Other Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology Commons^™

Integrating Towed Underwater Video With Multibeam Acoustics For Mapping Benthic Habitat And Assessing Reef Fish Communities On The West Florida Shelf, Alexander Ross Ilich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using a towed underwater video camera system, benthic habitats were classified along transects in a popular offshore fishing area on the West Florida Shelf (WFS) known as “The Elbow.” Additionally, high resolution multibeam bathymetry and co-registered backscatter data were collected for the entire study area. Using these data, full coverage geologic and biotic habitat maps were developed using both unsupervised and supervised statistical classification methodologies. The unsupervised methodology used was k-means clustering, and the supervised methodology used a random forest algorithm. The two methods produced broadly similar results; however, the supervised methodology outperformed the unsupervised methodology. The results of the …

Quantification Of Cloud Condensation Nuclei Effects On The Microphysical Structure Of Continental Thunderstorms Using Polarimetric Radar Observations, Kun-Yuan Lee

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Aerosols serving as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) are crucial to the microphysical structure of thunderstorms. They can also alter the rate of cloud microphysical processes, the moisture profile and the local temperature as a result of latent heating/cooling in the early stage of thunderstorm development. Continental thunderstorms are characterized by high complexity and are highly influenced by environmental conditions. The purpose of this study is to determine the influences of CCN concentration on the microphysics of continental thunderstorms, using a sample of storms from northwestern Oklahoma. The Weather Surveillance Radar-1988 Doppler (WSR-88D) at Vance Air Force Base (KVNX) was upgraded …

Quantitative Validation Of Simulated Sea Ice Displacements, Bryan R. Mccormick

Mathematics & Statistics ETDs

Accurate simulations of Arctic sea ice are important for forecasting as well as for understanding the global climate. However, quantitative measures for simulation displacements are underutilized. We present five such measures proposed as being useful in the validation of simulated sea ice displacements. Using drifting buoy and satellite measurements of sea ice motion as observation, we apply the metrics in a comparison of observed displacements and predicted displacements from the Arctic sea ice simulation MPM\_ice. We find the metric scores are useful for comparing simulations and observations. The metrics also brought to light problems in the simulation MPM_ice, demonstrating their …

Assessment Of Indoor & Outdoor Black Carbon Emissions Rural Areas Of Indo-Gangetic Plain: Seasonal Characteristics, Source Apportionment And Radiative Forcing, Mohammad Arif, Rajesh Kumar, Ramesh Kumar, Eric Zusman, Ramesh Singh, Akhilesh Gupta

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Black Carbon (BC) has been widely recognized as the second largest source of territorial and global climate change as well as a threat to human health. There has been serious concern of BC emission and its impact in Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) due to the use of biomass and fossil fuels for cooking, transportation and industrial activities. An attempt has been made to study indoor (Liquefied Petroleum Gas- LPG & Traditional cookstoves users households) and outdoor concentrations; seasonal characteristics; radiative forcing and source of apportionment of BC in three districts (Sitapur, Patna and Murshidabad) of IGP during January to December 2016. …

Climate-Informed Environmental Inflows To Revive A Drying Lake Facing Meteorological And Anthropogenic Droughts, Aneseh Alborzi, Ali Mirchi, Hamed Moftakhari, Iman Mallakpour, Sara Alian, Ali Nazemi, Elmira Hassanzadeh, Omid Mazdiyasni, Samaneh Ashraf, Kaveh Madani, Hamid Norouzi, Marzi Azarderakhsh, Ali Mehran, Mojtaba Sadegh, Andrea Castelletti, Amir Aghakouchak

Publications and Research

The rapid shrinkage of Lake Urmia, one of the world's largest saline lakes located in northwestern Iran, is a tragic wake-up call to revisit the principles of water resources management based on the socio-economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The overarching goal of this paper is to set a framework for deriving dynamic, climate-informed environmental inflows for drying lakes considering both meteorological/climatic and anthropogenic conditions. We report on the compounding effects of meteorological drought and unsustainable water resource management that contributed to Lake Urmia's contemporary environmental catastrophe. Using rich datasets of hydrologic attributes, water demands and withdrawals, as well …

Using Ecosystem-Based Modeling To Describe An Oil Spill And Assess The Long-Term Effects, Lindsey N. Dornberger

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of the research conducted in this dissertation was to define and test methods to incorporate oil spill effects into an ecosystem-based assessment model. It was instigated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, an unprecedented oil spill in the United States for both depth and volume, with unknown implications for the health of the region. Using an ecosystem-based assessment model like Atlantis, with integrated oil spill dynamics, was the ideal candidate to predict long-term impacts such as decreased abundance or population recovery time. However no previous methodology existed for doing so in any ecosystem-based assessment model. Therefore, first I …

Evaluation Of Trace-Metal And Isotopic Records As Techniques For Tracking Lifetime Movement Patterns In Fishes, Jennifer E. Granneman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The focus of this work was on the use of otolith microchemistry and fish eye lens chemical profiles to measure fish movement and provided indirect support for the use of otolith microchemistry to examine exposure to crude oil. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the applications of otolith microchemistry and eye lens isotopic profiles. In the second chapter, which examined associations between metal exposure and lesion formation in fishes collected after the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill, I did not observe any change in oil-associated metal concentrations in otoliths coinciding with the timing of the DWH oil spill. This suggests …

Spatial And Temporal Distributions Of Pelagic Sargassum In The Intra-Americas Sea And Atlantic Ocean, Mengqiu Wang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pelagic Sargassum is one type of marine macroalgae that is known to be abundant in the Gulf of Mexico and Sargasso Sea. It is also known to serve as a critical habitat for many marine animals. In the past few years, large amounts of Sargassum have been reported in the Tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea (CS), causing significant environmental and economic problems. The goal of this study is to improve the understanding of Sargassum distributions, quantity, transport pathways, and bloom mechanisms in the CS and Tropic Atlantic through combining a variety of techniques including satellite remote sensing, field and laboratory …

An Interdisciplinary Approach To Understanding Predator-Prey Relationships In A Changing Ocean: From System Design To Education, Ileana M. Freytes-Ortiz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climate change is ecologically and socially complex, deemed the most important issue of our generation. Through this dissertation I have approached climate change research through an interdisciplinary perspective, investigating how this phenomenon will affect marine ecological systems, how we can better develop experimental systems to answer ecological questions, and how we can effectively educate about this issue.

In Chapter 2, I provided accessible alternatives for researching the effects of climate change (elevated temperatures and pCO2) on marine ecosystems. I designed, built, and troubleshooted two accurate and inexpensive climate-controlled experimental systems capable of maintaining target conditions: a temperature-controlled system and an …

Estimating Live Fuel Moisture In Southern California Using Remote Sensing Vegetation Water Content Proxies, Shenyue Jia, Seung Hee Kim, Son V. Nghiem, Wonhee Cho, Menas Kafatos

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Wildfires are a major ecological disturbance in Southern California and often lead to great destruction along the Wildland-Urban Interface. Live fuel moisture has been used as an important indicator of wildfire risk in measurements of vegetation water content. However, the limited field measurements of live fuel moisture in both time and space have affected the accuracy of wildfire risk estimations. Traditional estimation of live fuel moisture using remote sensing data was based on vegetation indices, indirect proxies of vegetation water content and subject to influence from weather conditions. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of estimating live fuel moisture …

Diversity Of Ssdna Phages Related To The Family Microviridae Within The Ciona Robusta Gut, Alexandria Creasy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The gut microbiome is a complex ecosystem of bacteria, viruses, and fungi that strongly influences animal health. The bacterial component, for example, contributes orders of magnitude more gene products to host physiology than the host genome; thus, changes to the composition of these bacterial communities can have profound influences on the health of the animal. By infecting and lysing their hosts, viruses (particularly viruses infecting bacteria or phages) can affect critical functions in these environments, yet the consequences of these infections remain to be fully described. Most studies investigating gut viromes to date have focused on double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) phages …

Ecophysiology Of Oxygen Supply In Cephalopods, Matthew A. Birk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cephalopods are an important component of many marine ecosystems and support large fisheries. Their active lifestyles and complex behaviors are thought to be driven in large part by competition with fishes. Although cephalopods appear to compete successfully with fishes, a number of their important physiological traits are arguably inferior, such as an inefficient mode of locomotion via jet propulsion and a phylogenetically limited means of blood-borne gas transport. In active shallow-water cephalopods, these traits result in an interesting combination of very high oxygen demand and limited oxygen supply. The ability to maintain active lifestyles despite these metabolic constraints makes cephalopods …

Crop Residue Burning In Northern India: Increasing Threat To Greater India, S. Sarkar, Ramesh P. Singh, A. Chauhan

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

Crop residue burning (CRB) is a recurring problem, during October–November, in the northwestern regions (Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh) of India. The emissions from the CRB source regions spread in all directions through long-range transport mechanisms, depending upon the meteorological conditions. In recent years, numerous studies have been carried out dealing with the impact of CRB on the air quality of Delhi and surrounding areas, especially in the Indo-Gangetic Basin (also referred to as Indo-Gangetic Plain). In this paper, we present detailed analysis using both satellite- and ground-based sources, which show an increasing impact of CRB over the eastern …

Aerosol And Meteorological Parameters Associated With The Intense Dust Event Of 15 April 2015 Over Beijing, China, Sheng Zheng, Ramesh P. Singh

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

The northeastern parts of China, including Beijing city, the capital of China, were hit by an intense dust storm on 15 April 2015. The present paper discusses aerosol and meteorological parameters associated with this dust storm event. The back trajectory clearly shows that the dust originated from Inner Mongolia, the border of China, and Mongolia regions. Pronounced changes in aerosol and meteorological parameters along the dust track were observed. High aerosol optical depth (AOD) with low Ångström exponent (AE) are characteristics of coarse-mode dominated dust particles in the wavelength range 440–870 nm during the dusty day. During dust storm, dominance …

Evaluating Beach Water Quality And Dengue Fever Risk Factors By Satellite Remote Sensing And Artificial Neural Networks, Abdiel Elias Laureano-Rosario

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Climatic variations, together with large-scale environmental forces and human development affect the quality of coastal recreational waters, creating potential risks to human health. These environmental forces, including increased temperature and precipitation, often promote specific vector-borne diseases in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Human activities affect water quality through discharges from urban areas, including nutrient and other pollutants derived from wastewater systems. Both water quality of recreational beaches and vector-borne diseases can be better managed by understanding their relationship with local environmental forces.

I evaluated how changes in vector-borne diseases and poor recreational water quality were related to specific environmental …

Baroclinic Tidal Sea Level From Exact-Repeat Mission Altimetry, Edward Zaron

Portland Institute for Computational Science Publications

A near-global model for the sea-surface expression of the baroclinic tide has been developed using exact-repeat mission altimetry. The methodology used differs in detail from other altimetry-based estimates of the open ocean baroclinic tide, but it leads to estimates which are broadly similar to previous results. It may be used for prediction of the baroclinic sea level anomaly at the frequencies of the main diurnal and semidiurnal tides, K₁, O₁, M₂, S₂, as well as the annual modulates of M₂, denoted MA₂ and MB₂. Based on a …

A Novel Multiproxy Approach To Reconstructing Sea Surface Temperature In The Southwestern Gulf Of Mexico, Marissa Anne Vara

LSU Master's Theses

Coral Sr/Ca is a widely-used proxy for sea surface temperature (SST); however, discrepancies in the coral Sr/Ca-SST relationship among colonies of the same species makes uncertainty in absolute temperature reconstructions larger than the climate signal yet climate variability studies are possible. Furthermore, the riverine input of terrestrial carbonate weathering products to the coastal waters can disrupt the coral Sr/Ca-SST signal by changing local seawater chemistry. This study evaluates the fidelity and reproducibly of coral SST proxies (Sr/Ca, Li/Ca, Mg/Li, Sr-U, Mg/Ca, and U/Ca) and a riverine-upwelling proxy (Ba/Ca) in four Orbicella faveolata colonies in two reefs offshore from Veracruz, Mexico …

Predicting Spatial Patterns In Precipitation Isotope (Δ2h And Δ18o) Seasonality Using Sinusoidal Isoscapes, Scott T. Allen, James W. Kirchner, Gregory R. Goldsmith

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Understanding how precipitation isotopes vary spatially and temporally is important for tracer applications. We tested how well month‐to‐month variations in precipitation δ18O and δ2H were captured by sinusoidal cycles, and how well spatial variations in these seasonal cycles could be predicted, across Switzerland. Sine functions representing seasonal cycles in precipitation isotopes explained between 47% and 94% of the variance in monthly δ18O and δ2H values at each monitoring site. A significant sinusoidal cycle was also observed in line‐conditioned excess. We interpolated the amplitudes, phases, and offsets of these sine functions across the landscape, using multiple linear …

An Assessment Of Atmospheric And Meteorological Factors Regulating Red Sea Phytoplankton Growth, Wenzhao Li, Hesham El-Askary, Mohamed A. Qurban, Emmanouil Proestakis, Michael J. Garay, Olga V. Kalishnikova, Vassilis Amiridis, Antonis Gkikas, Eleni Marinou, Thomas Piechota, K. P. Manikandan

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

This study considers the various factors that regulate nutrients supply in the Red Sea. Multi-sensor observation and reanalysis datasets are used to examine the relationships among dust deposition, sea surface temperature (SST), and wind speed, as they may contribute to anomalous phytoplankton blooms, through time-series and correlation analyses. A positive correlation was found at 0–3 months lag between chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) anomalies and dust anomalies over the Red Sea regions. Dust deposition process was further examined with dust aerosols’ vertical distribution using satellite lidar data. Conversely, a negative correlation was found at 0–3 months lag between SST anomalies …

Spatial Dynamics And Productivity Of A Gulf Of Mexico Commercial Reef Fish Fishery Following Large Scale Disturbance And Management Change, Marcy Lynn Cockrell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Gulf of Mexico commercial reef fish fishery has experienced significant management changes and disturbance in recent years, including transitioning two major fisheries from a traditional open access system into a limited entry individual fishing quota (IFQ) system in 2007 and 2010. Also in 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill (DWH) released an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf (~206 million U.S. gallons), and is still the largest U.S. environmental disaster to date. Emergency fishing closures initiated shortly after the oil spill began were successful in keeping tainted seafood from reaching markets. However, effects of DWH closures …