The largest source of uncertainty among climate models simulating the climate system response to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations is the cloud feedback, the amplification or dampening of the warming from the carbon dioxide forcing by clouds. Refining our knowledge of the cloud feedback is therefore essential to gaining a...
REFEWLS - REnewable Food Energy Water on Land and Sea Nexus
This project will explore the connections between food, energy, and water uses along Oregon's mid coastal regions with a emphasis and focus on Newport. On average Newport uses approximately 2,000,000 gallons of water per day, but in the tourist...
Ice core records provide us a way to investigate past climate and look in detail at past atmospheric conditions. With, on average, higher CO2 concentrations in the Greenland record, the focus of this project was on the potential mechanisms responsible for the higher CO2 concentrations in the Greenland ice core...
There are few modern isotopic ages of igneous rocks and polymetallic (Pb-Zn-Ag-Cu-Au) hydrothermal mineral veins of the Mt. Thompson quadrangle in southwestern Montana. Lithology ages of this region vary from approximately 85-80 Ma Butte granite(Kbg) (Lund et al. 2002) to 48.6 Ma of Lowland Creek Volcanic Field (LCVF) (Dudas et...
Over 70% of the Antarctic krill population exists along the Antarctic Peninsula, a region undergoing rapid climate change. Recent studies have shown a clear correlation between krill recruitment each spring and the timing and coverage of sea ice the winter before, with less sea ice and a shorter duration being...
Over the last several years, the Northwest Fisheries Science Center, in collaboration with the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission and Oregon State University, has been sampling young-of-the-year groundfishes and other small demersal fishes along the Newport Hydrographic (NH) line. An important question concerning these surveys is whether the NH line...
During volcanic eruptions ascending magma undergoes decompression, resulting in a decrease of dissolved H2O. This creates unstable conditions for the hydrous mineral amphibole. As a result a reaction rim forms from anhydrous minerals such as pyroxene, plagioclase, and Fe-Ti oxides (Rutherford and Hill, 1993). There have been numerous studies done...
The origin of hornblendite and other mafic mineral-rich veins found in Cretaceous plutonic rocks from the Northern Cascades is currently not well known. This study seeks to investigate the possible relationship between host plutonic rocks and hornblendite and pyroxene-rich veins by comparing the chemical compositions and petrographic features between the...
Three key tectonic domains of western North America, the Walker Lane Fault Zone (WLFZ), northwestern Basin and Range (NWBR), and Cascade arc, intersect in south-central Oregon. Bounded by Cascade arc volcanoes in the west, the Klamath Graben is traditionally regarded as the western-most extent of the Basin and Range extensional...