Montane meadows comprise a small area of the predominantly forested landscape
of the Oregon Cascade Range. Tree encroachment in the last century in these areas has
threatened a loss of biodiversity and habitat. Climate change in the coming century may
accelerate tree encroachment into meadows, and exacerbate biodiversity loss. Multiple...
The El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) affects millions of people via global teleconnections in the form of drought and torrential rainfall that impact agriculture and food production in many countries. Yet how ENSO will respond to a warming world is uncertain and a greatly debated topic. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate...
Oregon’s High Lava Plains Province (HLP) has strongly bimodal basalt and rhyolitic volcanism. The Province caps the northern margin of the Basin and Range Province and serves as a transitional region between westward extension of the Basin and Range Province and unextended crust to the north . The High Lava...
The collapse of the Laurentide Ice Sheet over Hudson Bay ∼8.47 ka allowed the rapid drainage of glacial Lake Agassiz into the Labrador Sea, an event identified as causing a reduction in Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) and the 8.2 ka cold event. Atmosphere‐ocean models simulations based on this forcing,...
Details the development of the OSU 360 virtual tour system (www.oregonstate.edu/osu360) from May 2008 to May 2009. OSU 360 is a collaboration between the Department of Geosciences, University Housing and Dining Services, Central Web Services, Web Communications, and Admissions/Enrollment. This article details the project development from determining goals, distinguishing locations,...
The pressure history of a continental magmatic system can be deciphered by analyzing the composition of amphiboles in the eruptive products where the pressure of equilibration correlates with the depth of the magmatic system. This can reveal vertical evolution of the magma as amphibole composition varies significantly with temperature and...
The 2-ka eruption of Misti volcano produced voluminous flowage deposits and a wide-spread tephra-fall deposit. The flowage deposits form large terraces within channels draining the south side of the volcano. All the channels drain into the city of Arequipa. Arequipa's city center is ~16 km from the summit of the...
Shifting climate patterns in the Columbia River basin are affecting snow pack, and, as a result, stream flow throughout the region. In the Oregon Cascades, ever growing populations, and their associated activities, place increasing stress on an already over allocated hydrologic system. Political pressures, including the possibility of renegotiation or...
In November of 2006 an intense rainstorm of tropical origin, known colloquially as the "Pineapple Express," inundated the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, initiating numerous periglacial debris flows on several of the
stratovolcanoes in the Cascade Range of Oregon and Washington. These debris flows rapidly aggrade channels, deposit...
The net mass balance fluctuations of Arctic and Sub-Arctic glaciers, north of 47.5°
North latitude, are described over a 45-year period from 1957 to 2002 using two
parameters derived from a gridded climatology reanalysis. Variability among 185
measured glaciers was represented according to two main components. The first
component represents...
The field of geography has been transformed in recent years through the use of spatial tools such as geographic information systems (GIS) satellite and acoustic remote sensing, the global positioning system (GPS), Internet mapping and more. Studying geography and earth science in the digital age now requires a sophisticated and...
The Aucanquilcha Volcanic Cluster (AVC) is the erupted part of a magmatic system with a complex and long-lived history. The AVC lies at 21°S in the high Andes and is built on thick continental crust. The thick crust in the area combined with the prolonged magmatic activity make it an...
The origin of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the leading mode of sea surface temperature variability for the North Pacific, is a matter of considerable debate. One paradigm views the PDO as an independent mode centered in the North Pacific, while another regards it as a largely reddened response to...
Cold air drainage and pooling occur in many mountain valleys, especially at night and during winter. Local
climate regimes associated with frequent cold air pooling have substantial impacts on species phenology, distribution and
diversity. However, little is known about how the degree and frequency of cold air drainage and pooling...
We propose the experimental use of resazurin (Raz) and develop a metabolically active transient storage (MATS) model to include processes that may provide additional information on transient storage from a biogeochemical perspective in stream ecosystems. Raz is a phenoxazine compound that reduces irreversibly to resorufin (Rru) in the presence of...
Snow Peak is a voluminous shield volcano located ~50 km west of the axis of
the modern Cascade arc. A previously published K-Ar age estimate indicates that the
Snow Peak lavas are ~3 Ma. Subsequently, the preliminary research framework for
studying the Snow Peak lavas focused on constraining the petrogenesis...
The El Salvador porphyry copper deposit in the Indio Muerto district of northern Chile has been geologically investigated for more than 60 years and provides one of the best bases for understanding similar environments of ore formation elsewhere in the world. Fourteen new zircon U/Pb isotopic ages obtained via in...
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...
Normal faults characterizing extensional provinces may terminate along-strike at regions of zero extension, at zones of transform faults, or at triple junctions. Termination of the Basin and Range extensional province in southeastern Oregon is thought to occur by right-lateral transform motion distributed across the Brothers Fault zone (BFZ) in central...
Since the early 1980s, satellite imagery has been commonly used to detect change
in wetlands. The overall objective of this study is to utilize remote sensing and
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology to determine the extent of change of
the wetland area and of other land use and land cover...
This research focuses on the relationship between the emerging role of land trusts and
rapid growth and change in the West. Teton County, Idaho, Teton County, Wyoming, and
Sublette County, Wyoming, and each of their associated land trusts, are used as case studies. Each county has experienced varying levels of...
The analysis of material and energy exchange between the marine and terrestrial components of island ecosystems enables research into the impact of human population and land use on the health of coral reef habitat. Satellite and acoustic remote sensing technologies enable the collection of data to produce high resolution bathymetry...
This research seeks to understand the influences of perception on land use around
the Mount Hood area of Oregon and evaluate how it has evolved over the past 4,000
years. The study addresses three specific questions:
1) How has the study area evolved over time into the modern landscape?
2)...
This dissertation primarily uses observations made during the 2005 Kashmir earthquake relief effort and available disaster literature to address problems that impede effective and efficient disaster preparedness and response. Three manuscripts form the body of the dissertation. The manuscripts are thematically linked through the Emergency Management Cycle. Each manuscript examines...
An integrative method for monitoring glacier geometry change and mass balance is presented and applied to the Pacific Northwest, USA. Acting as a baseline for interpretation of future changes in glacier size and shape, we first derive a new inventory of regional glacier cover using remotely sensed data. To investigate...
This thesis presents the results of an investigation into the interactions between the present-day South Cascade Glacier and the former Mauna Kea ice cap at short (annual to centennial) and long (millennial and multimillennial) time scales. To quantify the response of South Cascade Glacier to atmospheric conditions, a surface energy...
Steepland valleys subject to debris flows incise bedrock even as episodic deposition typically covers valley bottoms. This paper’s hypothesis is that, while continual fluvial processes evacuate deposits, storage of episodic deposition drives valley widening and, thereby, creation of accommodation space for sediment storage on the valley floor. Data from three...
The modeling of fluvial systems is constrained by a lack of spatial information about the continuity and structure of streambed sediments. There are few methods for noninvasive characterization of streambeds. Invasive methods using wells and cores fail to provide detailed spatial information on the prevailing architecture and its continuity. Geophysical...
This study quantified the magnitude and timing of summer streamflow deficits in paired-watershed experiments in the Cascade Range of Oregon where mature and old-growth conifer forests were subjected to clearcutting, patch cutting, and overstory thinning treatments in the 1960s and 1970s. Hydrologic effects of clearcutting, small-patch cutting, and overstory thinning...
The development of new technologies in science is a balance between existence and use. There are three versions of this duality – something is built and users come, something is built and users don’t come, and, finally, potential users show up but the ballpark has not yet been built. In...
Abstract Watershed-scale fate/transport modeling of contaminants is a tool that scientists and land managers can use to assess pesticide contamination to stream systems. The Catchment Modeling Framework (CMF) is a catchment-scale fate/transport modeling tool. It was developed to help scientists and land managers assess the effects of possible land-use decisions...
Geospatial technology is a rapidly growing and changing field. The term geospatial technology (GST) refers to geographical information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), and remote sensing (RS), all emerging technologies that assist the user in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of spatial data. The speed at which new fields...
This study delineates and characterizes the distribution of montane meadows in the Willamette National Forest, identifies encroachment patterns in relation to topographic features and proximity to trees in the Chucksney-Grasshopper meadow complex, and examines tree species and age distributions in relation to distance from forest edges or isolated tree clusters...
This thesis develops a thematic, geology-based interpretive training manual for the interpretive staff at Yosemite National Park (YNP), California. The manual will help staff understand and convey geologic principles to park visitors who are all experiencing a dynamic landscape comprised of glacially-sculpted igneous rocks. Basic geology and the results of...
The geologic processes at work in American Samoa have long been a point of scientific debate. Of its numerous volcanic formations, few breach sea level, leaving an enormous proportion of their mass unavailable to traditional observation. This study aims to describe the deep sea geomorphology of American Samoa through compilation,...
An ASR metric and site rating index applied to over 120 municipal and agricultural locations across Oregon, combined with comparison to case study data from existing ASR sites, indicate that more than 50% of selected sites are hydrogeologically suitable for ASR. The ASR metric is a ratio of aquifer storage...
The Arc Marine data model is a generalized template to guide the implementation of geographic information systems (GIS) projects in the marine environment. Arc Marine developed out of a collaborative process involving research and industry shareholders in coastal and marine research. This template models and attempts to standardize common marine...
The EPA’s Western Ecology Division (WED) had been accumulating geographic information system (GIS) data files for up to 20 years. There was no index or catalog for these files; locating data became more difficult over time. More that 4 Tb of data existed on numerous disk volumes in hundreds of...
From a landscape ecology perspective, meadows are often seen as landscapes in
transition. Succession and change in meadows may be investigated by considering the
physical and anthropogenic factors that influence the landscape through time. What is
often unknown is how changes occur and how physical and anthropogenic factors
contribute to...
The northwestern corner of the Basin and Range Province (NWBR) lies in southeast Oregon where extensive Late Miocene, mafic to bimodal basalt-rhyolite volcanism and extensional faults dominate a stark and arid landscape. Near Lake Abert, the Late Miocene volcanic section abuts Early Miocene, dominantly intermediate composition volcanoes at the Coleman...
Satellite imagery has been a useful tool in monitoring land cover changes, including changes within protected areas. In the 1980’s and 1990’s Honduras created over 100 protected areas, yet few resources have been dedicated to their management. This study used Landsat satellite imagery to evaluate deforestation in the Río Plátano...
In steep headwater basins of the Oregon Coast Range (OCR), debris flows episodically deliver material from low-order tributary basins to larger catchments. Much of this material is stored in valleys and gradually removed by fluvial processes. Quantifying the transfer of material from hillslopes to mainstem channels is essential in understanding...
Urban sprawl and the establishment of greenbelts to separate growing cities and towns has become a popular topic of conversation among land use professionals. Economists focus on urban growth in terms of land rents and have sought market solutions such as transfers and purchases of development rights to slow this...
This study examined patterns and controls on 35-years of forest succession following logging in the 236 ha South Umpqua Experimental Forest within the Umpqua National Forest in southwestern Oregon. Prior to logging, the overstory in all three watersheds (~50% cover) was composed of Douglas-fir (30-40% cover), grand fir (2 to...
Increasing population and land use decisions have had a negative effect on the aquatic ecosystems in the Willamette River Basin. One result is elevated temperatures in many of the Basin’s streams, which adversely affect the fish that live in these streams. There are several regulatory mechanisms in place to improve...
This thesis synthesizes surficial structural data, a detailed analysis of an earthquake in 1944, and historical seismicity into a new model of crustal scale deformation in the eastern Precordillera in northwestern Argentina in the vicinity of San Juan. The eastern Precordillera was uplifted during previous thin-skinned deformation episodes, and is...
This thesis presents a detailed seismotectonic investigation of the Himalayan region and the Tibetan plateau as part of project HiCLIMB to explore the state of stress and the kinematics of the world’s largest continental collision zone. Using full regional waveforms for moment tensor inversion, source parameters for 107 earthquakes were...
This research provides details of water resource conflict and cooperation in Oregon between 1990 and 2004 by using an event database methodology. Events were concentrated in four of 18 basins. No basin accounted for more that 25% of the total water rights events, the most evenly distributed issue type. Overall...
This study examined two neighborhoods in San Francisco with similar earthquake-induced ground failure history -- the Marina District and the South of Market Area (SoMa) -- in the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The earthquake struck shortly after 5 pm on October 17th, 1989 and registered 6.9 in...