Continental flood basalts represent short-lived but immense blasts of mafic magma to the continental crust. The youngest and smallest continental flood basalt worldwide, the Columbia River Basalt, initiated with the eruption of the most mafic member, the Steens Basalt (~16.9 Ma). The Steens Basalt is exposed in southeast Oregon, southwest...
Seafood processing is an important industry along the Oregon coast as it provides employment and seafood to coastal communities as well as to international markets. The industry has been an integral part of the identity of Coos County since the establishment of salmon canneries in the late 1800’s and has...
The debate over a coastal migration route for the First Americans revolves around two major points: seafaring technology, and a viable landscape and resource base. Three lake cores from Sanak Island in the western Gulf of Alaska yield the first radiocarbon ages from the continental shelf of the Northeast Pacific...
Flow and temperature are strongly linked environmental factors driving ecosystem processes in streams. Stream temperature maxima (T [subscript max_w]) and stream flow minima (Q[subscript min]) can create periods of stress for aquatic organisms. In mountainous areas, such as western North America, recent shifts toward an earlier spring peak flow and...
The Hampton Tuff is a 3.9 ± .02 Ma (2σ) ignimbrite sheet from the High Lava Plains of central Oregon. The majority of known outcrops exist to the north, within ~22 mi (~35 km) of the Frederick Butte Volcanic Center, the proposed source of the tuff. Thickness of the tuff...
Fungi and Actinobacteria are essential actors in global biogeochemical cycles of carbon and nutrients, and have both been recently appreciated for their roles in marine ecosystems. However, the diversity and distribution of these ubiquitous, but low-abundance microbes in deep-sea habitats remains poorly understood, particularly in chemosynthetic habitats such as methane...
Biogeochemical mechanisms employed by key organisms, or symbiotic associations of organisms, transform the function and structure of their environment through processes recognized as ecosystem engineering. This dissertation seeks to investigate organism-ecosystem interactions that serve globally significant ecological functions in marine systems and impact how systems respond to environmental change. Using...
This is the second of two new reports sponsored by a consortium of public groups and focusing on the Western Pond Turtle (Emys marmorata marmorata). The first report (Adamus 2003) provided an updated perspective on the distribution of the species in the Willamette River Basin, based on new field surveys,...
The Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture Series was created by the Ocean Studies Board of the National Academies in honor of Roger Revelle to highlight the important links between ocean sciences and public policy. Dawn J. Wright, the eighteenth annual lecturer, spoke on April 28, 2017, at the Smithsonian National Museum...
Copper and iron are essential micronutrients that are required by marine primary producers for a variety of metabolic processes. Over 99% of both copper and iron are bound within organic complexes in the marine environment, however the molecular identity of many of these complexes remains unknown. The speciation of these...