natural equilibrium. These alterations have frequently led to the degradation of channel stability as well as damage to property and infrastructure. A better understanding of how both grain size (D₅₀) and vegetation impact stream sinuosity (S) is needed to analyze the prevalence of channel degradation …

Soil Capability Assessment For Expanding Irrigated Agriculture In The Irwin Focus Area And Surrounding Lands, Edward (Ted) Arnold Griffin, Angela Stuart-Street, Peter Tille

Resource management technical reports

The Midlands groundwater and land assessment is a $4.7 million Water for Food project using Royalties for Regions funding. It is seeking to confirm groundwater availability in focus areas that may form precincts of 2000–3000ha suitable for intensive irrigated horticulture. Irwin is one of these.

The Department of Water identified the Irwin focus area for investigation for irrigated agriculture potential. It covers almost 7000ha to the east of Dongara in the Mid West region of Western Australia.

This report provides the land assessment for the Irwin area. We expanded the investigation to include land outside of the focus area because …

Geochemical Analysis Of Mississippian Cherts And Devonian-Mississippian Novaculites, Southern Midcontinent Region, Julie Mary Cains

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study uses trace elements and radiogenic isotopes (Pb, Sr, and Nd) to investigate the origin and mode of formation for the siliceous deposits in the Lower Mississippian Boone Formation and the Devonian-Mississippian Arkansas Novaculite in the southern midcontinent. Mississippi Valley-type Pb-Zn ore deposits in the Tri-State District and the Northern Arkansas District were deposited by hydrothermal fluids, and highly radiogenic Pb isotope ratios suggest a genetic relationship between the Boone Formation chert (206Pb/204Pb ~ 21.59, 207Pb/204Pb ~ 15.87, 208Pb/204Pb ~ 40.10) and the MVT ores. Due to the very low concentration of Pb in the Boone chert (~2 ppm) …

Partitioned By Process: Measuring Post-Fire Debris Flow And Rill Erosion With Structure From Motion, Nicholas Ellett

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

In mountainous regions burned by wildfires, profound changes in soil characteristics and combustion of vegetation increase hillslope and channel erosion during storm events. Reduced infiltration and abundant loose sediment produce large post-fire erosional events which endanger human lives and infrastructure and contribute significantly to long-term erosion rates. While the influence of fire in increasing erosion has long been recognized, quantifying volumes and sources of eroded material from burned landscapes is difficult. Pre-erosion high-resolution topographic data (e.g. lidar) are often not available in burned areas and determining specific contributions from post-fire hillslope and channel erosion is challenging. Multiple erosional processes mobilize …

Detecting Coastal Marsh Change From Aerial Imagery Using Spectral And Textural Methods: Pascagoula River Estuary, Mississippi, 1955-2014, Margaret Claire Bell Waldron

Master's Theses

As sea level rise accelerates, coastal marsh ecosystems are increasingly vulnerable. Vertical accretion rates must exceed or keep pace with rates of sea level rise to prevent transition to open water or inland migration of marsh vegetation. While some marsh systems along the northern Gulf of Mexico coast have remained stable, others, e.g., the marshes of the Louisiana Gulf Coast, have experienced high rates of conversion to open water. This study examined the historical extent of intertidal marsh at the mouth of the Pascagoula River in Jackson County, Mississippi to determine whether marsh extent changed during the period 1955-2014 and …

Reconstructing Barrier Island Behavior From Overstepped Deposits And Relict Onshore Morphology : Modeling And Field Approaches, Daniel James Ciarletta

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Barrier Islands comprise 10% of the Earth’s shorelines, fringing every continent except Antarctica. Despite their ubiquity, much about the medium to long-term evolution of these coastal systems remain poorly understood, mostly due to the destruction of the geologic record as barriers migrate landward under the influence of rising sea level. Even where modern barriers and related strandplain systems have prograded and regressed, leaving evidence of their former geometries in the form of relict shorelines, field investigations often require intensive labor and time commitments to interpret past evolution. In this work, several investigations are undertaken to use novel numerical modeling techniques …

Fun In A Kansas Salt Mine, Robert F. Diffendal Jr.

Robert F. Diffendal, Jr., Publications

Most people probably do not know that salt deposits hundreds of feet thick lie buried beneath large parts of western Kansas, western Oklahoma and a small part of the northeastern Texas Panhandle. Native Americans and early European explorers found that where the salt deposits came near the land surface (for, example north of Hutchinson, Kansas) salt is dissolved by ground water and increases the salinity of rivers, streams, springs and ponds. This salty water was used as a salt source by these peoples. The Hutchinson Salt, a 275 million-year-old Middle Permian deposit, was discovered in an exploratory drill hole in …

Index

Bulletin of the University of Nebraska State Museum (1924–2023)

No abstract provided.

Sediment Transport And Channel Morphology Of A Natural And A Leveed Alluvial River, Bo Wang

LSU Master's Theses

Alluvial rivers are shaped by interactions of flow and sediment transport. Their lower reaches to the world’s oceans are highly dynamic, often presenting engineering and management challenges. This thesis research aimed to investigate channel dynamics and sediment transport in a natural river and a highly engineered river in South Louisiana, in order to gain much-needed science information for helping develop sustainable practices in river engineering, sediment management, and coastal restoration and protection. Especially, the thesis research examined (1) riverbed deformation from bank to bank in the final 500-km reach of the Mississippi River, (2) bed material transport at the Mississippi-Atchafalaya …