We describe observations of tropical stratospheric water vapor q that show clear evidence of large‐scale upward advection of the signal from annual fluctuations in the effective “entry mixing ratio” qE of air entering the tropical stratosphere. In other words, air is “marked,” on emergence above the highest cloud tops, like...
A major goal of the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) has been to understand the impacts of climate change and variability on the coastal ecosystems of the inner shelf of the California Current Large Marine System in particular, and other marine and even nonmarine systems more generally....
The objective of this research was to improve our understanding of how
changes in the environment affect ecological processes. Change detection is often
confounded by the large variation found in ecological data due to the difficulty of
finding replicates in nature. Intertidal communities were chosen for studies of biophysical
interactions...
Riparian vegetation along streams provides a suite of ecosystem services in rangelands and thus is the target of restoration when degraded by over-grazing, erosion, incision, or other disturbances. Assessments of restoration effectiveness depend on defensible monitoring data, which can be both expensive and difficult to collect. We present a method...
Observations of water vapor with high temporal and spatial resolution and good horizontal coverage just above the tropical tropopause have been scarce, but a preliminary version of such data has been developed using radiance measurements of the Microwave Limb Sounder. These data reveal distinct variations with periods in the ranges...
Identification of critical habitat for all life stages of commercially exploited fish populations is critical for effective management. Despite a clear need for basic biological information on juvenile rockfish life history, there have been very few efforts to describe distribution and habitat of this life stage, particularly along the Oregon...
The functioning of marine habitats needs to be understood in the context of the ecological relationships and associations between organisms and the physical and biogenic environment they inhabit. Thus, it becomes important to explore and define habitat features which contribute to these relationships and which are important in the life...
This study represents an internship, as a requirement of the Professional Science Masters program at Oregon State University, performed with Western Ag Innovations Inc. The study consisted of two aspects -- one business and one science oriented. The two objectives of this internship were to: 1) qualitatively evaluate how two...
Research progress to understand the role of vitamin C (ascorbic acid) in human health has been slow in coming. This is predominantly the result of several flawed approaches to study design, often lacking a full appreciation of the redox chemistry and biology of ascorbic acid. In this review, we summarize...
The near-term progression of ocean acidification (OA) is projected to bring about sharp changes in the chemistry of coastal upwelling ecosystems. The distribution of OA exposure across these early-impact systems, however, is highly uncertain and limits our understanding of whether and how spatial management actions can be deployed to ameliorate...
Predatorprey interactions are a primary structuring force vital to the resilience of marine communities and sustainability of the worlds oceans. Human influences on marine ecosystems mediate changes in species interactions. This generality is evinced by the cascading effects of overharvesting top predators on the structure and function of marine ecosystems....
The intriguing size- and shape dependent properties of nanoparticles have garnered recent attention in many science and engineering areas. When the particle size is in the nanometer size range, the material exhibits very different properties such as surface plasmon resonance (of gold nanoparticles) and superparamagnetism (of iron oxide nanoparticles). The...
Caenorhabditis elegans is arguably the best understood animal on the planet.
Used for over 50 years to study development, we have a vast amount of knowledge of
the inner workings of this worm. Our knowledge is incomplete, however, without
placing this organism in its evolutionary and ecological context. In this...
Wildlife managers often use species distribution models (SDMs) as an initial tool in conservation planning. Managers and researchers have made efforts to model the habitat and distribution of pygmy rabbits (Brachylagus idahoensis) across their historic range since the species was proposed for listing under the Endangered Species Act (USFWS 2003)....
Wildfires are keystone components of natural disturbance regimes that maintain ecosystem structure and functions, such as the hydrological cycle, in many parts of the world. Consequently, critical surface freshwater resources can be exposed to post-fire effects disrupting their quantity, quality and regularity. Although well studied at the local scale, the...
AIM: C₄ photosynthesis is an adaptation that maintains efficient carbon assimilation in warm and low-CO₂ conditions. Due to the importance of C₄ grasses for carbon and surface energy fluxes numerous models have been proposed to describe their spatial distribution and forecast responses to climate change. These models often rely on...
Citizen-science projects engage volunteers to gather or process data to address scientific questions. But
citizen-science projects vary in their ability to contribute usefully for science, conservation, or public policy.
eBird has evolved from a basic citizen-science project into a collective enterprise, taking a novel
approach to citizen science by developing...
We show the signature of the tropical intraseasonal oscillation (TIO) in upper tropospheric moisture and dynamical fields, roughly between 200 and 100 hPa. Relationships among these fields are examined using lag-correlation analysis and using multivariate extended empirical orthogonal functions (MEEOFs), which maximize the shared explained variance among several fields for...
Changes in climate caused by increased concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the Earth’s atmosphere have led land and ocean surface temperatures to increase by 0.85°C and sea level to increase by 19 cm relative to preindustrial times. Global climate change will lead to further alterations in mean temperature and...
The effect of adding a high moisture gel manufactured from a combination of konjac flour (2%) and kappa carrageenan (1%) to a reduced fat ground beef system was evaluated. Lean beef (95-10) and 50-50 fat beef trimmings were used to manufacture reduced fat ground beef patties containing konjac flour/carrageenan (K/C)...
Relieving phosphorus loading is a key management tool for controlling Lake Erie eutrophication. During the
1960s and 1970s, increased phosphorus inputs degraded water quality and reduced central basin hypolimnetic
oxygen levels which, in turn, eliminated thermal habitat vital to cold-water organisms and contributed to the
extirpation of important benthic macroinvertebrate...
Like most ecological communities, aspen (Populus tremuloides) forests are influenced by a synergy of bottom-up (resources-driven) and top-down (predator-driven) processes. Since the 1920s, ecologists have observed the decline of many aspen communities throughout the Intermountain West. The extent and possible drivers of this decline are topics of much recent scientific...
Integration methods for enzymatic reactions were applied to
transducer response vs. time curves which exhibit maxima, minima or
inflections. The difference between the integral of the time
dependent response and the initial response, often zero, is related
to the initial enzyme activity or substrate concentration. Fluorescence response curves which exhibit...
Nonindustrial private forest (NIPF) owners control a significant portion of forestland nationwide. Even though women own or manage NIPF lands, we know very little about how women manage forestland and what barriers women face in forest management. In addition, while there are several forestry organizations available to NIPF owners, few...
Grasslands in the Pacific Northwest are characterized by seasonally wet, acidic soils that mainly support cool season grasses and a limited number of legume species. A major limitation to efficient animal production in grass-dominant pastures is the decline in the herbage growth rate and nutritional quality of forage from late...
During barley germination, α-amylase and other hydrolases are synthesized in the aleurone layer and secreted into the starchy endosperm. As starch is degraded by amylases, lysophospholipids are released from inclusion complexes with the starch and undergo hydrolysis by a lysophospholipase (LPL) activity. Studies with embryo-free half seeds and isolated aleurone...
Current human – ocean relationships are dominated by unsustainable extraction of marine resources having both ecological and socio-economic consequences. Sustainable fishery management utilizing stakeholder collaboration must become a proactive strategy to prevent or reduce further long-lasting impacts. In Oregon, USA, a newly developing fishery for gooseneck barnacle (Pollicipes polymerus) presents...
Floodplains are a significant and increasingly threatened ecosystem. As restoration projects are implemented more frequently in degraded floodplains, novel methods are emerging with a focus on restoring critical processes in which vegetation plays a key role. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: 1) to develop expectations for vegetation response,...
The capability of the marine red macroalga Portieria hornemannii to remove and detoxify the nitroaromatic explosive 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) in a seawater environment was evaluated using an axenic microplantlet suspension culture system. Microplantlets were challenged with TNT dissolved in seawater at concentrations of 1 to 50 mg L-1 in well-mixed photobioreactors...
Standard larval Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) rearing systems can be described as either static or continuous flow. While rearing oyster larvae in static cultures can be a low-cost and simple method, static systems require significant husbandry effort, floorspace and can produce highly variable results due to environmental variance among cultures....
Parks help to build social cohesion within a community. Urban open spaces offer
a sense of place, act as the focal points for public gatherings, and provide an
opportunity for social networking (Francis, 2003; Hayward, 1989). While offering so
much they are also known to be places of disgust and...
Across the globe, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been established to protect biodiversity, sustain fisheries, and preserve cultural resources. However, there exist broad differences among MPAs with respect to their establishment stage and protective regulations, making it difficult to quantify how much ocean protection is actually occurring. This thesis utilizes...
Forest carbon (C) density varies tremendously across space due to the inherent heterogeneity of forest ecosystems. Variation of forest C density is especially pronounced in mountainous terrain, where environmental gradients are compressed and vary at multiple spatial scales. Additionally, the influence of environmental gradients may vary with forest age and...
Full Text:
silver fir (Abies amabilis Dougl. ex Forbes),
mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana (Bong.) Carr.), Douglas
Two studies were conducted to compare lamb feedlot
performance and digestibility of nutrients by lambs fed
rations containing bird-resistant and bird-susceptible
sorghum grain with 20 or 40% tall fescue hay as a source
of roughage.
Four rations were fed ad libitum on the performance
study and at 80% of ad...
Air passing upward through the tropical tropopause is “marked” by an annually varying water vapor mixing ratio much as a tape recorder marks a magnetic tape; as the air ascends in the tropical stratosphere, these marks are effaced by a combination of vertical diffusion within the tropics and dilution of...
The application of general circulation models (GCMs) to stratospheric chemistry and transport both permits and requires a thorough investigation of stratospheric water vapor. The National Center for Atmospheric Research has redesigned its GCM, the Community Climate Model (CCM2), to enable studies of the chemistry and transport of tracers including water...
The showy biennial to short-lived perennial Oenothera wolfii (Munz) Raven, Dietrich & Stubbe (Wolf’s evening primrose) occurs in only a small number of isolated populations on the southern Oregon and northern California coast. This rare species is currently listed as Threatened in Oregon, and is considered a Species of Concern...
The objective of this dissertation is to examine federally administered soil conservation policy within the United States and the broadly defined Columbia River Basin in the US Northwest. I accomplish this in five chapters. In the first chapter I provide background information for the study. In the second chapter I...
Rockfish of the genus Sebastes are important components of Oregon reef communities. I examined patterns of age and growth in young-of-year rockfish across two nested spatial scales – local and regional – along the Oregon coast. Using otolith microstructural examination, I examined the relative importance of local versus regional factors...
Within systems characterized by substantial spatial and temporal variability, abundances of organisms tend to be higher in localized areas. Within the northern California Current system, the identification of such marine, biological hotspots would be of great importance to resource managers, conservationists, and research planners, and is consequently a growing area...