This study examined how annual bedload export volume and bedload characteristics were related to disturbances including logging, floods, debris slides, and wildfires over 48 to 65-year periods in small, steep catchments in conifer forests of the western Cascade Range, Oregon. Bedload – the material rolling, sliding, or saltating along the...
The objective of this dissertation was to understand the physical mechanisms affecting inversion events in a complex forested mountain landscape. This work was motivated by the long-term studies of climate at the Andrews Forest, short-term studies of vertical temperature, light, wind, and moisture gradient in old-growth trees, and interest in...
Municipal watersheds attempt to balance growing and conflicting demands for water for human use and for ecosystems. The Mill Creek basin, a 295 km2 basin in southeast Washington, exemplifies these conflicts. Since the late 1800s, the City of Walla Walla has withdrawn water from Mill Creek for municipal use. However,...
The widespread fragmentation, channelization, and simplification of river ecosystems has had acute environmental impacts, including degradation of water quality and habitat and biodiversity loss (Vörösmarty et al., 2010). These concerns have incited an increased focus on reestablishing ecological and hydrogeomorphological functions and improving habitat that has been lost in riverine...
Childhood cancers are rare diseases that affect 188 children in Texas for every million born. Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer and accounts for roughly one third of childhood cancer cases. However, it is estimated that only 10% of childhood cancer cases can be explained by known risk factors....
This dissertation examines the spatial distribution of park access by type in relation to trajectories of gentrification in Seattle from 1990 to 2010. The dissertation includes 5 Chapters. The first chapter provides an overview of the literature that motivated this research. The second, third and fourth chapters are research papers...
Despite the importance of plant-pollinator interactions for ecological communities, few long-term observational studies have been conducted of plant-pollinator networks. Using four years of plant-pollinator interaction data from 18 meadows in the Willamette National Forest, Oregon, this thesis examined how meadow size, the amount of nearby meadow habitat, weather, degree days,...
Reservoir systems in the western US are managed to serve two main competing purposes: to reduce flooding during the winter and spring, and to provide water supply for multiple uses during the summer. Because the storage capacity of a reservoir cannot be used for both flood damage reduction and water...
The installation of engineered log jams (ELJs) is a common river restoration practice, implemented to modify flow structure and increase hydraulic complexity for the benefit of streambank protection and fish habitat. However, few studies have directly assessed the effects of ELJs on flow structure and complexity. This study presents a...
Despite advances in the understanding of rain-on-snow storms and their resulting peak flows, little is understood about the response of snowmelt to precipitation and the relative timing of the two at multiple temporal scales within such events. To address this issue, climate, snowmelt, and streamflow data were analyzed for 26...