Tide-topography coupling is important for understanding surface-tide energy loss, the intermittency of internal tides, and the cascade of internal-tide energy from large to small scales. Although tide-topography coupling has been observed and modeled for 50 years, the identification of surface and internal tides over arbitrary topography has not been standardized....
ROSS (Robotic Oceanographic Surface Sampler) is an autonomous boat, equipped with oceanographic sensors, used for studying the ocean’s surface. One of its advantages over traditional research vessels is its ability to sample near glaciers, an area too dangerous for manned ships. In order to properly ascertain deep ocean heat’s effect...
This dissertation investigates the dynamics of the tidally modulated outflow from the Columbia River mouth using high resolution measurements of velocity, density and turbulent microstructure. At high tide, flow through the river mouth reverses from flood (onshore) to ebb (offshore). During ebb, buoyant fluid issues from the river mouth and...
Recent observations of tidewater glaciers find that the currently accepted model for predicting ice melt vastly underestimates observed melt rates. The release of pressurized air bubbles into the ocean from pores in the ice is one process that can amplify glacier melt. To incorporate this process into models, we need...
This work investigates a methodology for estimating the ocean stratification gradient based on high-resolution, in space and time, remote sensing observations of internal wave propagation speeds. The internal wave speed observations were collected using a shore-based, X-band marine radar and the ocean vertical density profiles were collected simultaneously from an...
A new set of data from a large-scale sand bar migration experiment is presented. During this experiment, two sandbars were generated. One of the bar was generated by the action of undertow, and sediment moved offshore. The other bar was generated by the shoreward movement of sediment coming from the...
The decisions in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 531 U.S. 159 (2001) (SWANCC) and Rapanos v. United States, 547 U.S. ___(2006), deviated from the more broad interpretations of congressional intent granted by the court in past assessments of the constitutionality of environmental...
Despite unprecedented access to information, the American public has been shown to have difficulty distinguishing factually correct information from misinformation. Misinformation can, and does, alter voting patterns and policy preferences which impact the range of policy solutions available to policymakers. In recent years, media organizations have begun specialized ‘fact-‐checking’ operations...
Analogous to ocean surface waves, waves in the ocean interior also experience steepening, breaking, and dissipation as they approach the coastline. Much less is known about this internal beach. In this work, extensive moored Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler and temperature/salinity data together with optical remote sensing are combined to describe...
Basin-scale superinertial oceanic tides have been observed globally to resonate with the continental shelf (e.g., the Patagonian Shelf) with a clear theoretical framework. However, the response of the shelf to atmospheric tides – another basin-scale forcing – has not been discussed. This study explores this response using a prominent S2...
The southwest monsoon, which may be idealized as the northward movement of the intertropical convergence zone in the Indian Ocean associated with differential heating of land and ocean, brings a seasonal reversal of currents and winds in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. Atmospheric convection from monsoon activity...
Inner-shelf circulation and mechanisms of across-shelf transport of water masses were examined using seven years of observations collected by the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) program, a long-term monitoring effort along the central Oregon coast. Since 1998, moored velocity and hydrographic measurements have been obtained during the...
Several topics are presented in this dissertation, each of which has applications to solar cells and photodetectors. First, we discuss the growth of Cu10Te4S13, copper tellurium tetrahedrite. This material has interesting optical properties; it has a large joint density of states at the conduction band maximum and valence band minimum,...
The ability to engineer stiffness and strength in any desired direction make composites an ideal material candidate for various applications when compared to their traditional isotropic counterparts. In spite of this, the ability to model the material response in composites has yet to be fully explored. Composite research largely focuses...
In this study, a coupled potential flow-viscous flow model is used for numerical wave tank simulation. The solver satisfies all the requirements for such a simulation environment. The coupling scheme is based on a non-overlapping heterogeneous domain decomposition method. In this method, the flow domain consists of two subdomains. In...
Microplastics are widely distributed in aquatic environments. The term ‘microplastics’ encompasses a wide array of particles with unique polymer constituents, morphologies, and sources, such as automobile tire tread. Tire wear particles (TWP) can end up in waterways near densely populated municipalities, where they can interact with aquatic biota. Studying the...
Estimating the hydraulic conductivity of earth materials is important for many water resource modeling efforts, including predicting the transport of pollutants in ground water, computing surface runoff for flood control, and computing water budgets. This research implicitly used topography, soil, and climate data to estimate plausible continuous hydraulic conductivity values...
Latinos are the largest and most rapidly growing ethnic minority in the United States, and they have the highest dropout rates of any major ethnic group in the country (U.S. Department of Labor, 2003). Latinos' educational attainment is consistently lower than that of other students (Gandara, 2008). The majority of...
Climate change is a global phenomenon, but natural selection occurs within landscapes. A central tenet of landscape ecology is that mobile species depend on complementary habitats, which are insufficient in isolation, but combine to support animals through the full annual cycle. For coldwater fishes, it is widely assumed that maximum...