This dissertation draws on ethnographic data and political ecological theory to analyze the experience of residents living in the IBM-Endicott Superfund site in Endicott, New York. Combining in-depth narratives and quantitative measures from a household survey, it highlights residents' perceptions of 1) environmental health risk, 2) risk mitigation, 3) deindustrialization...
Two research questions are posed: (1) How have ecosystem conditions changed through time in southwestern Oregon? (2) How have culture-driven and climate-driven processes contributed to ecosystem change in southwestern Oregon? A brief introduction to the Little River study area is followed by a cultural and ecological history of the watershed....
Aquatic fecal contamination from non-point sources impairs environmental health and serves as a vehicle for transmission of waterborne disease, resulting in economic losses worldwide. Accurate methods of diagnosing fecal pollution and its source are needed to prevent human exposure, remediate pollution, and reduce economic impacts. In order to obtain this...
This dissertation presents the results of three studies that assessed climate variability on short and long timescales in western United States. The growth of carbonate formations in caves (speleothems) is used to infer the timing and amplitude of past climate variability. We first assess the controls on speleothem growth for...
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Peter U. Clark
This dissertation presents the results of three studies that assessed
The results presented in this dissertation address a number of questions regarding late Pleistocene and Holocene ice-sheet and climate interactions, spanning disciplines involving paleoclimatology and atmospheric science. These studies use various techniques in geochemistry, climate modeling, and ice-sheet modeling to address ice- sheet response to climate and the attendant interactions...
A reliable, easy, and inexpensive method for determination of
molecular hydrocyanic acid (HCN) in solutions of simple and complex
metal cyanides is described. The method was used to determine
molecular HCN concentrations as low as 0.005 milligram per liter,
and can be used for determination of even lower levels. It...
This dissertation presents results from three studies that address major scientific questions in glacial geology and paleoclimatology for the late Pleistocene and Holocene using relatively new geochemical and statistical techniques. Each of the studies attempts to answer a longstanding question in the respective field using geochemical or statistical methods that...
This dissertation explores one overarching question relevant to the
paleoclimate of the latest Pleistocene glacial cycle (approximately the last
130,000 years): “How did spatial and temporal evolution of ocean
temperature, both at the surface and interior, relate to other parts of the
climate system in the late Pleistocene?” Results from...
