Anecdotal evidence suggests many Pacific Northwest estuaries are filling with sediment due to historical logging activities in upstream watersheds. Using the Siletz River estuary as a case study, this research began by analyzing timber harvest and discharge records of the Siletz River watershed, and found that increased timber harvest coincides...
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...
This study examines dissolved rhenium (Re) as a function of water runoff using river samples from two contrasting watersheds, the Eel and Umpqua Rivers in the Pacific Northwest, USA. These watersheds share many key characteristics in terms of size, discharge, climate, and vegetation, but they have a 10-fold difference in...
Patterns of primary productivity in the Arctic are expected to change with continued warming, yet productivity measurements are historically limited, both spatially and temporally. An established method of measuring net biological oxygen production, which can be used to estimate net community production (NCP) rates, is with an equilibrated inlet mass...
One of the principal drivers of climate change is the concentration of greenhouse gases such as CO2 in the atmosphere. A large portion of this CO2 ends up in the waters off the continental coasts where it transforms into biomass. The major sink for this matter is the ocean sediments...
The growing need for accurate forest biomass and carbon estimates has sparked a recent re-examination of direct volume estimation and taper modeling techniques. Additionally, the need for increased precision of biomass and carbon estimates drives a need to improve the techniques used to evaluate these models. Taper equations have an...
The relationship between carbon burial and sedimentation in reservoirs is unknown, exposing gaps in our fundamental understanding of the transport, processing, and deposition of sediment and organic matter in fluvial and lacustrine systems and contributing to uncertainty in our understanding of the net impact of dams to the global carbon...
Quantification of contemporary sediment and carbon accumulation within Oregon tidal saline wetlands will: (1) fill a critical knowledge gap, and (2) naturally test without complicating variables whether sea level rise or sediment supply primarily control wetland growth. Here we measure vertical accretion rates and carbon burial rates in three Oregon...
Continental shelf sediments are sinks for dissolved oxygen and sources of many major and minor nutrients required for oceanic surface primary production, resulting in a strong coupling between benthic and pelagic biogeochemical cycling. However, the influence and spatiotemporal variability of benthic remineralization on bottom-water chemistry and the supply of nutrients...
Soils contain the largest pool of carbon that is actively cycling on human timescales, leading many to view soils as a natural climate solution with multiple co-benefits. The field of soil science is rapidly evolving, but without a unified understanding of soil carbon dynamics. This dissertation leverages two distinct long-term...